“No. You call Internal Affairs. Tell them Codex falsified a case to clear a 10-80. I’ll handle Kane.” At 6:48 AM, Officer Alex Cross knocked on the door of the blue duplex. No answer. He circled around back. The green Corolla was there, hood dented, windshield cracked in a spiderweb pattern—right where a human head would have struck.

Cross stood up slowly. “Dana, call off the BOLO for the dark sedan. The victim says the car was green. A Corolla. And the driver got out.”

Cross’s heart hammered. He ran the address. Owner: Douglas Kane. No prior record. Registered nurse at Mercy Hospital. Same hospital where Marcus Teller was now in surgery.

“A nurse’s watch. Facing inward, so he can take a pulse without turning his wrist. Same watch Marcus Teller saw before he passed out.”

The job was always the job.

The dispatch crackled to life at 3:17 AM. “All units, we have a 10-80 at the intersection of Fairmont and Vine. Hit-and-run, pedestrian down. Suspect vehicle last seen heading east on Vine—dark sedan, partial plate Sierra-November-7-9.”

He searched for “green Corolla hit-and-run” in the department’s internal logs. No results. Codex had purged anything not matching the dark sedan profile.

“Stolen? So the driver’s not the owner.”

Cross drew his service weapon. “Police! Open up!”

Cross looked down. The victim was mid-forties, wearing a janitor’s uniform. A cracked nameplate read Marcus Teller . His left leg was bent at an angle that made Cross’s stomach turn.