He looked toward her.
“Why?”
“Because once you do, you become responsible for the chain of custody.”
“What’s inside?”
“I’m not discussing restricted county material on a roadside.”
Derek smiled without humor.
“Convenient.”
Then he broke the seal.
Aaron muttered, “Damn it.”
The latches opened.
Inside were audit summaries, personnel-review packets, encrypted drives, internal complaint files, evidence-system reports, and individually sealed folders marked with sequential control numbers. Everything had been cataloged and packed with the deliberate precision of official material. Nothing about the case looked like stolen paperwork somebody had tossed into a trunk.
Derek opened the first folder.
Aaron said, “Stop.”
Derek ignored him.
His eyes moved across several pages.
Then stopped.
Aaron saw the color leave his face.
“What?”
Derek closed the folder too quickly.
“Nothing.”
Maya knew that meant the opposite.
Derek opened another packet.
Halfway down the second page he found his own name.
DEREK MADDOX
The entries beneath it referenced an unresolved evidence discrepancy, an excessive-force complaint, and a traffic report that had undergone unexplained supervisory modification. None of those entries proved Derek guilty of anything. They proved only that somebody conducting the transition review believed the incidents deserved another look.
That nuance did not matter to Derek.
He looked toward Maya.
“Where did you get this?”
“The control number.”
“Who are you?”
“You have my driver’s license.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
Maya remained silent.
Derek closed the case.
“You’re being detained for unlawful possession of restricted county property.”
Aaron stared at him.
“We haven’t established it’s unlawful.”
“Her name isn’t on these files.”
“You haven’t checked the custody authorization.”
“We’ll do that downtown.”
A sedan pulled onto the shoulder fifty yards behind them.
An older white woman stepped out.
She stayed behind the guardrail and raised her phone.
Derek noticed immediately.
“Ma’am, keep moving.”
The woman did not.
“I’m off the road.”
“This is an active police scene.”
“I’m not interfering.”
Her name was Helen Parker, sixty-seven, a retired emergency-room nurse who had spent thirty-four years watching frightened people later remember chaotic events differently. She did not know Maya, did not know Derek, and had no idea what began the traffic stop. What she did know was that a Bentley sat on the roadside with nearly every window smashed while a handcuffed woman stood several yards away.
So Helen recorded.
Derek ordered her to leave again.
She refused politely.
Aaron noticed.
Maya noticed too.
Chapter 4: The First Version of the Truth
A tow truck arrived twenty minutes later. Derek ordered the Bentley impounded as evidence while Aaron quietly asked him which suspected offense justified seizing the entire vehicle. Derek answered that it was part of an active investigation. Aaron stopped arguing because the highway had become the worst place to force a confrontation with a senior deputy who was already escalating.
Derek sat inside his patrol SUV while the Bentley was loaded onto the flatbed. The removed dash camera rested on his center console. He picked it up, located the memory-card slot, and connected the card to the reader attached to his mobile computer.