"The only question I have right now is simpler than any of those. Do you want to be cooperative, or don't you? Because if there is anything in your history at this department, any contact, any conversation, any arrangement that touches the subjects of this investigation, you are going to want to be the person who came forward, rather than the person who made us find it."
Culvin blinked. "What are you suggesting?"
"I'm not suggesting anything," Harmon said. "I'm telling you that a man in your position, looking at the charges currently in front of him, has very little to offer except information. And a man in your position who has information and doesn't offer it quickly is a man who gets sentenced before anyone finds out he had something to say."
Baines pushed off the door and walked to the table. She set a recording device on the surface and looked at Culvin.
"You have about 20 minutes to decide what kind of night this becomes for you. The charges are already written. What happens next is up to you."
Sergeant Ansel Doss was interviewed in a separate room for two hours.
He was not a target. He was not suspected of anything. He cooperated fully. And the exhaustion on his face when Baines thanked him for his time was the exhaustion of a man who had seen this particular outcome coming for months and had not been able to prevent it.
He surrendered his department credentials and radio as required, pending the internal review. And he walked out of the building carrying his uniform hat in both hands, looking at no one.
The forensic processing of Warehouse 7 continued through the night and into the early morning.
The ledgers Harmon had photographed were recovered and entered into evidence. The burner phone logs were extracted and decoded. Three low-level logistics personnel who had been present on the compound were taken into federal custody and processed separately.
At 4:17 in the morning, Elijah Moss was located at a secondary address in Inkster, Michigan. A location that Doss had not known existed, and that Culvin therefore could not have broadcast, regardless of what he had said on the radio.
The HRT team moved on the address and took Moss without incident. He was transported to the Detroit field office and processed in a separate wing from the holding rooms.
The operation had sustained significant damage. Two of the three secondary targets remained at large. The financial investigation team would spend another four months rebuilding the evidentiary chain to close the gaps created by the compromised timeline.
It was not the clean ending that 18 months of work had been designed to produce. But it was an ending.
Harmon stood in the parking structure adjacent to the field office as the sky began to gray toward dawn, his suit jacket folded over his arm.
Baines came to stand beside him, both of them looking at the skyline without speaking for a moment.