"Which means they were sequential," I said, leaning closer to the glass partition. "Sarah, I need the serial numbers of those exact bills."
Her posture stiffened. "Walter, you know the banking regulations. I can't just print out internal cash-tracking logs without a branch manager's formal approval. Did something happen to the money? Were you robbed?"
"It was stolen," I said evenly. "And the men who took it think I have absolutely no way to prove it. If I go to your manager, he'll insist on filing a standard police report with the local precinct. I cannot do that yet. I just need to know the numerical range."
Sarah hesitated. She looked past my shoulder toward the manager's office, biting her lower lip. She had known my late wife; she knew I didn't ask for favors lightly. She turned back to her monitor and began typing rapidly. A minute later, she wrote a series of numbers on a yellow sticky note and slid it discreetly across the marble counter.
"The bank strap started with a serial number ending in 8200," she whispered, her eyes fixed on her screen as if we were discussing a checking deposit. "Your fifteen hundred dollars was exactly thirty bills. That means your cash ends in the sequence 8200 through 8229."
I folded the yellow note and tucked it safely into my breast pocket. "Thank you, Sarah. You might have just saved a farm."
Now I had the net. I just needed to verify if the department's internal system was as compromised as the deputies on the highway.
I drove to the county sheriff's substation, a low brick building situated next to the old courthouse. I didn't walk up to the front desk. Instead, I waited by my truck in the adjacent visitor parking lot until I saw Captain Aris walk out the side door for his mid-morning coffee run.
Aris had been a young patrolman twenty years ago when I ran the logistics depot. He was a rigid company man, fiercely protective of his deputies, but he had a long-standing reputation for not tolerating outright corruption within his ranks.
"Walter?" Aris said, stopping on the concrete sidewalk, a look of genuine surprise crossing his face. "I haven't seen you since the retirement dinner. What brings you down here?"
"I need to report a theft, Captain. But I need to do it off the record first."
Aris sighed, his broad shoulders dropping slightly as his posture stiffened. "You know I hate that phrase, Walt. Come inside."
We sat in his small, windowless office near the back of the precinct. I told him exactly what had happened on Route 50. I gave him the precise time, the location, the vehicle description, and the false names. I deliberately withheld the information about the sequential serial numbers and the fingerprint. I needed to see how the administrative system would react to a civilian complaint first.
Aris rubbed his temples, staring at his desk blotter. "Car 22. That's Rollins and Hayes. They're good kids, Walter. A little aggressive on traffic enforcement, maybe, but they aren't highway robbers. You're honestly telling me they put on fake brass to steal farm cash?"
"Pull the cruiser dashcam," I said. "Four-fifteen PM. Route 50 right at the county line."
Aris turned to his desktop computer. He pulled up the department's digital video archive. I watched his face closely as he navigated the proprietary software. His expression didn't overtly change, but a muscle in his jaw tightened.
"Well?" I asked, breaking the silence.
"The dashcam for Car 22 was logged as temporarily disabled from four-ten to four-thirty," Aris said, his voice completely flat. "It’s a known software glitch. It happens occasionally with the new server upgrade."
"What about their personal body cameras?"
Aris clicked his mouse again. The silence in the cramped office grew suffocatingly heavy.
"Both deactivated," Aris said, refusing to meet my eyes. "Standard union policy allows them to turn off their personal cameras during private administrative time, like taking a scheduled meal break or handling personal calls."
"They took a meal break on the gravel shoulder of a state highway?" I asked.
Aris leaned back in his leather chair, crossing his arms over his chest. "Walter, I respect you. I really do. But without video evidence, and without a positive visual ID—especially since you admit the names on the badges didn't actually match my men—this is a ghost complaint. You're asking me to launch a formal Internal Affairs investigation based on a missing wallet and a supposed felony traffic stop that literally does not exist on paper. There's no proof."
He was giving me the polite, institutional brush-off. The blue wall was closing ranks to protect its own, just as Elias had feared. Aris wasn't necessarily in on the theft, but he was choosing administrative convenience over seeking the truth.
"I understand your position, Captain," I said, standing up slowly from the chair. "I just thought you'd want to hear it from me first."
I walked out of the station and back into the sunlight. The air felt colder now. I knew exactly what Rollins and Hayes were doing. They were systematically targeting vulnerable drivers—the elderly, out-of-towners, people who looked too tired or too intimidated to fight back—using the convenient camera "glitches" and swapped brass as a perfect, impenetrable shield.
Waiting for an official investigation would accomplish absolutely nothing. The captain demanded undeniable proof, and the two deputies honestly believed they had committed the perfect, untraceable crime.
But they didn't know I had the sequential serial numbers resting in my jacket pocket. And they were arrogant enough to assume the cash they had stolen was completely invisible.
Silence wasn't going to protect Elias's farm, and politely waiting for the system to correct itself wasn't going to get the money back. I had to force them out into the open, in a place where Captain Aris and the rest of the department would have absolutely no choice but to watch them fall.
CHAPTER 2 CONTINUED
I put the truck in gear and drove across town to the County Supply Annex. It was a long, windowless cinderblock building situated behind the main vehicle maintenance bays. When I ran logistics for the state patrol, I had helped design the inventory tracking system this county still used. I knew its blind spots, and more importantly, I knew the man who guarded the cages.
Stan Miller was a retired supply sergeant who treated county property with the fierce protectiveness of a junkyard dog. The air inside the annex smelled of floor wax, canvas duty bags, and ozone from the radio battery chargers. Stan was sitting behind the wire-mesh counter, indexing a box of heavy flashlights, when I walked in.
"You're in the wrong building, Walt," Stan said without looking up, marking a clipboard with a heavy red pen. "Retiree association meets on Tuesdays."
"I don't need coffee, Stan. I need the surplus disposal ledger for the last sixty days."
Stan finally stopped writing. He looked up, his thick gray eyebrows pulling together in a frown. "You've been off the state payroll for four years. I can't just hand over internal audit logs to a civilian."