"I'm sorry about your evening."
"It's not over yet," he said, and something in the way he said it made Benitez look at him a second longer.
She went back to Thuy Phan by the Tahoe, who was gathering her receipts off the hood, and Travis heard her say, in the same quiet voice, "Ms. Phan, you shouldn't have run out here like that. You understand that. Running up on an officer on a stop. That could have gone a lot of different ways."
"I know," Thuy Phan said.
"I'm going to write a memo tonight to the task force about that bulletin. With today's date and my name on it. It'll go up the chain. You might want your lawyer to ask for a copy."
Thuy Phan looked at her.
"Thank you," she said.
"Don't thank me. It should have been done two weeks ago." Benitez glanced at the van, at the man by its door. "And I'm glad you did. Run out here. Off the record."
"There isn't any off the record," Thuy Phan said, and looked at the camera on the sergeant's chest, and for the first time that evening, almost, smiled.
When the police vehicles had gone, Alton walked back through the gap in the fence onto the gravel, and halfway up the lot, beside the Altima, he found a woman's black flat lying on its side, and picked it up and carried it to the office. Thuy Phan was sitting at her desk with the title in front of her and both hands flat on either side of it. He set the shoe on her desk.