On Monday morning, Fern handed her a thick stack secured with a blue binder clip. The clerk mentioned quietly that Captain Beexley had asked who was requesting the certificates and had wanted to know when the woman would return. Fern had answered that a citizen had made a lawful records request, which was all the form said. Monica thanked her and sat on the wooden reading bench in the lobby, unwilling to let the captain's interest change what she had come to do. She began with the 2024 certificate.
The first page bore the department seal and a statement that the listed guns had been destroyed by mechanical crushing under official supervision. The pages that followed were crowded with serial numbers, dates, and brief disposal classifications, and the final certification carried Captain Lloyd Beexley's signature. Monica read each line as though it were a parts catalog. On the fourth page, her finger stopped at line 112, where the entry matched the number she had spoken aloud while kneeling in Larkspur Bend: DX30417.
The status read DESTROYED, with a date of June fourteenth, 2024. Monica read the number and date three times before looking again at Beexley's signature. According to the official document, the handgun Fowler had supposedly recovered from her car in October had been crushed into scrap more than a year earlier. She was careful not to assume that the explanation could only be a planted gun; a clerical error, a copied serial number, or a falsified destruction record remained possible. But the captain had held that same weapon in his hands on Saturday, had studied it longer than necessary, and had remained silent when she asked him to preserve her car's logs.
She photographed the page for reference, then made copies of the complete certificates and placed the originals back in their order. When she stood, Fern was on the telephone, speaking quietly toward the closed administration door. Monica did not linger to find out who was listening. She went out to Ralph's pickup in the parking lot, sat behind the wheel, and reached for her phone to call Harriet, whose name she had recently received from a colleague. Before dialing, however, she noticed the notification icon on the application for her electric sedan.
The car had been disconnected and stripped for weeks, so she had assumed nothing useful remained accessible. Yet the app showed an old alert that had been synchronized before the vehicle left her driveway: WATCH MODE EVENTS, OCTOBER 3, THREE SAVED CLIPS. Monica stared at the screen and resisted the urge to open the files in the police parking lot. She drove home, closed the kitchen blinds, and made a cup of tea that went cold beside her legal pad. Only then did she open the vehicle log.