Donald had rewritten the dashcam drive, but he hadn't wiped the county dispatch queue yet. He couldn't touch the server logs from inside our small precinct; that terminal was hosted thirty miles away at the central county sheriff's headquarters in Green River.
A heavy tap sounded against the frosted glass of the conference room door.
"Luke," Hayes's voice came through the crack above the frame, barely louder than a whisper. "County Medic Two just cleared the interstate exit. You’ve got three minutes before they back into the sally port."
I stood up, walked to the glass, and leaned against the wood. "Hayes, Donald took my cruiser drive. He put an orange tag on it dated ten forty-two. You know where I was at ten forty-two. I was running radar with you outside the school zone on Route 12."
Silence hung in the hallway for five long seconds. I could hear Hayes's heavy breathing against the laminate.
"Miller's family owns the wrecker service that tows for the county, Luke," Hayes said, his voice trembling with a bitter, exhausted defeat. "Donald signs off on all of our overtime vouchers every second Friday. If I tell the state board Donald swapped that cartridge, my wife loses her cancer coverage before the end of the month. I have three years until full retirement. I can't do it."
"I'm not asking you to testify for me, Hayes," I whispered back, pressing the pink slip flat against my palm. "I'm asking you if Donald locked the evidence transit locker in the records vestibule."
Another pause stretched between us, so long I thought he had walked away.
"He hasn't logged the daily deposits yet," Hayes finally muttered. "He left his brass desk master in the lock of the records pass-through because the morning clerk went to early lunch. But if Vance catches you out of that room, Luke, he isn't going to use his hands this time. He's got his drop-gun in his ankle holster, and Donald will sign whatever death certificate the county coroner puts in front of him."
"Unlock the door, Hayes."
The bolt rattled in the brass housing. It didn't swing wide, but the gap opened an inch, letting the cold draft of the station corridor cut across my split cheek.
"I didn't open this," Hayes said without turning around. He walked down the corridor toward the break room, his head down, leaving the hallway completely empty.
I looked at the heavy door leading to the front administrative desk where Donald was waiting for the paramedics. Then I looked at the dark wood door marked Records & Evidence Transit six feet down the hall.
Waiting for the county ambulance was suicide. If those doors closed behind me, my uniform would be cut off with shears, my pink carbon slip would disappear into an orderly's incinerator bag, and my name would be buried beneath a fabricated medical report.
I pushed the conference door open and stepped out onto the linoleum floor.
CHAPTER 2 CONTINUED
I turned the key three-quarters of a turn to the left. The brass tumblers fell with a dry, oiled click that felt deafening in the empty hall. I slipped through the doorway into the transit vestibule, pulled the solid oak door shut until the latch engaged, and twisted the manual deadbolt on the inside face of the frame.
Outside, the heavy pneumatic groan of County Medic Two’s diesel engine rattled the single pane of wire-reinforced glass facing the rear parking bay. The ambulance was backing into the sally port, its reverse alarm beeping with flat, rhythmic precision: three pulses, a brake release, then the thump of heavy tires against the concrete wheel stops. I had less than two minutes before Donald walked back down the hall with Paramedic Griggs and two intake orderlies carrying leather wrist restraints.
The transit room was narrow, windowless, and smelled of ozone, green hanging folders, and stale coffee grounds from the records clerk’s morning mug. To my left stood the locked deposit hopper where patrolmen dropped recovered property envelopes at the end of their shifts. On the metal sorting table beneath the fluorescent strip sat my black leather shift binder. Donald had tossed it there like yesterday’s circular, intending to shred my daily activity log once the ambulance cleared the driveway.
I didn't touch the binder yet. Paperwork inside this building was subject to Donald’s pen; if he swore I never handed it in, his word was county law. I needed corroboration that existed beyond the physical walls of Precinct 4.
I dropped into the metal swivel chair behind the clerk’s workstation and tapped the spacebar on the county terminal. The screen flickered awake, casting a cold blue square across my uniform shirt. The clerk had left her administrative session active on the state criminal justice information interface before stepping out to lunch.
My fingers were trembling slightly from the adrenaline surge, but muscle memory took over. I bypassed the local patrol roster and brought up the central computer-aided dispatch audit queue hosted on the sheriff’s mainframe in Green River. Local supervisors could edit dispatch notes on their precinct consoles, but the state data pipeline preserved the raw telemetry packet for every transmission made over county frequencies.
I typed my badge number—Unit 402—into the activity query for the previous ninety minutes.