Vehicle location data arrived in a format that made Adrienne understand why specialists earned their fees.
Rows of coordinates did not look like a confession. They looked like numbers produced by equipment that sometimes lost contact, rounded times, and resumed reporting after gaps. Miles hired a qualified analyst rather than drawing a bright line on a map himself.
The analyst's conclusion was narrower than Adrienne hoped and more useful than a confident guess.
Cruiser 318 had transmitted a location near the north district early in the shift. Later records placed it back at the central station. Between those points, there was a gap long enough to include the stop, but the available data could not independently put the cruiser on Briar Cut Road.
The department's original response had treated the assignment sheet as though it filled that gap.
It did not.
Nina interviewed the supervisor responsible for the response. Lieutenant Victor Brand said he had relied on the patrol summary and Rourke's denial. He had not personally checked the underlying location record before signing the letter.
That was carelessness. Whether it was more would depend on what else existed.
A roadside commercial camera offered another possibility. The tile warehouse had closed, but a neighboring storage yard still recorded its entrance. Nina requested the footage before its next automatic overwrite. The image showed headlights passing at approximately the right time, then a vehicle with emergency lights following less than a minute later.
The angle did not reveal a plate. The camera's clock was inaccurate. A delivery truck visible in the same sequence helped investigators compare the time with an independent receipt from the driver.
It was work without applause: finding the driver, confirming the receipt, checking how the camera clock had drifted, documenting every adjustment instead of hiding the inconvenient ones.
Adrienne asked Miles whether the video proved the stop.
โIt supports your account of two vehicles traveling that way. We still need the rest.โ
She began to dislike the phrase even while understanding why he used it.
The analyst showed Miles an example of an apparently useful location point that belonged to a different vehicle after a unit assignment changed. They corrected the working map before it reached a filing. Adrienne found the correction embarrassing until Miles reminded her that finding a mistake before relying on it was the purpose of checking. She had no interest in proving a true account with a false shortcut. The corrected map was less dramatic and far more valuable to her.
The rest included a clerk's memory of Rourke returning late, an unexplained deletion request affecting a draft patrol summary, and a phone call between the officer and a number registered to Harborlight's office service.
A call record did not say who held the clinic phone or what was discussed. Lydia told Nina that officers occasionally called about people requesting emergency assistance. Paul said he sometimes used the office handset after hours because his mobile reception was poor inside the building.
Both explanations could be checked.
Adrienne was not given every investigative detail while those checks continued. At first she experienced that as another exclusion. Nina explained the boundary without treating her like a child.
โYou are a witness and a complainant. You also deserve updates. Those things don't mean you should receive every other witness's account before I interview them.โ
Adrienne thought about her own clients and the occasions when she had mistaken a request for certainty for a request for information.
โAll right,โ she said. โTell me what you can.โ
Nina told her the inquiry remained open and that her account had not been disproved by the absence of a citation. She also asked Adrienne to report contact that felt threatening rather than investigating it herself.
Two days later, an unsigned envelope arrived at her firm. Inside was a photocopy of her public complaint, with one line marked in red: transport of organizational funds.
Her receptionist asked whether to throw it away.
โNo,โ Adrienne said.
She photographed the envelope where it lay, called Miles, and followed the instructions she had once given other people so easily.
That night she moved a chair away from her front window because she was tired of checking the street every time headlights crossed the wall.
Then she moved it back.
Fear could change where she sat for an evening. She did not want it furnishing the rest of her house.
Lydia Sutter came to Adrienne's office on a Tuesday afternoon carrying a grocery bag of oranges.