"Make sure nothing connected to Williams leaves this building," the sheriff said.
"Including the preserved server records?" Owen asked.
"Especially those. I want complete control of what goes into the official referral."
Owen wrote down the instruction. Cole watched him for a moment and frowned. "You don't have to record every sentence I say."
"I'm documenting the instruction."
"You were there this morning. You know what happened."
"I know what I witnessed," Owen replied.
Cole leaned back. "Then we shouldn't have a problem."
Owen closed his notebook but kept it within reach. He had served under Cole long enough to know that an argument would do little good. He also knew that a witness's duty did not end merely because the person asking for a signature held a higher rank. He had not decided what he believed about Maya, but he was already certain he would not improve an account simply to satisfy the sheriff.
Several miles away, Maya turned into the driveway of her father's brick house. Isaiah Williams opened the door before she knocked twice, the way he always did when he saw her car pull up. At seventy-four, he still dressed in a clean shirt and pressed trousers before breakfast, even when the day's only appointment was a walk to the mailbox. He looked at the cardboard box in her arms, then at her face.
"They fired you?" he asked.
"They accused me first."
Isaiah stepped aside. "Come in."
The kitchen smelled of toast and coffee. A pan of scrambled eggs rested on the stove, and the morning newspaper lay folded beside an old wooden fruit bowl. Isaiah took another mug from the cabinet without asking whether she wanted coffee. He poured it, set it in front of her, and sat across the table with the patience of a man who knew that difficult news rarely arrived all at once.
"What did they accuse you of?"
"Leaking protected records from Safe Communities. Cole says my account was connected to an export."
"Did you send anything?"
"No."
"Can you prove it?"
Maya wrapped both hands around the mug. "Not with anything I'm carrying. He disabled my access before I left the building."
Isaiah nodded, considering the distinction. "Then don't spend the day trying to sound innocent. Innocent and proven aren't the same thing."
"I know."
"Good. Eat something. You can't do your best thinking on coffee and worry."
She broke off a piece of toast. Isaiah had been a school maintenance supervisor for decades, a man who could identify a failing furnace by the sound it made and never trusted a repair report he had not checked against the machine. He had taught Maya, long before she joined the sheriff's department, that confidence was useful only when it rested on something a second person could verify. She had taken that lesson into every investigation she conducted.
Her personal phone vibrated with an unfamiliar number. A local reporter left a voicemail, followed by another call, then a message from a former colleague asking whether the rumor about her dismissal was true. Maya turned the phone face down and took another bite of toast. Isaiah watched her without comment until the front door opened.