Chapter 3 - The Interrogation Room Unveils the TruthInside Interrogation Room B, the air smelled of stale coffee and cheap disinfectant. The metallic table reflected the harsh fluorescent lights overhead.
Captain Thomas Landry sat across from me, stripped of his service weapon, his belt, and his badge. He no longer looked like the untouchable king of Westbridge. He looked like a cornered animal realizing the trap had finally snapped shut.
"You can't hold me here without a formal arraignment for more than forty-eight hours," Landry muttered, staring stubbornly at the table. "I know my rights."
"You spent your entire career stripping other people of theirs," I replied, tossing a printed transcript onto the metal table between us. "Take a look at that, Captain."
Landry glanced down. It was a digital log of encrypted text messages recovered from his personal cell phone—messages between him and a local contractor who had illegally flipped seized properties in Westbridge, with Landry taking a forty percent kickback on every fraudulent eviction.
"We pulled your communication logs with the Westbridge municipal council dating back four years," I continued, leaning forward, resting my forearms on the table. "You built an entire local protection racket. And tonight, you thought you could bury a routine aggravated assault case because the victim was a retired schoolteacher whose daughter lived out of town. You didn't bother checking my credentials when I walked in because you were too arrogant to realize the federal audit you've been dodging for six months was already sitting on my desk."
Landry swallowed hard, his throat dry. "It... it was a local matter. The family asked us to de-escalate."
"De-escalate?" I slammed my hand down on the table, the sharp crack making Landry jump. "By putting handcuffs on the victim, ignoring her medical distress, and helping a violent sociopath fabricate a false police report? That’s not de-escalation, Thomas. That’s conspiracy to obstruct justice under color of law."
The door swung open behind me. Stephen Vance stepped in, holding a small, clear evidence bag containing a splintered wooden handle stained with dried blood and hair fibers.
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"We found it," Vance said smoothly, dropping the bag onto the table next to Landry. "One of your patrol officers panicked and tried to throw it into the precinct's industrial dumpster behind the garage. Unfortunately for him, our cyber unit pulled the exterior security camera footage showing Officer Miller carrying it out thirty minutes before we arrived."
Landry stared at the blood-stained bat handle. The game was entirely over.
