After the meeting, he found a note on his desk. Someone had slipped it beneath the framed photograph of the department's first building, a small stone structure from the 1940s. The handwriting was blocky and uneven: CHIEF, ASK ABOUT THE COMPLAINTS THAT NEVER MADE IT TO THE BINDERS. Underneath were three initials, T.G., L.M., and D.C.
Jordan stared at the note for a long time. He did not know who had written it, and he had no intention of treating an anonymous message as proof. But the initials resembled two of the names Evelyn Price had given him, and that coincidence was enough to justify a closer look at the intake records. He placed the note in a folder marked FOR REVIEW and asked Lorraine whether complaints received by telephone had their own logs.
"They should," she said. "But it depends on how the calls were categorized."
"Then let's find out."
The first person to come forward was Tasha Green. She arrived at the department on Tuesday afternoon wearing a dark green blouse and carrying a folder of documents from her salon. She was forty-two, with a quick, precise way of speaking that reminded Jordan of people accustomed to managing small businesses where every minute of the day mattered. She had not expected to meet the chief personally, and she seemed wary when Lorraine brought her into the conference room.
"I don't need anyone to feel sorry for me," Tasha said before Jordan had sat down. "I need somebody to stop pretending my complaint doesn't exist."
"Then let's start with what happened," Jordan answered.
She told him about closing her salon late on a winter evening and finding a patrol vehicle parked across from her shop. She had turned off the lights, locked the front door, and walked toward her own car when an officer approached and demanded to know why she was lingering near the storefront. She explained that she owned the business, showed him her keys, and pointed to the sign with her name printed on it. He had continued questioning her for almost twenty minutes before letting her leave.
"Two nights later, the same officer followed me for four blocks," Tasha said. "He pulled me over and said my rear light looked dim. It wasn't broken. He wrote no citation. He just wanted me to know he could stop me whenever he felt like it."
"Which officer?" Jordan asked.
Tasha looked directly at him. "Daniel Voss."
She had filed a complaint afterward, giving the dates and describing the encounter in detail. A supervisor told her the officer was checking on a business after closing hours and that she should appreciate his vigilance. A week later, she received a form letter stating that no policy violation had been found. The letter carried no case number, and when she later requested a copy of the investigation, she was told no such investigation was recorded.
"I took a day off work to file that report," she said. "I lost appointments and paid my assistant to cover me. Then they acted like I'd imagined the whole thing. You want to know why people stop complaining? Because the system teaches them it costs more to tell the truth than to keep quiet."