Hollister leaned back.
“This whole thing is retaliation.”
Iris looked at him.
“For what?”
“For this morning.”
“The assessment authorization predates this morning by eleven weeks.”
She pulled a document from the folder.
“Your department received formal notice twelve days ago.”
Hollister looked at Keller.
Keller stared back.
Iris continued.
“The complaints under review predate our encounter.”
Hollister’s face tightened.
“How many?”
Iris opened another page.
“Fourteen department-wide in the core sample.”
She looked at him.
“Six involve you.”
Silence.
Davis looked at Hollister.
Hollister said, “All cleared.”
Iris nodded.
“That is one of the things we are evaluating.”
“They were investigated.”
“We will evaluate that too.”
“You came looking for me.”
“No.”
“You recognized me.”
“Yes.”
“And didn’t say who you were.”
“That is true.”
Hollister laughed bitterly.
“There.”
Iris folded her hands.
“Sergeant, recognizing you did not require me to surrender constitutional rights.”
Hollister’s voice rose.
“You were testing me.”
“I was walking to an appointment.”
“You knew exactly who I was.”
“Yes.”
“So you wanted a reaction.”
“No.”
“What did you expect me to do?”
Iris held his gaze.
“Let me walk to the courthouse.”
Nobody spoke.
The answer was devastating because it was so ordinary.
Hollister looked away.
The formal review began the next morning.
Iris was removed from direct fact-finding regarding her own incident.
That decision came from Marcus.
She argued.
He won.
“You are a witness.”
“I’m also lead investigator.”
“You cannot be both on that event.”
“I can separate—”
“No.”
Iris glared.
Marcus smiled.
“See? Federal authority.”
She hated when he won with her own arguments.
A separate team handled the assault investigation.
Iris remained lead on systemic issues.
That separation mattered.
Especially later.
Body-camera footage from Davis arrived first.
It was worse than Iris remembered.
Memory had compressed some moments.
Video restored them.
Hollister’s tone.
The backpack.
The boot.
Her fall.
His laughter.
Caption it: where they belong.
Davis watched the footage alone before his interview.
He cried.
Not dramatically.
He simply sat in an empty room after the screen went black and realized how often he had told himself he was better than Hollister because he did not behave like him.
The video asked a different question.
What had he done while Hollister behaved that way?
Davis met investigator Rebecca Sloan at ten.
She asked:
“When did you believe Sergeant Hollister’s conduct became inappropriate?”
Davis stared at his hands.
“When he grabbed the bag.”
“Not before?”
Davis thought.
“Maybe before.”
“When?”
“When she asked whether she was detained.”
“Why?”
“His attitude changed.”
“How?”
“He took it personally.”
Rebecca wrote.