Behind him, his front door hung broken on its hinges, and beyond it, his home lay in ruins. Garvey was on the phone before Francis even made it to the porch. He walked away from the wreckage, past the officers still standing around looking like they didn't know what to do with their hands and pressed the phone hard against his ear. Chief, we got a problem. Chief Diego Pauler was still in bed when the call came through.
He sat up fast when he heard the details. Say that again, Pauler said. Wrong address. 44 Somerset instead of four. We hit it anyway.
Full sweep, full breach, and it turns out the homeowner's the district attorney. Waldridge. He was just on his own front lawn telling me his job title like it was a loaded gun. Silence on the line. Pauler rubbed a hand down his face.
Is anyone hurt? No, sir. Just the house is pretty torn up. How torn up? Garvey glanced back over his shoulder at the shattered windows, the broken door, the drywall dust drifting out onto the porch.
"Torn up," he said again, because there wasn't really a better word for it. Paler was quiet for a long moment. "8 Years on the force had taught him plenty of things, and one of them was that a problem like this could end careers if it was handled wrong. His own career included." Listen to me carefully, Pauler said. Don't say anything else to him.
Don't apologize. Don't admit anything. Don't make any statement beyond confirming the warrant was executed. I'll handle it from here. Yes, sir.
Pauler hung up and sat on the edge of his bed for a moment, staring at nothing. Then he made another call. By the time the sun was fully up, the story had already started changing shape inside police headquarters. The incident report that would eventually get filed wouldn't use words like demolished or destroyed. It would say warrant execution, address discrepancy, no misconduct identified, clean, bureaucratic, the kind of sentence that made a shattered house sound like a paperwork error instead of what it actually was.
Pauler's next call went to Mayor Peggy Howard. She picked up on the second ring, already awake, already working through her morning briefing notes for a campaign event later that week. This better be good news, she said. It's not, Paul told her. One of Garvey's tactical raids hit the wrong house this morning.