Puren's eyes widened slightly. Then you already know more than I thought. I know there's a pattern. I don't have anyone willing to confirm it from the inside.
Puren went quiet, staring down into his cup. The silence stretched long enough that Francis wondered if he'd lose his nerve entirely. Walk out the way he had three times already, according to the deleted drafts, Francis would never know about. Bellamy changed his statement.
"Bellamy changed his statement," Puren said finally. "The first version he wrote down, the one right after it happened, matched what actually went down." "You standing still, hands up, no resistance." He looked up, meeting Francis's eyes for the first time. "Mason got to him that night. By the time the official report went in, it said something different."
Francis felt his pulse pick up, steady and controlled, the way it always did when a case finally cracked open. "Would you testify to that? On record?"
Puren's jaw worked, the fear plain on his face. "They'll end my career. Maybe worse." "They're already trying to end mine," Francis said quietly.
And I never raised my voice, never reached for anything. You know that you were standing right there. Puren closed his eyes for a long moment. When he opened them, something had settled.
Some decision finally made after days of half-written messages and swallowed words. "I'll testify," he said. "If it comes to a hearing, I won't lie for them anymore." Francis nodded, the weight of it landing heavy and welcome at the same time.
Thank you. I mean that. Don't thank me yet. Puren said Bellamy already suspects something.
If he finds out I talked to you, he won't hear it from me. They sat a moment longer, the coffee shop quiet around them, before Puren slid out of the booth, and left through the back door, careful not to be seen leaving with Francis by anyone passing on the street. Francis drove straight from the coffee shop to Father Oscar's house, the same pastor who'd stood on his lawn that Saturday morning, and watched the whole thing unfold. Oscar answered the door in his Thursday morning robe, surprised but not unwelcoming.
"I need a favor," Francis said. "A statement, written and signed. Exactly what you saw that morning." Oscar studied him a long moment, then stepped aside to let him in.
"I've been waiting for you to ask," he said. "Come in. Let's get it down on paper, and let's get it right." By that evening, Francis sat at his kitchen table with three documents spread in front of him.
Puren's verbal commitment written up carefully in Francis's own notes, Oscar's signed statement, and the two buried incidents from years past. For the first time since Saturday, the pieces were finally lining up into something he could bring forward and not have it crumble under questioning. He picked up his phone and dialed the department's records office requesting a formal hearing date. It was time to stop waiting for them to act.