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He tried to reclaim the narrative, shoving me backward with enough force to send me sprawling. He barked the word resisting at the top of his lungs, a practiced reflex designed to justify the violence that was supposed to follow. He was already rewriting the scene for a police report that would never be filed. He turned to the few bystanders, including a jogger who had slowed to a crawl, and ordered them to back up, claiming this was official police business. I stayed on the ground, playing the part of the broken man I had been for nearly a week. I watched him reach for his handcuffs, his movements jerky and fueled by a rising, panicked instinct.
When he ordered me to put my hands behind my back, I didn’t move. I simply reached into the inner lining of my coat. Walsh tensed, his hand hovering over his holster, but I moved with a slow, deliberate calmness that stopped him in his tracks. I pulled out the gold shield. It caught the morning sun, casting a sharp glint across the dirt where my meager belongings lay scattered. I introduced myself as Captain Jonathan Rivers of the Internal Affairs Division.