But it was the first time he had sounded afraid.
The bailiff asked Adrienne whether she needed medical attention. She looked down at the torn cloth, then at the button near her shoe.
“Yes,” she said. “And please leave that where it is until someone photographs it.”
Across the room, Rourke stared at the rear doors.
For the first time, Adrienne wondered whether the person he feared most was someone who had not come to court.
Adrienne asked him to repeat himself.
Rourke looked up from the pouch. “You heard me.”
“Who told you?”
His expression closed. He folded the empty pouch and pushed it beneath the papers in her tote.
“Where is the rest of the paperwork?”
“What paperwork?”
“The red folder.”
There was a red folder on the passenger seat, but it held photocopies of housing complaints and a draft letter about broken heating. Adrienne had carried it because a client had asked her to check a paragraph before a meeting the following week.
She watched Rourke open it against the roof of her car. He turned several pages, angled his flashlight across them, and appeared irritated by what he read.
“What exactly are you looking for?” she asked.
He shut the folder.
“Who else saw this money?”
The question frightened her more than the search. She wanted to give him a list because lists made things verifiable. She wanted him to know there were witnesses, a transport sheet, records that existed somewhere beyond this dark shoulder.
But his voice made the information feel dangerous.
“It was counted at the clinic,” she said. “There are records.”
Rourke held the cash low beside his thigh. He was not examining it now. He was deciding something.
“Then they can explain it.”
“Are you seizing it?”
“Get back in your car.”
“I need a receipt. Your badge number. An incident number.”
He moved closer. Adrienne smelled wet nylon and the sweet chemical scent of his chewing gum.
“I said get back in.”
She looked at the nameplate again. Rourke. She said it silently three times. She noticed a pale scratch beside the cruiser number, 318, and a narrow white scar on his left index finger.
Her phone lay in the console. She had not reached for it because every time her hand moved he watched her belt and pockets. Now she understood that a phone was useful only if you could safely put your hand on it.
He returned her license. The cash stayed in his hand.
“What happens to the money?”
He looked directly at her.
“What money?”
She waited, hoping the question was a warning she had misunderstood.
Rourke tapped her roof with the closed folder.
“Drive home, counselor.”
He had read her occupation from the card behind her license, a small firm identification she kept in the same sleeve. The word did not sound respectful. It sounded like a reminder that he knew something about her life.
She sat down slowly. He tossed the folder onto the passenger seat and shut the door before she had pulled her left foot fully inside. The edge caught her shoe, not her ankle. She would remember the distinction because Miles would later insist on recording exactly what had happened, without improving any detail to make it worse.
The cruiser pulled away before she started her engine.
Adrienne sat beside the canal until the blue light disappeared.
A truck passed on the opposite side of the canal. She watched its lights through the bare branches until they vanished beyond a bend. Somewhere, its driver was probably thinking about an ordinary destination. Adrienne tried to remember that she had a destination too, and that the road did not end where the officer had left her.
Then she called the department's public number and asked whether an officer had reported taking property from a driver on Briar Cut Road.
The dispatcher asked for her location, then her plate number.
A pause followed.
“I don't have a stop showing for that vehicle.”
Adrienne looked at the empty pouch.
“He just left.”
“Do you need an officer sent out?”
The question was ordinary. Her reaction was not. She realized she did not want another cruiser arriving while she stood alone in the same place.
“I want to make a report,” she said.