He refused.

He smiled a little, the way a man smiles when he intends to be remembered as having been the calm and cooperative one, and he said that the bag was his daughters’ and that this had all gone absurdly far and that everyone was going to feel very foolish shortly.

And then the station camera recorded the time — four twenty-four in the afternoon — as he took a slow step backward toward the SUV and began, casually, to move the backpack toward the open driver’s door, as though to set it inside out of the rain.

He did not get to finish.

A second patrol unit came into the lot behind him, and another officer was out and moving before the bag reached the door, and it was taken from him without any struggle at all, because men like Lucian Fenwick do not struggle in parking lots in front of cameras; they save themselves for lawyers and courtrooms, where they believe the real advantages lie.

Inside the front pocket of the backpack was a second empty oral syringe, wrapped in a paper towel.