The Investigator Asked To See The Hours Before The Handshake

I left Voss a recorder with its full card inside.

I did not erase a frame. I photographed its number and his work order, then put both photographs with my notes.

The backup drive went home in my lunch bag.

At my kitchen table, with the Merrimack hidden beyond the dark roofs, I called the state attorney general’s office. I said I had a recording tied to a missing woman and a police officer.

I did not say his name to the first person who answered.

The next afternoon, an investigator named Julian Mercer called. He asked whether I could speak alone.

“Can you meet somewhere besides a police station?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Do you know Sergeant Pike?”

“I know his name. I haven’t discussed your call with him.”

“Will you keep me safe?”

There was a pause.

“I can take steps,” he said. “I won’t promise something I can’t control.”

That was the first thing I liked about him.

He came to the alley after closing, through the front door. Celeste let him in and stayed to wipe tables that were already clean.

Julian was a Black man of sixty-four, with a neat gray beard and a brown coat worn smooth at the cuffs. He kept his hands where I could see them.

“Ms. Whitfield?”

“Odessa. This is Celeste. She stays.”

“All right.”

He showed us his badge and gave me an office number. I called it myself before opening my bag.

He waited without taking offense.

When I played the exchange, he leaned forward. When it ended, he asked to see the whole evening.

“You don’t believe it?” Celeste said.

“I need to know what came before it.”

“A broken sweep link,” I said.

For the next hour, we watched me test lane twelve, scratch my neck, and lose a washer under the table frame.

Julian took notes through all of it.

“The clock runs four minutes fast,” I said. “I never fixed it.”

He wrote that down, too.

“Does the wrong time hurt us?” I asked.

“Hiding it would.”

I brought out a test sheet where I had noted the same error in September. He put it beside his notebook without covering either date.

“Most folks tell me to stop fussing over little things,” I said.

“Little things are what I can check,” he said.

“Do you have anything that helps establish the real time?”

Celeste raised one finger.

“My register closed at 10:39. Mara came in while I was counting quarters. She bought water. Two dollars.”

She went to the office and returned with a receipt roll.

“People think I save these because I’m cheap.”

“You are cheap,” I said.

“And useful.”

Julian smiled once. Then he asked permission to copy the full recording.

He used a clean drive and recorded a digital fingerprint for the file. He explained that the number would help show whether the copy changed later.

He gave me a signed receipt with the file name, date, and his case number.

“Keep your source drive as it is,” he said. “No trimming. No captions. Don’t send clips around.”

“I fix machines. I don’t make movies.”

“Then we understand each other.”

He asked what I had seen myself. I told him I had been in the supply room during the exchange. The camera had seen more than I had.

He drew a line between those two facts in his notebook.

I liked that, too.

Before he left, he looked at the work order.

“Can you delay this?”

“The pinsetter has to be disconnected safely. I can document the steps.”

“Do that. Don’t damage anything for us. Don’t get into an argument over it.”

“He brings his own arguments.”

Julian gave me a direct number for urgent calls. He said a prosecutor would review the recording and decide what records they could seek.

“And Mara?” I asked.

“Finding her comes first.”

His voice stayed level. It made the words easier to trust.

The following night, he returned to photograph the camera mount. I had a motor cover open when he arrived.

“You’ll catch your coat in that,” I said.

He took it off.

“Better?”

“Now you look like someone who might work.”

He held my flashlight while I showed him the camera’s view. He did not shine it in my eyes or reach past me without asking. That small care stayed with me.

We drank coffee by the silent ball returns. I opened my socket tin.

Click.

“Peppermint?”

“Please.”

He slipped the wrapper into his pocket instead of leaving it on my cart.

At eleven, he left through the front. I waited until his car turned onto the street before locking up.

My phone rang as I pulled on my gloves.

It was Voss.

“Odessa,” he said, “why did a state investigator spend two evenings in my building?”