The discovery changed Simone's view of Mercer's role. She had suspected he was protecting others, perhaps in exchange for favors or influence. The financial evidence suggested he had benefited directly. It also offered a motive for why he had risked a false traffic stop to intercept the SUV. Someone who had spent months relying on altered records might have panicked at the thought of those records being carried to an office he could not control.
Talbot's attorney contacted federal prosecutors to ask whether his client could provide information. The request did not mean Talbot was innocent or cooperative. It meant he was beginning to recognize how much evidence had been collected outside his control. The prosecutors arranged a formal meeting with appropriate safeguards, and Talbot arrived looking as though he had aged several years in one week. He wore a suit he might have chosen for a budget hearing, but his hands shook when he unbuttoned the jacket.
He began by saying he had never intended anyone to be harmed. The investigator asked him whether he had known the fire department was missing equipment that had been reported delivered. Talbot looked at the table for a long moment before admitting that he had received those complaints. He said he believed the shortages were temporary and that the contractor would make up the difference. Asked why he had approved false delivery certificates, he returned to the same explanation: he expected the problem to be corrected later.
"When did later become a year?" the investigator asked.
Talbot did not answer.
He eventually acknowledged that the contractor payments had not been legitimate and that Mercer had intervened when a warehouse employee raised concerns. He described meetings where they discussed maintaining the appearance of routine transfers even as inventories failed to reconcile. The investigators asked him to identify dates, participants, and records that could corroborate his claims. He could not explain away his responsibility by describing himself as frightened of Mercer. But his account helped the team locate additional evidence that might otherwise have taken weeks to find.
Simone left the interview with a sense of fatigue she knew well. People involved in corruption often wanted investigators to believe they had been swept along by events they did not control. Sometimes pressure was real, and sometimes threats had been made. Yet each person's explanation contained moments when an honest decision had been possible: refusing a payment, rejecting a false entry, telling a supervisor that the inventory was wrong. The investigation was becoming a history of those abandoned moments.
At the end of that week, Reed informed Simone that the prosecutor was preparing to seek charges against several participants. She understood what the decision meant, but she did not celebrate. There were still records to preserve, witnesses to protect, and defendants entitled to a lawful process. There were also families attached to every name in the file, including innocent spouses and children who would bear consequences they had not chosen. Accountability could be necessary without becoming a spectacle.
"You should take Sunday off," Reed told her as they left the office.
Simone gave him a tired look. "You say that every Friday."
"And every Friday you act like the concept is new."