"I want to see what happens," he said, turning to face her. "I want to see if the department does the right thing on its own. If Petrov's report gets questioned." He paused.
"If anybody checks his body camera. His history. Anything. I want to know what kind of place I'm about to run before I start tearing it apart."
Darlene studied him for a long moment. The way she always did when she was deciding whether to push back or trust him. "And if they don't? If nobody checks anything?"
"Then I'll already have everything I need," Mackie said quietly. "It'll mean a lot more coming out then than it would right now." She didn't like it. He could see that in the tight set of her jaw.
But she nodded anyway because she'd known this man long enough to trust the way his mind worked, even when it moved slower than her instincts wanted it to. "I'm backing up every video tonight," she said. "All three angles. Yours, mine, and I'm calling the neighbor about that doorbell camera before she deletes anything by accident."
"Good," Mackie said. "Keep copies somewhere safe. Somewhere nobody but us can touch." She nodded again, already pulling out her phone to start the process.
Her fingers moved fast and sure. Mackie turned back toward the house. Toward the boxes still waiting to be carried in. Toward the life he and Darlene were supposed to be building today.
But his mind wasn't on furniture anymore. It was on Monday morning. On roll call. On the look that was going to cross Officer Petrov's face the first time he had to stand up and salute the man he'd just tried to break.
He watched the empty street for a moment longer. Quiet and still now. Like nothing had happened at all. "He just wrote the first page of his own personnel file," Mackie murmured.
Then he walked back inside to finish unpacking his new life. Three days passed quietly. Mackie spent the weekend finishing the unpacking, hanging pictures, and learning the creak of the floorboards in his new house. He didn't hear anything from the department about the incident in his driveway.
No call. No report. No follow-up. It was as if Friday morning had simply been swallowed whole, filed away and forgotten before it ever had a chance to matter.
Monday came fast. Mackie arrived at the precinct before six, dressed in his new uniform for the first time. The fabric was still stiff. The captain's bars caught the light on his collar.
He walked through the front doors of the building he was about to run, past officers who had no idea who he was yet, past a front-desk sergeant who did a double take at the bars before scrambling to stand. Roll call started at 6:30 sharp. The room was long and plain. Rows of folding chairs faced a podium.
Fluorescent lights hummed overhead. Officers filed in with coffee cups and half-awake faces, chatting in low voices and settling into seats out of habit rather than assignment. Mackie stood near the podium, watching the room fill. Waiting.
Petrov walked in near the front of the pack, laughing at something one of his buddies said, loose and easy like Friday morning had never happened. He dropped into a seat in the front row without looking up. Bishop came in a few minutes later, quieter. His eyes scanned the room before he found a seat near the back.