Chapter 6: The State Police Convoy
Sergeant Marcus Miller didn't waste breath arguing jurisdiction. Within forty minutes, two unmarked Ford Explorers turned off the county highway and rolled past the wrought-iron gates of the mansion without cutting their headlights. Their tires crunched over the gravel drive, stopping twenty yards from the grand front steps where my black leather travel bag still sat abandoned on the marble floor inside. Marcus stepped out from the passenger side of the lead vehicle, his heavy canvas field jacket zipped against the damp evening air, his breath pluming white under the security lights. He didn't offer a handshake; we didn't have that kind of history anymore. Fourteen months of dead ends had turned us into ghosts rattling chains in the dark.
"A state judge signed it thirty minutes ago based on the affidavit I phoned in," Marcus said, keeping his voice low as he walked up the stone steps. He flicked his gaze past me toward the heavy oak double doors, noting the deadbolts thrown from the inside. "You've got Elena and the kids locked down tight inside?"
"As tight as four walls and thirty years of reinforced cedar can manage," I replied, holding up the burner phone I'd lifted from the gatehouse. "The local sheriff's department is dirty, Marcus. Arthur Vance isn't just looking the other way; he's running the logbook for whatever happened to my wife. The calls coming off this burner route right through the county maintenance yard."
Marcus took the plastic-wrapped phone from my palm, sliding it into an evidence pouch with a practiced, unhurried motion. His eyes narrowed as he examined the cheap casing. "Vance has been hiding behind county tax lines for five years. If we hit his pump house without the state police holding the perimeter, his deputies would roll in and seize the evidence under local code before our forensics team even dusted for prints."
"Then we don't wait for morning," I said, stepping off the porch toward his cruiser. "The sedan that dropped this burner headed north toward the river fifteen minutes ago. They think I'm still sitting inside staring at my daughters baking flour into the kitchen counter. They don't know the state police are already inside the wire."
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Marcus looked back toward his troopers, two seasoned investigators who had spent the last year chasing shadows across three counties while local authorities buried every deposition we filed. He gave them a sharp, downward nod. "Mount up," he called out. "We're taking the back timber road to the pump house. Chris, you're riding with me."
The convoy rolled out in reverse, cutting their headlights before they hit the main highway, slipping through the dark pine breaks like wolves on a cold scent.
