"Then we'd better give him something worth hearing," Clayton replied. He shook Jaylen's hand and tried not to look at the empty space where his father's keys should have been hanging. The ring was still missing. The city had not corrected the false report. The contract was still suspended, and nothing about a packed room could guarantee that would change.
Against the back wall stood Officer Hagen, out of uniform and with his arms folded. Gerald Peton sat near the front beside a city attorney. Sutcliffe occupied a chair at the side table, his white pickup visible through the window below. In the last row sat Peggy Sandoval, looking like any other observer. Beside her was the elderly Black man in the tan corduroy jacket, his brown flat cap resting on one knee and the little black notebook open in his lap.
Sherman noticed him first. "That's the fellow from the auction," he murmured. "The one who came to our lot."
"I know." Clayton did not turn around. He was still unwilling to make the stranger's identity part of his case. A man could be in three places without being connected to the crimes that occurred in them. But the old man's presence made Clayton feel as though he were arriving late to a meeting somebody else had been preparing for years.
At 9:55, Ingrid Sato started the official recording and confirmed that the bid opening was a public procurement proceeding. She explained the order of business: signed non-collusion affidavits, price envelopes, verification of bidder eligibility, and the decision about the existing suspended award. She warned attendees that allegations concerning criminal conduct were not for her office to decide, but that facts affecting the city's procurement responsibilities would be part of the record.
Peton accepted the affidavit first. He turned to the signature page without reading the sections above it, signed with a flourish, and pushed it across the table. Clayton watched the pen move and remembered Ambrose's warning taped to the desk. Every contract begins as words, his father used to say, but sooner or later those words become a promise someone must keep.
When Clayton received his own copy, he read it carefully. Peton checked his gold watch. "Some of us have businesses to run, Reed," he said, loud enough for the room to hear.
"So do I," Clayton replied. "That's why I read before I sign." He finished the affidavit and put the pen down straight, parallel to the edge of the table. Ingrid accepted both forms and began opening the envelopes.
"Peton Motors," she announced. "$1,140,000." Peton leaned back with the expression of a man who had already counted the profit. His company had sold police vehicles to Halcott for twenty-two years, and he plainly expected that morning to restore the habit.
Ingrid opened the next envelope. "Reed Auto Shop. $926,000. The same price submitted in August."
A murmur moved through the chairs. Two hundred fourteen thousand dollars was not an abstract difference to the people who lived in Halcott. It was road repairs, public safety equipment, school maintenance, and the tax money collected from families who did not have enough left over to treat such numbers as a rounding error.