“You grabbed my bag.”
“Because you were trying to walk away.”
“I was leaving before you decided I was a thief.”
“I never called you a thief.”
“You emptied my backpack looking for your phone.”
“I asked you to cooperate.”
“You didn’t ask.”
By now, someone was recording.
Janelle could see a phone held upright near the fountain, another near the café entrance. The awareness made her stomach twist. She did not want to become somebody’s thirty-second social-media clip.
“Please move,” she said.
Cynthia refused.
“I want security here first.”
“Then go find security.”
“You stay where you are.”
“No.”
Janelle stepped around her.
Cynthia caught Janelle’s wrist.
Everything that happened afterward took less than fifteen seconds.
Janelle pulled her hand back immediately.
“Do not touch me.”
Cynthia grabbed again, this time catching the sleeve of Janelle’s olive-green jacket.
Janelle knocked her hand away.
“Stop.”
Cynthia’s voice rose.
“Don’t put your hands on me!”
A dozen people reacted at once.
One woman said, “She didn’t.”
Someone else called, “Ma’am, leave her alone.”
Cynthia barely seemed to hear them.
She reached toward Janelle’s shoulder.
Janelle backed away.
“Don’t.”
Cynthia shoved her.
Not hard enough to knock her down.
Hard enough to make the crowd gasp.
Janelle looked at her with genuine disbelief.
“You just pushed me.”
“You got in my face.”
“I was walking away.”
Cynthia swung one hand toward her.
Janelle blocked it.
That seemed to make Cynthia furious.
She grabbed at Janelle’s braids near the back of her head.
Janelle bent instinctively, one hand shooting upward to protect her scalp.
Several bystanders shouted.
“Hey!”
“Let her go!”
“Call the police!”
Cynthia held on.
Janelle twisted toward her, caught Cynthia’s forearm, and tried to free herself.
“LET GO.”
Instead, Cynthia grabbed Janelle around the upper body.
That was when Janelle stopped thinking about appearances.
Her father had enrolled her in judo when she was eleven because she had been small for her age and he worried about her walking home from school. She had quit after high school, but the fundamentals had never completely left her.
Balance.
Leverage.
Do not fight strength with strength.
Janelle planted one foot, turned her hips, and pulled Cynthia’s arm across her body.
Cynthia’s heels betrayed her.
Her weight moved forward.
Janelle stepped through.
The elegant cream suit disappeared below shoulder level.
Cynthia hit the pavement beside a café chair with a startled cry.
Her handbag struck the ground a second later.
The clasp opened.
Lipstick rolled beneath a table.
Keys skidded across the concrete.
A folded shopping receipt fluttered against Janelle’s anatomy textbook.
And a silver iPhone slid from the inner compartment of Cynthia Halbrook’s own handbag.
It stopped faceup on the pavement.
The screen lit.
10:33 AM.
Incoming call.
For several seconds, nobody said anything.
Then the young man who had defended Janelle pointed at it.
“Isn’t that your phone?”
Cynthia stared.
Janelle’s breathing was still heavy.
She looked from the phone to Cynthia.
Then back to the phone.
A woman behind them whispered, “Oh my God.”
Cynthia sat on the ground, one hand braced against the pavement.
“That—”
She stopped.
Janelle did not help her finish.
“Is that the phone you accused me of stealing?”
Cynthia’s face went pale.
“I must have—”
“Is it?”
Cynthia looked around.
Every person who had watched the confrontation was now watching the phone.
“I thought it was missing.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
Cynthia reached for it.
Janelle stepped backward, careful not to touch anything.
“You dumped my backpack.”
“I was mistaken.”
“You grabbed me.”
“You attacked me!”
The crowd erupted.
“No, she didn’t!”
“You grabbed her hair!”
“We saw the whole thing!”
“I have it on video!”
Cynthia looked around wildly.
The story she had constructed twenty minutes earlier was collapsing faster than she could replace it.
Then two uniformed police officers entered the courtyard.
They had been walking a retail patrol at the far end of Harbor Point when a restaurant manager called about a fight. Behind them came a security supervisor wearing a gray polo with the shopping center logo.
Cynthia immediately raised one hand.
“Officer! She assaulted me!”
Janelle closed her eyes briefly.
Of course.
One officer, a Black woman named Sergeant Angela Morris, looked at Cynthia on the pavement and then at Janelle standing several feet away. Her partner, Officer Ben Lowell, scanned the scattered books, open handbag, and crowd.
“Everybody stay where you are,” Morris said.
Cynthia pointed toward Janelle.
“She threw me down.”
Sergeant Morris looked at Janelle.
“Did you?”
“Yes.”
The direct answer surprised Cynthia.
Janelle continued.
“After she dumped my backpack, accused me of stealing her phone, shoved me, grabbed me, and pulled my hair.”
“That is not what happened.”
A man near the fountain lifted his phone.
“I recorded it.”
Another voice came from behind him.
“So did I.”
A café employee raised her hand.
“I saw the beginning.”
Cynthia struggled to stand.
Officer Lowell helped her up.
“I want her arrested.”
Sergeant Morris remained calm.
“We’re going to figure out what happened first.”
“There is nothing to figure out.”
Morris looked toward the silver phone lying beside Cynthia’s purse.
“Whose phone is that?”
Cynthia stopped.
“My phone.”
The officer glanced at Janelle.
“Was that the item you were accused of taking?”
“Yes.”
“Where was it found?”