"Impersonation kits can be bought off three websites in twenty-four hours," Caldwell snapped. "Any former auxiliary officer can pull that uniform together if he wants to play chief for ten minutes."
"Except you didn't check," I said quietly. "You didn't ask for my commission pocketbook. You didn't run my name. And you didn't look at the monitor three feet behind your shoulder."
Miller cleared his throat and tapped the yellow legal pad with the blunt end of a ballpoint pen. "Garrett is prepared to submit an amended field report. We will classify the contact as an escalated verification encounter resulting from an unannounced arrival during an active threat posture. You retain command authority. The sergeant accepts a written counseling letter in his personnel jacket for procedural haste. The lobby video remains inside internal affairs as an administrative work product, protected from public disclosure."
Miller slid the pad two inches across the table toward me. Written at the top, in neat, draftsman-like script, was a draft summary of the incident, framed entirely as a joint administrative misunderstanding caused by scheduling miscommunication.
"Sign the bottom line, Marcus," Miller said softly. "You want to run this department for the next four years? You need sixty-two patrolmen to answer their radios on Friday night. You push a felony assault referral against an active watch commander over an overzealous greeting at the front glass, and you will sit in that corner office listening to dead air while half the city calls 911."
I looked at the yellow pad. Then I looked at Miller.
"Where is the master duty roster for this morning's third watch?" I asked.
Miller’s pen paused mid-air. "Excuse me?"
"You just told me Sergeant Caldwell was acting on a suspicious subject bulletin logged by Lieutenant Albright at zero-seven-hundred," I said. "Lieutenant Albright was placed on mandatory medical leave by the state oversight board on Friday afternoon following the internal audit of the evidence locker. His login credentials were suspended at six o'clock yesterday evening."
Caldwell's eyes flicked sideways toward Miller, a sudden, nervous tic that ruptured his steady stare.
"Albright called it in from home," Caldwell offered quickly. "He noticed someone near his fence line by the reservoir road and called the watch desk."
"The water authority is six miles east of the reservoir road," I said. "And the front desk recording from eight-forty-two through eight-forty-eight did not log an incoming telephone transfer on any municipal trunk line. What you had, Sergeant, was an envelope."
I reached down and flicked open the left brass latch of my briefcase. The metal clicked loud in the narrow room. From the top divider, I drew a single manila folder containing the digital access logs generated by the dispatch mainframe between seven and eight-thirty this morning.
"At eight-twelve, forty minutes before I arrived," I said, laying the sheet flat between them, "someone accessed the personnel database using the administrative terminal in the records office. They pulled my official state transfer photograph, my arrival time, and the license plate of the county sedan assigned to my transport."
Neither man touched the paper.
"The search query didn't come from dispatch," I continued, keeping my eyes locked on Caldwell’s left hand, which had begun to curl into a tight, white-knuckled fist. "It was run under login terminal four. That terminal sits on the desk inside the watch commander's private office. Your office, Garrett."
The fluorescent tubes hummed in the ceiling, a low, relentless vibration that seemed to fill the silence.