"And if I don't sign?" "Then Marcus finds something unsavory tucked under the spare tire in your trunk," Thornton said, his tone casual, almost conversational. "A controlled substance. Maybe an unregistered firearm with the numbers filed off the receiver. Then you aren't dealing with a sixty-day exclusion. You're looking at five years at the state annex in Cumberland."
The trap was clean, practiced, and brutal. He had used it on a dozen shopkeepers and working men along the riverfront over the past three years. If they fought, they vanished into the state prison system on fabricated narcotics charges. If they signed, they surrendered their civil standing and abandoned their property to his brother's commercial holdings.
"Uncuff my right hand so I can hold the pen," I said. Thornton stood up, reached around my shoulder, and pulled my wrists forward. He didn't use a key; he grabbed the steel chain between the cuffs, expecting to find the double-locked tumblers engaged. Instead, the links separated instantly in his hands. Thornton froze, his fingers gripping the loose metal. For half a second, his brain tried to reconcile why the cuffs were unlocked with the fact that I had remained sitting entirely still on the bench. He lunged for his duty holster.
"Sullivan—" Before his fingers could wrap around the textured polymer grip of his sidearm, Brenda Sullivan moved. She didn't draw her weapon. She took a half-step forward and drove the hardened plastic housing of her heavy field radio directly down onto Thornton's wrist, pinning his gun hand against his thigh. "Step away from the bench, Chief," Brenda said, her voice dropping into a register that was stone cold. Thornton jerked his arm back, his face flushing crimson with sudden, violent shock. "What the hell are you doing, Brenda? Back off!"
"You're under administrative observation by the State Bureau of Professional Standards," I said, standing up from the bench and bringing my hands around to the front. I picked up the folded dispatch override log from beneath my thigh and unfolded it, holding the white sheet between my fingers. "Officer Sullivan isn't backing you up," I continued, stepping toward the center of the concrete room. "She's been documenting your manual dispatch overrides for forty-eight hours. Every time you forced an unlogged stop on River Road, you entered your personal PIN to mask unit locations at the municipal yard."
CHAPTER 5
Thornton stared from me to Brenda, his jaw working silently. Then his chest hitched, and a harsh, ragged laugh tore from his throat. "The Bureau?" He spat on the concrete floor between my shoes. "You think some toothless state board has jurisdiction over a county sheriff's contract? You're an undercover investigator with an unlogged notebook and a rogue patrolwoman who just assaulted her commanding officer. Who's backing you up, Cole? Ray from the coffee shop?" "Special Agent Raymond Coleman," I corrected him. "And five field units from the Department of Public Safety who have been tracking my vehicle transponder since we cleared the municipal bridge."
Thornton reached into his breast pocket for his mobile phone, but Brenda shifted her position, blocking the only doorway leading to the outer corridor.
"Don't touch the phone, Gerald," Brenda said, using his first name for the first time. "The tow truck isn't taking Cole's car to your house. Special Agent Coleman intercepted Marcus at the curb in front of Nora's shop ten minutes ago. The state troopers have the vehicle secured, and the town council president was just handed a copy of the security assessment letter you slipped under Nora's door."
Thornton's posture hardened. The easy, contemptuous arrogance of a small-town autocrat melted into something desperate and predatory. He was fifty-two years old, two hundred and twenty pounds of seasoned muscle, and he knew every square foot of the abandoned gravel quarry surrounding this annex.
"You don't have the hard drive," Thornton whispered, his voice trembling with venom. "You’ve got a sheet of paper with administrative overrides. That’s a suspension, Cole. A sixty-day slap on the wrist from the civil service board. You don't have the bank records, and you don't have the development deeds. They're locked in a safe that requires a biometric scan and a six-digit code in my basement. By the time your people get a district warrant, that drive will be melted into slag."
"We don't need a warrant for your basement, Chief," I said, keeping my gaze level with his. "We have the audio recording from the microphone sewn into this jacket. In the last three minutes, you directly threatened to plant controlled substances in the trunk of a state investigator to coerce the execution of a false waiver. That is extortion under color of authority, a Class B felony carrying a mandatory ten-year sentence."