At the station, Dez learned about the attempted planting from Harrison, who returned to the building after ensuring that a neutral evidence technician was documenting the driveway. He watched the short clip on the attorney's phone without speaking. The hand, the small item, the abrupt turn toward the camera, all of it seemed unreal against the familiar paint of his car. When the video ended, Dez asked only one question.
"Did he touch the interior?" Harrison said the available footage showed no completed entry and that independent investigators were confirming the scene. Dez nodded. He cared about the car, but the question also carried a deeper fear: whether anyone could have trusted the evidence had no camera been there.
Harrison was a tall man in his fifties with silver at his temples and a habit of taking his glasses off before asking a difficult question. He offered Dez a simple engagement agreement for legal representation and then set the paper aside until Dez had read it carefully. "We're going to proceed on the assumption that every record matters," he said.
"I'm not promising you that a viral video makes this simple. It doesn't. But the evidence is stronger than the story your arresting officer has been telling." Dez signed the agreement after reading it twice and asked whether Harrison had represented people without videos. The lawyer's answer came quickly: "Far too many."
Harrison then mentioned a cluster of previous forfeiture cases in Oak Haven that had bothered him for months. He had reviewed one for a local mechanic, but the man could not afford to fight and had accepted a small settlement. In that case, as in several others, the arrest was based on a vague claim of suspicious activity and the initial seizure included a valuable vehicle. Harlan's name appeared in more than one file. Harrison had not yet found enough to prove a pattern, but the incident at 422 Maple Ridge made the older cases look less random.
Dez studied the attorney's face. "Are you saying they wanted my car?" he asked. Harrison carefully separated what he knew from what he suspected.
He knew there had been attempts to seize expensive property after questionable stops. He knew Harlan had accused Dez of crimes without checking basic facts. He knew a new drug allegation had appeared after the original charges began to fall apart. Whether greed was part of this specific arrest remained an open question, and Harrison refused to call it proven until the evidence supported it.
That distinction impressed Dez more than any dramatic promise would have. He had learned to distrust people who rushed to conclusions, even when those conclusions favored him. "Good," he said.