"We have the city hall meeting at eleven," Aaron said. "Their counsel says the chief will make someone available to explain the records policy."
"Their counsel says many things."
"You think Langford knows we're here?"
"He knows federal investigators have requested records. He may not know which two people are eating his town's eggs this morning. Don't confuse secrecy with theater, Aaron. We're here to gather facts, not to see whether somebody can be provoked into doing something stupid."
"I know."
"I know you know. I am saying it because there are two ways to turn an honest investigation into a personal contest, and one of them is forgetting that the people in these folders need answers more than we need a dramatic morning."
Aaron accepted the correction. Nathaniel had supervised him long enough to know when his attention was becoming sharpened by anger rather than evidence. Aaron trusted the older man's judgment for the same reason that occasionally made it uncomfortable: Nathaniel would defend him fiercely against mistreatment, but he would never flatter him into making a mistake.
The television over the counter was showing weather maps when the morning news cut to a bulletin from a neighboring county. Police were seeking two men in connection with an armed robbery at a convenience store. The images on the screen were poor surveillance stills from a camera mounted above a freezer. The broadcaster described both suspects as Black men of medium build, then added that one appeared to have a noticeable limp and the other had a tattoo running up the left side of his neck.
The photographs were too grainy for positive identification, and the appeal ended with a request that anyone with actual information contact the proper agency. Aaron glanced up once, then returned to his eggs. Nathaniel wrote a time beside an entry in his notebook.
At the counter, Harold Benson heard only the first half of the announcement. Harold was sixty-eight and had occupied the same stool at Rosie's on Tuesday mornings for eleven years, except when his arthritis kept him home. He had retired from the local furniture plant, lost his wife five years earlier, and had become the kind of regular customer who believed long familiarity entitled him to an opinion about every stranger who came through the door. Rose knew he would complain if the hash browns were too crisp, but she also knew he had once carried a tray of food to a sick neighbor without being asked. He thought of those kindnesses as proof that his instincts were reliable. That belief would make what happened next harder for him to confront.
He looked at the television. Then he looked toward the booth. Two Black men, unfamiliar faces, one gray-haired, one younger, sitting together with papers, occasionally looking toward the police station. He did not notice that neither resembled the robber with the neck tattoo.