"Vance," Miller shouted over the wail of the alarm, his hand resting on the holster at his hip. "Step out of the vehicle with your hands empty. Slowly."
I pushed the door open with my elbow, stepping down onto the pavement. The cold mountain wind ripped through my torn uniform shirt, chilling the sweat on my ribs. I held my phone in my left hand by the corner, screen pointing toward Miller, displaying the green diagnostic seal and the raw serial stamp of Unit Seven's redundant black box.
"Investigator Miller," I said, my voice steady despite the adrenaline hammering behind my ears. "You have a forged state homicide docket sitting on Captain Reynolds's desk. You have an altered shift log signed by Frank Briggs naming me as the operating driver of Unit Four."
From down by the drainage ditch, Briggs’s voice cut through the alarm siren, hoarse and ragged with rage. He had kicked his driver’s side door open and was stumbling up the gravel embankment, his uniform jacket splattered with ditch mud, his hand pointing an accusing finger toward the apron.
"Hold those men!" Briggs roared, gasping for breath as he reached the perimeter line, stopped only by the raised hand of a state trooper at the gate. "Miller, hold them right there! That's Officer Vance! He broke into the county maintenance yard, assaulted Marcus Cole, and stole the hard storage drive from a deadlined unit to conceal his involvement in the Route Nine fatality!"
Captain Reynolds didn't look at Briggs. He walked past the troopers, stopping five feet from where I stood beside Marcus's truck. His gaze dropped to the phone in my hand, then shifted to Marcus, who was slowly climbing down from the driver’s side, trembling so violently his knees knocked against the doorframe.
"Is that true, Marcus?" Reynolds asked, his voice dead level. "Did Officer Vance force you into this vehicle?"
Marcus looked at Frank Briggs standing at the gate line, held back by two armed state troopers. Briggs’s eyes were locked on the boy, burning with a furious, desperate intensity that demanded the lie he had spent all morning preparing.
Marcus swallowed hard, wiped a streak of grease from his cheek, and shook his head.
"No, sir," Marcus said, his voice cracking before catching on solid ground. "Ethan didn't steal anything. Frank took the primary drive out of Unit Four this morning at five thirty. He told me to use the wrecking bar on Unit Seven's dash bracket so the state would think Ethan ripped it out before court."
A heavy silence fell over the apron, broken only by the hum of the transformer banks and the idling diesel of Marcus's truck.
"That's a lie," Briggs barked, trying to shoulder past the trooper at the boundary line. "The boy is panicked. He's trying to protect a shift partner. Look at the dispatch logs, Reynolds! Look at the physical paperwork!"
"I am looking at the paperwork, Frank," Reynolds said. He didn't raise his voice, but the cold weight of it carried all the way to the gate. He reached into his folder and pulled out a fresh sheet of white teletype paper—a direct transmission from the state licensing bureau in Charleston. "The state forensic team ran an ink-density analysis on the fatal collision addendum you handed me on the courthouse steps. The signature on the driver line was written with a blue gel-ink pen issued by the Mercer County Sheriff's administrative pool. Ethan Vance hasn't drawn supplies from that pool in four months. But your desk ledger shows you signed out a box of twelve yesterday afternoon."
Briggs froze, his mouth half open, his boots rooted in the gravel.