He thought about the look on Garvey's face on the front lawn, the way it had drained the second Francis said his job title out loud. He thought about how fast that fear had turned into silence, into officers scrambling to take the cuffs off him, like his badge mattered more than what had actually happened to his house. "They tore my house apart, looking for something illegal," he said slowly. "Something that was never here to begin with. And in the process they handed my office a case with the district attorney himself as the victim.
He turned to look at Stella, his voice steady now, certain. Now they're going to have to explain publicly why they don't think that changes anything. Stella reached over and took his hand, the first time either of them had touched since the officers had zip tied her that morning. You're really going to do this? She said, not a question.
I don't have a choice, Francis said. If I let this go, they'll do it to the next family and the family after that, and nobody will stop them because nobody with any power ever gets hit. He squeezed her hand once. I got hit. That's not luck.
That's an opportunity, and I'm not wasting it. He reached for his phone, still cracked in one corner from where it had hit the ground that morning, and dialed his office. Stella watched him stand, watched the exhaustion in his shoulders straighten into something harder. Something that looked a lot more like the man who'd built a career refusing to let power go unchecked. "Pull every file on Captain Roger Garvey's unit," Francis said into the phone, his voice carrying clean through the ruined house.
Today, three days had passed since the raid, and the house on Somerset Court still sat behind caution tape, waiting on contractors who couldn't start until the insurance paperwork cleared. Francis and Stella were staying with her sister across town, sleeping in a guest room that didn't feel like home, showering with someone else's soap. Francis told himself it was temporary. He told himself that every morning right before he drove to the office and buried himself in the one thing he could actually control. The review he'd ordered that first afternoon had been running quietly ever since.
Two parallegals and a junior attorney combing through department records, cross-referencing names, addresses, and warrant numbers tied to Garvey's tactical unit going back 6 years. By Thursday afternoon, they had something. You need to see this," said Pepper, the junior attorney, setting three thin folders on Francis's desk like she was laying down evidence in a trial. In a way, she was. Francis opened the first folder.
A complaint filed four years earlier from a homeowner named Wilbert Brooks. Wrong address. Doors broken. No charges filed against the officers involved. Case closed.
Signed off by Chief Diego Pauler. He opened the second. A different name, a different street, same pattern, same signature at the bottom. The third folder made his jaw tighten. Same unit, same excuse, same outcome.