A courier named Bobby Chastain received a message offering him unusually good money for an evening delivery. Bobby was twenty-four, worked part-time for a shipping company, and picked up independent errands whenever his schedule allowed. The instructions seemed strange: leave a leather wallet outside a particular house, knock twice, and observe long enough to confirm that someone retrieved it. The woman paying him told him it was part of a private loss-prevention test and that all property involved belonged to the company conducting it. He hesitated, then accepted when she doubled the delivery fee.
Linda arranged the wallet herself. It contained a large amount of cash, one hundred thousand dollars, and a fabricated identity card she hoped would make the property appear to belong to a wealthy traveler. She used an account associated with a corporate security contingency to advance the money, recording it under a vague expense description that she expected to reconcile later. Her confidence rested on the belief that the result would justify the method. She never asked Miriam Cole whether the company had the legal right to stage such a test at a private citizen's home.
Bobby arrived at Daniel's street late on a Wednesday afternoon. A light rain had passed earlier, leaving the porch steps damp and the smell of wet cedar hanging beneath the trees. He placed the wallet near the door, knocked twice, and hurried behind a parked car as instructed. Daniel opened the door a moment later with a measuring tape clipped to his belt and a small smear of wood glue on his thumb. He looked down at the wallet, then toward the sidewalk.
Bobby expected the man to open it immediately. Instead, Daniel picked it up, examined the street, and called out, asking whether anyone had just dropped something. He checked the delivery label on a nearby package, then looked toward Alice's house as though considering whether it might belong to a neighbor. Only after nobody answered did he open the wallet far enough to find identification. Even from a distance, Bobby saw his posture change when he discovered the cash.
Daniel went back inside, and Bobby felt a brief surge of excitement. Perhaps the man had taken it. He sent Linda a message saying the wallet was inside the house and waited for further instructions. Ten minutes passed. Then twenty. Finally Daniel emerged carrying the wallet in a sealed plastic bag, climbed into his old truck, and drove away.
Bobby followed until he saw Daniel pull into the county police station. There the restorer approached the front desk, explained that a wallet containing a very large amount of money had been left outside his home, and asked the desk officer to record its contents before accepting it. Deputy Naomi Harmon, who was assigned to the shared county service desk that afternoon, called another employee to witness the inventory. Daniel stood beside the counter while they documented the bills, photographed the fabricated identification, and sealed everything as found property. He requested a copy of the report because the manner in which the wallet appeared made him uneasy.