"When the starter sticks, yes. It's a 1972. The solenoid sticks. You tap it." She kept her voice level. "I'm an airline pilot, Officer. I just landed. My employee ID is around my neck, under my coat. My keys are in the ignition. My registration and insurance are in the glove box. I'd like to show you any of those, whichever you want, and I'll move however you tell me to move."
There was a pause, and in the pause she heard him breathing, fast, through his nose. She could not see his face now. She was looking across the roof of the car at the dark row of cottonwoods past the fence, and at the shuttle shelter, where the shuttle's interior lights still burned and where, in the front window, a small figure in a pink bonnet had both hands pressed flat to the glass.
Oh, Naomi thought. Oh, baby, don't watch this.
"There've been thefts out here," the officer said. "Catalytic converters. Batteries. Couple of whole cars. We've had people coming over that fence." His hand moved off her back. "Keep your hands on the roof. I'm going to pat you down for weapons."
"I don't have any weapons. You're welcome to check."
He checked. He was not rough about it, she would give him that later, when she was giving him things, but he was not gentle either, and when his hands found the lanyard under her coat he pulled it out without asking and held the badge up to his flashlight. She heard him read it under his breath. Meridian Air. Whitfield. Captain.
"This could be anybody's," he said. It was not quite addressed to her.
"It has my picture on it."
"I'm going to need you to sit down on the curb."
"There isn't a curb, Officer. It's a parking lot."
"Then on the ground. Sit on the ground."
She looked at the wet asphalt and at her uniform trousers and made a decision. It was the same decision she had made at nineteen in an Air Force recruiter's office and at twenty-six on the ramp at Bagram and at thirty-five in the right seat of a jet with a captain who had called her sweetheart for four days straight. The decision was that the moment was not hers to win. The moment was only hers to survive with her dignity and her evidence intact. The winning came later, and it came on paper.
She sat down on the ground.