Ray’s face went past pale, turning the yellowish-gray color of old beef tallow. His lips thinned out until they vanished against his teeth. "Arthur baited that stop, Chief. He set that rig up on purpose to make a local patrol look bad."
"Arthur’s been setting that rig up every fall since nineteen-ninety to test the ice sensors," Miller said. He stepped back to the hood of my van, peeled one of the wet twenties off the paint, and held it out toward Ray by the corner. "You want to explain why twelve hundred dollars of quarry funds was sitting in your pocket before you even asked him for his registration?"
Ray didn't touch the bill. He looked back toward the road behind him, but there was nowhere to turn. The timber cut was a dead-end spur, choked with hemlock down to the creek bottom, and the heavy county rescue truck completely blocked the single gravel lane back down to the highway.
"I took custody of the funds for safekeeping," Ray choked out, the lie souring in his throat before he could finish it. "Subject was unstable. Resisted an official inspection."
Miller let the wet bill drop back onto the hood. He reached into his coat pocket, pulled out his worn, black-bound ledger, and clicked his ballpoint.
"Jesse," Miller said without looking around. "Take Deputy Vance’s belt. Put him in the back of my sedan."
"Chief—" Ray started, his hands finally dropping down toward his sides in a frantic, uncoordinated appeal. "Call my brother first. Talk to Don down at the quarry. Don can clear up the voucher timing. We don't need to put paper on this before we sit down with the county attorney."
"Don’s already on the wire," Miller said, writing two lines in his small, crabbed handwriting across the top of a clean ledger page. "The minute your voice hit the tactical band, Don called dispatch from his personal line trying to pull the repeater breaker from the substation. That’s an obstruction charge, Ray. State police investigators are already at the quarry scale house."
Miller stopped writing, tucked the pen behind his ear, and turned to look at the clay on my shoulder.
"You need an ice pack on that joint, Arthur?" he asked, his tone shifting back to the easy, quiet cadence of an old neighbor.
"I need my twelve hundred dollars, Paul," I said, watching the fireman unbuckle Ray’s leather service belt and lay the heavy sidearm in the tool tray of the rescue truck. "And I need this citation pad out of my cab before the rain melts the paper."
Miller reached in, lifted the yellow carbon slip by its cardboard backing, and folded it twice before slipping it into his breast pocket behind his badge.
"The pad stays with the ledger," Miller said. "Let’s get your van down to the blacktop. You’ve got three more towers to check before the fog sets in tonight."
CHAPTER 3: The Desk Where Paper Stays
Miller did not take Deputy Ray Vance down the mountain in the back of his cruiser. He walked the younger man to the passenger side of the unmarked sedan, opened the door with his uninjured left hand, and waited until Ray tucked his knees beneath the glove box before clicking the latch shut. There were no metal handcuffs. There was no theatrical shove against the fender. But when Jesse, the volunteer fireman, dropped Ray’s leather duty rig into the steel side-box of the rescue engine, the brass tongue struck the tray with a dry, hollow clatter that settled like an iron bolt across the ridge road.