He laid out the terms one by one, in the same deliberate tone he had used for everything since he walked in. Briggs would have no access to department systems, not to the records, not to the radio channels, not to the internal files, not to any database where a report could be altered or a record softened. He would have no contact with witnesses, not with Mrs. Alden, not with the officers who had been in the room, not with anyone who had seen the arrest or the booking. He would not speak to the press, and he would not discuss the case with anyone in the department except through the proper channels. He would wait for Internal Affairs in Interview Room Two, and he would wait there quietly, and he would answer their questions when they came.
Briggs stood very still while the terms were read. His hands, which had shaken through the surrender of his gun and badge, had gone quiet again, and his face had settled into a blankness that looked less like calm and more like a man who has stopped trying to follow what is happening to him. He nodded at each term, small jerky nods, as if nodding would make the words pass more quickly. He did not ask what would happen to his pay, or his pension, or his family, or his future. He did not ask whether the suspension could be appealed, or how long the investigation would take, or what the criminal charges might be. He asked nothing at all.
Nobody in the room defended him. The officers at the far desks kept their eyes on their work or on the floor, and none of them spoke a word on his behalf. The man on the bench against the wall watched with his mouth closed. Mercer stood beside Isaiah with his arms folded, and his expression said that he had seen enough of the morning to know that no defense was possible. Camille stood beside her husband with her hand on his arm, and she did not look at Briggs. It was the look of a man who has heard an order given properly and who expects it to be carried out properly.
Bell turned to two officers who had been standing near the door since he came in, and he directed them to escort Briggs to Interview Room Two. The two officers stepped forward at once, and they moved with a professionalism that stood in sharp contrast to the morning in the park. They did not grab Briggs. They did not push him. They did not cuff him. They simply took positions on either side of him, one slightly ahead and one slightly behind, and they waited for him to walk. His hands were uncuffed, and they stayed uncuffed, and the fact of it seemed to matter in the room. The man who had cuffed a citizen so tightly that his wrists bled was now being walked down a hallway with his hands free, treated with the restraint he had failed to show.
Briggs walked between them toward the door. His steps were slow, and his shoulders were low, and his uniform, missing its badge and its weapon, looked suddenly like a costume he had borrowed. He passed the counter where his badge lay beside the gold mayor's badge, and he did not look at either object. He passed the far desks, and none of the officers there met his eyes. He passed the bench, and the man sitting there looked away. He reached the door, and the two officers guided him through it, and the door closed behind them with a soft sound that seemed very loud in the quiet room.
The booking room exhaled. Mercer picked up the weapon and the badge and carried them away to be logged and secured, and his movements were careful and unhurried. The wallet stayed on the counter a little longer, open, with the driver's license and the city identification card and the gold mayor's badge still in their neat row, until Bell told Mercer to log those too, and to keep them safe, and to make sure the record of what had been on that counter was complete. Camille finally let go of Isaiah's arm and turned to face him fully, and for the first time since she had burst through the door, she allowed herself to look at him the way a wife looks at a husband when no one else is watching.
Isaiah stood in the middle of the booking room, free, uncuffed, with his wife beside him and his chief in front of him, and the morning that had begun with a walk in a gray hoodie had arrived at its first formal ending.
Chapter Twenty Six
The Power Isaiah Said He Would Not Use