Higgins finally looked up, and what he saw made him set his pen down slowly. Dignified posture. Steady eyes. Absolutely nothing in this man's bearing matched the word prowler.
"He refused to identify," Bole said, arms crossed, before Higgins could ask.
"Sergeant," Marcus said, and his voice carried just enough to cut through the noise of the room without shouting, "before this officer files paperwork that will end his career and expose this department to a lawsuit it cannot survive, I am entitled to a phone call. I would like my phone back, the one your officer removed from my person unlawfully."
"He wants his lawyer," Bole sneered. "Let him use the precinct line."
"No," Marcus said. "I'll use my own device. Now."
There was something in the way he said now. Not loud, not desperate, simply final. It made Higgins's stomach drop half an inch before his mind had caught up to why.
"Give him the phone, Curtis."
"Are you serious? He's a suspect."
"Give him the damn phone," Higgins said, already regretting every choice that had led him to this particular Saturday shift.
Bole slammed the evidence bag onto the desk, unlocked one cuff so Marcus's right hand was free while his left stayed shackled to the booking rail, and stepped back with his arms crossed, smirking.
Marcus did not dial a lawyer. He pressed a single speed-dial digit, and the call connected on the first ring.
"Director."
The voice on the other end was crisp, alert, already moving before the sentence finished. Special Agent Daniel Cross had spent four years learning the difference between his boss's ordinary calm and the specific controlled calm that meant something had gone badly wrong. He was hearing the second one now.
"Danny," Marcus said, using an old habit from years of working together. "I've been detained. I'm at the Ninth District station in Ashcom County."
Four hundred yards from Marcus's own front gate, sitting behind the wheel of an armored Suburban, Daniel Cross felt something cold drop through his chest.
"Sir, you were arrested?"
"I was," Marcus said, watching Bole lean against the desk, arms folded, grinning at what he clearly believed was the pathetic bluff of a cornered man. "Stand down on any tactical response. I want the detail brought to the station in a controlled fashion, and I want you to reach Deputy Director Gregory Sanders. Tell him to activate a civil rights response team out of the Washington field office. Tell him the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation is currently handcuffed to a booking rail in a county precinct."
Bole, close enough to catch fragments of the conversation, burst out laughing.
"Director of the FBI, Walt. This guy's a straight-up psych case."
Sergeant Higgins was not laughing.
While Marcus had been speaking, Higgins had already pressed the older man's right index finger to the digital scanner mounted on the booking counter, more out of procedural habit than any real suspicion that anything unusual would come back.
The machine beeped. It did not return a local record. The screen flashed solid red.
CLEARANCE: TOP SECRET/SCI.
AGENCY: FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION.
TITLE: DIRECTOR.
NAME: ASHWORTH, MARCUS T.
Higgins felt every drop of blood leave his face at once. He looked from the glaring red banner to the calm, silver-haired man cuffed to his booking rail, and then back again, as though a second look might correct the first.
"Curtis," he said, his voice cracking in the middle of the name.
"What?" Bole was still pouring himself a cup of coffee, unbothered. "He's got warrants or something?"
Higgins was already on his feet, hands shaking so badly he dropped his key ring twice trying to find the right one.
"You didn't arrest a prowler."
He looked Marcus directly in the eyes, and something like real fear entered his face for the first time.
"You arrested the Director of the FBI."
The room went absolutely silent.
The ringing phones seemed to fade into background static. Two officers processing a shoplifting suspect at the far end of the room stopped midsentence and turned to stare. Everyone's eyes moved between the glowing red screen and the handcuffed man standing utterly, terrifyingly still at the center of the room.
Curtis Bole let out a short, disbelieving laugh, the sound of a man whose nervous system was refusing the information his ears had just delivered.
"Come on, Walt. Machines glitch. Or he stole somebody's ID. You think the Director of the FBI is out here in dirty clothes on Ridgemont Hollow?"
Higgins did not answer. His hands were shaking so badly the little brass key skated twice off the lock before it finally caught. The cuffs opened with a soft double click, swinging free from Marcus's wrist and leaving behind two angry red welts.