Compliance

There were at least six cameras around the parking lot Grace could see without craning her neck. There were another nine she’d seen as she entered the lot. The counting wasn’t voluntary, it was more an annoying tic. She tried to relax in her car, waiting for the Compliance Office to open, but there was no comfortable position in her tiny commuter one-seater.

She looked at the ticket summons on her phone again. “Presence in a restricted zone.” Convenient, she thought, that they can mark an area restricted with no warning and collect fines.

A stout, matronly woman opened the doors of the office. She looked stuffed into the stiff-collared, square-shouldered Compliance Officer uniform.

After she’d propped the doors open, she put on her uniform cap, stuffing it down over her curly hair where it threatened to fly free any second. She looked at the time on her phone, and motioned for those in the parking lot to come in. Her uniform strained and bunched as she waved her arm.

Grace made her way into the drab waiting room with the others who had been waiting in the parking lot. Her phone chimed and her number in the queue showed: 14. Seeing how there were only six other people in the waiting room, she assumed that the numbers didn’t start at one.

The waiting room was silent. While cameras covered every public space and citizens’ moves were always monitored, the Compliance Office was certain to have visual and sound recording. The fear of saying something that might increase a fine or add a new violation kept everyone silent.

The woman in the overtaxed uniform sat at a desk near the front door and called out, “Number one!”

Grace was surprised to see one of the people in the room stand and approach the desk. She checked her phone again; the number was still 14, and there were now only five others in the room with her.

Every ten minutes, another number was called. Sprinkled between the ones who were called from the room, others entered the front door, their phone chimed with their number, and the woman at the desk called their number in the same moment.

Grace’s plan to save time by arriving before opening and being seen soon was, she found out, without merit. She had expected the waiting room to fill up, but there were never more than a few people there at a time. It was more than two hours before she was called.

She approached the desk and showed her phone. The woman motioned to the door behind her with a thumb. Grace said, “Thank you,” and went in.

Somehow, the long hallway through the door was even more bland than the waiting room. Doors were offset on each side of the hall, and young woman in civilian clothes with a badge on her hip waited for her at an open door.

“Grace Spahn? We’re in here.”

Once Grace was seated at the small table, the woman closed the door. “Grace, I’m Compliance Detective Alexandra McAlly, but you can just call me Lex.”

Grace nodded at the woman but remained silent.

Lex smiled. “Let’s start with the basics. Your name is Grace Spahn?”

“Yes.”

“Where do you live?”

“Sunrise apartments, 302 West Baker.”

“Right there on the corner of Third?” Lex asked.

“Yeah.”

“And where do you work?”

“I’m an underwriter at Starline Mutual.”

“Where is that?” Lex continued to make notes in her tablet as they talked.

“It’s in the Southerland Building, just past East H Street on Fourth.”

“And do you drive to work? Seems a pretty short trip.”

“No, I walk.”

“Do you walk up Third or Fourth or…?” Lex let the question hang.

“Fifth, to work. The same back, unless I need to stop at the market, then I take Seventh instead.”

“Why is that?”

“No sidewalks on Third or Fourth, and Sixth goes right past that biker bar and run-down hotel with all the drug dealers.”

“Yeah, the Braun district can get pretty seedy depending on where you are. But your apartment’s in a quiet area, right?”

Grace nodded.

“I’m not going to beat around the bush here. Your fine is steep. I know you don’t have a way to pay it off without taking out a loan, so I’d like to talk about alternatives with you; see what we can work out.”

“I was fined for walking home from work. The so-called restricted zone wasn’t restricted when I entered it.” Grace crossed her arms. “Don’t I have a right to an attorney?”

Lex leaned forward, her elbows on her knees. “Compliance violations aren’t crimes, and they aren’t handled by the courts. The only time they come up in court is as character background when determining sentencing.”

“If I haven’t committed a crime, then why am I facing a five-thousand—”

“Compliance violation, as I said.”

“If it isn’t laws you’re enforcing, what do Compliance Officers enforce with your constant surveillance and outrageous fines?”

“Community standards, decency, and safety. The surveillance doesn’t belong to us, but to the State. It’s shared with us, police, the Workplace Safety Administration, the courts, and so on.”

“And the Anti-Terrorism Task Force, right? The ones that disappear people.” Grace leaned back.

Lex scooted her chair closer to Grace. “You’re a smart woman, it’s obvious. You’ve got a good job, decent place to live, perfect credit record…you know how to keep your life in order. If you could help us out, this violation would be purged from your record.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“We’re trying to identify someone that was in the restricted zone at the same time you were. If you could walk me through your trip home, it could help…especially if you can remember the people you saw there.”

“You want me to try and describe everyone I saw in the fourteen-block walk home, last week? I’m afraid I won’t be much help.”

“Not everyone, no. Did you make any stops the night you were stopped?”

“Yeah, the corner market, over on Seventh and West Baker.”

“Was that before or after the stop?”

Grace knew that the detective knew well the answers to the questions she was asking. “Before. If you look at the summons, it describes the shopping bag I was carrying at the time.”

