The paper in my hand proved I was dead wrong.
The top line of the transmission was not a county routing code. It was an encrypted inter-agency teletype string: FED-ESC-ROUT-0881.
Directly below that sat the terminal identifier: DEN-CTR-OPS-4.
That was not a public dispatch number. It was the private, restricted terminal assigned directly to Marcus Albright, the regional supervisory auditor in Denver who had handed me my travel folder at eight o'clock this morning.
My gaze dropped to the time stamps.
The teletype authorizing the fatal accident entry and release of custody had been received by Harlan’s terminal at 3:12 PM—an hour before I had even reached the county line. The text below the routing string was concise, bureaucratic, and lethal:
SUBJECT: VANCE, CLAIRE A. (SPEC. AUDITOR, ID 9044-B). TRANSIT FATALITY CONFIRMED EN ROUTE. CLEAR DEBRIS UPON ARRIVAL. TRANSFER SIX CRATES SECURED EVIDENCE DIRECTLY TO CONTRACT CARRIER AT 1800 HOURS PER REGIONAL CLEARANCE CODE ALBRIGHT-SEC-9.
The room seemed to shrink, the humming fluorescent tubes overhead buzzing with a low, sickening vibration.
Marcus Albright had not sent me here to audit Harlan. He had sent me here to be erased. The unmanifested crates were never meant to be inventoried by the regional office; they were being laundered through this mountain depot, using Harlan as a local butcher to clean the paper trail. My presence had been staged as a tragic road casualty to close the case file permanently before anyone in Washington could audit the missing certificates.
From the gravel lot outside the front entrance, a deep, rattling diesel rumble vibrated through the reinforced glass of the narrow exterior slit windows. The yellow flash of a rotator beacon washed across the ceiling in slow, methodical sweeps.
It was a heavy flatbed wrecker, backing up toward the parking space where my rental car sat.
"That's Pete with the county tow," Harlan said, reaching to the belt loop at his hip and unclipping a ring of heavy brass mortise keys. He didn't look angry anymore; his expression had settled into the flat, hollow patience of an undertaker. "Pete's going to winch that little gray sedan of yours up to the switchback over Devil's Gorge. By six o'clock, the fog rolls in thick enough that you can't see ten feet past your own hood. The guardrail there has been rotted out since the November freeze."
He stepped out from behind the counter, the brass keys clinking together in his palm. Behind the glass, Mara finally turned her chair away from the desk, pulling her headset off and burying her face in her hands.
"You can walk into the holding tank on your own feet, Claire," Harlan told me, his boots clicking slow and steady across the linoleum, "or I can use this baton and carry you in. Either way, Pete's going up that mountain with your car in ten minutes."
I looked down at the crumpled carbon paper, then at the heavy steel pass-through tray, and finally at the ring of brass keys resting in Harlan’s right hand.
Silence was a death sentence. Cooperating would only let them load me into the trunk of my own rental before Pete reached the switchback. I backed toward the metal bench bolted to the far wall, shifting the carbon slip into my inner sock, and set my feet square against the floor.
CHAPTER 2 CONTINUED
I scrambled for the floor, my fingers grazing the cold metal of the key ring, but Harlan’s heavy boot came down hard on the links, pinning them against the linoleum. With a guttural grunt, he twisted his heel, kicked the keys through the doorframe into the holding corridor, and grabbed a fistful of my coat lapel, hauling me upward until my boots barely brushed the tiles.
"You're done running paperwork in my station, Claire," he hissed, his face inches from mine, his breath hot and stale against my cheek. He shoved me backward through the open corridor threshold, using his bulk to shield the doorway from Mara’s sightline.
The holding corridor was narrow, eight feet of poured concrete illuminated only by wire-caged yellow bulbs embedded in the ceiling. To the left sat two windowless holding tanks behind sliding bar doors; to the right, behind a heavy industrial chain-link security gate, was the intake property vault and subterranean evidence cage.
Outside, the heavy diesel engine of Pete’s wrecker revved into a low, straining whine. The hydraulic bed groaned as the metal winch cable began dragging my rental sedan onto the diamond-plate ramps. The vibration traveled up through the foundation, vibrating the concrete floor beneath our boots. In less than ten minutes, that car would be rolling toward the rotted timber guardrail at Devil's Gorge. If I was locked in an unmonitored holding tank when Pete reached the ridge, Harlan wouldn't need to fake an autopsy; he would simply walk in with his service weapon, wrap my body in county canvas, and deliver me to the ravine after dark.