Nadia's appointment letter was still folded beside a notebook in the briefcase. She opened it with her left hand because the right shoulder had begun to stiffen. The paper contained the council resolution, her start date, and the name of the person authorized to introduce her to the command staff. Deputy Chief Victor Sloane had signed the transition arrangements. His office had confirmed that the personnel notice would reach every shift before she arrived. Nadia laid that page beside Ellis's incident reference.
Sloane entered after noon, smelling faintly of expensive aftershave. He looked first at Elena, then at the medical bandage on Nadia's wrist. “This is appalling,” he said. “There has clearly been a breakdown in communication.” He did not mention the strike until Marin asked which conduct he understood to be a communication problem. Sloane paused, then said the whole encounter would require investigation. Nadia waited while he sat. She had met him twice. Both times he had been excellent at selecting a word large enough to cover something smaller and uglier.
“Who received the appointment notice?” she asked.
“Administrative staff distributed it.”
“Who confirmed receipt?”
“I can have that checked.”
“Please preserve the distribution record before checking.”
He looked offended. “Of course.”
Ellis returned with a printout. The notice had been delivered to supervisory accounts at six the previous evening. Heller's shift briefing included a line about a command transition, but the attached photograph had not been displayed. Reed's acknowledgment was blank. Sloane's own office had marked the briefing complete. None of those facts explained a slap or a gun. They did establish that ignorance had been partly manufactured by people failing to pass on information they possessed.
Elena wanted an announcement before the evening news discovered what had happened through rumor. Nadia said an accurate statement could confirm the appointment, the incident, and the independent review without turning a preliminary account into a final disciplinary finding. Marin agreed. Sloane suggested describing the event as an identification dispute. Ellis looked down at her notes. Nadia watched him for a moment. “The identification was disputed because nobody checked it,” she said. “The force still needs to be described.”
A city vehicle took her to the clinic for further examination. The doctor found no fracture but advised rest, follow-up, and documentation if the pain changed. Camille arrived while Nadia was reading the instructions. She brought a cardigan and anger she was trying to control. “I thought your first day would be boring,” she said. Nadia laughed once, then discovered that laughter hurt her shoulder. Camille stopped trying to sound casual. She sat beside her without asking her to be reassuring.
At home that evening, Nadia placed the appointment letter on the kitchen counter. She had imagined putting it in a frame for her late father's photograph. He had been a bus mechanic who taught her to ask which person a rule protected before praising its existence. She thought of his hands smoothing a service manual and wished she could ask him how to lead a department that had assaulted her before breakfast. He would probably have asked what she planned to do tomorrow.
Before leaving the clinic, Nadia asked for copies of the examination record and follow-up instructions. She did not want her professional training to make her an unreliable patient who dismissed symptoms until they became harder to assess. Camille read the shoulder exercises while waiting for the car. She asked whether Nadia wanted her to stay overnight. Nadia nearly refused out of habit, then said yes. It was the first decision that day she made without considering how the department might interpret it.
At home, Camille put the briefcase on a chair instead of the floor. The small care made Nadia suddenly furious. A stranger had handled her body less respectfully than her sister handled a damaged bag. She cried for several minutes while Camille sat beside her. There was no recorder in the room and no need to sound composed. Afterward, she washed her face and returned to the instructions. She could be injured, angry, and responsible for tomorrow without any one of those things cancelling the others.
Nadia called Marin and requested that responsibility for investigating her own encounter remain outside her command. She could preserve records and direct immediate safeguards. She would not determine the disputed facts or impose punishment in a case where she was the complainant. Marin began drafting the arrangements. Before bed, Nadia sent Ellis a separate instruction: identify every complaint involving Heller from the previous three years, including withdrawn complaints and matters informally closed. Her first investigation as chief would concern a pattern she did not yet claim to know.
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