We went down our street and along the parkway and past the high school and turned right, and about thirty seconds after that turn I understood where we were going, and I said, out loud, in a voice that I did not recognise: “Oh my God.

Is this about Maya?”

And Officer Daniels said, “Ma’am, we’re almost there.”

Which is a non-answer, and which I now know he gave because he had been told to deliver us and nothing else, and because the entire situation had been set up by a lieutenant who had made an enormous and well-meaning error of judgement that would cost him something.

In those nine minutes I went through every possibility available to me.