An Investigator Counted My Photographs While The Freight Bill Came Due

Caleb arrived before the shop opened. He brought two paper cups and an empty evidence case.

“Tea or coffee?” he asked.

“Which is the tea?”

“The one I didn't spill on my thumb.”

I took that cup.

Caleb Ortega was forty-three, Mexican American, with warm brown skin, close-cut black hair, and a small white scar through one eyebrow. He worked as an investigator for a regional state crime unit. His shirt cuffs were worn clean at the edges.

He read Bruno's demand twice.

“Did you receive that shipment?”

“No.”

“Did you sign anything last month?”

“A water-heater estimate. And a birthday card.”

“We'll start with the freight company's claimed receipt.”

He made the threat sound like a problem with a missing page. I could breathe around that.

Nina opened the safe. Caleb photographed the tray where it sat, then recorded each stone as I moved it onto clean paper. He kept my intake form with Bruno's signature.

“These pictures won't prove who stole them,” I said.

“Then don't tell me they do.”

I looked up.

“Tell me what they can prove,” he added.

I set my old image beside the live view through the microscope. We turned the empty-chair stone until the needles lined up. A pale crystal sat below them. Three small healed cracks curved behind it.

“This group, at these angles, supports a match,” I said. “We also compare the outside map and weight. It needs a second examiner.”

“Good.”

He wrote needs independent comparison.

He did not write magic fingerprint.

I gave him the archive drive, my signed agreement with Marian, and the lab book. Before he sealed them, we checked the old file list against my backup. Each file had a recorded digital checksum, a number used to show whether its contents had changed.

Marian had a copy of that list in an email from eighteen months earlier. So did her insurer.

“I kept this because a dealer once said I had changed a grade,” I told Caleb. “He owed me ninety dollars.”

“Did he pay?”

“After I sent the pictures.”

Caleb almost smiled.

At eleven, Bruno called the counter.

“My money,” he said.

Nina put him on speaker. Caleb stood beside me and nodded toward a fresh sheet.

“Please send the signed delivery receipt,” I said.

“Don't play clerk with me.”

“You sent a bill. I'm asking for its support.”

His breath came hard through the speaker.

“Bring the stones to the yard.”

“They have been released to an investigator.”

The line went quiet.

Then he said, “You won't always stand behind glass.”

Caleb took over. He gave his name, stated that he had heard the threat, and ended the call when Bruno began shouting.

“Did I make it worse?” I asked.

“He made a threat. That's his choice.”

By afternoon, someone had posted a notice on our door calling me a thief. Nina took it down with gloves from her soldering kit. Caleb collected it.

“You can close early,” Nina told me. “Your pay continues.”

“The shop didn't do this.”

“Neither did you.”

Caleb asked whether I had somewhere Bruno could not easily find. My sister lived in Sioux Falls, but I would not lead trouble to her children.

He arranged temporary witness lodging through his unit. I agreed to stay two nights while officers checked the threats. I packed a shirt, my pills, and the grocery list with the tiny chair.

“You can bring more,” Caleb said.

“I don't know what matters.”

He stood by my apartment door and waited while I chose a second shirt.

The house had two bedrooms and a kitchen that smelled of lemon soap. Caleb used the spare room for his overnight protection shift. Another officer would replace him the next evening.

After the recorded interview ended, he asked if I wanted quiet.

“People keep giving me quiet,” I said. “Usually because they think I have nothing to say.”

He sat across the table.

“What did you want to say?”

I told him how my father had taught science in a crowded school, how I had come to Rapid City for a job and stayed for the open sky. I told him how tired I was of being treated like furniture.

Caleb listened without reaching for his notebook.

For supper, he warmed soup. He set out two chairs, then moved one so neither of us faced the wall.

The next morning, his unit received records from Sayer Transfer. The company had sent them after being asked to preserve shipment files and explain the false bill.

Caleb opened the scanned packet at the kitchen table.

Halfway through, his spoon stopped.

The address of our witness house appeared under Delivery Exception.

Below it, someone had typed: ORTEGA. OCCUPIED OVERNIGHT.