"I can see you're a police officer. I'm not coming any closer." The man bent his knees, slowly, and set the grocery bags down on the linoleum just inside the door, one, two, and slid the third one off his wrist and set it beside them. He straightened up just as slowly and held his hands out from his sides, open, at waist height, the fingers spread, and Kurt understood, with a sick lurch, that he was doing it for Kurt's benefit, that this was a thing he had learned how to do, and from the ease of it he had learned it a long time ago. "My hands are empty. I'm standing right here. You can see my hands. Now I need you to let go of her. She's twelve years old."
Kurt let go.
He did not decide to. His fingers opened, and the girl was out of his grip and across the room in two steps and into her father, who did not put his hands down to catch her, not at first. He kept them where they were, open, out from his sides, while she pressed her face into his work shirt, and only when Kurt took a step back, and then another, until his shoulders touched the shelving behind him, did the man lower his arms and put them around his daughter. He held her with one hand flat between her shoulder blades and the other on the back of her head. He did not take his eyes off Kurt.
"You're all right," he said into her hair. "You're all right, Del. I'm right here."
"He dumped my bag," she said, muffled. "He dumped everything. She's coming down, Daddy, it's almost four, she's going to see, I tried to put it back but he—"
"I know. I know. It's okay."
"It's not okay. It's not, it's ruined, she's going to see the card—"
"Mr. Lowry," Kurt said. His voice came out rougher than he meant it to and he cleared his throat. "I'm Officer Brisco, Tacoma PD. I live in 1D. I've been investigating a series of thefts from this room—"
"I know who you are."
"Your daughter was observed in here going through Mrs. Dunning's grocery delivery. I found her with her hands in the bags. She had a number of food items in her backpack." He heard himself, and it was the voice from the reports, the passive, careful, ironed-flat voice. Was observed. A number of food items. "She wouldn't explain what she was doing. She tried to remove the items and I restrained her. I believe she's been taking items out of Mrs. Dunning's deliveries."