"He'll throw you in the county tank for disorderly, Art. He'll say you came in smelling like liquor."
"He can say what he wants," I replied, taking the Ford keys off the counter and dropping them into my right pocket. "Hayes is still on the desk until eight, and Hayes gets nervous when people write things down in front of him. If they took it under the county ordinance, they have to produce the pink interdiction copy within ninety minutes of the stop, or the whole seizure is illegal under state statute 44. I'm going to make Marcus Vance look at that log book while the ink on his glove is still wet."
CHAPTER 2 CONTINUED
I checked the dashboard clock. It was five-forty-eight. The seventy-two minutes that had passed since Vance shoved my face into his hood were seventy-two minutes Vance hadn't used to log a formal property voucher. Under Title 44 of the state administrative code, an officer conducting an impromptu highway interdiction had ninety minutes from the initial detention to index seized currency into the precinct lockbox, complete the tripartite pink chain-of-custody slip, and provide dispatch with the registry tag. If the clock ran out without a voucher number on the state board, the stop was legally classified as an unsanctioned roadside confiscation.
I unpinned the micro-transmitter from between my shoulder blades, peeled the medical tape from my gray hair at the nape of my neck, and set the unit on the bench seat. Then I reached into the glove compartment and pulled out the slim, leather-bound notebook where I recorded axle weights and board footage for every cedar haul we moved across the river. Tucked into the back pocket was my carbon duplicate of the bank’s payroll withdrawal slip, along with my state commercial hauler’s permit.
When I stepped out of the truck, the November chill went through the split seam on my shirt collar. My left knee flared with an ache where the bumper had bumped me off balance, but my stride stayed level as I crossed the wet asphalt toward the double glass doors.
Inside, the substation smelled of institutional wax, burnt percolator grounds, and wet rubber. Behind the two-inch polycarbonate partition, Officer Hayes sat on a swivel chair, his service jacket thrown over the back of a filing cabinet. His boots were propped on the lower metal ledge of the booking counter, and he was using a wooden coffee stirrer to clean dirt from under his fingernails.
The room went dead silent when the heavy hydraulic door slammed shut behind me.
Hayes looked up. His face tightened, the easy smirk from the shoulder of Old State Road vanishing into a blank, defensive stare. His boots dropped to the linoleum with a heavy thud.
"Lobby's closed to the public after five, Mercer," Hayes said through the perforated chrome speaker grill. "You got business with county roads, you come back Monday morning."
"I don't have business with county roads," I said, stepping up to the waist-high sill. I kept my hands open and resting on the wood, well clear of my coat. "I'm here for my property receipt."
Hayes didn't blink. "What property?"
"The brown kraft-paper envelope your partner pulled out of my left breast pocket at four-thirty-six," I said, keeping my voice level, steady enough that the partition didn't rattle. "Two thousand dollars in federal reserve notes, banded in four five-hundred-dollar straps, stamped by Clara Henderson at the Miller County Agricultural Bank. You've got twelve minutes left on your ninety-minute statutory window to produce the pink interdiction voucher."
Hayes stared at me through the scuffed plastic. His right hand dropped beneath the rim of the desk, reaching toward the interior drawer. "You're confused, Arthur. Nobody took anything from you. You got let off with a roadside caution for erratic lane changes. You ought to be sitting in your kitchen counting your blessings instead of trespassing on county property."
"If it was a caution, where's the written warning slip?" I asked. "Where’s the stop log on the county terminal?"
A side door at the end of the hall swung back on its spring hinge, hitting the rubber wall-stop with a flat crack. Marcus Vance walked into the lobby.