* * *
The sergeant was named Harlan Pruitt, and he arrived at 10:58 with the expression of a man who had been eating dinner.
He listened to Dacey for four minutes, standing by his car with his back to the side lot. He listened to Lomax for one. He did not listen to Julian Ashby at all, and he did not look at the phone on the brick, which by then had gone dark. Lomax would testify, months later, that she told her sergeant the man in handcuffs appeared to be the registered owner of the vehicle and that the off-duty officer's account "had some issues," and that Pruitt had replied, "Then the magistrate can sort out the issues. Russ says he resisted. I'm not going to un-arrest a man on a sidewalk in front of a crowd and make one of ours look like a fool."
So the cuffs stayed on.
Julian was charged with obstruction of justice under Virginia Code 18.2-460, a Class 1 misdemeanor, punishable by up to twelve months in jail. Teodoro Barrientos was charged with the same thing. Dacey wrote in the field notes that the valet had "advanced aggressively on the officer while shouting, creating a hazard and diverting the officer's attention from a resisting subject." Julian's shoulder had swelled enough by then that Lomax, without asking Pruitt, radioed for a medic unit, and the medic, a young woman with a nose ring and a very steady voice, looked at the way his left arm hung and said, "Nope. He's going to the ER before he goes anywhere else."
"Which ER?" Julian asked.
"VCU's closest."
He laughed then, for the first time, a short dry sound that hurt his ribs. The medic looked at him strangely.
"My daughter's there," he said. "Labor and delivery. Fourth floor."
"Oh," the medic said. "Oh, sir. I'm sorry."
* * *