"Technically?"
"Supervisors can request a specific vendor for special circumstances. Availability, equipment, location."
"Who approves the exception?"
"Shift sergeant."
Marcus looked at the signatures. Calvin Voss. Again and again. Marcus sent the reports to Kim and asked the city procurement office for the towing contract, vendor invoices, exception logs, and any payments or consulting arrangements involving Westbridge Towing Services. He expected that request to take days.
Instead, procurement director Alicia Grant called him personally forty minutes later.
"Captain, you need to come see this."
"Why?"
"Because I don't want to email it until legal tells me I can."
Marcus walked two blocks to city hall rather than send an officer. Grant met him in a second-floor records room with an attorney already present and a stack of vendor disclosures on the table. Westbridge Towing was owned by a man named Leonard Pike. The company held a renewable municipal contract to provide towing, storage, and recovery services. Nothing about that was unusual.
What was unusual appeared in the vendor's annual conflict-of-interest disclosure. For two years, Pike's company had paid consulting fees to Voss Security Consulting LLC. The registered manager of that company was Patricia Voss, Calvin Voss's wife. The invoices described the payments as "law-enforcement liaison training," "scene coordination consulting," and "impound workflow optimization." Total compensation: forty-seven thousand three hundred dollars.
Marcus read the number twice.
"Was this disclosed to the police department?"
Grant shook her head. "Not in any conflict statement I have. The vendor disclosed it because city procurement requires contractors to list paid consultants. Nobody appears to have cross-checked the consultant against police personnel households."
The city attorney beside her added, "That connection is not proof of a crime by itself. A spouse can own a legitimate consulting business. We need evidence of quid pro quo, concealment, or misuse of authority."
"Understood."
Marcus photographed nothing. He requested certified copies through the proper channel and left the originals where they were. By the time he returned to headquarters, the atmosphere had changed.
Officers were talking in clusters. Reigns stood near the coffee station surrounded by three patrolmen. Voss was nowhere visible. Officer Torres approached Marcus near the elevator.
"Captain, can I ask you something off the record?"
"Nothing is off the record if it concerns the investigation."
Torres nodded. "Fair enough. People are saying you're trying to close the towing company."
"I'm not."
"People are saying you're planning to discipline anyone who used Westbridge Towing."
"Also false."
"People are saying you're going through body-camera records to build a list of officers who ever had equipment problems."