Chapter 3
Sergeant First Class Terrence Nakamura did not hurry. He never hurried. He was forty-one years old, five-foot-ten, lean the way a fence post is lean, and he moved like a man who'd already decided how the next ten minutes were going to go.
He pushed the shack door open with one flat hand and stepped out onto the asphalt with his ruggedized tablet already live in both hands, reading glasses pushed up on his forehead, the audit lanyard tucked under his blouse so nobody on the lane could see what it said.
He walked to the podium without looking at Mullins. Stopped at my left shoulder. Looked down at the page under my fingers.
"Six thirty-eight," he said. Flat. Not to me. To the lane.
Then he turned the tablet around and held it up at chest height, screen facing out.
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The screen showed the side-gate camera still. Same minute. 06:38 in the corner of the frame. A contractor box truck mid-pass through the side gate, wheels on the line, cab already past the arm. The gate arm was up. The post was empty.
No guard. No inspection. No entry on that camera's log except the one Mullins had signed.
I heard a car door open somewhere in the line. Then another.
Mullins's hand came off the podium and stopped halfway in the air.
"That's — that's a different post," he said. "That's not — Nakamura, that camera's not my — "
"Staff Sergeant." Nakamura didn't raise his voice. "When did you hurt your right hand?"
"Two weeks ago. The shack door."
"And who was on the logbook the morning of the fourteenth?"
"That's — I don't — Delgado does the lane log — "
"Delgado does her lane log," Nakamura said. "You do the entry book."
The whole line was watching now. Not the way they'd watched when Mullins shoved me — that had been entertainment. This was something else. This was forty drivers with their engines running, phones out at the second car and the fifth car and the ninth car, and nobody honking, nobody leaning on the wheel, just watching a staff sergeant try to find a sentence that would make the screen in Nakamura's hands go blank.
Mullins looked at the tablet. Then the logbook. Then the line behind him. Then the tablet again, like if he stared long enough the truck would finish its pass and disappear and the post would have a guard standing at it and the time stamp would change.
It didn't.
"Sergeant, I want to say something before — " Mullins started.
"You can say it inside," Nakamura said. "Specialist Delgado, is this your logbook page or Staff Sergeant Mullins's?"
"It's his entry," I said. "I'm on the lane log. That page is the entry book."
"And you were reviewing it because?"
Now I did hesitate. Nakamura had never once asked me what I was doing with my pocket notebook. Fourteen months, and he'd never asked. I'd assumed he didn't care. I'd assumed he thought I was being precious about a job that didn't need to be precious.
"I keep a pocket log," I said. "Times and plates. My own handwriting. I match it against the entry book every morning before the push."
Nakamura's expression didn't change.
"For how long?"
"Fourteen months."
Something moved across his face. Not surprise. Recognition.
Fourteen months.
The audit had been open for fourteen days.