“Preston.” Vanessa threw her arms around him. “He attacked me. In our parking lot. In broad daylight.”
Ayers turned to Hadley with a tight, professional smile. “Officer, I’m sure you have this under control. But I want to make it clear that the club will fully support Mrs. Whitlock in pressing charges. We’ll also be contacting Swiftline to make sure this individual is banned from our property.”
“Appreciate that, Mr. Ayers,” Hadley said, in a tone that suggested he did not appreciate it at all. “Right now I’m just gathering facts.”
“The facts seem pretty clear.” Ayers glanced at Mateo with open distaste. “We have a member who says she was assaulted, and several witnesses who agree.”
“Several witnesses who saw eleven seconds,” Hadley said mildly.
Ayers blinked. He wasn’t used to being corrected.
Vanessa stepped forward. Her voice dropped into something cold and smooth. “Officer Hadley. That’s your name, right? Hadley?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“My husband plays golf with the mayor every Sunday. He donated the new dock lights. He donated the clubhouse. I would think very carefully about how you handle this. Because if this man walks away tonight, I’m going to make sure everyone in this town knows that the Gull Point Police Department protects criminals instead of taxpayers.”
The crowd went quiet. A few people shifted uncomfortably.
Hadley didn’t flinch. He looked at her for a long moment. Then he looked at the white scrape on the back of the van. Then at the green smear on her bumper. Then up at the little black camera mounted high above the van’s rear doors, its tiny red light glowing steadily in the sun.
When he spoke again, his voice was calm. Almost gentle.
“Ma’am,” he said. “Are you sure you want me to check the camera?”
## “What Camera?”
For a few seconds, nobody said anything at all.
Vanessa Whitlock’s mouth opened, then closed. Her eyes followed Hadley’s gaze up to the top of the van. Mateo watched her see the small black dome for the first time. He watched her see the red light.
“What camera?” she said.
“That one,” Hadley said, pointing. “Swiftline puts cameras on all their vans. Front and back. They record video. They record sound.” He turned and pointed again, this time at the tall pole by the gate. “And that one belongs to the marina. Mr. Pruitt, the dockmaster, put it up after somebody stole an outboard motor last year. It looks right down this lane.”
Preston Ayers cleared his throat. “Officer, I hardly think that’s necessary—”
“Mr. Ayers,” Hadley said, without looking at him, “I’m asking Mrs. Whitlock.”
Vanessa’s face had gone very still. Mateo saw her fingers twitch at her side. Her eyes darted to the Range Rover, then back.
“Those things don’t work,” she said finally. “Everyone knows those little cameras are just for show.”
“This one’s recording right now,” Mateo said quietly. “The red dot means it’s on.”
“Nobody asked you!” she snapped. Then she caught herself. She smoothed her skirt. She pushed her sunglasses back up on her head and forced a laugh. “I mean, fine. Look. Check whatever you want. It’ll show you exactly what I said. He grabbed me.”
“Okay,” Hadley said. “Then we’ll look.”
“Although,” she added quickly, “I don’t think a delivery company’s video should be trusted. They could edit it. They’ll protect their employee. They always do.”
“Ma’am, five minutes ago you wanted this man fired by his company. Now you’re worried his company will protect him?”
A few people in the crowd laughed nervously. Bradley Kemp, the man in the pink polo, frowned and looked down at his shoes.
Hadley’s backup arrived just then. A patrol car pulled into the lot, and a young officer named Danielle Ortiz stepped out. Behind her came an ambulance, lights flashing but no siren. Two paramedics hopped out with a bag and a stretcher.
“Over here,” Hadley called. “Young man’s got a hip injury and some lacerations on his neck.”
“Lacerations?” Vanessa said. “He probably did that to himself.”
One of the paramedics, a broad woman with gray braids, knelt beside Mateo and gently lifted the edge of his torn pants. She let out a low whistle. “That’s a nasty one. Big bruise already forming. Could be a hip fracture. What happened, hon?”
“An SUV backed into me,” Mateo said. “Pinned me against my van.”
The paramedic glanced at the scrape on the van door, then at the bumper of the Range Rover. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to.
“Officer,” she said, “I’d like to get him off his feet. Can we lose the cuffs, or at least move them to the front?”
Hadley looked at Mateo. Mateo looked back at him, steady and quiet.
“Move them to the front for now,” Hadley said. “Officer Ortiz, stay with him. Nobody touches that van until I say so.”
The Swiftline cameras could be viewed two ways. The driver could play back footage on the dashboard screen, or the depot could pull it remotely through the company’s system. Hadley wanted both. He wanted no doubt, later, that anything had been changed.
Mateo gave him the depot number. Hadley put the call on speaker.
“Swiftline, Pellegrino.”
“Mr. Pellegrino, this is Officer Thomas Hadley, Gull Point PD. I’m at the yacht club marina with one of your drivers, Mateo Reyes.”
There was a pause. Then Gus’s voice changed completely. “Is he okay? What happened? Is the kid okay?”
“He’s injured, but he’s talking. There’s been an incident with a customer. I need you to pull the footage from his van, front and rear, from the last thirty minutes. And I need you to lock it so nobody can delete it.”
“Already doing it.” Mateo could hear Gus’s fingers pounding his keyboard. “Officer, I’ve been running this depot a long time. That kid has never had a single complaint. Not one. If somebody’s saying he did something—”
“I’m not saying anything yet, sir. I just want to see the tape.”
