She nodded.
"Yes."
I looked toward her camera.
"Follow your department's evidence-preservation procedures. Do not review or alter the recording on your own."
She nodded.
"Understood."
Keller looked as though he might say something.
Then thought better of it.
I turned back toward Rourke.
He was still holding the empty cup.
"Officer."
He looked up.
"Yes?"
"Put that down."
He obeyed.
The plastic cup struck the table with a tiny hollow sound.
Then I reached into my briefcase.
Removed a thick official document.
And looked toward the hallway.
"Now," I said, "I'd like to speak with the commander."
Nobody laughed.
Not anymore.
But the coffee incident was not why I had come to the Fourteenth Precinct.
It was merely the first mistake the officers made in front of me.
The reason I was there involved a missing evidence ledger, nearly two hundred thousand dollars in seized cash, and a woman whose name had been quietly removed from three official reports.
And within forty-eight hours, I would discover that the missing money was only the smallest part of the truth.
Eleven months earlier, on a freezing Thursday evening, officers assigned to the Fourteenth Precinct executed a search warrant at a vehicle exchange business on the south side of the city.
The business was called South Harbor Auto Exchange.
It occupied an old brick building near a rail yard, surrounded by repair garages, storage units, small restaurants, and family-owned shops that had survived decades of changing economic fortunes.
The owner was a sixty-one-year-old Black American man named Isaac Brooks.
He had spent thirty-five years working in automotive repair, towing, and used-vehicle sales.
He was not a wealthy man.
But he had built something stable.
His business employed eleven people.
Several had worked with him for more than a decade.
His daughter, Elena Brooks, handled office administration, customer records, and accounting.
She was twenty-nine years old, a single mother raising a seven-year-old boy.
Every morning, she dropped her son at school before driving to the garage.
Every afternoon, she balanced the books, returned customer calls, and checked vehicle titles before heading home.
The business was not glamorous.
The waiting room furniture had seen better days.
The coffee machine sometimes refused to work.
And the heating system made an alarming noise whenever the temperature dropped below freezing.
But customers trusted Isaac.
He had a reputation for fixing vehicles properly and refusing to sell cars he believed were unsafe.
For years, local drivers recommended him to relatives and neighbors.