They sealed his wallet, watch, and phone in a clear property bag behind the counter. Cara was signing the transport form when the phone inside the bag lit up. A notification slid across the screen and sat there glowing. Ridley Fleet Secure.
Three clips synced. Cara frowned at it. She didn't know what Ridley Fleet Secure was. She didn't know what had been synced or where.
Before she could look closer, the dispatcher called her name about a fender bender out on Old Mill Road, and she turned away. By the time she came back, the screen had gone dark. She would not think about that notification again for almost seven hours.
At a quarter to seven, the side door opened and Captain Russell Puit walked in. He was 60 years old and had worn a Ridley County badge for 35 of them. Silver hair, pressed slacks, a gas station coffee in his hand. People in that building straightened up when he walked past. They always had.
Toiver met him at the evidence table and said one sentence. Traffic stop turned into something bigger. Puit set his coffee down and looked at the black case. He read the label. He opened the first folder Toiver had pulled out on the roadside and began to read, and the whole room watched his face not change at all.
Then he turned a page and stopped. It was a list of old complaints. Most of the numbers meant nothing to anyone in that room, but one line near the bottom meant a great deal to Russell Puit. Complaint 91-0447.
Complainant: W. Prior. Allegation: excessive force, Route 9 traffic stop.
Reviewing deputy: R. Puit. Status: closed, no finding. He read it twice.
Then he closed the folder very gently the way a man closes a door on a sleeping child. Who else saw what's in here? Just me and Beckett. Then that's two people, too many. Puit looked across the room at Cara and held his eyes on her for a long moment. Then he looked through the small window into the interview room where Lennox sat alone at a metal table, not pacing, not demanding a lawyer, just sitting with his hands folded in front of him the way a man sits in church.
Puit ran the name through the system himself. Hargrove, Lennox. No warrants, no record. Under employment history, there was a single line, retired federal employee.
To Russell Puit, it explained everything. A retired federal man, a sealed transition review in his trunk. Puit had heard the rumors that the board was bringing in an outside auditor before the new sheriff took over. Now he believed he was looking at him, and Puit knew something Toiver didn't.
Under the transition order the commissioners had signed on Friday, every evidence log in that building would be locked and copied at 12 midnight for the new administration's audit. After midnight, nothing in the system could be changed without leaving a mark that someone outside the building would see. He pulled Toiver into his office and closed the blinds. We have until midnight. After that, every log in this building belongs to somebody else.