Briggs flinched as if the words had struck him physically. He began to beg. He said it was a mistake, and he said it twice, as if repeating the word would make it true. He said he had not known who Isaiah was, and that the park and the hoodie and the hour had misled him, and that any officer in his place might have done the same. He said he had a family to support, and that the morning had gone wrong in ways he had not intended, and that he was sorry for how it had ended. His voice shook, and his hands shook with it, and he held his hands out in front of him in a gesture that was half surrender and half plea.
Bell listened without moving. When Briggs finished, Bell answered in a tone that was quieter than before, and therefore harder to ignore. He said a wrong address is a mistake. He said a mistake is when a man turns down the wrong street, or knocks on the wrong door, or reads a number incorrectly in poor light. He said what had happened in Mason Park was not that kind of thing. He said Briggs had made a decision at the fence, and another decision when he tightened the cuffs, and another decision when he punched a cuffed man in the stomach, and another decision when he wrote that man down as a nameless suspect. He said a decision is not undone by calling it a mistake after the truth comes out, and the room heard the distinction clearly.
Briggs tried to comply. He reached for his holster with both hands, but his hands were shaking so badly that his fingers could not work the clasp. He fumbled at it, and the clasp caught, and his breath came short as he tried again. The officers at the far desks watched, and Mercer watched, and Camille watched, and nobody stepped forward to help him. The moment stretched, and the shaking grew worse rather than better, until it was plain to everyone that Briggs could not complete the act himself.
Bell stepped forward. He did not ask permission, and he did not wait for Briggs to try a third time. He reached to Briggs's holster with steady hands, opened the clasp himself, drew out the weapon, and handed it to Mercer, who took it with both hands and held it away from his body. Then Bell reached to Briggs's uniform and removed the badge from his chest, working the pin free with a deliberate motion, and set the badge on the counter beside the wallet. The badge lay there next to the gold mayor's badge, and the contrast between the two objects, one taken and one revealed, seemed to fill the room.
Briggs stood with his hands empty. His uniform, which had carried the badge since he transferred to Brookhaven eight months earlier, now showed only the small holes where the pin had been. His holster hung empty at his hip. He looked down at himself as if he were seeing his own body for the first time, and his shoulders sagged in a way that had nothing to do with posture. The man who had walked into Mason Park that morning with one hand already near his holster, confident in his authority, was now standing in a booking room without a weapon and without a badge, and the change had taken less than a minute.
Isaiah watched too, and his face showed no satisfaction. He had said he would not hit Briggs, and he had meant it, and watching another man take Briggs's gun and badge was not a victory to him. It was a procedure, and a necessary one, and he treated it with the gravity it deserved. He did not speak while Bell worked, and he did not look away either. He kept his eyes on the counter, where the record of the morning was now laid out in objects.
Mercer set the weapon down carefully on the counter, at a distance from the wallet and the badges, and then he stepped back and folded his hands. He had served about thirty years, and he had seen officers lose their badges before, but he had never seen it happen in a room where the victim of the morning stood beside the chief and watched in silence. He said nothing, and his silence carried the weight of his service.
Bell looked at Briggs, and then at the badge on the counter, and then back at Briggs. He said the gun and the badge would stay where they were, and that Briggs would not touch them again, and that the department would hold them pending what came next. Briggs nodded, a small, jerky motion, and his hands hung at his sides, empty and shaking, and the room waited for the chief to speak the next order.
Chapter Twenty Five
The Suspension Read In The Booking Room
Bell did not pause after taking the gun and the badge. The weapon lay on the counter beside the wallet, and the badge lay beside the gold mayor's badge, and the chief stood between them and Briggs and spoke the order that would define the rest of the morning. He suspended Briggs at once, pending termination and criminal investigation. He said the suspension was effective immediately, from that moment, in that room, and that it was not a pause for reflection or a chance to explain further. It was the department's answer to what had happened in Mason Park, and it would stand until the investigation and the courts had finished their work.