…”one of our officers.”
I asked her which one. She turned her screen toward me. Sergeant Paul Decker. I knew that name. Two months earlier, someone had backed into my car in a grocery store lot, and the officer who took the report had been friendly. Too friendly. He’d asked if I was single. I’d laughed it off and given him my insurance card. With my address on it.
A man came through the side door a minute later, in a suit, with a badge on his belt. Lieutenant Morales, from Internal Affairs. Officer Hale had called him, not Decker’s supervisor. “I’ve been doing this thirty years,” she told me later. “I wasn’t going to let anyone near that tag who might want to make it disappear.”
Morales took my statement in a small room with the door closed. I told him about the accident, the questions, the eleven days. He asked me to wait while he made some calls. When he came back, his face was very still.
Decker had pulled my file from the police database three times in two months. Once the day of the accident. Once the night before the AirTag showed up. Once the morning I walked into the station.
He was put on leave that afternoon, and later fired. He’s been charged with stalking and misuse of a police database. Two other women came forward after my case made the local news. Same story. A traffic stop, a friendly officer, and then the feeling of being watched.
Officer Hale walked me to my car that day. She checked under every seat herself, with a flashlight, before she let me drive away.
I still have the sandwich bag. The AirTag is in an evidence locker now, but I kept the bag as a reminder. Not of him. Of her. Of the one person who looked at her screen, saw a badge number she recognized, and decided the right thing to do was pick up the phone anyway.
