"Getting into his truck," he typed.
"Follow him. Don't lose sight of the wallet."
Bobby watched the old pickup move away and followed at a distance. He expected Daniel to drive toward a bank or a private meeting, perhaps somewhere cash could be counted without being seen. Instead the truck pulled into the parking lot of a local police station. Daniel parked near the public entrance, went inside with the envelope, and did not come out for almost forty minutes.
During that time Bobby sat in his car with both hands on the steering wheel. He had been told the test was harmless. A man who found a wallet on his own porch and took it to the police was now being drawn into someone else's secret plan, and Bobby knew that if the police asked questions, the story might stop being a harmless errand. He called Linda and told her where Daniel had gone.
"Did he count the money?" she demanded.
"I don't know. He took the envelope inside. He didn't take anything out while I was watching."
"Then wait. We need to know what he tells them."
Bobby looked at the station doors. "Ms. Whitfield, I wasn't hired to follow someone into a police station. I delivered what you asked me to deliver. I'm leaving."
Linda told him there would be no final payment if he stopped. Bobby ended the call. He had accepted the assignment because he needed money, but the closer he came to understanding what he had helped create, the less certain he became that any amount could make it feel acceptable.
Inside, Daniel sat opposite Deputy Elaine Harmon, who had worked in public-facing investigative assignments for fifteen years. She listened while he explained that an envelope had appeared on his porch without a sender's name and that its contents seemed far too valuable to be an ordinary delivery error. She asked whether anyone had contacted him about the property. He said no, then told her about the wallet he had found and returned to Victoria several weeks earlier.
Harmon raised an eyebrow. "Another wallet?"
"That's one reason I brought this in. It doesn't make sense."
"Did you open it?"
"Enough to see the money and an identification card. I stopped after that. I didn't want to handle anything else."
She asked Daniel to describe where he found it, took down the time, and explained that the property would be inventoried under the department's procedures. She advised him to retain the receipt and to contact the department if anyone approached him claiming ownership. Daniel thanked her and signed the documentation. He asked whether leaving the wallet with the police was enough, and she said it was the appropriate step for now.
Before he left, Harmon looked at the envelope and then at him. "People don't usually bring this kind of cash straight to us," she said.