At a workstation out of sight, Puit pulled the memory card and turned it over in the light. It looked perfectly fine. That bothered him. He pressed down with his thumb until it cracked, bent the halves apart, and dropped them into a disposal bin. Then he loosened a few parts inside the camera housing, just enough to make it look like cheap equipment that fails all the time.
Then he turned to the black case. The broken tamper seal sat in a temporary bag beside it. Puit fed it into the shredder. It took about two seconds. Then he went through the folders, stopping only when he saw his own name.
Supervisory overrides, complaints closed without review. and the old list, the one with complaint 91-0447 on it. He held that page longer than the others. For a moment, something moved across his face that might have been memory. Then it was gone.
He fed it into the shredder with the rest. The machine ran for about four seconds. Out in the hallway, a dispatcher laughed at something on her phone. Nobody came to see what the sound was.
Puit put the remaining files back in roughly the right order, bagged the case in fresh plastic and wrote a new note on the label. Received in compromised condition. Then he peeled off the gloves and went to find more coffee.
11 miles away, Wendell Prior, sat at his kitchen table with a cup of decaf going cold in front of him. He was 71 years old and had driven a long-haul truck for 38 years. His wife, Loretta, had been gone four years. The kitchen still smelled faintly of the lemon cleaner she liked. He had never changed brands.
The video from the roadside was open on his phone. He had watched it six times. He took a yellow legal pad from the drawer and in careful block letters wrote down everything he had seen with his own eyes. The time, the road, the broken windows, the man in handcuffs standing well away from the car.
Only what he had witnessed and nothing he hadn't. He knew how much that mattered. He had learned it the hard way a long time ago.
August 1991, Route 9 just passed the old feed mill. A young deputy with a flashlight and a temper had pulled him out of his rig for a broken taillight that wasn't broken. Wendell had asked one question, just one. He'd spent the next 3 weeks with a cracked rib and the next 35 years knowing that the complaint he filed had gone into a drawer somewhere and never come out.
He had never seen that deputy's face clearly in the dark, but he had never forgotten the voice. At a few minutes past 9, he called the sheriff's office to say he had a video. A dispatcher put him on hold. Then a man came on the line. This is Captain Puit.
Wendell's hand went cold around the phone. He couldn't have said why. It was just a voice, older now, smoother, the edges sanded off by years. But something in the back of his neck stood up and stayed up. Yes, sir.
We'd very much like to see that video. Do you still have the original phone? It would be best if you brought the whole device in tonight for chain of custody. I can bring you a copy in the morning. I'd really prefer the original tonight if you can.