“Did he tell you what evidence was inside?”
“No.”
“Did he mention an encrypted drive?”
Travis's eyes flicked upward.
It was a tiny movement.
But it was enough.
Adrian put down his pen.
“You've heard of it.”
“No.”
“You reacted when I mentioned it.”
“I'm nervous.”
“That's possible. But you're also aware of something you haven't told me.”
Travis pressed his lips together.
Adrian leaned back.
“I'm going to ask one final question before we stop. Did Lieutenant Harris tell you that the department had already received an inquiry about the missing evidence?”
Travis's breathing changed.
He stared at the table for several seconds.
Then he nodded.
“He said the file was supposed to be gone.”
Adrian felt the room become very quiet.
“Which file?”
“The Foster file.”
Daniel Foster.
The dead detective.
The missing storage device.
The altered evidence log.
Everything was converging on the same point.
Adrian kept his voice controlled.
“Who said the file was supposed to be gone?”
Travis's eyes filled with panic.
“I don't know.”
“Was it Lieutenant Harris?”
“I don't know.”
“Was it Deputy Chief Vance?”
Travis shook his head.
“I don't know. I swear.”
Adrian closed the folder.
“Then we will verify your statement through the records.”
He stood and moved toward the door.
Behind him, Travis spoke again.
“Detective?”
Adrian turned.
The officer looked smaller now, stripped of the authority he had used so casually in the parking lot.
“I didn't know who you were.”
Adrian regarded him for a long moment.
“That's not what concerns me.”
“Then what does?”
Adrian's voice was quiet.
“You knew you didn't have a reason to put your hands on me. You knew you hadn't established grounds to draw your weapon. You knew you were following an instruction that made you uncomfortable.”
Travis lowered his eyes.
“And you did it anyway,” Adrian continued. “Not because you believed it was right. Because you believed the person who gave the order would protect you.”
Travis said nothing.
Adrian opened the door.
“That is the part we need to understand.”
He stepped into the corridor.
Marcus Reed was waiting outside.
“Well?” Marcus asked.
“Lieutenant Harris gave him the assignment. Someone provided a precise description of me. And they knew the Foster file was supposed to disappear.”
Marcus's expression darkened.
“Do we bring Harris in?”
“Not yet.”
“Why not?”
“Because if Harris is taking orders from Vance, he'll warn him the moment he realizes we're investigating.”
Marcus folded his arms.
“So what's the next move?”
Adrian looked through the glass panel in the interview-room door.
Travis was sitting motionless at the table.
“We follow the evidence before we follow the people.”
“And if the evidence points straight at Vance?”
“Then we make sure he can't erase it.”
Adrian's phone vibrated.
A message had arrived from the digital forensics team.
RECOVERED FILE FOUND ON WAREHOUSE SERVER. POSSIBLE AUDIO RECORDING. REQUIRES IMMEDIATE REVIEW.
Beneath it was a second line.
FILE CREATION TIME: 11:41 P.M. TONIGHT.
Adrian stared at the timestamp.
The file had been created two minutes before Travis stopped him.
Someone had known the operation was coming.
Someone had accessed the warehouse server while the team was still outside.
And someone had left behind a recording that might explain why Daniel Foster had died.
Adrian looked at Marcus.
“Get the team back to the warehouse.”
Marcus immediately reached for his radio.
Adrian opened the message attachment.
The audio file contained only thirty-one seconds.
At first, there was static.
Then a man's voice emerged.
“If Cross gets the original, we're all finished.”
A second voice replied.
“He won't get it. Cole has been told what to do.”
Adrian stopped breathing for a moment.
The first voice spoke again.
“And the Foster report?”
“Already changed.”
A pause.
Then the second man added a sentence that made Adrian's blood run cold.
“There's one thing they still haven't found.”
The recording ended.
Adrian replayed it.
Once.
Twice.
On the third listen, he recognized something in the background: the faint rhythmic sound of a clock chiming the quarter hour.
He looked at the file's creation time again.
11:41 p.m.
Then he remembered the old clock mounted in the administrative corridor of the Westbridge Police Department.
It chimed every fifteen minutes.
The recording had not been made in the warehouse.
It had been recorded inside the police department itself.
Which meant that the person discussing the missing evidence had been standing in the building while Travis was ordered to intercept Adrian.
And the voice might belong to someone who had spent years pretending to protect the department.
Adrian locked his phone.
“Marcus.”
“Yeah?”
“Cancel the plan to bring Harris in tonight.”
Marcus frowned.
“You just said—”
“I know what I said. The recording changes everything.”
Adrian looked toward the interview room.
“Someone inside the department is feeding us just enough information to keep us moving in the direction they want.”
“And you think the recording is bait?”
“I think we need to find out who made it before they know we have it.”
He slipped the phone into his pocket.
Outside, the rain had stopped.
The city lights reflected across the wet pavement, and the black tactical vehicle waited beneath the streetlamps.
Adrian had arrived that night expecting to recover a missing storage device.
Instead, he had uncovered a coordinated effort to stop him, a compromised chain of command, and evidence that someone inside the department had altered a dead detective's case file.
The officer who had tried to humiliate him was only the beginning.
Now Adrian needed to find the person who had ordered the confrontation.
Because the recording had made one thing clear.
The person responsible was close enough to watch the operation unfold.
Close enough to know every move Adrian made.
And possibly close enough to be listening to the same conversation right now.
End of Part 1.
mật giúp anh có thể cũng là người đã phản bội Daniel Foster.