"Mireya?" she said. "Are you still with me?"
"I'm here."
"Police are on scene. An officer's walking toward you now. I'm going to let you go. You did a really good job today."
"Thank you," I said. "Keturah. Thank you."
"Take care of yourself," she said, and the green capsule disappeared. Twenty-six minutes and forty seconds. I looked at the number for a long time before I put the phone down.
Then my hands started to shake.
The officer was a woman about my age, short and solid, with her hair in a tight bun under her cap and a body camera clipped to the center of her vest. Her nameplate said VALDIVIA. She came up the access road with a notebook in one hand and the other resting on her belt, not on anything in particular, just resting, and when she reached me she looked at my hands and said, "You want to sit down?"
"I'm okay."
"Sit down anyway," she said. "Curb's in the shade."
I sat on the curb. She crouched in front of me, which I appreciated, because standing over someone who's sitting is how you make them feel like a suspect. She asked my name and my address and my date of birth. She asked if I was hurt. She asked if I'd breathed any of the gas, and I said a little, and she called one of the paramedics over to listen to my chest, and he did, and said I was clear but that I should go in if I started coughing. Then she said, "Dispatch tells me somebody took your phone."
"The HOA president," I said. "Glynis Hollister. His wife."