Not urgent yet, but I need you to know what's happening in case it becomes urgent fast. She gave him the short version. Fast and clean. The way she'd learned to brief a supervisor with limited time. Harold listened without interrupting the old habit of a careful man who'd spent 30 years letting other people finish their sentences before he offered an opinion.
Your father called me about those two. Harold finally said years back I told him to keep documenting everything and let it sit. Said the department wasn't ready to hear it yet. Not from one man alone. I always meant to circle back to it.
Never did. That's on me. It's on them, Norah said. Not you, maybe. Harold said.
Either way, you call me the second anything gets formal. I'll drive up myself if I have to. Before they hung up, Harold added one more thing. The kind of small, practical wisdom he'd probably repeated to a 100 clients over 30 years of practice. Whatever paper they bring you, remember this.
An order that isn't specific isn't really an order. It's a suggestion dressed up in official language. Make him read it out loud if you have to. Make him tell you in his own words exactly what he thinks it allows. People like that rarely sound as confident saying something out loud as they do writing it down.
We'll remember, Norah said. And Norah, Harold added, his voice softening. Your father would be proud of both of you. For whatever that's worth this morning. It's worth quite a bit actually, Norah said and meant it.
Get dressed, Vivien said once the call ended. Already halfway up the stairs. Whatever this is, we're not doing it in yesterday's clothes. By 9:15, two patrol cars pulled up to the curb. Voss stepped out of the first vehicle, a folded document in his hand, his uniform as crisp as it had been the night before.
Like sleep and stress simply didn't leave marks on him the way they did on other people. Hutchkins climbed out of the passenger seat, his expression set in hard, flat lines. Behind them, a second car delivered Boyd, Pierce, and Doyle. Each man carrying himself differently in the morning light. Boyd walked with the same loose, easy aggression as the night before.