Several outdated equipment manuals.
A stack of blank property forms.
And one large bound ledger.
I looked toward Dana.
She looked back.
Neither spoke.
The book was recovered.
But when the forensic examiner carefully checked its pages, the central problem remained.
Page 187 was gone.
The surrounding pages showed clean cuts near the binding.
Someone had removed the sheet deliberately.
And there was something else.
Between pages 186 and 188 lay a small strip of blue paper.
No larger than a receipt.
Folded twice.
The examiner photographed it before moving it.
Then carefully opened it.
The handwriting was hurried.
Only one line.
Check the original incident camera. They took both bags.
There was no name.
No date.
No explanation.
Dana looked toward me.
"Another tip?"
"Maybe."
I studied the paper.
Then looked toward the ledger.
Whoever placed it inside may have been trying to preserve evidence.
Or may have been attempting to direct us toward something misleading.
We could not assume its origin.
But the message matched the anonymous envelope.
Don't ask only where the money went.
Ask what else was in the bag.
And now this.
Check the original incident camera.
I looked toward Dana.
"Call the digital evidence team."
She nodded.
"What do you want?"
"The entire seizure inventory revisited. Every device. Every storage medium. Every property label. And every record of anyone accessing the missing recording device."
Dana picked up her phone.
I looked down at the damaged ledger.
Somebody had spent considerable effort trying to make one page disappear.
But the page was not the whole story.
The physical book had survived.
The scanner had preserved part of the missing entry.
The hallway camera recorded the unauthorized removal.
And someone inside the building had apparently been leaving small warnings for anyone willing to look.
The question was no longer whether evidence had been mishandled.
The question was what the missing recording device contained that frightened someone enough to compromise an entire police precinct.
The answer began with a mechanic.
Daniel Price.
The same man detained during the South Harbor raid.
He was thirty-eight, a white American automotive technician who had worked for Isaac Brooks for fourteen years.
He lived in a small house outside the city with his wife and two daughters.
When I first interviewed him, he seemed nervous.
He sat across from me at a table, twisting a baseball cap between his hands.
He had already spoken with local investigators several times.
Each time, he said, the questions focused on whether Isaac Brooks was involved in drug trafficking.