"Open the lockbox, Jesse," he said.
"Those coolers aren't in a lockbox," I answered, keeping my voice level against the drone of the idling six-cylinder engine. "They're strapped under the marine tarp with county tamper bands. Protocol Thirty-Two. Once the zip-seals are crimped at the clinic, nobody cuts them until the receiving technician signs the custody log at Blackwood Memorial."
"I am the county right now," Vance said.
He reached into his utility belt, pulled a folding utility blade from behind his magazine pouch, and flicked the carbon-steel thumb stud. The blade snapped open with a tiny, oiled click. He didn't ask for the logbook. He took two steps to the side of the truck bed, hooked the serrated edge under the high-tensile orange band cinching the lid of Cooler One, and severed the braided nylon in a single upward jerk.
The orange plastic tag—stamped with county serial number 0441—spun off into the dark and landed on the corrugated steel floor of the bed.
"Deputy, you just broke chain of custody on a state-mandated toxicology draw," I said. My fingers curled against the chill of the tailgate’s cold rim, but I didn't reach for his hands. Moving toward a sworn officer with an open blade on an unlit mountain road was an invitation for a draw-and-fire report that no inquest board would ever question. "That draw was ordered by the regional medical examiner at three-fifteen. If those vials aren't refrigerated and logged by six, the entire panel is contaminated."
"Contaminated by what?" Vance tilted the lid back on its plastic hinges. The interior light from his cruiser didn't reach into the bed, but the small penlight he clamped between his molars threw a harsh circle of white across the styrofoam inserts. "Water? Road silt? You tell Dr. Sterling the seal frayed on the washboard gravel coming down through the gap. He signs off on transit damage twice a month."
"He doesn't sign off when the seal is sliced clean through with a box cutter," I said.
Vance ignored me. His thick, gloved fingers reached down into the partitioned foam and pulled the first acrylic vial carrier into the rain.
There were three vacutainer tubes inside the rack, each topped with a gray potassium-oxalate stopper. The red handwritten clinic sticker across the glass bore the name Arthur P. Cross, alongside the time of collection: 03:12 AM. Arthur Cross had been the night superintendent at the Blackwood Chemical Transfer Depot until two hours ago, when his company flatbed missed the embankment on Old Freight Road and rolled thirty feet down into the creek bed. The initial radio dispatch had called it an open-and-shut road fatality—driver fatigue or alcohol—which was why Vance’s presence out here on Mile Marker Nine made no sense at all. Old Freight Road was twelve miles south, deep inside state police territory, outside county jurisdiction entirely.
As Vance turned the rack in his palm, the heavy odor of acetone rolled off the cuff of his rain jacket again, sharper this time, rising against the smell of wet hemlock and exhaust.
My eyes dropped to his duty jacket. The right forearm, from the brass wrist-snap to the elbow seam, wasn't just damp from the rain. The dark navy fabric was stiffened, bleached slightly pale in a ragged streak where a heavy concentration of industrial solvent had stripped the water-repellent coating off the nylon.
"You weren't on patrol when the call went out," I said quietly.
Vance froze. His thumb stayed pressed against the plastic sleeve of the second vial. "Watch your mouth, Miller."
"The Blackwood depot uses acetone-fortified degreaser on their pump manifolds," I said, my voice steady, though my stomach pulled tight. "They use it by the drum. The state environmental board cited them for unventilated storage three weeks ago. My father hauled the paperwork for the county attorney's office before his stroke."
I pointed toward his sleeve with two fingers, keeping my hands fully extended where he could see them. "You didn't get that on your coat checking speeders on the pass. You were at the depot gate before the state troopers arrived."
Vance’s jaw set hard. For three seconds, the only sound between us was the steady hiss of rain drumming against the truck’s fiberglass hood and the distant hum of the idling squad car behind us. Then he smiled—a small, humorless tug of his lower lip that showed the yellow edges of his canine teeth.
He tilted the plastic rack upside down.
"Accidents happen on slick roads, Jesse," he said softly.