Marcus looked through the side window.
“I think you do.”
Harris did not answer again.
At the station, Marcus was processed without being permitted a phone call.
Morrison personally emptied his pockets.
Wallet.
Keys.
Rental receipt.
Phone.
Cash.
Nothing identifying him as FBI.
Marcus had deliberately left his federal credentials secured elsewhere before beginning the operation.
Morrison looked disappointed.
“Thought you were important.”
Marcus met his eyes.
“Did I say I was?”
Morrison shoved the wallet into an evidence bag.
“You act like it.”
Marcus nearly smiled.
That was the strange thing about power.
People who truly possessed it rarely needed strangers to recognize it.
They placed Marcus in Interrogation Room 2.
Gray walls.
Metal table.
Two chairs.
One dead camera mounted near the ceiling.
Or apparently dead.
The indicator light was dark.
An officer chained one cuff to a metal ring beneath the tabletop.
“Bathroom?” Marcus asked.
“When somebody has time.”
The door closed.
Marcus was alone.
He tested his breathing.
Four seconds in.
Four seconds out.
His shoulder pulsed.
Blood had dried along the side of his face.
His reflection in the narrow observation window looked like a man who had lost a fight.
That image did not bother him.
What bothered him was what was happening outside.
He could not see the FBI operations room.
But he knew the protocol.
Supervisor Rebecca Keller would be there.
So would Assistant Special Agent in Charge Emilio Vargas.
Federal prosecutors would already be receiving summaries.
Preservation orders would be drafted.
The local station’s computer systems would become evidence.
And if the live transmission remained intact, nobody in Deerfield had any idea how much had already been captured.
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.”
“He hurt people.”
“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?”
“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.
Reeves softened his voice.
“You’re clearly educated. Clearly not stupid. So make the smart choice. Sign a statement acknowledging that you became upset during the stop, failed to comply promptly, and accidentally contributed to the 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.”
“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.”
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.
He looked down.
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.
“Did he just ask Troy to sign a false statement?” Vargas said.
Liu did not look away from her laptop.
“He strongly implied the alternative was prosecution based on an officer report they know is contradicted by witnesses.”
“So yes.”
“So we’re writing carefully.”
Keller removed her headphones.
“We need the warrants now.”
Liu nodded.
“The magistrate has the affidavit.”
“How long?”
“She’s reviewing it.”
Keller hated waiting.
Marcus had worked under her for seven years.
He had become more than an agent she supervised.
He was the person she trusted when a case required patience without passivity.
He never chased heroics.
Never tried to be the loudest person in a room.
That was why watching Morrison throw him to the pavement had been almost unbearable.
Vargas noticed her expression.
“He knew the risk.”
“You want to pull him out?”
“Yes.”
“That’s not what I asked.”