Chương 5
“That isn’t what I asked.”
Harris stopped several feet away. “I did not know records were falsified.”
“Mike asked to transfer out of Collins’s unit.”
“I approved the transfer.”
“Six months after he requested it.”
“There were staffing issues.”
Grant laughed once without humor. “There are always staffing issues.”
“Did Daniels tell you why he wanted out?”
“He said Collins had him signing things he didn’t want to sign.”
“When?”
“Last summer.”
“And you didn’t report that?”
“I told him to.”
“You could have.”
“He asked me not to.”
Harris stared at him. “You honored that?”
“I thought he was scared of getting written up, not scared he’d end up dead.”
The words echoed through the concrete level.
Grant looked away first. “Rex was Mike’s training dog, you know.”
“I knew he worked with him.”
“He did more than work with him. When Rex came into the unit, he wouldn’t enter stairwells. Some bad training before we got him. Mike spent two months sitting on the bottom step feeding him pieces of chicken. Didn’t force him. Just sat there until the dog decided.”
Harris pictured Daniels in an empty station stairwell, wearing down fear without making a report of it.
“Why was Rex at the funeral?” he asked.
“Vega thought he should be. Elena agreed.”
“You think he smelled Daniels on the bag?”
“Probably. Or the adhesive. Or the evidence plastic. Dogs aren’t prophets, Chief.”
“No.”
“But he knew something we didn’t.”
Grant opened his truck door, then paused. “Mike wasn’t perfect.”
“I know.”
“No, you know the sentence. That’s different.”
“What are you telling me?”
Grant’s jaw moved before he spoke. “He took cash once.”
Harris remained still.
“From an arrest,” Grant continued. “Five hundred dollars. Maybe six. He put it back before the property count, but Collins saw him.”
“When?”
“Three years ago.”
“Why would Daniels take it?”
“His kid needed dental surgery. Insurance denied part of it. Elena didn’t know how bad their account was.”
“You’re telling me Daniels stole seized money.”
“I’m telling you he picked it up, carried it into the restroom, stared at himself, and brought it back. Collins was waiting outside.”
“How do you know?”
“Mike told me.”
“When?”
“After Collins started making him sign the vouchers.”
Harris felt anger rise, immediate and unfair. “And you kept this to yourself.”
Grant stepped closer. “He was ashamed.”
“So you protected him.”
“Yes.”
“From what?”
“From you.”
The answer landed harder than accusation.
Grant closed the truck door without getting in. “You like clean people, Chief. Clean records. Clean uniforms. Clean explanations. Mike thought if he told you the whole thing, you’d see only the five minutes when he almost became somebody else.”
“He committed a crime.”
“He stopped himself.”
“He concealed it.”
“He was trying to confess everything.”
“After three years.”
Grant’s face tightened. “People don’t become brave on schedule.”
Harris looked across the garage at a row of county vehicles. “Did Collins know Daniels planned to meet me?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you?”
“He said he had one last chance to do it right.”
“Did he mention the chapel?”
“No.”
“Did he give you records, copies, anything?”
Grant shook his head. “He didn’t trust me with them.”
“Why not?”
“Because I kept telling him to wait.”
Grant drove away. Harris stood in the garage until the cold reached through his coat.
The informant-fund audit arrived that evening. The discrepancies were not dramatic on paper. Twelve payments lacked complete signatures. Seven case numbers had been corrected by hand. Three informants appeared under slightly different spellings. The total amount in question was $18,740 across four years.
Ortiz’s financial analyst found that two listed informants did not exist.
A third existed but had been in state prison on three dates when records claimed he received cash.
Daniels had certified nine of those payments.
Collins had approved all twelve.
The amounts had grown gradually. Eight hundred dollars. Twelve hundred. Fifteen hundred. No single payment was large enough to attract immediate attention. Together they formed a pattern that looked less like sloppiness and more like practice.
The analyst also found that Collins deposited cash into his personal account within days of six false payments. The deposits were lower than the voucher amounts and irregular enough to avoid an obvious match. Some went toward medical bills from his wife’s final year. Others paid credit cards. One paid property taxes on his daughter’s house.
Harris learned these details from a formal briefing at which Ortiz reminded everyone that financial correlation was not proof of theft.
The body camera yielded nineteen minutes of damaged audio and eleven minutes of partial video. Most of the lens had been obstructed by the evidence bag, but the microphone captured the chapel meeting.
Daniels had arrived first.
He was breathing hard. For several minutes, he moved around the side corridor. Brick scraped against stone. Plastic crinkled. He muttered, “Come on,” twice.
Then Collins entered.
“You sent Harris a message,” Collins said.
“How did you see that?”
“I see a lot of things.”
“You shouldn’t be here.”
They argued about the vouchers. Collins accused Daniels of pretending he had been coerced when he had benefited from the scheme. Daniels admitted signing the forms. He denied taking any of the later money.
Collins said, “First time was yours, Mike. Don’t rewrite it.”
Daniels answered, “First time was the reason you knew I’d stay quiet.”
“You needed help.”
“I needed somebody to stop me.”
“I kept you out of prison.”
“You kept me useful.”
The audio weakened. Footsteps crossed the corridor. Collins’s voice became less clear.
“You blow this open, Elena learns what you did. Your boy learns. Everybody at your funeral gets to talk about what kind of man you almost were.”
Daniels said, “Maybe that’s better than what I became.”
Collins replied, “You don’t believe that.”
After a long silence, Daniels said, “I’m done being afraid of who finds out.”
May you like
A door closed.
The camera continued recording from inside the wall for another eight minutes. Daniels returned once and whispered something too damaged to recover. Then he left.
