"Did you notice an injury when you moved him?" Benton asked.
"I heard him say his wrist caught the wall, but I didn't see blood at first," the officer replied. "I thought it was minor. We were focused on keeping him secured."
"It may be minor," Benton said. "The seriousness of the injury does not decide whether it should have been reported. We will document exactly when you knew about it."
The department medic arrived while Benton was collecting statements. Adrian sat at his kitchen table with the door open to the porch and allowed the medic to clean the cut on his left wrist. It was shallow but long enough to need a proper dressing, and the skin around it was tender where the cuff had pressed. The medic advised him to watch for increased pain or swelling and recorded the injury in a report with the time of assessment.
Adrian looked around the kitchen while the dressing was secured. A cardboard box labeled GLASSWARE stood beside the refrigerator, a folded blanket rested on a chair, and the overhead light flickered slightly because he had not yet replaced a faulty switch. For a moment the sight of those ordinary problems felt almost absurd. A man could spend decades overseeing difficult arrests and still come home to unpacked dinner plates and a light switch needing repair.
Benton joined him when the medic finished. She set her notebook on the table without opening it, allowing him a moment to move his wrist and inspect the bandage. Adrian thanked her for coming and asked whether Hanley had been informed that all camera recordings, radio traffic, and dispatch communications needed to be preserved. She said that request had been made before she arrived.
"I want to handle this departmentally," Adrian said. "But I won't. I'm the affected party, and I have to separate that from my position as commissioner."
"The Office of Professional Standards can take it independently," Benton replied. "I'll make sure the conflict is documented."
"I want the same standard applied if I had been a delivery driver or a resident without a title," Adrian continued. "I don't want an investigation that exists only because somebody eventually recognized me."
Benton sat across from him. "Then we'll establish a record that doesn't depend on your title. The investigators will interview everyone and review the evidence. Your account will be treated as a statement, not a command."
Adrian nodded. "That's the only way this has any meaning."
Over the next hour, Benton separated the witnesses and asked each to reconstruct the evening from the beginning. She spoke to Grant in his front room, Serena near the dining table, Colin in the entrance hall, and the business associates individually where their answers could not be influenced by seeing one another's reactions.
The questions were simple and repetitive on purpose: Where were you standing? Who held the key? Did anyone touch the car? What words did you hear? What did you see after the man crossed the street?