The ambulance sirens wailed as they finally pulled up to the Crowne estate to take Elias Crowne and Judge Harrison away, but Detective Julian Vance wasn't listening. His mind was locked on the final question left by the nitrogen tank: Who drove the getaway car?
He knew the answer wouldn't be found in Elias Crowne’s underground garage. It was locked deep within the physical and digital archives of the central police precinct—files that Arthur Sterling and his internal allies had meticulously doctored five years ago.
Vance drove back through the relentless rain, parking his unmarked cruiser in the shadows behind the precinct. It was past midnight, and the building was mostly deserted, save for the hum of the servers and the occasional footsteps of the night shift duty officer. He bypassed the main entrance, swiping his badge at the heavy back fire-exit that led directly down into the basement records room.
The basement smelled of old paper, damp concrete, and floor wax. Vance flipped on his pen-light, navigating the towering metal rows of cold-case boxes. He needed the original traffic collision report from the night Dr. Sebastian Crowne was killed—the one prior to Sterling's legal scrubbing.
He reached Section 4B, the 2021 archive. But as he turned the aisle, he stopped cold.
The security monitor mounted at the end of the aisle—a feed connected to the main server room upstairs—was glowing. More importantly, a silhouette was moving among the filing cabinets. Someone was already down here, systematically shredding files.
Vance drew his weapon, moving silently over the concrete floor. "Freeze! Drop whatever you're holding, hands where I can see them!"
The figure paused, slowly turning around. The light caught the badge pinned to their chest and the familiar, cold smirk on their face. It wasn't an anonymous grunt or a corrupt rookie. It was Captain Miller—the very man Vance had trusted for years, the one who had signed off on the original accident report.
Miller raised his hands, but a digital tablet in his left hand was still lit, displaying a live transfer of encrypted police files to an unknown external server.
"You're looking at the wrong ghosts, Julian," Miller said, his voice disturbingly calm against the backdrop of falling rain outside. "Sterling didn't just buy lawyers and judges. He bought the badge of the man who ran this department. And that passenger in the car the night Elias Crowne killed the doctor? They weren't just a witness... they were the person who handed Elias the keys."
Miller stepped backward toward the emergency exit, his finger hovering over a remote detonator on the tablet. "And the person who has been collecting the interest? They’re standing right behind you."
Before Vance could turn, a heavy blow struck the back of his head, sending his vision into a dizzying spin of white noise and darkness as he collapsed onto the damp basement floor.