Chapter 6 - Captain Landry’s Desperation
While Arthur was disintegrating at the hospital, Captain Thomas Landry was experiencing his own private nightmare inside the interrogation room of the Westbridge precinct—the very room where he had terrorized citizens for over a decade.
He sat across the steel table from two state corruption investigators, his belt and badge removed, his uniform shirt wrinkled.
“I want my union rep,” Landry grunted, staring stubbornly at the tabletop. “I want my attorney present. You have no legal basis for holding me.”
“Actually, Captain, we have plenty,” Investigator Vance said, sliding a printed transcript across the metal table. “At 3:14 a.m., approximately forty-five minutes after your niece was brought into this station, our forensic mirror of your department's internal server caught you accessing the dispatch logs. You didn't just read them—you initiated a terminal delete command targeting the 911 audio file originating from Helena Carter’s emergency call.”
Landry’s eye twitched. “That’s a software glitch. The archives purge automatically every week.”
“Except,” Investigator Vance continued smoothly, sliding a second sheet of paper forward, “we didn't just capture the local server. Our automated federal backup protocol had already cloned the entire primary database to an off-site cloud server the moment my department was notified of the incident. We have the raw audio. We have your login credentials. And, best of all, we have the security camera footage from the hallway showing you walking into the server room carrying a personal USB flash drive at precisely 3:12 a.m.”
Landry stared at the paper. The digital trail was airtight. There was no escape hatch, no fabricated excuse, and no influential friend in local politics powerful enough to override a federal corruption indictment.
The untouchable king of Westbridge had finally hit a wall he couldn't break through.
May you like
“She... she has no idea what she’s dealing with,” Landry muttered, his voice dropping to a bitter, desperate whisper. “The Carters... they own this town. They’ve owned it for fifty years.”
“Not anymore, Captain,” Investigator Vance said, standing up and snapping his notebook shut. “Towns belong to the law now. Put your hands behind your back.”
