Puit's gaze moved toward Renata. "Agent, I have no idea what he's talking about."
Renata did not accept the denial or reject it. She asked Wendell to sit and give his account in an interview room with Leah present if he wished. Then she requested the historical complaint index from the transition inventory. The relevant pages were missing from the working copy, but the index itself still listed the complaint number.
91-0447. W. PRIOR. REVIEWING DEPUTY R. PUIT. CLOSED, NO FINDING.
Wendell lowered himself into a plastic chair in the corridor when he saw it. His hands began shaking again, and he placed the legal pad across his knees to conceal them. Leah crouched beside him, not trying to tell him to calm down. She held the old man's hand until the tremor slowed enough for him to speak.
"I told Loretta nobody would believe me," he said. "She said somebody would. She didn't get to see it."
Lennox had come down the corridor when he heard the old man's name. He sat in the chair beside Wendell and rested one hand lightly on his shoulder. He knew better than to promise that an old wrong could be made entirely right. The missing complaint page might never be reconstructed, and the law might no longer allow prosecution for whatever happened in 1991.
But the number existed. The witness existed. The recording of tonight existed. For the first time in a very long time, Wendell did not have to be the only person in the room insisting that something had happened.
"We're going to make the record as complete as the evidence allows," Lennox said. "Not because you know me. Because your account deserves to be examined."
Wendell looked at him. "I thought you were going to get hurt out there."
"So did I, for a little while."
"You stayed still."
"I was trying to come home."
The old man nodded slowly. They sat together beneath the lights while investigators worked in the adjoining room and the first hint of morning gathered behind the windows. At the far end of the corridor, Russell Puit stood alone, with no deputy moving automatically to his side.
At four in the morning, Russell Puit asked to speak with the new sheriff. Renata Solberg agreed only after confirming that any conversation involving potential evidence would be recorded and that she would remain present. Lennox considered refusing, not because he feared the captain, but because he knew the meeting would offer the older man one last opportunity to describe corruption as an unfortunate misunderstanding between reasonable people. Naomi advised him that he could listen without surrendering the decision to the independent investigators.
Puit entered the small conference room looking older than he had at sunset. His shirt was wrinkled at the sleeves, his tie loosened, and the carefully arranged silver hair had fallen slightly out of place. He sat across from Lennox with Renata at the side of the table and the recorder in plain view. For a moment he seemed uncertain which of the two held the authority he most needed to persuade.
"I've been in that building thirty-five years," he began. "You were a federal man. You don't know what it takes to run a rural department where everybody knows everybody, where every second person who calls has a cousin on the force and half the witnesses have been feuding since high school."