Chương 7
Beside the warehouse, he had written: P keeps unit 27 here when he doesn’t want GPS questions.
“Unit twenty-seven?” Harris asked.
“You tell me.”
“It was an unmarked SUV assigned to narcotics.”
“Was?”
“It was removed from service after a transmission failure.”
“When?”
“I don’t know.”
She slid the notebook toward him. “Ortiz says the city vehicle records show it was at a repair shop the night Michael died.”
“Then she’s checked.”
“The shop says it arrived that afternoon. Michael wrote this two weeks before.”
“What are you asking me to do?”
“I’m asking whether Collins could use a city vehicle without creating a record.”
Harris knew three ways. Supervisors could sign out pool keys manually when the electronic system failed. Mechanics could release vehicles for road testing. Command staff could authorize temporary reassignment without updating the main fleet database until the next business day.
He had approved that final exception years earlier after officers complained the system was too slow during emergencies.
“Possibly,” he said.
Elena waited.
Harris understood the rest of the question. “And I know where those records would be.”
“You’re on leave.”
“Yes.”
“Does that mean you’re not allowed to remember?”
He looked at the map again. “Give this to Ortiz.”
“She has a photograph.”
“Then let her handle it.”
Elena stood. “Michael let fear turn him into an accomplice. You let procedure turn you into a bystander. I don’t know which one of you had the better excuse.”
She picked up the box.
At the door, Harris said, “Why bring it to me if Ortiz has it?”
Elena shifted the box against her hip. “Because she’s investigating Collins.”
“And?”
“I’m trying to decide whether you deserve to remain part of how this ends.”
After she left, Harris sat at the table until the sunlight moved off the notebook-shaped patch of dust.
He called Ortiz.
“I know you have Daniels’s map,” he said.
“I do.”
“Unit twenty-seven could have been released under a temporary command authorization.”
“We checked electronic authorizations.”
“Not the paper forms.”
“What paper forms?”
“The fleet office keeps carbon copies for emergency releases. Basement file room. Gray cabinet behind retired maintenance logs.”
A pause followed.
“Why are these not in the policy manual?” Ortiz asked.
“They were supposed to be temporary.”
“How temporary?”
“Eight years.”
Ortiz exhaled. “Anything else?”
“Collins had authority to sign them.”
“We’ll get a warrant.”
“You don’t need one. They’re city records.”
“I may need one if I want a clean path around your department’s sudden interest in helping.”
Harris accepted that.
“Did Elena come to see you?” Ortiz asked.
“Yes.”
“She was asked not to share case materials.”
“She showed me her husband’s notebook.”
“Which is evidence.”
“It belongs to her.”
“Not all ownership questions are that simple during an active investigation.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
Harris looked at the repaired drawer across the kitchen. “More than I did last week.”
Agents found the carbon copy the next morning.
Collins had signed out Unit 27 at 6:40 p.m. on the night Daniels died. The stated purpose was “post-repair operational evaluation.” No mileage was recorded upon return. The form had been filed behind maintenance logs from the previous year.
The repair shop’s security video showed the SUV leaving its lot at 6:52 p.m. The driver’s face was obscured by glare, but the person wore a dark department jacket. At 10:13 p.m., a traffic camera captured the vehicle traveling north toward the abandoned grain warehouse.
Daniels’s phone records placed him in the same area.
At 1:46 a.m., a private security camera at a trucking yard recorded two sets of headlights entering the industrial road. At 2:07, one vehicle left at high speed. At 2:11, Daniels’s truck failed to negotiate the curve and entered the drainage canal.
Unit 27 returned to the repair shop at 3:02 a.m.
The front bumper had new damage.
The shop manager had assumed one of his employees caused it during a test drive. Collins approved payment for the repair from a discretionary maintenance account the next day.
Ortiz arrested him at his daughter’s house.
Harris learned from the television. The video showed Collins in handcuffs wearing khaki pants and a gray sweater. He did not resist. Before entering the state vehicle, he looked toward the cameras and said, “I did not kill Michael Daniels.”
The prosecutor charged him initially with evidence tampering, theft of public funds, fraud, official misconduct, and obstruction. The death remained under investigation.
Public anger split into camps. Some people treated Daniels as a whistleblower murdered for exposing corruption. Others treated him as a thief who had decided to cooperate only when discovery became inevitable. Collins’s supporters posted photographs of his late wife during chemotherapy and accused the city of criminalizing a desperate husband. Daniels’s supporters posted photographs of Noah at the funeral.
Someone leaked the recovered chapel audio.
Harris listened to it once online before closing the browser. Without the static and pauses, the edited clip made Daniels sound fearless and Collins sound purely threatening. The missing complexity had been removed by whoever wanted the cleanest version of outrage.
Grant called that evening.
“Did you leak it?” Harris asked.
“No.”
“Do you know who did?”
“No.”
“Would you tell me?”
Grant considered. “Probably not.”
Harris appreciated the honesty more than he wanted to.
“Ortiz interviewed me again,” Grant said. “She asked about the night Mike died.”
“What did you tell her?”
“That he called me at eleven forty.”
Harris gripped the phone. “You never mentioned that.”
“She had his records. She already knew.”
“What did he say?”
“He asked me to meet him at the warehouse.”
“Did you?”
“No.”
“Why?”
Grant was quiet long enough that Harris checked the screen to see whether the call had dropped.
“My daughter was in town,” he said. “First time in six months. We were at dinner. Mike sounded worked up. I told him not to do anything stupid and said I’d call in the morning.”
May you like
“Did he mention Collins?”
“He said Peter was following him.”
