Officer Valdivia breathed out through her nose. It wasn't quite a laugh.
"She didn't know about that folder," she said.
"Most people don't."
"Most people," said Officer Valdivia, "don't try to delete evidence while they're on the phone with nine-one-one, either." She leaned in so her body camera could see the screen. "Go ahead and recover it. Slowly. Good. Now play it."
We watched it together, sitting on a curb in the shade of a mesquite tree while a hazmat team in yellow suits went in and out of a pump house forty yards away. When Kenton's voice came out of the phone—the ones on the end there are the reorder, same as last time, Everett, you just pour 'em in the feeder—she wrote down the time stamp. When Glynis said Kenton's labeled them, she wrote that one down too. When the truck turned and the license plate showed for a second and a half, she asked me to pause it, and wrote down the plate.
"You know this guy?" she said.
"Kenton Brandvold. He's the treasurer of the HOA. He sells the pool chemicals to the association."
"Sells?"
"At cost," I said. "That's what they told everyone."
She looked at me for a moment longer than she'd looked at me before. Then she stood up, keyed the radio on her shoulder, and walked a few steps away, and I heard her say the plate number and the words "Desert Shine" and "hazmat captain."
Nico was standing at the maintenance gate when I turned around. He had his inhaler in one hand and a dish towel over his nose and mouth, which I had not told him to do but which I would have told him to do if I'd thought of it, and Fern Abiodun was beside him with one hand on his shoulder, wearing a housecoat and gardening clogs.