Laceder disliked the answer. He had spent four terms winning elections by presenting every disagreement as a problem of communication, something that could be solved with a committee and a carefully phrased statement. But the accusations against the police department were not simply disagreements. They were allegations that people with authority had used their positions to frighten, arrest, and silence residents who had few ways to challenge them.
Kirkland's office was becoming a place where telephones rang without producing solutions. A city council member asked about the police budget and the number of possession arrests that had been dismissed after defendants challenged them. The chief blamed defense lawyers for exploiting technicalities. Another council member requested the written policy on body-camera retention, and Kirkland discovered that the policy had not been updated in years.
The records staff began talking among themselves. Some had spent years watching complaints arrive and disappear; others believed the department did its best and resented outsiders suggesting otherwise. The federal inquiry forced those differences into the open. An employee who had once regarded the evidence room as merely disorganized began to wonder why certain bags had no complete chain-of-custody records, while another noticed that several deleted video entries shared the same administrator account.
Nathaniel refused most requests for television interviews. Simone explained that public statements could complicate both criminal and civil proceedings, and Nathaniel had no interest in becoming an amateur prosecutor on national television. He agreed to one brief interview with Autumn after confirming that she had spoken to Jerome and the other drivers. They met on Ruthie's porch, where the geraniums had begun to wilt in the afternoon heat.
"Why haven't you told the press more about your rank?" Autumn asked. Nathaniel glanced toward the street before answering.
"Because people already know my rank. I don't want it to become the reason anybody thinks this was wrong." She asked what he wanted to see happen. "A real investigation, not a public performance," he said. "And I'd like the people whose stories were ignored before mine to have the opportunity to tell them to someone who can act."
Autumn asked whether he was angry. Nathaniel considered lying out of habit, then decided the truth served him better. "Yes," he said. "I'm angry that a man pointed a gun at me when I had done nothing to justify it. I'm angry that he thought he could invent evidence. But what I keep thinking about is how easily all of that might have ended differently if Calvin hadn't been standing beside me, if the camera hadn't been there, or if I hadn't known exactly how to keep myself still."