Pruitt did not seem to hear him. He leaned back in his chair and remarked that men like Marcus tried this kind of thing more often than people realized: buying costume medals online and wearing them around town for the attention, hoping someone might offer them a free meal or a discount at the hardware store.
Officer Sandra Whitfield, a younger officer standing near the door, had already pulled out her phone and begun recording, later claiming it was standard procedure. Though nothing about her posture suggested procedure so much as curiosity dressed up as duty, she murmured to another officer that people should not think dressing up like a soldier was a clever way to fool anyone in that building. A few heads nodded in agreement, as if the matter had already been settled before it had even begun.
The camera in the corner blinked its small red light, indifferent to the tension building inside the room, and somewhere down the hallway a coffee machine gurgled and hissed as another shift began without ever pausing to consider the man seated quietly under fluorescent light.
Pruitt tapped his pen against the notepad, repeating his questions in slightly different phrasing, as though rewording an accusation might somehow make it more true. Marcus remained composed throughout the questioning, answering each accusation with the same unhurried calm, never once raising his voice or shifting in his seat. He did not argue about the medal or the identification card because he understood that no argument would change minds that had already closed.
Instead, he made a single, simple request—one he repeated twice more when it was ignored the first time. He asked to be allowed one telephone call. Not to a lawyer, not to a relative, but to a specific number connected to the Department of Defense.
Pruitt burst out laughing at that, slapping the table with his palm, and told Marcus that of course he could call the Pentagon right after he called the moon. The room filled again with the same mocking laughter that had followed Marcus since the moment he walked through the front doors.
Whitfield lowered her phone for a moment, glancing at the older man's face, something in his stillness giving her the faintest flicker of unease, though she pushed the feeling aside just as quickly as it arrived. Pruitt stood and told Marcus that he would be held while they verified his identity through the system, and that if his story turned out to be false, additional charges would be added for wasting police time.
Marcus nodded once, folded his hands on the table, and said nothing further, watching the door close behind the officers with an expression that betrayed no anger—only the quiet, patient resignation of a man who had waited out far worse than a locked room and a pair of handcuffs.