"The report's false," she said at last. "Not mistaken. False. A man doesn't misremember an alarm that never went off and two minutes that were seven seconds."
"No."
"Which means I have probable cause that a police officer knowingly made a false statement in an official report. Which means I can get a warrant for his phone." She looked up. "You understand I'm not doing this for your civil case."
"I understand you're doing it because it's your job."
"I'm doing it," Hargrove said, "because somebody texted him. A man doesn't walk thirty steps to a car on his own initiative at the exact moment another man picks up a key. Somebody pointed. I want to know who."
* * *
The warrant was signed on the twenty-third. Dacey's personal phone, an iPhone in a camouflage case, was seized from his house in Chesterfield County by two investigators from the Virginia State Police that afternoon. He had deleted a thread of messages from it on the morning of October fourth. The state police's digital forensics lab in Richmond recovered all of them within six days.
The first message in the recovered thread that night was sent at 9:51 p.m., about four minutes after Julian Ashby stepped down from the stage in the Marlowe's ballroom. It was from a contact saved in Dacey's phone as HB Boss.
Ashby up there giving a sermon about plaster. Room ate it up. Somebody ought to knock that man down a peg before Council.
Dacey had replied: lol. say the word.
Then nothing for forty-nine minutes. Then, at 10:40:12 p.m.: