tired, familiar sadness that this was still happening, that men still thought they could treat a person this way simply because she was young, and alone, and driving down a quiet road at the wrong time.
Then she picked up her phone and made a call.
It didn’t take long. Fifteen minutes later, a second set of headlights turned onto the shoulder behind the patrol car — a district vehicle, and out of it stepped a heavyset man in a senior officer’s uniform, along with two others Victoria recognized from her building. The district chief. He walked straight past the two patrol officers without a word to either of them and came to her window first.
“Are you alright?” he asked her.
“I’m fine,” she said, and meant it, mostly. “I’d like to show you something.”
She pulled up the footage on her phone and let it play. The chief watched in silence, his jaw growing tighter with every passing second. He watched the moment the tall officer threw her documents onto the car roof. He watched the second officer grab her wrist before she’d even unlocked her phone screen.
