Marcus closed his eyes.
Rebecca Keller had warned him.
Three days earlier, she had stood beside a whiteboard covered in names and arrows.
"You're not supposed to become the complaint," she said.
Marcus had smiled.
"I know."
"I mean it."
"So do I."
"Observe. Document. Don't give Morrison an excuse to escalate."
"I won't."
Keller had stared at him.
"You have a talent for sounding calm when you're being stubborn."
"That's why you hired me."
"I didn't hire you."
"You keep assigning me cases."
"Because nobody else enjoys getting yelled at by corrupt public officials as much as you do."
Marcus's smile had disappeared.
"These complaints are real, Rebecca."
"I know."
"He hurt people."
"I know."
"And somebody inside that station keeps making evidence disappear."
That was the central question.
Not whether Morrison was dangerous.
They already suspected he was.
The real question was who protected him.
Captain Reeves was an obvious possibility.
Too obvious, Marcus thought.
Corrupt departments rarely survived because of one bad officer.
They survived because silence became institutional.
Records vanished.
Witnesses changed stories.
Complaints were discouraged.
Supervisors approved reports they knew were false.
Prosecutors received sanitized files.
Everybody did a little.
Nobody admitted responsibility for the whole.
Marcus had learned that years earlier.
His father had taught him the opposite lesson.
"Institutions are just people standing close together," Anthony Troy used to say. "If the institution fails, look at which people decided not to move."
Anthony had been a public defender.
Not glamorous.
Not powerful.
He spent thirty-one years representing people who could not afford anyone else.
He died when Marcus was twenty-nine.
Cancer.
Fast.
Unfair.
During Marcus's final conversation with him, Anthony had said something Marcus still heard whenever a case became ugly.
"Don't confuse winning with justice."
At 8:26 p.m., the interrogation-room door opened.
Morrison entered first.
Reeves followed.
No recording officer.
No attorney.
Reeves sat opposite Marcus.
Morrison remained standing.
"You've created a serious problem for yourself," Reeves said.
Marcus's cuffed hand rested on the table.
"I want to speak to a lawyer."
"We're trying to help you."
"I want a lawyer."
Reeves sighed.
"Marcus, right?"
Marcus said nothing.
"We know who you are."
That caught his attention.
Not visibly.
Internally.
Reeves smiled faintly.
"You have a driver's license. We're not magicians."
Marcus relaxed.
Of course.
The license identified him.
Not his occupation.
Reeves opened a folder.
"Obstruction. Resisting. Disorderly conduct. Potential reckless driving."
"I want an attorney."
"You keep saying that like it's magic."
"No," Marcus replied. "I'm saying it because questioning should stop."
Morrison leaned over the table.
"You think you can tell us how this works?"
Marcus looked directly at him.
"I think the law can."
Morrison's jaw tightened.
Reeves raised a hand.
"Jason."
Morrison stepped back.
escalation. We can probably reduce this to a citation.
Marcus stared at the paper Reeves slid toward him.
There it was.
Not merely violence.
Not merely a false report.
A manufactured confession.
"What happens if I refuse?"
Reeves leaned back.
"Then Officer Morrison's account stands."
"And the witnesses?"
"Witnesses misunderstand things."
"The videos?"
For the first time, silence entered the room.
Reeves's eyes changed.
Only slightly.
Marcus had found something.
"What videos?" Morrison asked.
Marcus tilted his head.
"There were people recording."
"People record everything," Morrison said.
Reeves continued watching Marcus.
"What exactly do you think they recorded?"
"The stop."
Morrison laughed.
"From fifty feet away? In the dark?"
"The parking lot was brightly lit."
Morrison's smile disappeared.
Reeves took the statement back.
"You want to play games, that's your choice."
"I want a lawyer."
Morrison bent close enough that Marcus could smell coffee on his breath.
"You know how much lawyers cost?"
Marcus almost answered.
Then he remembered the assignment.
Let them believe what they wanted.
Morrison took the silence as surrender.
That was his mistake.
"Thought so," he said.
When they left, Marcus listened to their footsteps fade.
Then he looked toward the apparently dead camera.
"I hope you got that," he whispered.
Four miles away, Rebecca Keller did.
She stood in a federal conference room with headphones pressed against one ear.
Eight people were moving around her.
Screens showed timestamps, audio waveforms, maps, legal documents.
Vargas stood beside a prosecutor named Karen Liu.