But more were already taking the post at face value. The way lies always traveled faster and stuck longer than truth ever did. He clicked on the username, searching for any trace of who was behind it. Nothing.
A blank profile created that same week. No friends, no history. Built for exactly this. "Somebody made this account just to post that," Francis said quietly.
"Who would do that?" Francis already had a guess. But guesses didn't matter without proof. He thought about Mason's friends inside the department.
The kind of informal network that protected its own without ever putting a name to the favor. A blog post here, an anonymous comment there. Death by a thousand whispers until the official story didn't even need to be true. It just needed to exist long enough to plant doubt.
Across town, inside the precinct breakroom, Officer Nate Puren sat alone with a cup of coffee going cold in front of him. His phone open to the same post Regina had found. His thumb hovered over a blank message thread, a burner account he'd created that morning specifically to reach out to Francis. He'd typed three different versions of the same message.
He had typed three different versions of the same message: "You should know what really happened. Bellamy changed his statement. Mason's pushing this. I can't go on record, but..." Then he deleted every one of them before he could hit send.
"What are you doing?" Puren jumped, nearly dropping the phone. Bellamy stood in the doorway, arms crossed, his eyes flicking down toward the screen before Puren could lock it. "Nothing," Puren said too fast.
"Checking the schedule." Bellamy didn't look convinced. He stepped further into the room, voice dropping low. "You've been weird since Saturday. Real weird."
"I'm fine." "You better be." Bellamy's tone shifted harder now.
The friendliness had gone out of it completely. "Mason's already stressed enough without worrying about who's going to run their mouth. You remember whose side you're on, Puren? Blue line."
Don't bend for a guy with a fancy badge. Puren's jaw tightened, but he said nothing. He deleted the draft message entirely, the cursor blinking on an empty screen and slid the phone into his pocket like it had never existed. Bellamy watched him a second longer, then walked out, satisfied.
That night, Francis sat at his kitchen table long after Regina had gone to bed, reading the post again under the dim glow of his laptop screen. The comment count had climbed past sixty now, the lie taking on a life of its own, spreading faster than any truth he could offer in response. He thought about filing a complaint about the post itself, then realized how useless that would be. No name, no source, nothing to hold accountable.