Don't say another word to them. You'll have company in exactly 20 minutes. Pendleton hung up. David lowered the phone and handed it back through the bars to Higgins. The sergeant looked at him suspiciously.
Lawyer tell you to take a plea deal? " Brody called out from his desk, chuckling as he tossed a crushed paper cup into a trash can. David looked directly into Brody's eyes. A cold, terrifying smile finally touching the corners of his mouth. "No, Officer Brody," David said quietly, his voice carrying perfectly across the room. "He told me to advise you to call your union representative and perhaps your family.
Brody's smile faltered for a fraction of a second. He stood up, puffing out his chest. "Are you threatening a police officer? " "I'm giving you a weather report," David said, sitting back down on the metal bench. "A storm is coming. " 10 minutes later, the main phone lines at the Oak Haven 42nd precinct began to ring. Not just the front desk, every single phone in the building.
The precinct's ancient yellowed telephone system did not simply ring. It erupted into a cacophony of shrill mechanical shrieks that seemed to vibrate through the stained ceiling tiles. First, the main dispatch line lit up, the heavy red button flashing violently on the switchboard. Before the duty officer could even lift the heavy plastic receiver, Sergeant Pete Higgins's personal desk phone began to scream. A second later, the secure, unlisted line inside Captain Robert Callahan's office joined the deafening chorus, bleeding through the cheap drywall.
The mundane, lazy Tuesday afternoon atmosphere of the Oak Haven 42nd precinct, vanished in a heartbeat, replaced by a sudden, suffocating wave of collective anxiety. Higgins, his brow slick with fresh perspiration, snatched his receiver with a trembling fleshy hand. "Oh Haven, 42nd Sergeant Higgins, speaking. " "Do not touch the prisoner in holding cell three," a sharp metallic voice commanded, leaving absolutely no room for interpretation or negotiation. "Do not attempt to process his paperwork. Do not move him.
Do not so much as breathe in his direction. This is special agent Richard Hayes, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Atlanta Field Office. If a single hair on David Henderson's head is harmed, I will personally see you indicted before the sun goes down. The line went dead with a hollow click. Higgins stared at the receiver as if it had transformed into a venomous snake, his mouth opening and closing soundlessly.
Across the bullpen, Officer Thomas Brody was still leaning back in his creaky office chair, his boots propped arrogantly on his scratched metal desk. He was entirely oblivious to the monumental collapse of his career, casually picking at his fingernails with a standard-issue pocketknife. Suddenly, Captain Callahan's office door blew open with the force of a hurricane. Callahan, a man who usually moved with the sluggish apathy of a career bureaucrat, sprinted into the bullpen. His face was entirely drained of color, resembling a sheet of damp parchment.
His hands were shaking so violently that the coffee in his mug had spilled all over his pressed uniform shirt, leaving a dark, embarrassing stain. "Brody! " Callahan roared, his voice cracking with a high-pitched panic that made rookie officer Jimmy Collins flinch from two desks away. "What the hell did you just bring into my station? " Brody dropped his boots to the linoleum floor, his arrogant smirk faltering, but not entirely disappearing. Just some stolen valor guy. Cap caught him driving a stolen Gwagon out on Route 9. resisted arrest, caught an attitude.