The Chair
“Sit still. Your attitude ends the second this hair hits the floor.”
The electric clippers screamed against the silence of the booking room.
A thick curl fell onto the gray floor beside a pair of polished green heels.
Simone Greene sat perfectly upright in the metal chair. She wore a dark emerald suit, a crisp white blouse, and a slim gold watch. Her carefully styled curls were being cut by Officer Caleb Rourke, whose expression suggested that he expected fear.
Simone gave him none.
“Touch one more curl,” she said quietly, “and your badge becomes evidence.”
Rourke leaned closer.
“In this room, I decide what evidence looks like.”
Simone stared at the observation window.
“Then keep cutting,” she replied. “Because the State Attorney is about to walk in and ask who put clippers on Assistant Counsel Greene.”
The second officer in the room, Nathan Bell, went completely still.
For the first time, he looked carefully at the woman sitting in the chair.
Something about her did not fit the story Rourke had told him.
She wasn't an ordinary detainee.
And Rourke was about to discover exactly who he had brought into his booking room.
The Woman Behind the Emerald Suit
Simone Greene was thirty-six years old and had spent nearly eight years working in the State Attorney's Office.
She served in the Public Integrity Division, investigating allegations involving law enforcement, evidence handling, public officials, government contracts, and abuse of authority.
For four months, she had been quietly investigating Chicago's Twelfth District.
The complaints seemed unrelated at first.
A missing phone.
Cash that disappeared from a wallet.
A detainee held for hours without being formally booked.
Body-camera footage that mysteriously vanished.
But Simone noticed something the department's internal reviews had ignored.
The same names appeared again and again.
One of them was Caleb Rourke.
Nine complaints.
Nathan Bell appeared in four.
Every case had been dismissed separately.
One complainant had an expired license.
Another had argued during booking.
Someone else had accepted a reduced charge and later withdrawn their statement.
To the department, they were separate incidents.
To Simone, they were pieces of the same machine.
The most disturbing complaint came from twenty-two-year-old Amaya Lewis.
Amaya said Rourke had cut her natural hair after she refused to unlock her phone.
The department denied it.
The booking camera had supposedly suffered a technical failure.