There was a pause. Ray could hear the squad room behind Kimball, a radio, somebody laughing.
"Ray," Kimball said, "the complainant has a 2016 appraisal on the letterhead of a jeweler in Towson that describes that watch down to the stitching on the band, and a photograph of it, and a burglary report with a broken back-door window. What's the shop guy got? A card he wrote in the window?"
"He said he's got a workbook."
"Then he can show it to Property Crimes. That's what Property Crimes is for. You're patrol. You recovered an item matching a report. That's a good day. Take the good day."
Ray started the car.
* * *
The Northern District station sat on Keswick Road behind a low brick wall like a school that had given up on children. Ray logged the watch in at the evidence window at a quarter to one. The civilian clerk, a heavyset man named Teo with reading glasses on a beaded chain, held out a heat-seal bag, and Ray put the black box into it, chamois and all.
Teo raised his eyebrows. "Box goes in?"
"Box goes in."
"Usually we take it out of the box."
"Leave it in the box."
Teo shrugged, sealed the bag, printed the label, stuck it on. Item 26-114-0873. Wristwatch, steel. Recovered stolen property. Complainant: CARROW, DENNIS M. Ray watched him write the locker number.
"Make sure nobody winds it."
Teo looked at him over the reading glasses. "Ray, I've been doing this twenty-two years. Nobody winds anything."
At his desk in the patrol room, Ray pulled up the report on the computer and read it again, all the way through, slowly, the way he hadn't read it the first time.