Badge in the Trash

The room changed. A clerk at the copy machine froze with a page half-fed. Sergeant Miller, at the front desk, lifted his head. Cole’s grin thinned, then came back meaner.

“Cute,” he said. “You print that at Kinko’s?”

Claire flipped the wallet open wider. The badge caught the fluorescent light. The ID card sat behind it, her photo, her name, the seal. She held it where the nearest camera could see.

Cole’s eyes flicked up. So did everybody else’s.

Then he reached out and took the wallet from her hand.

He tossed it into the trash can beside the counter. It landed on top of two empty soda cans and a wad of forms, the metal badge clinking once against the side.

For half a second, no one moved.

Claire looked at the can, then back at him. “You just made a bad choice.”

Cole spread his hands. “Get her out of here.”

She reached for the desk phone and punched the line for federal dispatch from memory. Her thumb pressed the button once, hard.

“Central Division, Fairmont,” she said when the secure line picked up. “This is Special Agent Bennett. I need an emergency containment response at 410 Market. Officer obstruction, credential seizure, evidence risk, active compromise in the building.”

Miller stared at her. One of the live camera lights over the lobby door blinked red.

Cole went still.

From the captain’s office down the hall, a chair scraped back.

Claire kept her voice flat. “You have about ninety seconds before this gets a lot larger than your precinct.”

The badge wallet hit the trash can and slid under a wad of soda cups.

Claire watched it disappear. Her hand stayed at her side. “Don’t touch me again,” she said.

Travis Cole leaned in like he wanted the whole bullpen to hear him. “Or what? You gonna write me up, lady?”

A few desks over, a woman with a printer cart froze with a stack of forms in her hands. Two detectives by the coffee machine looked over and then away. The fluorescent lights buzzed above them. Somebody laughed too loud near booking, like they didn’t want this to count.

Claire reached into her coat and pulled out her federal wallet. She flipped it open once, steady and flat, so the gold seal caught the light. She held it there long enough for the nearest camera dome to catch her face beside it.

“Claire Bennett,” she said. “Federal Public Integrity Task Force. You just seized federal credentials in front of witnesses.”

Cole’s grin slipped for half a second. Then he puffed his chest and gave the trash can a kick. “That thing? You can dig it out with the rest of the garbage.”