Miller stared at the screen for a long time. Then, he let out a short, dry breath that sounded almost like a laugh. "Walter Hayes," he repeated. "Well, Mr. Hayes, it looks like Officer Ryder already filed a report regarding your interaction at the impound lot."
My stomach dropped. "A report?"
"Yeah," Miller said, turning the monitor slightly, though I couldn't read the text from where I stood. "Logged at 3:05 PM. He issued a formal warning for public disturbance and verbal harassment. Noted that you became belligerent when informed of standard impound fees, shouting obscenities and refusing to comply with a lawful order to vacate the premises."
I stared at the heavy silver badge on Miller's chest, identical to the one Ryder wore. The trap had already been set. Ryder knew I might complain, so he had preemptively discredited me. He had weaponized the official record. If it came down to the word of an angry, swearing old man against a decorated patrolman, the department wouldn't even blink.
"I didn't shout," I said, keeping my voice perfectly level. "I didn't swear. I paid my fees inside. Officer Ryder took five hundred dollars in cash out of my wallet in the parking lot and put it in his pocket."
Miller leaned forward, resting his forearms on the high desk. The casual indifference was gone, replaced by a hard, intimidating glare. "That is a very serious accusation, Mr. Hayes. You're accusing a sworn officer of grand theft. Do you have any actual proof, or are you just mad that you got towed and want to cause trouble?"
My hand instinctively twitched toward the inside pocket of my jacket, where Maria's stamped ledger sheet rested against my ribs. All I had to do was pull it out. All I had to do was show him the serial numbers.
But I looked into Miller's cold, calculating eyes. I looked at the three other officers standing near the breakroom door, watching our exchange with quiet, unified hostility.
If I handed over that paper, it would become "evidence." It would be logged into their system. It would be placed in a manila folder in a filing cabinet that Ryder probably had the key to. The document would vanish by morning, misplaced in a bureaucratic shuffle, and I would be left with nothing but an escalating harassment charge.
They controlled the access. They controlled the records in this building. I couldn't fight Ryder inside his own fortress.
"I know how much money I withdrew from the bank," I said carefully, dropping my hand away from my jacket. "I know what he took."
Miller leaned back, a smug smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. "Right. So it's your word against his. And his word is backed by a sworn oath and a documented incident report of you acting aggressively. Let me give you some advice, Walter. Go home. Pay your bills. Don't come in here throwing wild accusations around without a shred of evidence. Because if you push this, we'll upgrade that warning to a formal charge of filing a false police report, and you'll be spending the night in a cell instead of your own bed."
The threat hung in the harsh fluorescent light. It wasn't just a dismissal; it was a promise.
I didn't argue. I didn't raise my voice. I turned my back on the desk sergeant and walked out of the precinct, the heavy glass doors swinging shut behind me.
The late afternoon air was freezing, but I barely felt it. I walked back to my truck, climbed into the cab, and locked the doors. I reached into my jacket and pulled out the printed ledger sheet, tracing the ink of the serial numbers with my thumb.
Silence wouldn't protect me. An apology wouldn't get my tax money back. Waiting for the system to correct itself was a fool's errand because the system was doing exactly what it was designed to do: protect its own.
Ryder thought he had won because he controlled the local narrative. But he didn't control the federal banking system, and he didn't know these bills were marked. If I wanted my dignity back, I couldn't just complain. I had to track him. I had to find out exactly where a corrupt cop goes to spend five crisp, traceable hundred-dollar bills, and I had to make sure the right people were watching when he did.
CHAPTER 2 CONTINUED
Shift change was at four o'clock. I knew the precinct's rhythm from years of hauling municipal scrap and clearing out their impound overflows. When the hour approached, the parking lot began to stir. Uniformed officers walked out in pairs, their shoulders dropping as they shed the weight of their shifts. They moved with the easy assurance of men who owned the streets they patrolled.
At ten past four, Ryder walked through the double doors. He was out of uniform, wearing a dark leather jacket and carrying a black canvas duffel bag over his shoulder. He didn't look like a man who had just robbed a citizen and falsified a police report to cover his tracks. He looked entirely relaxed, stopping to joke with a passing detective before cutting across the asphalt to a late-model gray Dodge Durango.
I waited until his brake lights flared and he pulled out onto the avenue. Then, I turned my ignition. The old V8 engine choked once, sputtered, and finally caught, the exhaust rattling against the pavement. I dropped the column shifter into drive and pulled into traffic, keeping a white commercial box truck between my cracked windshield and his rear bumper.
Tracking a man in a city you’ve worked in for forty years isn't about speed. It’s about knowing the rhythm of the traffic lights and the lanes that bottleneck during the late afternoon rush. Ryder drove with the careless, aggressive confidence of someone who never looked in his rearview mirror for threats. Why would he? In his mind, he was the threat.