And immediately afterward, he'd stopped asking ordinary questions and begun trying to force open the vehicle.
As though he wasn't merely investigating a supposedly stolen Rolls-Royce.
As though someone had told him there was something inside it that needed to be found.
Or removed.
The woman looked toward the damaged window.
Then she turned to the captain.
"There's something you need to know."
He straightened.
"What?"
Her eyes moved toward the older deputy.
"I don't think your men stopped me by accident."
Six hours earlier, the woman had been sitting inside a state government office in Atlanta, reviewing documents connected to a series of complaints from Hawthorne County residents.
The office was quiet.
There were no dramatic surveillance screens or walls covered with photographs.
Just desks, computers, filing cabinets, meeting rooms, and investigators doing the slow, often frustrating work of examining public records.
She had been assigned to the state's investigative division less than four years earlier.
Before that, she'd worked in financial analysis and administrative compliance, developing a reputation for noticing inconsistencies that other people dismissed as routine paperwork problems.
She was twenty-nine.
Young for the level of responsibility she'd recently received.
But her supervisors trusted her judgment.
She didn't rush toward accusations.
She didn't assume every complaint was valid.
And she understood that the most useful evidence often came from ordinary documents that nobody had bothered to compare carefully.
The Hawthorne County assignment had begun with a letter from an elderly resident.
The woman lived alone in a modest house on the edge of town.
Several months earlier, sheriff's deputies had stopped her adult grandson while he was driving her vehicle.
The grandson had been cited for an equipment violation.
The vehicle was subsequently towed under circumstances the family considered improper.
When the elderly woman tried to recover it, she discovered that storage fees had accumulated to an amount she couldn't afford.
She contacted the sheriff's department.
Then the towing company.
Then the county administrator.
Each office gave her a different explanation.
Eventually, the vehicle was sold through an auction process.