"And you still use the alphanumeric indexing system I built for this department for free," I replied, stepping up to the wire mesh. "I just need to check one specific equipment requisition. It won't take me five minutes, and you can stand right next to me while I do it."
Stan hesitated. He was a stickler for the rules, but he also remembered the late nights I had spent helping him balance his catastrophic inventory deficits before the state auditors arrived a decade ago. He owed me, and we both knew it.
Grumbling under his breath, Stan unlocked the mesh door. He led me back to a row of gray metal filing cabinets, unlocked the top drawer of the third cabinet, and pulled out a heavy, leather-bound ledger. He dropped it onto a folding table.
"Five minutes, Walt. And you didn't see this."
I opened the heavy cover. The ledger tracked every piece of equipment that was damaged, retired, or reassigned. I ran my index finger down the columns: Date, Item Description, Officer Badge Number, Signature, Reason for Issue.
I skipped past the cracked batons, the frayed duty belts, and the dead radios. I focused entirely on the requests from four weeks ago.
Halfway down the page for July 28th, my finger stopped.
There it was. Two obsolete brass nameplates. The previous issue names listed in the disposal column were COLE (retired in 2019) and HARRIS (transferred out of state in 2021).
The requesting officer's signature in the next column belonged to Deputy T. Rollins. The stated reason for signing out the retired brass was written in hurried, block letters: Tactical roleplay scenarios for academy training.
I stared at the ink. The academy hadn't run plainclothes tactical roleplays in six months due to county budget cuts. It was a paper-thin excuse, but it was enough to satisfy a clerk who wasn't paying close attention.
"Did he ever return them?" I asked quietly, tapping the entry.
Stan leaned over my shoulder, squinting at the line. He checked the corresponding intake column on the opposite page. "No. Marked as consumed or lost in the field during exercises."
"I need a certified photocopy of this exact spread, Stan. Signed and dated by you."
Stan’s posture went rigid. He took a step back from the table. "Absolutely not. Walt, what the hell is this about? Rollins is Aris’s golden boy on the DUI task force. If I give you a certified copy of his requisition, Internal Affairs is going to want to know why I’m handing out active police records."
"It's about a felony," I said, turning to face him. "Two deputies are using your inventory to shake down elderly drivers on the county line under false identities. And when the state investigators finally crack this open, you are going to want a piece of paper proving you didn't hand them that brass willingly."
The color drained from Stan’s face. He looked at the ledger, then back at me, realizing the sheer gravity of what I was accusing. Without another word, he picked up the heavy book, walked over to the copy machine in the corner, and pressed the glass down. He stamped the duplicate sheet with the official blue county seal, signed his name across the bottom, and handed it to me.
I folded the heavy paper and slid it into my jacket pocket, right next to the yellow sticky note from the bank.
I had the paper trail proving premeditation. But the ledger didn't prove the theft of Elias’s fifteen hundred dollars. Aris could still claim Rollins simply lost the nameplates and that I was a bitter old man imagining a conspiracy. I needed the physical cash to tie the theft directly to the officers.
And I needed to find it before it disappeared into the local economy.
Where does a patrolman with a thick stack of untaxed, stolen cash spend it? They couldn't deposit it into a bank account without triggering an eventual flag, but they could use it to pay off immediate, off-the-books debts.
I pulled out my phone and called David at dispatch one last time.
"David, don't look up their GPS. Just tell me the duty roster for Car 22 today."
"They're working a compressed four-ten schedule," David said, his voice hushed. "Today is their Friday. Their shift ended at three o'clock. Walt, please tell me you aren't doing something crazy."
"I'm just running an errand," I said, ending the call.
I looked at my dashboard clock. It was three-fifteen. They were off the clock, likely still in uniform, with fifteen hundred dollars burning a hole in their pockets.
I drove toward the county maintenance yard on the east side of town. It was a sprawling, fenced-in complex where the public works trucks were stored, but it also housed a rear garage where county mechanics occasionally serviced deputies' personal vehicles on the cheap—an unofficial perk of the badge.
I parked my truck across the street, in the shadow of an overgrown oak tree, and waited.
At three-thirty, a familiar marked cruiser pulled through the chain-link gates. Car 22. It bypassed the official fueling pumps and drove straight toward the rear civilian mechanic bays.
I reached behind my seat and pulled out my old heavy-duty binoculars.
The cruiser parked. Rollins and Hayes stepped out. They were both in full uniform, but the brass on their chests had been swapped back. The nameplates now correctly read ROLLINS and HAYES. The fake plates they used to rob me were likely sitting in their glove compartment.
They walked toward a lifted, aggressively modified black pickup truck parked near the open garage doors. It was Rollins’s personal vehicle, sitting on brand-new oversized tires that cost more than a junior deputy's monthly take-home pay.
The head civilian mechanic, a man in a greasy blue jumpsuit, walked out holding a clipboard. He handed it to Rollins. Rollins reviewed the invoice, nodded, and reached into his uniform trouser pocket. Not his wallet pocket. His front tactical pocket.
He pulled out a thick, familiar fold of cash.
Through the magnified glass of the binoculars, I saw the distinctive green bands of fifty-dollar bills. My chest tightened. It was Elias’s harvest money. Rollins began peeling the bills off his thumb, counting them out into the mechanic's outstretched hand.
This was the exact moment the trap would either snap shut or fall apart entirely.