"Somebody told me they've seen you in here every Thursday. Same time. Right when her groceries come. They said last week there was a can of soup on the floor next to her bag." He nodded at the floor beside the totes, where a can of Campbell's Chicken Noodle was standing upright on the linoleum next to her open backpack, as if it had been posed there for a photograph. "Just like that one."
"I didn't take anything," the girl said. "I swear to God. I didn't take anything from her. I would never."
"Then you won't mind if I look in your backpack."
"No."
"No, I can look, or no, I can't?"
"You can't. You can't just—it's my backpack, you don't have a warrant." She said warrant the way kids said it, from television, with a little lift at the end, as if she were not sure it was a real word, and he felt something in his chest go hard and tired at the same time, because it was the same thing every kid said, and because she was right, and because he had already decided.
What he would remember afterward, what he would go over and over at his kitchen table at two in the morning and in the car on the way to work and in the shower with the water running cold, was how reasonable it had felt. That was the worst of it. There had been no moment of anger, no flash of temper he could blame. It had felt like procedure. She was in a room where thefts had occurred, with her hands in property that was not hers, refusing to explain herself, with an open bag at her feet that could contain stolen goods; there was a witness who placed her there on prior occasions; there was a can on the floor. He was a police officer. He had probable cause, or something close enough to it that he could write it down in a way that would read like probable cause, and she was twelve, and she would not be charged with anything, he was nearly sure of that, he only wanted to know. He only wanted to know so that he could go up the stairs to 2F and tell Mrs. Dunning that it was over and go to the leasing office and tell Shirlene Treadwell the same, and write it down in his October summary, and keep the green bedroom with the bunk bed in it. He would remember thinking, very clearly, that it would be kinder to do it fast.
He stepped forward and picked the backpack up off the floor by its top loop. It was heavier than he expected, much heavier; it dragged at his arm. The girl made a sound and reached for it and he turned his shoulder and she missed.
"Please," she said. "Please don't. Please, she's going to come down. She comes down at four. Please just let me finish and I'll go, I'll go upstairs, you can talk to my dad, please—"
He upended the bag over the folding table.