He turned to Mercer, and his voice took on the crisp, practical tone of a man giving instructions that must not be misunderstood.
"I want everything preserved," he said. "Everything. I want the bodycam video from every officer who was at Mason Park this morning, and from every officer who came into this room after. I want the dashcam video from the cruiser that brought me here, from the moment it left the park to the moment it stopped at the sally port. I want the sally port video itself, and the booking video from this room, from the first minute I walked through that door to the minute I walk out of it."
Mercer nodded, already reaching for a form, his pen moving across the paper as if the act of writing could hold the morning still.
"I want a full medical file," Isaiah went on. "Photographs of these wrists, of this cheek, of the bruise that is coming up on my stomach. I want the doctor's notes in full, not a summary, not a line that says minor injuries and leaves it there. I want the file to say what happened, in the order it happened, while the marks are still fresh enough to tell the story themselves."
"And I want the prosecution file moved today," he said. "Not next week. Not when the department has had time to decide how it wants this to look. Today. The report Briggs wrote, the radio traffic from Unit Seven Adam, the intake log, the fingerprint record, every page, every recording, every note. I want it in the hands of people who do not answer to this department, before anyone has a chance to rewrite it."
Chief Marcus Bell, who had been standing near the door with his arms crossed, gave a short nod. "It will be done," he said.
Isaiah held his gaze. "I am asking for this as a citizen," he said. "Not only as the mayor. A man was wrongly arrested this morning. A man was assaulted while his hands were cuffed behind his back. That man happens to be me, but the rights I am claiming are not mayoral rights. They are the rights of any person who walks into a park in this city in a gray hoodie and old running shoes and expects to walk out of it unharmed. If I ask for less because of my title, then the next man, who has no title, will get even less. I will not do that to him."
"I have a family," he said.
Isaiah looked at him for a moment, and when he answered, his voice was quiet, but there was iron in it.
"So did I," he said. "I had a family when you punched me in the stomach."
"I have a wife," Isaiah said, not raising his voice, not hurrying. "She is standing in this room because a neighbor called her and told her that an officer had hit her husband in a park. She left her own morning behind and came here, and she will take me to a hospital if I let her, and she will sit beside me while a doctor photographs my wrists. That is my family. You did not think about them when you pulled my arm behind my back. You did not think about them when you tightened the cuffs until they cut the skin. You did not think about them when you decided that a man who told you his name three times was lying to you."
He stepped a little closer, not threatening, not looming, simply refusing to let the moment be softened.
"A family is not a shield," he said. "It does not excuse what you did. It makes what you did worse, because it means you know exactly what it is to love someone and to fear for someone, and you still chose to do this to a man who loved his own family and feared for them too, while he was standing in a park with a phone in his hand, taking pictures of a broken slide for the children of this city."
Isaiah turned back to Mercer. "Write it all down," he said. "Every recording. Every file. Every photograph. I want a list, signed, with copies, before I leave this building. If anything is missing tomorrow, I want to know what it was, who had it last, and why it is gone. The city will not lose this morning to a broken camera or a misplaced tape. Not this time."
Isaiah finally took the glass of water. He drank slowly, set it down, and looked at Briggs one last time.
"You said you have a family," he said. "Then go home and tell them the truth about this morning. It will be the first honest thing you have said today."
Chapter Twenty Eight
The Terrible Liar And The Repair Order