Chapter 12 - The Fall of the Badges
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The color vanished from Captain Gregory Reynolds’s face so fast it looked like he had suffered a sudden stroke.
His bluster and booming voice died instantly in his throat, replaced by a hollow, choking gasp.
“I... I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Reynolds stammered, his eyes darting frantically toward the front doors.
Outside the glass facade of the Grand Waverly, three more federal vehicles had just blocked Reynolds’s departmental cruiser.
Two agents from the FBI’s Public Corruption Squad stepped through the entryway, holding crisp blue warrant folders.
“Captain Gregory Reynolds,” the lead corruption investigator announced, stepping up beside me.
“Pursuant to a federal grand jury indictment signed thirty minutes ago, you are under arrest for conspiracy, extortion, and bribery.”
Reynolds reached instinctively toward his service weapon, a reflex born of twenty-five years of unquestioned street authority.
“Don't do it, Greg,” Commander Hayes said, his voice flat and devastatingly heavy.
“If you draw that sidearm, you won't survive to see the inside of a courtroom.”
Reynolds froze, his hand trembling inches from his leather holster.
He looked around the magnificent hotel lobby, realizing every exit was sealed and every gun was aimed at his chest.
Slowly, humiliatingly, the veteran police captain unclipped his duty belt and let it crash onto the marble floor.
The heavy leather and steel echoed like a death knell in the cavernous room.
Beside him on the velvet sofa, Officer Derek Channing watched his mentor and protector being disarmed like a common street criminal.
The young officer buried his face in his trembling hands, finally understanding the true magnitude of the machine he had served.
He hadn't been catching a vagrant; he had been the expendable pawn in a corrupt syndicate’s dirty game.
“Director Pendleton,” Reynolds whispered, his arrogance fully broken into desperate gravel.
“Let’s talk in private. I can give you city councilmen... I can give you state representatives...”
“You will give all of that to the federal prosecutors, Captain,” I answered, not yielding an inch of ground.
“You sold your badge, you sold your city, and you sold out this young officer sitting right behind you.”
Channing looked up through streaming tears, his face contorted in agony.
“You told me to arrest him, Captain!” Channing screamed at Reynolds, jumping to his feet.
“You texted me on my personal phone and said Caldwell had an unregistered troublemaker who needed to disappear!”
“You set me up to take the fall for your foreign bosses!”
Reynolds didn't even look at the young patrolman; to him, Channing was just collateral damage on a spreadsheet.
Two FBI agents cuffed Reynolds’s hands behind his back and marched the disgraced captain toward the waiting federal transport outside.
Flashbulbs from news reporters who had gathered beyond the police tape illuminated the glass doors like continuous lightning.
The images of a Chicago police captain and a luxury hotel manager being escorted out in federal chains would lead every morning broadcast across the country.
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I turned back toward Channing, who was standing alone in the middle of the lobby, trembling uncontrollably.
His uniform was rumpled, his badge was gone, and his future was reduced to ashes.
