Across the street stood the Millbrook Police Department, a low brick building with a faded flag and an uneven line of patrol cars. There was nothing especially menacing about it from the outside. Its lawn had been trimmed recently, the front steps were clean, and a cheerful banner advertised the department's annual charity softball tournament. Residents drove past it on their way to church, school, work, or the grocery store.
Most never had reason to enter. The people whose names appeared in Nathaniel's leather notebook knew the building differently. They knew its interview rooms, the laminated complaint forms, the reception window where an officer could decide whether their problem deserved a report, and the narrow drawer where a written grievance could vanish without anyone telling them why.
Aaron Brooks sat in the corner booth with his back toward the wall. He was thirty-four, with close-cropped hair, a careful manner, and the habit of checking exits without seeming to turn his head. His navy jacket hung over the seat beside him. Under an ordinary gray sweater, his shoulders had the posture of someone who had learned to remain still while thinking quickly.
He was a special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, assigned to a civil-rights investigation being conducted alongside attorneys from the Department of Justice. He had spent the previous three days reviewing police records in Millbrook without making a public announcement of who he was. The object was not to spring a theatrical trap on anyone. It was to understand how routine encounters were being handled when officers believed no outside authority was watching.
Opposite him, Nathaniel Reed inspected an entry in a battered leather notebook. At fifty-nine, Nathaniel carried thirty years of investigations in the movements of his hands. He never turned a page until he had finished reading it, never put a pen down without replacing its cap, and almost never spoke over another person. His hair was gray along the temples, his glasses rested low on his nose, and his dark jacket looked as though it had accompanied him through every courthouse and records office east of the Mississippi. Aaron had once asked why he still wrote by hand when their office had secure digital systems for every report. Nathaniel's reply had become a standing joke between them.
"Computers get hacked," Nathaniel said that morning, without looking up. "Paper makes you work harder to lie to yourself."
"That's not what you said last time," Aaron replied.
"Last time I said a notebook stays with me. Both are true." Nathaniel underlined a date and closed his pen. "And neither is permission to skip the electronic record. You have uploaded yesterday's interviews, haven't you?"
"Every one. With the file references you wanted."
"Good. Then we can afford breakfast."
Grace Holloway approached with two cups and a pot of fresh coffee. She was twenty-two and three weeks into a job at Rosie's, and she moved with the particular caution of a new waitress who knew the regular customers could remember a mistake for years. Her auburn hair was pinned