Lennox ran his thumb along the edge without touching a seal. "Has the evidence custodian documented the handover?"
"Twice. Once for the county, once for the independent inventory. The control number is in the transition order. Please don't open it before the transfer is effective."
"I wasn't planning to."
"And don't let somebody else open it for you."
Naomi's voice changed on the final sentence. Lennox looked up and saw that her concern was personal rather than procedural. She had spent the previous week answering questions from county staff who wanted to know whether their years of work were about to be discredited alongside the wrongdoing of a few supervisors. She believed the appointment could protect honest employees, but only if the first days were handled carefully enough that nobody could dismiss the review as retaliation.
"There are good deputies in that building," she said. "Some are frightened. Some are merely tired. Give them a way to tell the difference between loyalty to the office and loyalty to the people who've been running it."
"That is the plan."
He signed the last acknowledgment and carried the case himself to the parking lot. Before setting it in the trunk, he photographed the seal numbers and sent the routine custody acknowledgment through the secure transition system. His phone buzzed as he closed the lid. The message was from his sixteen-year-old son, Miles, who was in Rocky Mount for the final of a summer basketball tournament.
Coach says I'm starting. You still coming, Dad?
Lennox stood by the car for a moment. He had missed too many games during the years when protecting somebody else's family had been his duty and seeing his own had been something he promised to do later. Miles seldom complained about that directly. Instead, he asked whether his father had watched the highlight clips, or told him that the gym had been loud anyway, or pretended not to notice an empty seat.
Wouldn't miss it, Lennox typed.
He put the phone away and took the road east. At a quarter past four, traffic was light enough that he could travel at the posted speed without being passed constantly. He had time to reach the game, buy a terrible cup of gym coffee, and sit where his son would see him during warmups. For a few miles he let himself imagine the opening tip instead of the files in the trunk.
Three miles outside town, a Ridley County cruiser appeared in his rearview mirror. At first he thought nothing of it. Then the cruiser stayed at exactly the same distance through two changes in speed and one long straight stretch where passing would have been easy. Lennox did not accelerate, brake sharply, or turn onto a side road to test the deputy.
He simply drove. The sun lay low enough to turn the road markings bright white, and fields of tobacco and soybeans rolled past behind wire fences. The Bentley's engine ran with the quiet confidence of a machine Samuel would have approved of after a thorough inspection. Then the cruiser lights came on.