Chapter 10 - The First Arrest
By noon, the police station felt completely different from the place Arthur had entered only hours earlier.
The laughter was gone.
Conversations had become whispers.
Uniformed officers watched one another with growing uncertainty.
Chief Mercer walked through the front entrance carrying the basement ledger beneath his arm.
Internal Affairs investigators followed closely behind.
Officer Miller stood near his desk, pretending to complete paperwork despite trembling hands.
Mercer stopped directly in front of him.
"Stand up."
Miller forced a smile.
"Chief, I know this looks bad, but there's an explanation."
"I sincerely hope there is."
Mercer placed the ledger on the desk.
"Because your name appears here seven times."
Miller's smile vanished.
"I've never seen that book."
"Perhaps."
Mercer opened another folder.
"But we've also recovered your patrol logs."
Miller remained silent.
"And we've compared them with emergency dispatch records."
Silence again.
"On six different occasions, calls from Arthur Hale's address were closed without any responding unit arriving."
Several officers nearby looked at one another in disbelief.
Mercer continued.
"Each of those dates matches payments recorded in this ledger."
The room became perfectly still.
An Internal Affairs investigator stepped forward.
"Officer Miller, you're being placed on administrative leave pending investigation."
Before anyone could move, another investigator added quietly,
"And because new evidence has been recovered this morning, you are also being detained for questioning."
Miller's face turned pale.
"This is ridiculous!"
He pointed toward Arthur.
"You're believing him over me?"
Arthur answered calmly.
"No."
Everyone turned toward him.
"They're believing the evidence."
For several seconds, nobody spoke.
Then an investigator gently removed Miller's badge and service weapon.
The metallic sound echoed through the station.
It was the first badge surrendered.
Arthur watched without satisfaction.
Justice, he knew, was never about revenge.
It was about truth.
As Miller was escorted toward the interview rooms, he suddenly stopped and turned back.
"You think this ends with me?"
No one answered.
Miller laughed bitterly.
"You have no idea who you're really investigating."
The doors closed behind him.
Chief Mercer stared toward the hallway in silence.
Arthur did the same.
May you like
Both men understood exactly what those words meant.
The corruption they had uncovered was only the outer layer of something much larger, and somewhere beyond the walls of the station, someone had already begun preparing for the next move.
