My father, who'd been eating cake in a folding chair against the wall with a plate on his knee, said, "That the visor lady?"
"That's her."
"She looked sick."
"She did."
He took another bite of cake. "Good frosting," he said. "Your mother used to put too much butter in hers."
At seven-thirty the next morning I was in my office, a corner room on the second floor of the police station on Commerce Street with a view of the water tower and a desk that still had a coffee ring from my predecessor's mug. By eight I had sent three documents. The first was my recusal memo, to the city attorney and the city manager, copied to Captain Yarbrough. The second was a letter, co-signed by District Attorney Cleon Haltiwanger, whom I'd met with at six-fifteen at a Waffle House on Route 9 because it was the only place either of us could think of that nobody from the courthouse would be at that hour, formally requesting that the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation open an inquiry into the administration of the Fernhill Police Department's Chronic Nuisance Property program and the Community Partnership Program, including any connection between department personnel and the purchase of properties subject to nuisance liens. The third was a preservation order to the department's records division: every call log, every dispatch record, every email and text on department devices, every designation and appeal file under Chapter Fourteen, Article Six, going back to the ordinance's adoption. Nothing deleted, nothing moved, nothing touched.
At eight-fifteen, Deputy Chief Kessling came into my office without knocking.
He shut the door and stood in front of my desk. He didn't sit. "Chief," he said. "Welcome. I imagine you'd like a briefing on operations."
"Have a seat, Garrett."