The excuse no longer worked in his own mind. He glanced toward Grace and saw her rubbing one wrist, not dramatically, just the way someone checks a tender joint after it has been restrained. He thought about his daughter, Lily, who had been born six months earlier, and about what he might one day teach her when someone in authority did something wrong. He found no version of that lesson in which silence made him a good man.
Colonel Barrett's vehicle reached the square five minutes later. The driver had been waiting nearby for the ceremony, so he had not needed to cover the distance from Washington. Barrett stepped out with Staff Sergeant Amara Price and a military police liaison assigned to support the visiting general's official travel. They approached without rushing, careful not to create a new confrontation around a crowd already unsettled by what it had witnessed.
Barrett stopped in front of Grace. His face changed when he saw the torn uniform and the red marks on her wrists. For a second he looked more like a friend than an officer. Then he straightened his shoulders and asked, "General, are you injured?"
"Nothing that prevents me from speaking, Colonel," Grace answered. "Please have the medical staff check my wrists when the situation is secure. The decorations are on the ground. Make sure they're photographed before anyone picks them up."
Barrett nodded and passed the request to Price. The staff sergeant began documenting the objects, their locations, and the damage to the cloth while a local officer from another responding unit prepared an evidence record. Grace knew the difference between recovering her property and preserving a scene for an independent investigation. She did not want the decorations turned into a sentimental photograph before anyone could establish where they had fallen.
A second sheriff's vehicle arrived almost immediately, followed by a county supervisor who had been directed to the scene by dispatch. Captain Isabel Greene stepped out, took one look at the crowd and at Perkins's face, and understood that she was arriving in the middle of a serious departmental crisis. She had served for eighteen years and knew better than to accept the first explanation offered by the person wearing her department's uniform.
"Deputy Perkins, step away from General Monroe," she said. "Do not communicate with Deputy Fielding about this incident. Both of you will remain available for separate interviews. Sergeant, take their duty weapons into temporary administrative custody while we determine what happened."
Perkins stared at her. "Captain, that's unnecessary. There's been a misunderstanding."
Greene's gaze moved to the torn shoulder boards and the marks on Grace's wrists. "The time to decide what was necessary was before you put your hands on her," she answered. "Right now, you will follow my directions."