A small notification appeared.
SECURE EVIDENCE SESSION — ACTIVE
She looked directly into his eyes.
“Too late.”
His expression tightened.
“What did you do?”
She lowered the phone slightly.
“Internal Affairs has been watching.”
The sergeant laughed.
But the sound was forced.
“Nice try.”
Then two black SUVs appeared at the intersection.
They turned sharply onto the street and stopped behind the police cruiser.
Their doors opened.
Four investigators in dark suits stepped out, followed by two senior uniformed officers.
One investigator raised an identification folder.
“INTERNAL AFFAIRS! STEP AWAY FROM THE VEHICLE!”
The youngest officer froze with both hands inside the passenger compartment.
The oldest stepped away from the rear wheel.
The sergeant turned toward the arriving investigators, his face losing color.
The lead investigator pointed toward him.
“Keep your hands visible, Sergeant.”
For the first time that afternoon, the officer obeyed without arguing.
The Black CEO stood beside her open supercar, white cape moving gently in the breeze.
She didn't smile.
She didn't celebrate.
She simply looked at the man who had just shoved her and asked one final question.
“Do you still want to know where the evidence is?”
The sergeant stared at her.
Then he looked toward the investigators.
Because the answer was suddenly much more frightening than he'd expected.
The evidence wasn't inside the car.
It hadn't been inside the handbag.
And the three officers had spent the past eleven minutes doing something that the people in those SUVs had been waiting months to document.
But to understand why three police officers would tear apart a luxury supercar in broad daylight, it was necessary to go back seventeen days.
Back to a woman who lost her car.
A storage facility that was supposed to contain it.
And a small accounting discrepancy that somebody inside the city government was willing to do almost anything to keep hidden.
Seventeen days earlier, the CEO had been sitting in her company's headquarters overlooking the Hudson River when her executive assistant delivered an unusual request.
The request came from a woman who worked as a home health aide in Brooklyn.
She was fifty-four years old, lived with her adult daughter, and spent most weekdays traveling between elderly patients who depended on her for assistance with meals, medication reminders, and daily living.
Her income was modest.
Her car was thirteen years old.
And three weeks earlier, it had been towed from a street where she believed she was legally parked.