It was unusually thick.

“Grant Mercer,” she said.

Adrian looked at the name.

“I know him.”

“Everybody knows him.”

That was not a compliment.

Mercer had served twelve years with the Bellhaven Police Department. His personnel file looked respectable at first glance. Commendations. Strong arrest numbers. Good performance reviews.

He had also accumulated twenty-one civilian complaints.

Adrian opened the folder.

“Twenty-one?”

“Twenty-one filed. We have no idea how many never made it that far.”

The complaints followed a pattern.

Unnecessary searches.

Aggressive questioning.

Property disappearing during stops.

People threatened with arrest after asking for badge numbers.

Young Black and Latino men repeatedly detained after supposedly matching vague descriptions.

Yet Mercer had never received more than a written warning.

Adrian flipped through the findings.

“Not sustained.”

“Not sustained.”

“Insufficient evidence.”

“Unable to determine.”

Same conclusion over and over.

“No body camera?”

“Sometimes.”

Adrian looked up.

“Sometimes?”

Captain Sloan handed him another page.

Mercer’s body camera had experienced more “technical failures” than any other officer in the Central District.

Sometimes the battery was dead.

Sometimes the camera fell loose.

Sometimes Mercer forgot to activate it.

In several cases, footage began only after the most disputed part of the encounter.

Adrian leaned back.

“So why now?”

Sloan slid another folder across the desk.

This one contained photographs.

A frightened twenty-three-year-old man named Andre Mills sat in an interrogation room.

On the table in front of him was a small clear plastic bag.

Adrian looked at the photograph.

“What am I looking at?”

“Mercer arrested him six weeks ago.”

“For?”

“Possession of suspected illegal evidence.”

Adrian opened the report.

Mercer claimed he watched Andre remove the bag from his jacket and drop it beneath a parked car.

Andre said Mercer produced the bag himself.

Adrian had heard that accusation before.

“What did the lab say?”

Sloan’s expression became interesting.

“That’s the problem.”

“What?”

“There’s no lab result.”

Adrian frowned.

“The case is six weeks old.”

“Because the bag disappeared.”

Now Adrian sat forward.

“From evidence?”

“It never made it to evidence.”

Mercer’s report said the property technician misplaced it.

The technician denied ever receiving it.

The transfer log contained Mercer’s signature, but no receiving signature.

Prosecutors quietly dropped the charge.

Andre spent nine days in jail before that happened.

“Did Andre file a complaint?”

Sloan nodded.

“Number twenty-one.”

Adrian closed the file.

“Still not enough.”

“No.”

That was the reality Internal Affairs faced.

Everybody wanted bad officers removed quickly.

But allegations were not evidence.

Adrian needed documentation strong enough to survive union hearings, departmental appeals, prosecutors, and potentially a courtroom.

Mercer understood that system extremely well.

He knew what could be proved.

More importantly, he knew what could not.