Chapter 16 - The Badge
"It's a trade," Mercer said through the cell-door speaker. "Bring me the blue ledger by six. Nurse Alvarez goes home."
Lucie stood beside Valérie, staring at the photograph. "He thinks I have the originals."
"Then don't correct him," Valérie said.
Raines arrived during afternoon medication rounds. He carried Rosa's badge inside a sealed evidence bag. The kitchen worker had given it to him, saying Rosa asked for it to be delivered to Lucie if anything happened.
"There's something under the plastic," Raines said.
Lucie turned the badge over. Behind Rosa's picture was a tiny memory card, taped beneath the clip. Raines took it to an approved staff terminal in the administrative wing and opened a video file. He returned pale.
"It shows Mercer signing Denise Bell's release paperwork," he whispered. "The footage is dated three days after her so-called release. You can hear Denise in the room asking where they're taking her."
"Is there a backup?"
"Three now. One is already with an attorney outside."
Lucie looked at him. "You'll lose your job."
"I lost my sister," he said. "The job can go."
Mara called using an emergency legal line. She had persuaded an on-call federal magistrate to hear evidence of unlawful detention and witness intimidation. An independent investigator would seek immediate preservation and search orders, but Mara warned that the paperwork alone wouldn't keep Rosa alive.
Valérie reached into her pocket and handed Lucie the photograph of Nico. On the back, she had written his date of birth and the address of Cedar Ridge Depot.
"If I go after Mercer, he will use my son as a shield," she said. "If you go after him, he'll use yours."
"We don't go after him," Lucie said. "We make him come after the evidence, in front of witnesses."
She folded the photograph into a blank grievance form and gave it to Raines. "Get this to the investigators, too."
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At five fifty-five, Mercer entered the chapel carrying a locked black case.
A woman’s cry crackled from a phone inside it.
