…Officer Vance.”
The name dropped like a lead weight in the quiet of my living room. My blood turned to ice. Officer Vance was the lead investigator on her case. He was the one who had stood on my front porch, hat in hand, speaking softly about black ice and tragic misfortune. He was the one who had explicitly written in his report that the dashcam was obliterated upon impact.
On the screen, my sister, Clara, took a shaky breath. Her hands gripped the steering wheel so tightly her knuckles were white.
“He found out I’ve been looking into the municipal accounts,” she whispered to the empty garage, her eyes darting to the rearview mirror. “The missing evidence locker funds, the kickbacks… it all leads back to him and the chief. I have the ledgers backed up on a flash drive. I’m bypassing local and driving straight to the State Troopers in the city. If I don’t make it, check the lining of my blue winter coat. Expose them.”
The video feed cut out, replaced by a timestamped black screen indicating the engine had been turned off.
I stared at the laptop. Clara wasn’t just an administrative assistant at the precinct; she was a whistleblower who had been hunted down. And the man who orchestrated her murder was the one put in charge of covering it up.
Panic spiked through my chest. I scrambled to my feet and ran to the hallway closet. Hanging right where I had unpacked it from the coroner’s return box was Clara’s blue winter coat. It was torn at the shoulder, stained with dried blood and smelling of engine coolant. My hands trembled as I ran my fingers along the heavy wool hem. Near the left pocket, the stitching felt unusually thick.
I grabbed a seam ripper from the kitchen drawer and tore the fabric open. A tiny, silver flash drive slipped out, clattering onto the hardwood floor.
I had the proof. But as I bent down to pick it up, the unmistakable crunch of tires on gravel echoed from my driveway.
I froze. My house was secluded, sitting at the end of a long, private dirt road. Nobody came down here at this hour.
I crept to the window and peered through the edge of the blinds. A police cruiser was idling in my driveway, its headlights switched off. The driver’s side door clicked open, and a heavy-set figure stepped out into the moonlight. It was Officer Vance. He didn’t walk to the front door; instead, he unholstered his service weapon and began moving silently toward my back patio.
He had realized the dashcam was missing from the impound lot. And he knew exactly who had visited the junkyard that afternoon.
I grabbed my laptop, shoved the flash drive into my pocket, and slipped out the front door into the freezing woods, knowing that if I wanted justice for Clara, I had to survive the night.
