The next morning, Deputy Chief Vance requested a meeting.
He entered without waiting for permission.
Marcus was reading an evidence audit.
Vance shut the door.
“We need to talk.”
Marcus looked up.
“Sit.”
“I’ll stand.”
“Then talk.”
Vance placed both hands on Marcus’s desk.
“You are destroying this department.”
Marcus stared.
“In twelve days?”
“You’ve got officers afraid to make arrests.”
“Why?”
“Because they think every decision will be second-guessed.”
Marcus leaned back.
“Good decisions survive review.”
“That’s easy for administrators to say.”
“I made arrests for eighteen years.”
“Not here.”
“No.”
Vance laughed bitterly.
“Exactly.”
Marcus studied him.
“What is it you think I don’t understand?”
“This city.”
“Then teach me.”
Vance pointed toward the window.
“You see lawsuits.”
“I see neighborhoods where officers get bottles thrown at them.”
“People who call us pigs until somebody breaks into their house.”
“Gang crews who know every rule better than rookies.”
“Prosecutors who drop cases.”
“Judges who release people.”
“And then chiefs like you arrive talking about trust as if trust is a one-way obligation.”
Marcus waited until he finished.
“Anything else?”
Vance stared.
“That’s your response?”
Marcus folded his hands.
“No.”
“My response is that every difficult thing you just described can be true without justifying falsified reports or deleted video.”
Vance’s eyes hardened.
“You don’t know those deletions were improper.”
“I know twenty-seven carried your approval.”
Silence.
Vance did not visibly react.
That reaction itself told Marcus something.
“You’re investigating me.”
“I’m auditing the department.”
“Don’t play language games.”
Marcus’s voice lowered.
“Then don’t ask questions you already know the answer to.”
Vance stepped closer.
“You think because Caldwell put your face on a desk you understand what it takes to keep order here?”
Marcus stood.
Slowly.
The two men were almost the same height.
“No.”
Marcus came around the desk.
“I think because Caldwell put my face on a desk, I got eight minutes of what some Riverside residents have been describing for years.”
Vance said nothing.
“The difference is my badge made everyone panic afterward.”
Marcus looked directly at him.
“Theirs didn’t.”
Vance’s face remained expressionless.
Marcus continued.
“That should bother you.”
“It does.”
“No.”
Marcus shook his head.
“What bothers you is that now outsiders are looking.”
Vance’s jaw tightened.
“You don’t know me.”
“Not yet.”
The words hung there.
Vance left.
That evening Marcus drove home after midnight.
Isaiah was asleep on the couch with a textbook open across his chest.
Marcus stood in the doorway.
His son looked younger asleep.
Seventeen.
Still a child in moments.
Marcus turned off the television.
Isaiah opened one eye.
“You’re late.”
“You’re awake.”
“Wasn’t.”
“Clearly.”
Marcus picked up the textbook.
Isaiah sat.
His eyes went toward his father’s wrists.
Bruises remained.