Briggs reached his hand toward his duty holster in disbelief, his jaw working without a sound.
Around the perimeter of the plaza, four unmarked dark gray sedans pulled up simultaneously against the granite curbing, doors snapping open as state investigators in windbreakers stepped out, effectively sealing every vehicle exit out of the county lot.
CHAPTER 2: Unmarked Cars Blocked The Exits While My Name Burned On Paper
State Investigator Miller did not raise his weapon, but his hand rested heavy on the black strap across his chest as his boots cleared the courthouse curb. Two more men in windbreakers moved past the decorative limestone urns, their bodies cutting off the path toward the county garage where Briggs’s personal truck sat idling under the sycamores. The plaza had gone dead still except for the dry rattle of dead leaves against the cruiser’s tires and the faint, rhythmic shudder of the idling exhaust.
"Nobody touches leather," Reynolds ordered, his voice cutting through the dry midday glare with the flat authority of a man who had already called the county prosecutor’s desk from the second-floor stairwell. He reached out and caught the thumb-break on Briggs’s duty holster with two fingers, pinning the hammer down before the sergeant’s knuckles could close around the grip. "Take your hands off the belt, Frank. You do it right now, in front of the building, or these men will put you on the pavement."
Briggs took half a breath, his nostrils flaring wide, his throat corded like dried hemp. His fingers hesitated against the polished basketweave leather, twitching once, twice, before he slowly flattened both palms against the hot hood of Unit Four. The metal gave off a faint metallic ping beneath his weight. "You're making a mistake, Tom," Briggs muttered through clenched teeth, staring directly into the radiator grille. "You don't blow up the entire road division over an unsigned log. The union will have you out of the captain's office before the morning shift turns out."
"It isn't unsigned," Reynolds said. He didn't raise his voice. He laid the manila folder flat on the cruiser's hood, right beside Briggs’s left thumb, using his forearm to keep the autumn breeze from lifting the pink sheets. "It's stamped by the Mercer County records repository. It has your supervisor endorsement on line four. And it carries Ethan Vance’s employee signature at the bottom of the state fatality report."
I stepped away from the cruiser door, my shoulder throbbing where Briggs had driven me into the steel frame. My torn badge still lay six feet behind us on the concrete, the gold plating catching the harsh midday sun like a discarded coin. I stared at the paper pinned under the captain's sleeve. My name was there in dark blue rollerball ink, printed in block capitals on the operator line: Officer Ethan Vance, Badge 412. Beneath it, running across the signature block, was a quick, jagged scrawl that mimicked my hand just closely enough to pass through an overworked county clerk's intake basket on a busy Friday morning.
"I didn't sign that," I said, the words scraping my throat. "I was in the magistrate's hearing on the gravel pit trespass until ten thirty. The docket clerk took my appearance on the record. I never touched Unit Four."
"The clerk took your appearance at ten twenty-five, Ethan," Reynolds said, looking up at me without blinking. "The collision on Route Nine occurred at nine fifty-eight. That left twenty-seven minutes between the impact at the bridge abutment and the moment you walked into Courtroom B. A cruiser running code three down the ridge bypass covers that distance in twelve."
The calculation hit me like a blow to the ribs. Briggs hadn't just forged my name to clear Marcus; he had timed the forgery to an exact window where my presence wasn't officially logged on a stenographer's machine. The twenty minutes I had spent sitting in the basement breakroom drinking burnt coffee while waiting for the judge to finish his morning calendar had just become my execution docket.
Investigator Miller reached the fender, his badge case flipped open to show the silver state seal backed by dark red enamel. "Sergeant Frank Briggs, step back toward my vehicle. Keep your hands visible above your belt."
Briggs didn't move toward the unmarked sedan. Instead, he twisted his neck, glaring at Reynolds with a contempt so raw it pulled his upper lip away from his gold crown. "You think Vance is clean in this, Tom? Ask him where his dashcam hard drive is right now. Ask him why the secure lockbox on Unit Seven was pried open before dawn."
My stomach tightened into a knot. "Unit Seven has been deadlined behind the impound bay since Tuesday," I said. "The power steering pump burned out on the river road."
"Then why did the yard supervisor log Unit Seven out at six this morning under your key fob?" Briggs snapped, his voice rising enough to carry toward the county workers lingering near the courthouse doors. "The gate reader caught the fob code, Ethan. You checked the spare cruiser out, you pulled the drive from the dash camera, and you dumped it in the scrap bin behind the quarry before you walked in here to play the martyr for the grand jury."
"That's a lie," I said, taking half a step forward before Miller’s partner raised an open palm to hold me in place. "My keys were in the lockbox in the squad room."