"Your daddy knew something about tools," Ralph said. Monica told him that her father had taught her most of what she knew about numbers, engines, and people who were too confident to check their work. Ralph nodded and started across the street, then stopped as though he had remembered an unfinished task. He finally told her about the anonymous call that had come to his landline on Saturday night. Monica listened without interrupting while he repeated the sentence exactly as he had written it down.
"Ask her when the crusher last ran," she said slowly. Ralph explained that the police department held an annual gun-destruction ceremony behind headquarters, complete with reporters, official speeches, and a large industrial crusher. The ceremony was local news every fall, a public demonstration that seized firearms had been removed from circulation. Monica looked down at the RS1979 engraving and then toward the garage where her damaged car stood on the lift. She had memorized a serial number, and someone had just directed her toward a machine whose purpose was to erase the serial numbers on surrendered guns.
"I'm not in command right now," she told Ralph. "I can't order somebody to open an evidence room because I'm curious." Ralph leaned against the porch rail and said that retired people, schoolteachers, and mechanics did not have the power to order evidence rooms opened either. "But we can ask for paper, can't we? Public paper?" he said. Monica smiled for the first time that evening and promised to visit the records counter in the morning.
At eight the next day she stood in line at the Silver Pines Police Department, wearing jeans, a charcoal hoodie, and a green cap pulled low over her hair. A man ahead of her wanted an accident report, while a young mother with a restless baby was trying to find out whether animal control had located the family dog. When it was her turn, a records clerk named Fern took the form from her hand. Monica had requested the department's 2023 and 2024 firearm-destruction certificates, including the serial-number lists appended to each certificate.
Fern read the request, paused, and asked why anyone would need all those numbers. Monica said she wanted to check a matter of public record and was willing to pay the applicable copying charges. Fern explained that the office would respond within the period provided by the applicable records procedure and gave her a stamped receipt. While she typed, Monica noticed the woman's eyes shift toward the administration door behind the counter. Fern looked back at her and said the packet should be ready Monday morning.
Monica returned to the records room and resumed scanning reports. By Friday afternoon she had processed 206 files, thirty-one of which involved task-force operations classified as armed fugitive arrests. Twenty-eight of those thirty-one reported guns recovered at the scene, and every recovery had been attributed to either Copeland or Fowler. Monica wrote the number 28 on a sticky note and folded it into her pocket. It was not proof of wrongdoing, but it was a pattern that demanded an explanation better than the one she had received.