The reports looked clean.

Almost too clean.

Briggs always described the same sequence.

Suspicious behavior.

Voluntary encounter.

Probable cause.

Small bag of narcotics discovered.

Suspect becomes aggressive.

Arrest.

The suspects were never wealthy.

One was a delivery driver.

One worked in a nursing home.

Another was a sixty-two-year-old widower living out of his car.

None had the money for a long legal fight.

Most accepted plea agreements.

Marcus noticed something else.

Three had cash when they were arrested.

The property records showed much smaller amounts when they were released.

That was when Marcus contacted the state police integrity office.

Only four people were supposed to know he was looking into Briggs.

The following week, Leonard Price stopped answering his phone.

Marcus drove to his apartment.

Leonard was alive, but frightened.

Someone had left a photograph beneath his door.

It showed Leonard entering Marcus’s government office.

Written across the back were six words:

OLD MEN SHOULD MIND THEIR BUSINESS.

Marcus took the photograph.

“Did you tell anyone we met?”

Leonard shook his head.

“Not even my daughter.”

Marcus looked at the picture again.

Someone had been watching his office.

Someone knew about an investigation that had barely begun.

That meant Briggs was not working alone.

Marcus arranged protection for Leonard and made one decision.

He would visit the park himself.

No uniform.

No government vehicle.

No security detail.

He wanted to watch Briggs work when Briggs believed nobody important was looking.

Marcus expected harassment.

He expected questions.

He even expected Briggs to search him.

He did not expect the officer to plant narcotics in his pocket in front of half a dozen witnesses.

And he certainly did not expect Briggs to do it while cameras were pointed directly at him.

That part made no sense.

Unless Briggs was desperate.

Or unless someone had told Briggs exactly who Marcus was and ordered him to create a scandal before Marcus could create one.

By noon, Marcus would learn the answer.

And it would make the encounter in the park look almost harmless.

Officer Briggs was taken to the Central District station.

Marcus went voluntarily.

He refused an ambulance, although one side of his neck was red where Briggs had grabbed his collar.

The two responding officers, Evan Miller and Thomas Reed, looked more nervous than Marcus did.

Neither stopped apologizing.

Marcus finally raised one hand.

“You saw a man standing over one of your officers. Drawing your weapons was understandable.”

Miller looked embarrassed.

“We pointed them at you, sir.”

“You didn’t know who I was.”

“That’s the part bothering me.”

Marcus looked at him.

“It shouldn’t.”

Miller frowned.

Marcus continued.

“If I only deserve careful treatment after you recognize my title, then we have a much bigger problem.”