billfold with credit cards and other identification. The woman detective was collecting the fallen items while the security guard, his uniform wet and soiled, and with a painfully sprained ankle, limped to a telephone to call the local police.
It was all so ridiculously easy that the two policemen were grinning as they escorted Erica from her car to theirs. Minutes earlier the police cruiser had pulled alongside the convertible and without fuss, not using flashing lights or siren, one of the policemen had waved her to stop, which she did immediately, knowing that anything else would be insane, just as attempting to run away to begin with had been madly foolish.
The policemen, both young, had been firm but also quiet and polite so that Erica felt less intimidated than by the antagonistic woman detective in the store. In any case, she was now totally resigned to whatever was going to happen. She knew she had brought disaster on herself, and whatever other disasters followed would happen anyway because it was too late to change anything, whatever she said or did.
'Our orders are to take you in, ma'am,' one of the policemen said. 'My partner will drive your car.'
Erica gasped, 'All right.' She went to the rear of the cruiser where the policeman had the door open for her to enter, then shrank back when she realized the interior was barred and she would be locked inside as if in a cell.
The policeman saw her hesitate. 'Regulations,' he explained. 'I'd let you ride up front if I could, but if I did they'd likely put me in the back.'
Erica managed a smile. Obviously the two officers had decided she was not a major criminal.
The same policeman asked, 'Ever been arrested before?'
She shook her head.
'Didn't think you had. Nothing to it after the first few times. That is, for people who don't make trouble.'
She entered the cruiser, the door slammed, and she was locked in.
At the suburban police station she had an impression of polished wood, and tile floors, but otherwise was only dully aware of the surroundings.
She was cautioned, then questioned about what happened at the store.
Erica answered truthfully, knowing the time for evasion was past. She was confronted by the woman detective and the security guard, both hostile, even when Erica confirmed their version of events. She identified the briefcase she had stolen, at the same time wondering why she had ever wanted it. Later, she signed a statement, then was asked if she wished to make a telephone call. To a lawyer? To her husband? She answered no.
After that, she was taken to a small room with a barred window at the rear of the police station, locked in, and left alone.
The chief of the suburban police force, Wilbur Arenson, was not a man who burried needlessly. Many times during his career, Chief Arenson had found that slowness, when it could be managed, paid off later, and thus he had taken his time while reading several reports concerning an alleged shoplifting which occurred earlier in the afternoon, followed by a suspect's attempted flight, a police radio alert and, later, an interception and detention. The detained suspect, one Erica Marguerite Trenton, age twenty-five, a married woman living at Quarton Lake, had been cooperative, and further had signed a statement admitting the offense.
Under normal procedure the case would have gone ahead routinely, with the suspect charged, a subsequent court appearance and, most likely, a conviction. But not everything in a Detroit suburban police station proceeded according to routine.
It was not routine for the chief to review details of a minor criminal case, yet certain cases - at subordinates' discretion - found their way to his desk.
Trenton. The name stirred a chord of memory. The chief was not sure how or when he had heard the name before, but knew his mind would churn out the answer if he didn't rush it. Meanwhile, he continued reading.
Another departure from routine was that the station desk sergeant, familiar with the ways and preferences of his chief, had not so far booked the suspect. Thus no blotter listing yet existed, with a name and charges listed, for press reporters to peruse.
Several things about the case interested the chief. First, a need of money obviously was not a motive. A billfold, dropped on the shopping plaza parking lot by the fleeing suspect, contained more than a hundred dollars cash as well as American Express and Diners cards, plus credit cards from local stores. A checkbook in the suspect's handbag showed a substantial balance in the account.
Chief Arenson knew all about well-heeled women shoplifters and their supposed motivations, so the money aspect did not surprise him. More interesting was the suspect's unwillingness to give information about her husband or to telephone him when allowed the opportunity.
Not that it made any difference. The interrogating officer had routinely checked out ownership of the car she was driving, which proved to be registered to one of the Big Three auto manufacturers, and a further check with that company's security office revealed it was an official company car, one of two allocated to Mr. Adam Trenton.
The company security man had let that item of information about two cars slip out, though he hadn't been asked, and the police officer phoning the inquiry had noted it in his report. Now, Chief Arenson, a stockily built, balding man in his late fifties, sat at his desk and considered the notation.
As the police chief well knew, plenty of auto executives drove company cars. But only a senior executive would have two company cars - one for himself, another for his wife.
Thus it required no great deductive powers to conclude that the suspect, Erica Marguerite Trenton, now locked in a small interrogation room instead of in a cell - another intuitive move by the desk sergeant - was married to a reasonably important man.
What the chief needed to know was: How important? And how much influence did Mrs. Trenton's husband have?
The fact that the chief would take time to consider such questions at all was a reason why suburban Detroit communities insisted on maintaining their own local police forces. Periodically, proposals appeared for a merger of the score or more of separate police forces of Greater Detroit into a single metropolitan force. Such an arrangement, it was argued, would ensure better policing by eliminating duplication, and would also be less costly. The metropolitan system, its advocates pointed out, worked successfully elsewhere.
But the suburbs - Birmingham, Bloomfield Hills, Troy, Dearborn, the Grosse Pointes and others - were always solidly opposed. As a result, and because residents of those communities had influence where it counted, the proposal always failed.
The existing system of small, independent forces might not be the best means of providing equal justice for all, but it did give local citizens whose names were known a better break when they, their families or friends transgressed the law.
Presto! - the chief remembered where he had heard the name Trenton before.
Six or seven months ago, Chief Arenson had bought a car for his wife from the auto dealer, Smokey Stephensen. During the chief's visit to the dealer's showroom on Saturday, he recalled - Smokey had introduced him to an Adam Trenton from the auto company's head office. Afterward and privately, while Smokey and the chief made their deal about the car, Smokey mentioned Trenton again, predicting that he was going higher in the company, and one day would be its president.
Reflecting on the incident, and its implications at this moment, Chief Arenson was glad he had dawdled.
