Because it revealed too much calm.
Morrison noticed.
Men like Morrison often mistook fear for respect.
A calm person confused them.
“You think you’re smarter than me?” Morrison asked.
Marcus said nothing.
“Put him in the car.”
They pushed him toward a patrol vehicle.
The woman near the pharmacy was still filming.
Marcus caught her eyes.
She looked terrified.
He gave the smallest nod he could.
Keep recording.
She seemed to understand.
At 7:14 p.m., the rear door of a Deerfield police cruiser opened outside the station.
Marcus stepped out with his hands still cuffed behind him.
His left shoulder burned.
His cheek felt swollen.
One wrist was bleeding where the metal cuff had pinched skin.
But physically, he was functional.
He had experienced worse.
What troubled him was Harris.
The younger officer had barely spoken during the drive.
At two stoplights, Marcus saw Harris glance at him through the rearview mirror.
Finally Marcus said, “You can still tell the truth.”
Harris’s hands tightened around the steering wheel.
“Don’t talk.”
Marcus waited.
A few blocks later, Harris said quietly, “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
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.”
“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.