"Can you hear Miller flip the cradle?" I asked, rubbing the back of my neck where Vance had shoved my head against the Ford's glass.
Ramos tapped the monitor screen. "The secondary microphone we planted on your driver's-side mirror bracket picked up the mechanical latch of the patrol unit's overhead visor. You can hear Miller's door seal creak, then the camera toggle drops. It kills the county feed, but our external mic recorded Vance telling Miller, 'Log it as an abandoned vehicle check, no contact.'"
"Which means they don't intend to file a property seizure receipt at all," Jim said. His jaw worked tight. "If they filed a seizure form, the marked serials would sit in the evidence locker until trial. They aren't putting that cash in an evidence locker. They're splitting it."
"Where do they go with it?" I asked.
"Shift ends at eight," Jim said, checking his watch. "Vance is supposed to turn in cruiser four-twelve at the county substation behind the old courthouse. But Miller doesn't live in town. Miller lives out on the creek road, right past your shop."
"Miller doesn't take cash home," I told them, remembering the four times that boy had brought his personal truck into my garage for brake pads before he pinned on the county star. "His wife does the books for the Baptist preschool. If Miller walked through his kitchen door with an envelope of loose hundreds, Sarah would have him on his knees on the rug before Sunday service. If he's dirty, Vance is holding the paper for both of them."
Jim opened his manila folder against the hood of my truck. Inside were photocopies of twenty hundred-dollar bills, their federal serial numbers highlighted in yellow marker, alongside Cullum Equipment's delivery invoice bearing my signature from two o'clock this afternoon.
"The county judge signed the anticipatory search warrant forty minutes ago," Jim said. "It covers Vance's personal locker at the substation, his duty bag, and his home address. But there's a hole, Art."
"What hole?"
"The warrant requires us to execute within three hours of the seizure to establish continuous custody of the marked currency," Ramos stated, her voice clipped and professional. "If Vance leaves the substation without that money on him, and we don't find it in his locker or his trunk, he claims you handed him nothing. He claims you made up the two grand out of spite because he threatened to tow your rig for a defective taillight. Without the bills in his possession, an audio recording of two men talking about cash becomes a dispute of interpretation in front of a county jury that has known Vance's father for forty years."
"He won't leave it at the substation," I said, looking out toward the dark line of trees where Route 9 ran back toward town. "The county barn has three dispatchers and a night sergeant who actually reads the locker logs. Vance has a private lockbox. When he worked the township detail five years ago, he kept an old steel job-box bolted to the bed of his personal Chevy parked in the substation gravel lot."
Jim looked at Ramos. Ramos pulled out her radio.
"We need eyes on that gravel lot right now," Jim told her. "If he drops that envelope into his personal truck before we serve the warrant, we take him with the box open."
Ramos shook her head, looking at the screen of her dispatch phone. "County just broadcast a priority assist call on the east bypass. An overturned cattle trailer. Every available county unit is rolling to block the intersection."
"Vance isn't rolling to a cattle wreck," I said. My pulse hammered against my ribs, cold and deliberate. "He's got two thousand dollars of Cullum's money in his vest. He's going to use that wreck to clear the lot, dump his duty belt into his Chevy, and punch out before the night shift arrives."
Jim looked at my truck, then at me. "Get back in the cab, Art. You don't follow him in. You park at the feed store across the street. If that Chevy moves before State Police units assemble, you give us the plate."
CHAPTER 2 CONTINUED