The Funeral Ended When Rex Chose the Wall Over the Coffin

Harris closed his eyes.

“I thought he was panicking,” Grant continued. “Mike had been sleeping three hours a night. He was seeing Collins everywhere.”

“He was right.”

“I know that now.”

“What time did you call him back?”

“I didn’t.”

The two men remained silent.

Grant finally said, “There’s more.”

Harris waited.

“Mike left a voicemail at one fifty-eight.”

“During the pursuit.”

“Maybe.”

“What did it say?”

“Mostly road noise. He said, ‘Tell Elena I tried.’ Then he said your name.”

“My name?”

“He said, ‘Harris has the red file.’”

“I don’t.”

“I told Ortiz.”

“What red file?”

“I thought you would know.”

Harris walked into his dark living room. On the mantel stood a photograph from Daniels’s academy graduation. Harris had shaken his hand that day. Collins stood one row behind them.

“Did Daniels ever give me anything?”

“That’s what I’m asking.”

“No.”

“Could he have left it somewhere?”

“At headquarters?”

“He didn’t trust headquarters.”

Harris looked toward the coat he had worn at the funeral. It still hung over the kitchen chair. “The chapel.”

“They searched the wall.”

“He had already hidden the camera.”

“He could have hidden something else.”

Ortiz did not want Harris at the chapel. She said so six times. On the seventh, she agreed to meet him there because the building remained an active evidence site and Father Malloy had reported a second disturbed area near the sacristy.

The priest let them in after dark.

The funeral flowers had been removed. The coffin was gone. Without either, the chapel appeared smaller. The damaged corridor wall remained exposed behind clear plastic sheeting.

“What did Daniels mean by a red file?” Ortiz asked.

Father Malloy frowned. “He carried a red folder when he visited.”

“Where did he put it?”

“I did not see.”

“Did he enter the sacristy?”

“Yes. He asked to use the restroom.”

The sacristy contained vestments, candles, metal cabinets, and a narrow desk stacked with parish records. Agents had searched it after the camera discovery. They found no folder.

Harris stood in the doorway while Ortiz and a technician examined the floor and cabinets. He tried to picture Daniels moving through the room under pressure. A man hiding evidence would choose a place he expected to remain unnoticed but accessible. Daniels had known the chapel only as a visitor. He would not know which cabinets were locked or how often drawers were opened.

Harris looked at the purple stole hanging from a brass hook.

Father Malloy had worn it at the funeral.

Gold crosses had been embroidered down both sides. The lower hem on the right side sagged slightly.

“Father,” Harris said. “Is that the same stole you wore when Daniels came here?”

The priest touched it. “Yes.”

“Did he handle it?”

“I don’t recall.”

Ortiz watched Harris.

He did not touch the fabric. “The hem.”

The technician photographed the stole before lifting it from the hook. Inside the lining, behind a loose section of stitching, she found a small red waterproof pouch no larger than a paperback book.

Father Malloy sat down hard in the desk chair.

“I truly did not know,” he said.

Inside the pouch were photocopies of payment vouchers, cash-deposit slips, a handwritten statement by Daniels, and a memory card sealed in a plastic sleeve.

The statement was eight pages long.

Daniels admitted taking $600 from seized cash three years earlier. He described returning it before the official count. Collins had witnessed the act and promised not to report him. Two months later, Collins asked him to sign a false informant-payment voucher. Daniels refused until Collins reminded him that theft from evidence could end his career and expose him to prosecution.

Daniels signed.

Over the next three years, Collins submitted additional false vouchers. Sometimes Daniels received blank forms and signed them without amounts. Sometimes he certified payments to informants he never met. He told himself he was protecting his family from the consequences of one failed moment. Eventually, he began copying records.

The memory card contained photographs of vouchers, messages from Collins, and an audio recording made four weeks before Daniels died.

In that recording, Collins spoke about money spent on his wife’s medical care.

“It started because I needed it,” he said. “Then it kept going because stopping would make the first time real.”

Daniels answered, “It was real when we did it.”

Collins said, “You think confession makes you different from me?”

“No.”

“Then what does it make you?”

“Late.”

The recording also contained a threat.

“If you take this to Harris,” Collins said, “I will tell Elena about the six hundred. I will tell your son. I will make sure every cop in the state knows you wore the uniform after putting evidence money in your pocket.”

Daniels replied, “That’s what the statement is for.”

“What statement?”

“The one where I tell them myself.”

The recording ended with a chair scraping and Collins saying, “Don’t do this, Mike.”

The red pouch did not contain proof of murder. It proved motive, coercion, theft, and Daniels’s intention to confess. It also transformed the investigation.

Collins requested another interview.

Ortiz allowed Harris to observe from behind one-way glass because the defense had indicated Collins intended to discuss command decisions. Harris stood beside the prosecutor while Collins entered the room with his attorney.

Collins looked older than he had at the funeral. His short brown hair had lost its careful part. He wore county jail clothing and carried no belt. The guarded narrowness of his face remained, but the performance of authority had left him.

Ortiz placed a photograph of Unit 27’s damaged bumper on the table.

Collins glanced at it. “I met him at the warehouse.”