Chapter 3 - THE DIGITAL PAPER TRAILBack in the command suite—which I had effectively commandeered by flashing my senior investigator credentials—the digital bones of the Westbridge Police Department began to expose themselves.
My laptop screen cast a harsh blue glow across my face as lines of code, dispatch logs, and internal communications scrolled past at lightning speed. My tactical cyber-analyst back in Washington, Marcus, was feeding me data packages faster than I could open them.
"Clara," Marcus’s voice crackled through my encrypted earpiece. "You’re not going to believe what’s buried in the local dispatch metadata. The call from Arthur’s house wasn't logged at 2:15 a.m. as the report claims. It was logged at 1:45 a.m."
I leaned in closer to the screen. "Thirty minutes unaccounted for. What happened during that window?"
"That’s when the conversation between Landry and Arthur took place," Marcus replied, typing furiously on his end. "Look at the cell tower pings. Landry's personal cell pinged off the tower nearest your family home twenty minutes before the 911 call was ever placed. They were coordinating the narrative before the police were even officially dispatched."
A cold thrill of absolute certainty ran down my spine. This wasn't just a botched domestic call or lazy policing. This was a pre-arranged, premeditated frame-up designed to protect a politically connected family at the expense of an innocent senior citizen.
And Arthur was right in the middle of it.
Suddenly, the heavy oak door of the captain's office swung open. Captain Landry walked in, no longer wearing his uniform cap. His face was pale, and he held a steaming cup of black coffee that shook slightly in his grip. He placed it down on the corner of the desk with a heavy thud.
"Agent Vance," Landry began, his voice stripped of its earlier bravado. "Let’s talk off the record. Professional to professional."
I didn’t look up from my screen. "There is no off the record, Captain. Not anymore. You crossed the line from institutional negligence straight into criminal conspiracy."
Landry pulled up a metal chair and sat down uninvited. "You think you’re walking into a clean federal takedown, but you’re missing the bigger picture. Westbridge is a closed ecosystem. The judges, the DA, the town council—they all drink at the same club. If you try to burn this department down, you’ll trigger a chain reaction that destroys more than just my career."
I finally turned my head, locking my eyes onto his with terrifying intensity. "Try me."
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"Your brother," Landry said, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "Arthur isn't just a passive bystander. He’s knee-deep in local real estate kickbacks tied directly to the municipal zoning board. If I go down for covering up an assault, I take down the zoning permits, the fraudulent property titles, and half the development deals in this county. Arthur loses everything. His house, his money, his freedom. Do you really want to destroy your own family to prove a point?"
I smiled—a cold, humorless expression that made Landry recoil. "Captain, you still don't understand military discipline. When a limb is infected, you don't save it because it shares your DNA. You amputate it to save the body."
