Then toward the wall clock.
The officer reluctantly picked up the receiver.
โCentral processing. Officer Briggs.โ
He listened.
His expression tightened.
โWho?โ
Another pause.
Then his face changed.
The blood seemed to drain from his cheeks.
โSir, Iโโ
A voice on the other end interrupted him so loudly that Daniel could hear several words through the receiver.
โTake your hands off that man. Now!โ
Briggs looked toward Daniel.
Then toward the badge.
Then back at Daniel.
His mouth opened slightly.
โWait,โ he whispered.
Daniel remained seated.
The officer swallowed.
โWho the hell are you?โ
Daniel looked him straight in the eyes.
โYou should have asked me that before.โ
And three floors above them, the police chief was already walking toward the elevator with two federal investigators, a department attorney, and a sealed folder that would soon change the Riverside Police Department forever.
Three hours earlier, Daniel had been driving through the southern part of Riverside in a dark blue sedan.
The city was waking beneath a pale autumn sky.
Delivery trucks moved along the industrial streets.
Commuters crowded intersections near the courthouse.
The smell of coffee drifted from small shops opening along Jefferson Avenue.
Daniel had been awake since four thirty.
He had slept less than five hours.
His phone contained eighteen unread messages.
Three were from his younger sister.
One was from his mother.
The others came from people whose names were not saved in his contacts.
That was deliberate.
Daniel was working on an investigation that required him to maintain a life almost nobody around him understood.
For the past seven months, he had been gathering evidence concerning a network of officers suspected of falsifying arrests, stealing seized property, intimidating witnesses, and protecting certain local businesses in exchange for payments.
The investigation had started with a missing envelope.
A small envelope.
One containing twelve hundred dollars in cash.
It belonged to a sixty-three-year-old Black American woman named Evelyn Brooks, who had been arrested during a traffic stop outside a grocery store.
The arrest report claimed she had interfered with an officer conducting an investigation.
The incident began when Evelyn questioned why police were searching her adult son's car without explaining the reason.
She had not threatened anyone.
She had not resisted.
But she was handcuffed and transported to Riverside Central.
Her handbag was inventoried.
Her wallet was searched.
And an envelope containing twelve hundred dollars disappeared.
Evelyn filed a complaint.
The department initially classified the money as unverified.
The officer who completed the property report wrote that no cash envelope had been found.