If Vance intended to offload those bills, he wasn't going to wait for the night sergeant to finish roll call. He knew every blind angle in the municipal lot because he had spent six years backing into them to sleep through graveyard shifts.
I reached the south edge of the commercial district at seven-twenty. The feed store sat across from the old county annex, separated by four lanes of broken roadway and an abandoned spur line where the grain elevators had rusted out twenty years ago. I rolled the Ford into the gravel apron behind the feed store's bulk fertilizer tanks, cut the engine, and let the truck coast the final twenty feet until the front bumper touched the rotting timber rail of the load-out ramp.
From there, through the gap between two rusted grain augers, the annex lot was open ground.
The county building was a squat, two-story cinderblock rectangle painted municipal beige, its rear entrance sheltered by a corrugated tin awning. Beneath the yard floodlights sat three squad cars, their roofs caked in dried road salt. At the far end of the gravel, parked nose-in against the chain-link perimeter fence, was Vance’s personal rig: an old square-body Silverado, flat black with oxidized clear coat, sitting high on mismatched all-terrain tires. In the open bed, bolted directly over the axle, rested a black steel cross-bed toolbox secured with a heavy master padlock.
I reached into my glove compartment, pushed aside the spare fuses and the greasy tire gauge, and pulled out an old pair of seven-by-thirty-five field binoculars Jesse had left on the floorboard after deer season last fall. The lenses were scratched near the outer rim, but the center glass was clear enough.
The substation’s back door didn't open. Instead, headlights cut through the alley along the west wall. Cruiser four-twelve rolled into view, its tires crunching slow over the crushed stone. It didn't pull into the assigned patrol bays near the awning. Miller swung the nose wide, cut the light bar completely, and crept toward the fence line until the cruiser’s bumper stopped less than ten feet from the tailgate of Vance’s Silverado.
The driver’s door opened first. Miller stepped out. Even fifty yards away through scratched lenses, the kid looked brittle. He didn't have his service cap on. He kept his hands jammed into the pockets of his waist-length nylon patrol jacket, his chin tucked down into his collar like he was bracing for a freezing squall. He walked three steps toward the rear of the cruiser, stopped, turned back, and kicked at a limestone chunk in the gravel.
Then Vance got out of the passenger side.
Vance didn't hurry. He possessed that heavy, rolling gait common to men who believe their uniform makes them bulletproof in their home district. He had his duty belt unbuckled at the front clip, easing the pressure off his stomach. In his right hand, carried loose by his leg, was a standard nine-by-twelve yellow document envelope—the kind county clerks use to route daily mileage slips.
I adjusted the focus ring until the serrated metal edges of the Silverado's bed came sharp.
Vance didn't head for the back door of the substation. He walked straight to the driver’s side of his personal truck, fished a small brass key from his trouser pocket, and bent over the latch of the cross-bed toolbox. The heavy lid rose on squealing gas struts.
Miller took two quick steps toward him, his voice rising enough that fragments drifted across the asphalt over the idle of my truck's settling exhaust.
"...told you we shouldn't have touched Cullum's paper," Miller was saying. His head whipped toward the alleyway, watching for headlights. "Art’s had that shop forty years. He knows the prosecutor. He fixed the sheriff's personal boat two months ago."
Vance didn't turn around. He reached deep into the steel box, his shoulders shifting as he moved something heavy out of the way. "Art’s seventy years old and can't pay his parts supplier on time. The sheriff doesn't give a damn about an old grease monkey running expired tags on a three-hundred-dollar hauler. You take your five hundred, you put it in the furnace closet behind your water heater, and you shut your mouth until the county auditor finishes the quarter."
"It's marked, Vance," Miller said, his boots shuffling in the gravel. "He didn't blink when you took it. A guy losing two weeks of labor doesn't just climb back in the cab and drive away forty miles an hour. He didn't even yell."
"He didn't yell because he knows what happens to an unlicensed hauler when the state motor carrier division drops an audit on his books," Vance snapped.
Through the binoculars, I saw Vance lift the flap of the yellow envelope. He didn't pull the money out by hand; he dumped the twenty banded bills directly onto the tray inside the tool compartment. But as the green bank band caught the yellowish glare of the yard floodlight, Vance paused. He picked up the top bill, held it close to his eyes, and flipped it over.