She thought about the fact that her motorcycle was legitimately registered and legitimately owned and had an entirely clean record, and that none of that would have mattered once the tow truck took it, because the chain of custody for the vehicle would then have passed through a system that the sergeant had spent years learning how to manipulate.
She opened a new page in her notes. "I'm going to request a meeting with the FBI field office," she said. "Today."
The federal advisor nodded. "Good. Because what I have in these boxes is enough to support a warrant request, but it's not enough for the scope of what we're actually looking at." He paused. "And I want to find something specific before we move. Something I've been looking for for two years and haven't been able to locate."
"What is it?"
"There is a photograph," he said, "from an old vehicle theft file. One of the earliest cases I flagged. The photograph shows a vehicle with an altered identification number. In the background of the photograph, partially visible, is a sign: part of a dealership name. I identified the dealership as belonging to the businessman, but the photograph itself was removed from the evidence file before I could submit it formally. I have a copy—a scan I made before it disappeared."
He reached into the hard drive case and produced a single printed page. "This is it."
The investigator looked at the photograph. The image was slightly grainy, a scan of a scan, several generations removed from the original, but the vehicle was clear enough. The altered number was visible on the dashboard plate. And in the upper right corner of the frame, partially cut off, were three letters of a sign.
The letters matched the first three letters of the name on one of the businessman's dealerships.
"This photograph alone proves nothing," the federal advisor said. "But if we can locate the original file and show that the photograph was removed after the investigation began, we have documented evidence of obstruction in a federal case. That gives us the warrant foundation we need to access the businessman's full business records."
The investigator looked at the photograph for a long time. It was, in isolation, an unremarkable image: a vehicle interior photographed at an angle that suggested a handheld camera rather than a mounted one, the shot of an investigator documenting something quickly in a place they were not supposed to be or had not anticipated needing to document until the moment arrived.
The vehicle identification plate was visible on the dash. The number had been altered in a way that was subtle at the physical level, but obvious once you knew to look: the numeral that had been changed left a slightly different impression in the stamped metal, a depth difference that a trained eye could read and that a standard VIN check would not catch without a secondary physical inspection.