Clayton stared at the receipt. He had carried it in his wallet like an ordinary piece of paperwork, yet it now mattered more than any argument he could have made at the gate. "They took the box," he said slowly. "Not the record."
Rosa smiled without much humor. "Now get off the floor. We have one day until the bid opening, and I'm not carrying both of you to city hall."
Wednesday, October 14, Clayton and Rosa drove to Indianapolis for a meeting with Assistant United States Attorney Peggy Sandoval. She was a serious woman with dark hair pulled back, a navy suit, and a small silver pin on her lapel. She had received an earlier anonymous letter naming Clayton and describing a possible corruption issue in Halcott procurement, but she had not yet decided whether federal law gave her office a case.
Clayton put a folder on her table. It contained the dated stills from Jaylen's sunrise video, the dealer plate records, the sign complaint, the 911 log, the court-warrant entry, the bank-board photograph, the threat note, the signed seizure inventory, and the transcript of Sutcliffe's sworn administrative testimony. He gave her a written description of the available unit-seven archive and the contact information for the city records custodian.
Peggy read without interrupting. When she finished, she asked about the federal funding component of the fleet procurement, the interstate purchases of equipment, and the rules attached to the city's public safety grant. She was careful to distinguish suspicious relationships from crimes. A truck with dealer plates, a false-looking complaint, and a bad arrest did not automatically prove a federal conspiracy, but the combined records provided substantial grounds for inquiry.
"Why haven't you released the video online?" she asked.
"Because I'm not trying to win an argument on the internet," Clayton said. "I'm trying to make it impossible for an official record to pretend something different happened. The recording belongs in the same file as the contract, the testimony, and the reports. The proper investigators should decide what it proves."
"You sound like someone who has been in court before."
"I've fixed machines all my life," he replied. "A machine doesn't care how confident you sound. It cares whether your diagnosis fits the evidence. My father taught me that before I could drive."
Peggy requested copies of the preserved documentation through formal channels and said she would coordinate with the appropriate state and federal investigators. She refused to promise indictments, immediate arrests, or a dramatic reversal at the bid opening. Clayton was relieved by her caution. After two weeks of people promising him things they could not justify, a woman who said only what she could actually do sounded trustworthy.
At the door she mentioned the anonymous letter she had received before Rosa contacted her. It had contained Clayton's name, the fleet contract number, and a warning about an undisclosed dealer relationship. It had no return address. Clayton thought of the elderly man with the brown flat cap, but he did not say the two were connected. Peggy had no proof, and neither did he.