Nothing I wore suggested my profession. I neither announced me nor displayed credentials; I ordered lunch.
Twenty-two minutes later, Voss arrested me.
The station was six minutes away. Voss drove one-handed, humming to country music. He occasionally smiled at me in the mirror.
The young deputy sat in the passenger seat holding my purse in his lap. His name tag said MILLER. He looked no older than twenty-five. He repeatedly glanced back, visibly wanting to speak but afraid.
“Run her name when we get in,” Voss told him. “And find out what she was doing in my county.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Probably casing the pharmacy,” Voss said to nobody in particular. “Pruitt’s got opioids in there. I’ve seen her type.”
My so-called type.
I watched parched fields and kudzu-covered pines, breathing in and out for four seconds each. My grandmother taught me this in church when I was six, after a white man at a Waffle House called my grandfather an ugly word I refuse to repeat.
