"Please hold your questions until the end of the presentation," Carter said smoothly, and the politeness in his voice was worse than anger because it left no room to argue with.
The video continued. The flashing red and blue lights of O'Grady's cruiser bloomed in the Taurus's rear window, first as a faint pulse and then as a hard strobe that filled the cabin. Cynthia's voice, crisp and clear through the vehicle's hidden microphones, filled the interrogation room, and so did her steady breathing, unhurried even as the lights came up behind her. On the wall, the recorded Cynthia pulled over perfectly onto the gravel shoulder, placed the car in park, and rested her hands at ten and two on the steering wheel. She did not fumble. She did not reach for anything. She waited.
"Okay, so she got lucky for a few miles," O'Grady scoffed, though a bead of sweat was beginning to form at his hairline and he wiped at it with the back of his hand as if it were rain. "That doesn't prove anything. Anybody can rig a dashcam."
Carter ignored him. He tapped again, and the projection split into four screens at once, a quad display that made the room feel suddenly crowded with angles. Driver's perspective. Passenger side. Rear. A direct shot of the driver's side window. Four views of the same night, none of them blinking, none of them offering a blind spot to hide in.
The room watched as the recorded O'Grady approached the car. The audio captured his aggressive tone perfectly, the bark of it, the absence of any greeting, the absence of a name or a reason. "License and registration," the recorded O'Grady demanded, shining the blinding flashlight straight into the driver's eyes. They watched Cynthia hand over her documents slowly, her movements measured, her hands visible. They watched O'Grady order her out of the vehicle, his hand already drifting toward his weapon, his voice already making a threat out of a traffic stop.
Then came the moment of truth, and Carter did not hurry it. He let the quad screen hold on the recorded Cynthia standing outside in the rain, facing the roof of the car, her hands flat on the wet metal, her back to the man who was about to search her car. The camera that mattered most now was the one aimed at the driver's side door, the wide-angle lens the Bureau's technical division had installed specifically to monitor the vehicle's interior blind spots. There was no place for O'Grady to hide, and the video knew it.