“I liked him.”
“You investigated him.”
“I was assigned to assist.”
“You found the cash.”
Baines sighed.
“Mara, if this audit is about revisiting what happened to Henry—”
“It isn’t.”
That surprised him.
“Not officially.”
She continued.
“Officially, I’m interested in current evidence controls.”
“Good.”
“But personally?”
Baines watched her.
“I want to know why seventeen items Henry identified as missing or improperly logged continued moving through your department after he left.”
For the first time, Baines stopped smiling.
“Seventeen?”
“Yes.”
“That sounds like a lot.”
“It is.”
“You’re implying something.”
“I’m stating a number.”
Baines stood.
“I think I should wait for counsel.”
Mara smiled slightly.
“Probably.”
At the same time, Ryan Keller was sitting in his parked car three blocks away.
Mara did not know that yet.
She did not know he had been there since six in the morning.
She did not know he had watched Sergeant Creel enter the department through the employee entrance.
Or that Creel had called him twelve times since midnight.
Ryan answered none of them.
He kept replaying the roadside stop in his head.
The bag.
The number.
Mara’s voice.
Ask him where MC-19-4472 came from.
Ryan had been a police officer for nineteen months.
Before that, he served four years in the Army.
Before that, he was a kid from a town twenty miles south whose father repaired heating systems and whose mother worked reception at a dental clinic.
No one in his family had worn a badge.
Ryan joined because his younger brother nearly died after being struck by a drunk driver.
A state trooper stayed with Ryan’s mother at the hospital for five hours.
Ryan remembered thinking that was what authority was supposed to look like.
Not power.
Presence.
He had believed Monroe County was a good department.
Mostly, it was.
At least that was what he wanted to believe.
Three weeks earlier, Creel began taking unusual interest in him.
Extra shifts.
Advice.
Invitations for coffee after work.
Ryan felt flattered.
Creel had been in law enforcement longer than Ryan had been alive.
The night before Mara’s stop, Creel called him privately.
“There’s a vehicle we may need to watch.”
He sent the plate.
Dark sedan.
Rental.
Possible narcotics courier.
Ryan asked where the intelligence came from.
“Task force.”
That explanation was normal enough.
During the stop, Mara refused consent.
Ryan expected Creel to tell him to let her go.
Instead, Creel arrived carrying information that supposedly established probable cause.
Ryan searched.
He opened the rear door.
Looked beneath the seat.
Nothing.
Then Creel called him away.
“Check the trunk release.”
Ryan walked around the car.
Creel stood near the open rear door for perhaps eight seconds.
Maybe ten.
When Ryan returned, Creel pointed.
“You missed something.”
Ryan bent down again.