Through the hallway window, Clayton saw Peton and Sutcliffe standing beside the deputy chief's white pickup in the parking lot. The men shook hands slowly, without looking around. It was the kind of gesture people had seen for years and stopped noticing. Clayton watched until they separated, then wrote down the time.
That night he placed the hearing notes beside the suspension letter at his father's desk. The red sign lay beneath a canvas tarp. Twelve new cruisers sat in the impound yard. His bank would not finance fresh inventory, Jaylen was still shaken by his arrest, and the calendar showed only nine days until the rebid.
Erica called after Hope went to bed. "How bad?" she asked.
"The suspension held. Sutcliffe said the keys were logged."
"They aren't, are they?"
"Not in any record we've received. And the camera shows where they went." Clayton paused. "I didn't show the video yet."
Erica went quiet. "Clayton, I trust you. But don't let proving he's a liar cost you the business. Your father didn't build that shop so it could become evidence in somebody else's case. He built it so people could work there."
Clayton looked at the framed photograph on the desk, Ambrose leaning against the red sign in 1979 with Sherman beside him. "I hear you," he said. "Tomorrow I'll move faster. I promise."
Wednesday, October 7, began with Clayton searching for the dealer plate visible in Jaylen's sunrise video. He used public business listings and lawful vehicle-registration resources available to licensed dealers, careful not to pretend a partial number established ownership. The readable prefix narrowed his search to three plausible registrations in the region. One belonged to a used-car business near the county line, one to a truck seller north of town, and the third to Peton Motors.
Jaylen leaned over his shoulder when he printed the results. "It's Peton's car. It has to be."
"Three possibilities means three possibilities," Clayton replied. "The one you want to be right is the one you need to question hardest. My father said that the day I replaced a perfectly good alternator because I was sure the noise came from it."
He circled Peton Motors in pencil but left the other names visible. Then he called Rosa and explained what the partial plate showed and what it did not. She agreed that photographs of the actual vehicle would be more useful than any confident assertion based on a blurred image. Clayton added the plate question to the wall above his father's desk, where the sign complaint and bank records already hung.
That afternoon, he drove to the county code office to ask Duke Hollander about the complaint that had forced the red sign down. Duke greeted him with a weary look, as though he had expected another angry argument. Instead, Clayton placed the removal order on the desk and asked for the original complaint, the date received, and the section of code the county had relied on.