The seal was not decorative. It was an embossed gold circle pressed into a strip of tamper tape across the folder's flap, bearing the seal of the Virginia Attorney General, and it had been applied in Naomi's office two afternoons earlier while a paralegal witnessed it and logged the time. The paralegal had warned her that morning that the tape photographed badly, and Naomi had laughed, saying photographs were the least important thing about a seal's honesty. Naomi had initialed the log herself in blue ink. Breaking it outside that log was an event. Weiss broke it with her thumbnail, without hesitation, and the tape split with a dry, fibrous tear that Naomi heard in her teeth.
"That file is sealed state material," Naomi said. "You are opening it without authorization."
Weiss lifted the flap and slid the contents partway out, enough to read with the papers still fanned inside the folder. She held it angled away from the neighbors, toward the cruiser windshield, out of habit or instinct for privacy she had not extended to anything else that morning.
The cover sheet was printed on heavy stock. At the top, in the sober typeface the office used for enforcement reviews, it read ASHFORD HEIGHTS PEDESTRIAN DETENTION REVIEW. Below that came the case number, the date the review had been opened, and a distribution list limited to five names. In the middle of the page, under the heading Reviewing Official, stood a single name in bold: Dr. Naomi Whitaker, Director, Civil Rights Enforcement Division.
Naomi watched Weiss read it. She watched her eyes travel down and stop, travel up and begin again. For the first time since the stop began, the officer was quiet for longer than a breath.
"Read it aloud," Naomi said.
Weiss did not.
"You have my identification in that bag as well. The photograph will match my face."
Still the officer read. Beneath the reviewing official line was a section titled Subject Officers, Preliminary, and a numbered list of personnel whose stop reports, body camera logs, and complaint histories had been pulled for examination. Naomi knew the order by heart because she had argued over it in a conference room the previous week. First came an officer from the north precinct with a pattern of late-night stops. Second came a sergeant who had written the training memo under scrutiny.
Third, in plain black type, was Officer Hannah Weiss, badge 412.
A draft summary clipped behind the cover sheet detailed three complaints against Weiss from pedestrians in this very community, each describing a demand for identification without a stated offense. A fourth page held a map of Ashford Heights with circles at intersections, and this sidewalk, this very stretch of concrete near the cruiser, fell inside one of the circles Naomi herself had drawn in blue pen during a late review session.
Weiss turned one page, then another, with a care that would have looked professional if the folder had been hers to open. The paper whispered. Her thumb left a smudge of road dust on the edge of the summary, and Naomi found herself furious at that small mark out of all proportion, because she had kept those pages immaculate through two weeks of reading.
"You are named in that file," Naomi said at last. "You are the third officer under investigation. I am the official conducting the review. Those documents in my bag are why I walked here this morning, to collect a resident's signed statement for that same file. Do you understand what you have done?"
Weiss's face performed a complicated series of adjustments. Surprise arrived first and was dismissed. Calculation followed. Underneath both, something harder settled in, the look of a person deciding that retreat would cost more than doubling down.
"You expect me to believe this?" she said.
"It is not a matter of belief. It is a state file with a seal you just broke. The seal number is logged. My office can verify it in one phone call."
"Anyone can print a cover sheet."
"Then call the number on it. Call your supervisor. Call the Attorney General's main line and ask for the Civil Rights Enforcement Division. I will wait, handcuffed, while you do the thing that ends this."
Behind them, the neighbors had gone very quiet, sensing a turn they could not see. The folder's contents were hidden from their cameras, but Naomi's sentences were not, and phones adjusted slightly, following her voice.
Weiss slid the papers back inside with excessive neatness, as if precision now could retroactively make the opening lawful. The torn seal hung from the flap in two curling halves, gold catching the light, ruined beyond any denial. She held the folder against her forearm the way people hold things they intend to keep.
"You are not going anywhere until this is sorted," she said.
"It is sorted," Naomi said. "You are holding the proof in your hand."
Chapter 10: Fake, She Says
"Fake," Weiss said.
She said the word to the folder first, as if pronouncing a verdict on paper, and then she turned and said it to Naomi directly, louder, so that the porches and driveways could receive it too.