A pause on the wire. The background noise on his end wasn't an office; it was the hum of a desktop fan and the scrape of heavy ledger paper being shifted across a blotter. Pendergast was seventy-one, still carrying an investigator's badge because the state couldn't find anyone else willing to audit rural municipal authorities for forty thousand a year.
"Walter," he said softly. "You're thirty minutes late for the weigh station log. I was about to call the state barracks in Dunmore to see if you went off the shoulder."
"I didn't go off the shoulder," I said, looking through the cracked windshield at the empty highway. "Young Vance and the Miller boy pulled me two miles north of the elevator."
Pendergast went dead quiet. "They take the seed cash?"
"Two thousand even," I said. "Miller took the envelope out of the dash. Vance pinned me to the cruiser hood while Miller dropped the bank slip in the ditch."
"Did they write a log number?"
"No ticket. No citation. Vance told me to take my keys and go home before they impounded the rig for seventy-two hours on suspicion."
I heard Pendergast’s pen set down on glass. "Walter, I warned you three months ago when the township council voted in that new asset forfeiture ordinance. Miller's uncle is the township supervisor, and the district judge is his second cousin. Without a paper trail, it's your word against two active badges. If I file an administrative inquiry with the county prosecutor, Miller will claim you handed him an empty envelope to get out of a reckless driving citation. They'll charge you with attempted bribery of an officer before breakfast."
"I have the carbon slip," I said. "Found it on the fence wire."
"A slip proves you withdrew money, Walter. It doesn't prove it was in their hands when they cleared the scene."
"David’s glass," I said.
The silence on the line stretched five seconds. Ten.
"The rig your boy put in the console?" Pendergast asked, his voice dropping an octave. "The dual-lens?"
"Every second of it," I told him. "From the high beams at the elevator to Miller stuffing the envelope inside his vest."
Pendergast exhaled slowly through his teeth. "Don't bring it to the county annex. Vance's cousin works the intake desk. If that drive enters Mercer County property before we have an independent custody seal, it'll disappear into an evidence locker before the sun comes up."
"Where do you want it?"
"The state scales on Route 11," Pendergast said. "Mile marker 4. The commercial enforcement bay is federal property under the interstate compact. Mercer County can't touch the tarmac without an escort."
"I'm fifteen miles out," I said.
"Get moving," Pendergast said. "And Walter—Miller's cruiser has an automated plate reader. If he sees your truck heading toward the state line instead of your farm road, he won't wait for a township boundary to hit his siren."
I closed the phone, dropped it into my breast pocket, and reached for the gear shift. Through the side glass, across the dark asphalt of Route 9, two high-beam lamps just crested the railway rise, running south at eighty miles an hour without a roof light showing.
CHAPTER 2 CONTINUED
The interceptor blew past the old general store at seventy miles an hour, its roof lights dark, the intake whining under heavy throttle. The backdraft rattled the tin signs on the grocery porch, shaking loose a shower of rust and dry hornets' nests.