Photographs—dozens of them, all timestamped and labeled. Inspection reports with his handwritten notes in the margins. Incident summaries cross-referenced by address, by owner, by the officials who'd signed off on compliance.
And a fresh stack of printouts on top—the incident reports he'd compiled since our last meeting.
"You've been busy," I said.
"So have you." He sat on the edge of my couch, elbows on his knees. "How did it go with Diaz?"
"She's in. She's handling the arson case, but the FDNY corruption is beyond NYPD jurisdiction. It will have to go federal."
Garrett went still. Not alarmed. Processing. Running it through that tactical mind the way he ran everything, calculating three steps ahead.
"Federal," he said quietly.
"She has a contact. Special Agent who works public corruption out of Federal Plaza."
He nodded slowly.
"She wants everything you have," I said. "The more documentation, the better."
"That's the box."
"I told her you'd been trying to get someone to listen for years." I looked up at him. "She said to tell you someone's finally listening."
Something shifted in his expression. Not relief exactly, but close. The look of a man who'd been shouting into a void for years and just heard the first echo back.
"What did you find?" I asked, nodding at the incident reports. "Anything useful?"
"Three structure fires in the last four years. All in buildings owned by the same shell company network. All ruled accidental." He pulled a folder from the box and handed it to me. "Two injuries. One fatality."
I opened the folder. A list of names, dates, and addresses.
"You've been tracking the victims."
"If someone's burning these buildings for revenge, they lost someone. A family member, a friend." He leaned forward, pointing to the list. "These are the people who died or were seriously injured in fires connected to the shell companies. If our arsonist is on this list—or connected to someone on it—this is how we find them."
I stared at the list. At the careful handwriting, the cross-references, the years of quiet, methodical work.
"You know," I said, "you would've made a good cop."
Garrett froze.
"Take that back."
"Take what back?" I grinned at him, not even trying to hide it.
The firefighter-cop rivalry was one of those things you didn't fully understand until you'd spent time inside a firehouse. It wasn't hatred—it was sibling warfare. Two departments pulling from the same city budget, the same outer-borough families, sometimes the same Thanksgiving table.
Cops resented firefighters for the better schedules, the universal adoration, and the fact that no one had ever protested the fire department. Firefighters resented cops for the bigger budgets, the jurisdictional overreach, and the way ESU units kept showing up to do jobs the FDNY was already handling.
But underneath the budget fights and the turf wars, the real divide was simpler.
Cops enforced. Firefighters saved.
Telling a firefighter he'd make a good cop was like telling a chef he'd make a great microwave technician. Technically adjacent. Spiritually devastating.
And I’d just said it to Garrett's face.
He shook his head slowly, but he was smiling. The one that used to make me forget my own name.
