The sergeant-at-arms, a compact, broad-shouldered man named Mason Navarro whom everyone called Mace, stepped closer. "They told us there'd be no further search," he said. "Closed the case before the ground was even dry. Jack fought them for months. Requests, records, lawyers. Every door we tried came back locked."
Jack's eyes stayed on Chloe. "Preacher wasn't a saint," he said. "I'm not going to stand here and pretend he was. He'd made enemies, he'd made mistakes, and he knew there were ways of living that came with consequences. But he was my friend for twenty-five years. He deserved the truth about what happened to him, the same as anyone."
Chloe stared at the old motorcycle. The damage suddenly seemed to belong to a different story than an ordinary crash.
"My stepfather came home that night," she said slowly. "The night they said the man disappeared. I was sixteen. There was a canvas bundle in the back of a county truck. I saw him hide it."
Mace straightened. "What sort of bundle?"
"Dark cloth. It might've been a motorcycle cover. He saw me looking through the window and told me I'd be sorry if I repeated anything." She swallowed.
"I didn't know what it meant. I thought maybe he'd found stolen property. Richard was always talking about people stealing things."
Jack looked at Mace, and for the first time his control appeared strained. "You remember that night?" he asked.
Chloe nodded. "He had mud on his boots, but the truck wasn't muddy. His shirt smelled like something burned. He stayed outside on the phone a long time. I heard him arguing with somebody."
"What did he say?"
She closed her eyes, searching for sounds she had spent years trying not to remember. "Something about a station, or a transfer. He said he didn't want the sheriff putting his name on another piece of paper. Then he saw me and stopped talking."
One of the older riders let out a long breath. Jack turned slightly and spoke to him without raising his voice. "Get photographs of everything as it sits. The bike, the vest, the damage, the road. Nobody pulls another part off until somebody trained in evidence recovery can inspect it."
"Too late for that," Mace said gently, looking at the loose compartment and the vest. "We already touched it."
"Then write down who touched it and when," Jack replied. "We can't undo that. We can tell the truth about it."
Chloe watched the exchange with surprise. She had expected men with club patches to be interested only in avenging their lost president. She had not expected them to worry about records and fingerprints. Richard had always told her that the law was whatever the strongest man could make it. Jack seemed to understand that strength alone would not tell a jury what had happened three years earlier.