“Okay, well, did anything odd happen while you were in the market?”

Grace shrugged. “I got the notice on my phone that the area was restricted right after I got my groceries.”

“Groceries?”

“Well, junk food, anyway. Just some snacks for while I watched the latest streams of Star Voice. I didn’t know Compliance was policing our eating habits now.”

“Nothing like that,” Lex said, “I just want to be sure my report is precise. You understand; you write accident reports for insurance.”

“No, I determine who qualifies for what amount of insurance.”

“Thanks, I just learned a thing. I know you’re observant, I’ve watched you since you walked into the building. You probably know there are four cameras in here and seven in the waiting room.”

“Five and nine, unless you count the one in the foyer, then it’s ten.”

“Exactly. You always count the cameras?”

“I can’t help it, I just do.”

“It’s fine.” Lex flipped through her tablet. “We’re just hoping you can help us out with that observational skill of yours. How many cameras between your work and the market?”

“If I go straight down Seventh like usual it would be eighty-nine. If I take Fifth and then up the hill on Baker, it’s ninety-one.”

“Did you notice anything odd about any of those cameras that day?”

“No…I try not to look right at them…I just count them out of the corner of my eye. I wish I didn’t.”

“Fair enough.” Lex took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Now, I’m going to ask you again, Grace; other than the restriction notice, what odd thing happened while you were in the store?”

“There was a commotion in the front of the store when I was in the back. I didn’t think anything of it. The neighborhood’s not the best, and sometimes it gets noisy.”

“What about the man who caused the commotion?” Lex showed a still of the man in a mask looking directly at Grace. “Did he say anything to you?”

Grace knew who it was. Jeremiah was her neighbor. He was sweet but disturbed by the constant surveillance. He rarely left his apartment, and always returned in a state of near panic. She knew who it was behind the mask because he had one green eye and one brown eye.

“He said, ‘Sorry’ when he bumped into me on his way to the bathroom.”

Lex showed her another image, Jeremiah’s identification photo. “Do you know this man?”

“Yeah, he’s my neighbor, Jeremiah…can’t remember his last name. You already knew that, though.” She felt like the hammer was going to come down any second. “Why?”

“Is this who bumped into you in the market? It would be hard to hide from anyone he knows with those eyes.”

Grace’s eyes fixed on the door, and she felt the room shrinking.

“If you prefer, you can end this right now and pay the fine.”

“I can’t afford that, but….”

Lex lowered her voice, talking softly to Grace. “Look, I get it. Jeremiah’s your friend, and you don’t want to implicate him in anything. But you know, if you pay your fine and leave, and we find out later that it’s him, you’ll be charged as an accessory after the fact. We have his phone on West Carter and Third before it disappeared, then didn’t show up again until four hours later at his home.”

“Wha—what’s the charge?”

“The police don’t tell us, but if I had to guess, I would guess misdemeanor vandalism. The person in the mask was spray-painting cameras on Fifth and West Baker. If you know something you don’t tell us, though, they can bump it up to felony conspiracy for both of you.”

Lex stood up. “I’m going to give you a few minutes to make up your mind. I’ll come back with a loan form in case you decide to pay your fine today, but I’d rather make the police detective happy than the change counters in Compliance.”

Grace thought about it. She knew that Lex was probably lying that she didn’t know the charges. If she kept quiet, she would have to find a way to pay a fine of more than three months’ rent, and the loan rates would be brutal. She wasn’t sure how much the police and compliance knew. It might be a ploy to get them both on higher charges.

She crossed her arms on the table and buried her face in them so the cameras couldn’t see her cry. “I’m sorry, Jeremiah,” she whispered through the tears.

Lex came back in the room after Grace’s tears had mostly subsided and offered her a box of tissues.

Grace accepted one and wiped her tears and blew her nose. “Sorry.”

“No need to apologize.” Lex kept her voice soft, her cadence slow and soothing. “Have you decided to tell us who the man in the mask was?”

“You already know,” she said. “I saw those eyes, and knew right away, but I didn’t know why he’d be wearing a mask and running. I was afraid he’d done something terrible.”

“It’s really not as big of a deal as the police want to make it, from what I can tell,” Lex said. “But I need you to say it out loud. Who was the man in the mask?”

“It was Jer—Jeremiah…my neighbor.”

“Thank you, Grace. If I can get your thumbprint here, verifying that your answers are truthful and your fine and compliance violation has been purged.”

Grace held her hand out and let Lex get her thumbprint. She felt numb. Lex led her out the rear door of the Compliance Office, and she found herself standing in front of a sign pointing the way to the parking lot.

She had already taken the morning off work to deal with her summons, and now her head was too scrambled to go in. Grace texted work to say that she wouldn’t be in for the afternoon, either, and went home.

She pulled into her parking space as the last of a parade of police vehicles pulled out…including units marked “ATTF”, the Anti-terrorism Task Force. The world shifted beneath her, as she realized what she’d just condemned him to.