He read them with the careful, methodical attention he gave to case files. He noted the name that appeared on the closing authorization for all three. He noted the dates, the demographics of the complainants, the similarity of language in Puit's own written accounts of each incident. He picked up his phone and called District Attorney Marcus Webb at 9:45 on a Sunday evening. Webb picked up on the third ring.
I expected to hear from you, he said. Then you've already seen the body camera footage, Raymond said. It was flagged to my office this afternoon along with a neighbor's security footage that arrived in the IInternal Affairs inbox late tonight. A pause. Raymond, tell me you want to pursue this properly.
"I want to pursue this properly," Raymond said. "All of it, not just Saturday. The three prior complaints, the authorization chain that closed them, the pattern." A longer pause. When Webb spoke again, his voice had the quality of a prosecutor who has just been handed a case he knows he can win.
"I can have a grand jury convened within the month." "Good," Raymond said. He closed the personnel file, turned off the desk lamp, and sat in the dark of his office for a few minutes, listening to the house settle around him, the familiar sound of his home, the specific quiet that belongs to the place a man has built, and then he went to bed.
Raymond walked through the glass doors of the Garland City Police Department's main district precinct at 7:58 on Monday morning, wearing his class A dress uniform. The brass buttons were polished to mirror finish. His trousers carried a crease that could measure a right angle. The gold detective sergeant's shield on his left breast caught the fluorescent lighting and gave it back with interest. He walked with the measured pace of a man who has been in this building for 22 years and has no reason to hurry.
He moved through the bullpen quickly. On a normal Monday, it held the raucous energy of officers arriving for shift change. This Monday carried the heavy crackling undercurrent of a place where people are being very careful about what they say out loud. The news of what had happened on Maplewood Court had moved through the department with the velocity of information that carries genuine stakes. Officers who were crossing the bullpen slowed and nodded the nod of someone who has chosen their side and wants that choice to be visible.
Raymond walked through without pausing, headed toward the basement internal affairs offices. He gave his statement to Detective Lena Voss in a conference room on the second floor. Precise chronological stripped of editorial commentary. He described each exchange, each of Puit's actions, each of his own responses in the flat, detailed language of an experienced investigator narrating a case to a colleague. He did not embellish.