"That's why I started asking what the rules were supposed to be. Joining came later. I wanted someone to read the question instead of deciding who I was before I could answer it."
Nathaniel nodded. "I have been doing this thirty years. I still think that is a reasonable ambition."
Aaron looked at him. "Thirty years. You've been reminding me for six months."
"My wife has been reminding me for two. She says retirement is something I have to do before my knees vote on it without consulting me."
"You'll hate retirement."
"Within a week, probably. I intend to complain about it to anyone who will listen." Nathaniel smiled faintly, then glanced at the notebook. "One more town after this. Then I get to find out whether the tomatoes in my backyard are really as difficult as my wife says."
He opened the notebook again. The first page visible between them carried the name Isaiah Monroe and three dates from the same month. Isaiah was twenty-four, worked nights at a distribution warehouse on the industrial edge of town, and had filed three separate complaints after being stopped on his way home. Each complaint had been marked unfounded.
Each had been closed before the end of the morning shift. The reason for the stops had changed from report to report, but the absence of tickets, warnings, or identifiable suspicious conduct had not. Nathaniel had put the cases beside one another because the pattern was easier to see when no single officer could insist each incident belonged in a separate drawer.
"Three stops in thirty days," Aaron murmured. "One at four twelve in the morning, one at four twenty-nine, and the third at five oh six. He drives home when the roads are almost empty."
"He used to drive straight down Mercer Avenue," Nathaniel said. "After the second stop, he added six miles to his commute. That detail isn't in the department's complaint summaries. His sister told our intake attorney."
"I've read the referral."
"Read it again. A man changes his route to avoid his own police department, and the department closes his complaint by deciding he must have misunderstood what happened. The mileage matters. The overtime he loses matters. The nervous glance at the mirror matters. None of that shows up in a box marked no disciplinary action."
There were other names. Lena Carter operated a small catering van and had been searched four times while delivering food to events on the north side of Millbrook. Malik Webb had called police after finding his repair shop's rear door broken. The responding officer questioned how he had obtained the front-door keys and held him outside his own business while confirming ownership, turning a victim's report into an encounter he would never forget.
A college student named Brianna Price had been cited for disorderly conduct after asking why officers were stopping her brother. A grandmother named Evelyn Harper had tried twice to submit video footage of her grandson's detention and had been told the complaint desk could not accept a file without a case number. Each incident looked manageable when read alone. Together, they described a town in which some people were required to prove their right to ordinary existence over and over.