The dispatcher started screaming into her headset, which had gone dead. Someone in the back office knocked over a filing cabinet pulling at it, trying to do something, anything with the contents. A deputy named Wyatt Foss grabbed his radio and started calling for backup on channels that were now jammed by federal signal override. Pruitt turned in a slow circle, his face cycling through confusion, then alarm, then something that looked very much like the first stage of genuine terror. "What did you do?"
He stared at Josephine. "What the hell did you do?" She was standing fully upright now. The bruise on her jaw was darkening by the second. A single thin line of blood marked her lower lip.
She held a small black leather credential wallet open in her right hand. The badge inside it was silver, the kind of silver that only comes from a federal mint. "My name," she said, her voice cutting clean through the noise of the room, "is Deputy Assistant Director Josephine Duvall, Federal Bureau of Investigation." She looked around the room, at the panicking deputies, at the ceiling, doors, at the screens all glowing with the federal seal. "I am the lead officer on a federal racketeering investigation designated Operation Gulf Ledger, targeting the administrative and operational command structure of this department.
She lowered the badge and looked directly at Pruitt. You are not locked inside this building to prevent me from leaving," she said quietly. "You are locked inside this building to prevent the destruction of the evidence secured in Sheriff Beaumont's office and the records room on the second floor. She checked her watch. In approximately 60 seconds, a 12-person federal evidence recovery team will breach through the roof access point.
At that time, any officer who has not moved away from the filing cabinets and record storage will be charged with obstruction of justice in addition to whatever charges already apply. 60 seconds. The lobby had gone very, very quiet. Sergeant Hal Grover, the senior officer on the floor, was a 25-year department veteran who had survived four different sheriffs by being smarter than he looked. He looked at Josephine's badge.
He looked at the screens. He looked at Pruitt. He looked at the sealed doors. He did a fast, very accurate calculation of the next 12 hours of his life and made a decision. "Everyone step away from your desks," Grover said, his voice rough but controlled.
"Hands where they can see them. Do it now." "Hal," Pruitt started. "Shut your mouth, Dale." Grover's voice cracked like a whip.
"You just assaulted a Federal Deputy Assistant Director. Shut your mouth, get on your knees, and put your hands behind your head. That is the only decision you have left to make that matters." Pruitt stared at him. Something behind his eyes collapsed.