"You'll test at the station."
"You could do it now and document the result. It would take less time than this conversation."
"You don't run this stop," Lyman snapped. "I do."
Audrey kept her voice level. "I have never consumed alcohol. A drunk driver killed my father when I was twelve. I am asking you to test me so that your report has an objective measurement."
For a moment Kincaid looked uncomfortable. Lyman did not. He spat his gum into a scrap of paper and told his partner to move Audrey closer to the hood. She noticed a black ribbon tied around the green post at mile marker seventy-four, its loose ends lifting whenever a tractor-trailer rushed past. The ribbon seemed strangely deliberate, a little dark mark tied tightly at a place where strangers normally left nothing but litter.
Lyman opened the back door, pulled out Audrey's handbag, and emptied it over the hood. Her reading glasses, lipstick, charger, a folded church bulletin, and the white bank envelope fell into the sunlight. He held the envelope up as though it had personally offended him. The blue handwriting made Audrey's chest tighten before she even saw the cash.
"Ten years. Counted twice. Mama," he read, making each word sound foolish. "What's this? A collection plate?"
"A scholarship fund," Audrey answered. "My mother's church raised it over ten years. Please don't damage the envelope."
"How much?"
"Eighteen thousand six hundred dollars. The church has records, and the pastor's telephone number is on the bulletin. You're welcome to verify it."
Lyman tore open the flap. Audrey felt the paper split in a place her mother's fingers had once carefully folded. He arranged the bills in groups across the hood, calling out numbers for Kincaid as though they were enjoying a game. Kincaid leaned closer and joined the count. Neither asked whether Audrey had bank records or who was meant to receive the scholarship.
"Eighteen-six," Lyman announced. "Nobody drives with cash like this unless something is going on."
"Count it twice," Audrey said.
"I already counted it."
"My mother counted it twice every first Sunday for ten years. The congregation watched. Not one dollar went missing, and she never treated the second count as an insult."
"Your mother's church doesn't tell me how to do my job."
"Then call the pastor and verify the origin. It's a perfectly ordinary investigative step if you're genuinely uncertain."
"I don't call churches," Lyman said. "People move illegal money on highways. Churches don't make that impossible."
He pushed the cash into an evidence bag without giving Audrey a receipt. When she asked him to preserve the envelope, he rolled it into a ball and threw it into the grass. The wind from a passing truck carried it down the embankment. She watched the handwriting disappear into green weeds and finally lost the composure she had been measuring out one breath at a time.