Through the windshield he could see the old man still standing at the counter. He hadn't moved. The young woman was talking to him, her hands going, and he was nodding slowly, and then a big woman in a hardware-store smock came in from across the street with a broom and stood there holding it like a rifle at parade rest, glaring out the window directly at Ray.
Ray looked away first.
He had been a Baltimore police officer for nineteen years, the last eleven in the Northern District, and he had seen a great many people lie to him. He knew the way a liar's voice went thin and helpful.
The old man's voice had not gone thin. The old man's voice had gone careful, the way you'd talk to a horse.
Put it in the bag in the box. Please.
Ray picked the box up and opened the lid. The chamois was folded with the precision of a flag at a funeral. He did not unfold it. He put the lid back on and set the box down and sat with both hands on the wheel.
His phone buzzed. Sergeant Kimball.
"You get it?"
"Got it."
"Good. That Carrow guy's called the desk four times since Thursday. He sent an email to the councilwoman's office and cc'd the Major. The Major forwarded it to me with a question mark. You know what a question mark from the Major means."
"Yeah."
"It means I'm going to get a call. So now I can tell him it's recovered. Log it and get it in evidence, Ray, I want to call this guy back before he calls the Commissioner."
"Sarge, the shop guy says he made it."
"Made it."
"Says he made it himself. In 1979. There's a card in the window says so. He had a customer buying it right when I walked in, she's got a receipt, it says made by hand."