Patricia Graves started to object. Pierce held up one hand without looking at the attorney, keeping her eyes on Voss. He had no answer. He stared at the still frame on the table. Something was happening around his eyes: a kind of erosion. The architecture was cracking from the inside, slowly, the way old buildings crack—not all at once, but incrementally, fault line by fault line.
"I was acting in good faith," he said.
Pierce moved the still frame aside. She placed the next document in front of him. "Marcus Webb," she said. "16 years old. Years earlier, you stopped him while he was walking home from football practice on Elm Street in the Southside district. You conducted a pat-down search. When asked what description he fit, the incident report states—and I'm quoting the report you filed—'Subject's behavior was consistent with suspicious activity in the area.' There was no accompanying description in any active case file from that precinct on that date."
She looked up. "Marcus Webb is now older and plays defensive end for a Division I program. He has given us a detailed statement describing the stop. He says you told him—and I'm quoting his statement—'Your kind needs to learn to move differently around here.'"
Voss's jaw tightened. "That's not accurate."
"His statement is corroborated by a bystander who was present and whom he identified by name at the time of the incident. We've spoken to that bystander." Pierce turned a page. "Carla Osai, pediatric nurse. Years earlier, detained for minutes in Northfield Park while jogging." She set down a photo of the park. "A park that is, as I'm sure you know, public property."
She set down the complaint Carla Osai had filed. She set down the "handled informally" determination beside it. She set down the signature on that determination: a lieutenant named Howard Beck.
"Several complaints over the years," she said. "All reviewed, all buried, all signed off at the supervisory level by either Lieutenant Beck or review board member Dale Ashford." She set down both names on paper: their signatures, the dates. "Would you like to characterize the pattern for me, or would you like me to characterize it?"
The room was very quiet.
Patricia Graves said carefully, "My client is not in a position to speak to the supervisory determinations."
"He's not being asked about the supervisory determinations," Pierce said, still without looking at her. "He's being asked about the pattern of behavior that required those determinations." She turned back to Voss. "Several incidents, Officer Voss, over the years, all involving Black or Latino civilians, none resulting in charges because there was no basis for charges. Would you say that's accurate?"
Voss said nothing.
"I will note for the record that the subject did not dispute the characterization," Pierce said into her recording device.
Patricia Graves said, "That's not fair."
"The record will show what it shows," Pierce said. She closed the folder. She looked at Voss directly, and for a moment the procedural language dropped away and she spoke as one human being to another.
"Mr. Voss, I have been in this building for years. I have conducted more than internal investigations. I have seen every version of this conversation. I want to tell you something that I am not required to tell you, and that is not in my mandate to say." She paused. "There are several people whose lives were interrupted by your judgment. One of them is eight years old and had a $10 bill in his grandfather's wallet. The others are adults who filed complaints and were told by this institution that what happened to them didn't matter enough to act on. They have all given statements—all of them." She held his gaze. "This is going to be resolved one way or another. The only variable at this point is whether you contribute to understanding what happened here, or whether you don't. That choice is yours."
Voss looked at the table for a long time. Then he said very quietly, "I want to speak to my attorney privately."
The suspension without pay came that afternoon. Voss drove home in civilian clothes, with his badge and service weapon having been surrendered at the armory. He pulled into his driveway; Diane's car was there. He sat in his personal car—technically personal, but he'd driven it to work for so long it had absorbed the character of something official—and stared at the front door of his house for a long time.
His neighbor, Terry Hoffman, was raking leaves in the front yard across the street. Terry had known Declan for years; they'd waved to each other across the street on countless mornings. Terry looked up, saw Declan sitting in the car, and raised a hand in greeting. Declan raised his hand back. Then he went inside.
Diane was in the kitchen. She was making coffee, her back to the door. She didn't turn around when he came in. "How'd it go?" she said. Her voice was neutral in the way that a person makes their voice neutral when they are holding a great deal at a controlled distance.
"They're recommending termination," he said.
She poured her coffee. She turned around. She looked at him across the kitchen: at the man she had been married to for years, who coached Saturday baseball and had a Labrador named Buck. And whom she had, she realized with a particular, exhausting clarity, been not looking at for a very long time. Not the way he talked about certain calls, not the way he described certain neighborhoods, not the slow, incremental accumulation of things she'd chosen not to name.
"Declan," she said, "I need to ask you something, and I need you to tell me the truth."
He said, "Okay."