“You okay?”
“Yes.”
“You get kicked?”
“Attempted.”
Blake snapped:
“He resisted.”
The clerk spoke before anyone else could.
“No, he didn't.”
Everyone turned.
Her name badge read Maya Reynolds.
She looked frightened the moment the words left her mouth.
Blake's face hardened.
“Maya.”
She swallowed.
“You shoved him first.”
Blake pointed toward Malik.
“He came into a secured station carrying sealed evidence.”
Claire asked:
“How did you know it was evidence?”
Blake stopped.
Claire continued:
“And how did you know the case?”
He looked at the gray envelope.
Then at the investigators.
“I saw it.”
“Where?”
“Somewhere.”
Malik finally smiled.
It contained no amusement.
“That's going to be a difficult report.”
Blake turned toward him.
“You think you're clever?”
“No.”
Malik stepped away from the counter.
“I think you talked too early.”
Claire moved between them.
“Sergeant Blake, you're being temporarily relieved of access to department evidence systems and internal networks pending execution of preservation orders.”
Blake laughed.
“You can't do that.”
Claire removed folded documents from her jacket.
“I can.”
His laugh died.
She placed the order on the counter.
Blake did not touch it.
Claire continued:
“Your department chief was notified thirty minutes ago.”
Blake looked toward the hallway.
“Chief Ramirez knows about this?”
“Yes.”
“Where is he?”
“Being interviewed.”
That hit harder.
Blake's shoulders dropped slightly.
Malik saw it.
Not because Blake cared about the chief.
Because he had believed his authority existed inside a closed system.
Now he understood the system had opened around him.
Claire turned to the officers.
“No one deletes anything.”
“No one disables cameras.”
“No one contacts witnesses outside normal operational necessity.”
“Any questions go through department counsel or the investigative command desk.”
Blake muttered:
“This is a witch hunt.”
Malik looked at him.
“Then you shouldn't have known the witch's name.”
Claire gave Malik a warning look.
He raised both hands.
Fair.
They were not here for victory lines.
They were here for evidence.
And the evidence had begun talking before they opened a single computer.
Forty-eight hours earlier, Gabriel Whitaker had been officially dead for nineteen days.
Unofficially, the investigation into his murder had been dying almost as quickly.
Whitaker was fifty-six, divorced, meticulous, and widely disliked by people whose budgets he reviewed.
He worked as an external forensic accountant for the state inspector general's office and specialized in public-contract fraud.
He was not a police officer.
Not a prosecutor.
Not someone who normally appeared in headlines.
He followed money.
Money rarely threatened people until someone explained where it had gone.
Three months before his death, Whitaker had been assigned to review discrepancies connected to Riverside Police Department's evidence-disposal contracts.
Nothing glamorous.
Old vehicles.
Auctioned electronics.
Seized property.
Storage vendors.
Destruction certificates for narcotics and weapons after cases closed.
Then Whitaker found something strange.
Several items listed as destroyed had appeared months later in unrelated police inventory photographs.
A seized luxury watch supposedly destroyed after a fraud conviction appeared on the wrist of a confidential source photographed during another operation.
Two batches of confiscated opioids marked as incinerated had weight discrepancies too large to be clerical.
A handgun logged as destroyed was later recovered during a shooting sixty miles away.
Whitaker widened the audit.
That was when money appeared.
Small payments.
Then larger ones.
Shell companies connected to towing services.
Property-maintenance contractors.
A private security firm called Northstar Civic Solutions.
Invoices that almost made sense.
Almost.
Whitaker contacted the state quietly.
Claire Bennett received the first briefing.
Malik Turner joined two weeks later.
By then, Whitaker had begun acting frightened.
He requested meetings in person instead of by phone.
Stopped emailing attachments.
Bought a second laptop.
Changed hotels twice during one week.
When Malik asked why, Whitaker answered:
“Because someone knows what I'm looking at before I finish looking.”
Malik remembered the sentence.
He also remembered not taking it seriously enough.
They had met in a diner outside Riverside.
Whitaker wore a blue shirt, wire-frame glasses, and the expression of a man who had slept badly for weeks.