Miller swallowed hard, his throat clicking. "Underwood... I was just following dispatch. Douglas said you were scouting the county maintenance yards without an escort. He said you were a safety risk."
"You weren't protecting a maintenance yard, Deputy," I told him quietly, holding up my left wrist where the dark ring of bruised skin showed clearly above the bandage. "You were using your badge to cover up forty thousand tons of river silt poured beneath a four-lane bridge. You used your authority to strip another man of his rights on public asphalt because you thought no one outside this county would ever hold you accountable."
Miller didn't answer. He turned his face away, pressing his forehead against the heavy wire partition of the cage as a federal agent climbed into the driver's seat of the cruiser, started the engine, and pulled out toward the interstate connector to Savannah.
Vance walked up beside me, handing me a clean, dry credential wallet containing my replacement credentials, freshly countersigned by the regional director.
"The grand jury convenes in Savannah at nine o'clock tomorrow morning," Vance said, looking out over the silent, empty lanes of the condemned overpass. "The U.S. Attorney wants your field report and the core sample analysis on the clerk's desk by eight. Can you write with those wrists?"
I tucked the leather wallet into my breast pocket, feeling the solid weight of the brass shield against my ribs.
"I can write, Director," I said. "Let's go close the docket."
CHAPTER 4: What The River Sand Cost
The emergency injunction came down from the Southern District of Georgia at five minutes past seven that evening, written on two pages of bonded bond paper that carried the blind-embossed seal of the United States District Court.
Byron Underwood did not leave the state highway annex in Jesup until the last laboratory core report was signed, countersigned, and copied into three heavy red-rope folios. The skin across his forearms remained swollen and hot, patterned with dark, mottled yellowing where Vance Miller’s ratchets had pinched down into the soft tissue, but the fingers of his right hand were functional enough to initial every line of the chain of custody.
Across the oak table, Assistant United States Attorney Martin Vance stacked the core photography beside the weigh-house logbooks.
"The Commissioner’s defense counsel filed an emergency motion for release on recognizance twenty minutes ago," Vance said, adjusting his reading glasses as he scanned the final sieve analysis from the state laboratory. "They argued that Harlan Douglas has forty years of unblemished municipal service and represents zero flight risk."
"And the Magistrate?" Byron asked.
"Denied from the bench," Vance replied. "The moment the structural lab confirmed that the foundation of the Route 9 overpass contained forty-two percent unwashed organic dredge silt instead of quarried granite, the case stopped being an audit dispute. It became reckless endangerment of a federal interstate corridor. When forty school buses cross an unbonded pier twice a day, nobody gets bail on personal recognizance."