"How many were returned?"
The records officer checked.
"Eleven."
Daniel looked up.
"Eleven?"
"Yes."
"Where is the twelfth?"
Nobody knew.
The room became quiet.
The investigator turned toward Reed.
"Where did you get the badge?"
Reed didn't answer.
Whitaker stepped closer.
"Officer Reed."
Nothing.
"Where did you get it?"
Reed finally spoke.
"I found it."
"Where?"
"At a flea market."
The investigator raised an eyebrow.
"A retired police badge?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"I collect things."
Daniel looked at him.
That answer sounded weak.
But it wasn't yet proof of a crime.
The investigator continued.
"Why was it at the scene?"
"I don't know."
Daniel said quietly:
"It was near your boot."
Reed glared at him.
"You don't know what you saw."
"I know exactly what I saw."
Whitaker raised a hand.
"Enough."
The investigation continued.
Then someone discovered something.
The badge wasn't merely an old police badge.
It belonged to an investigator named Marcus Vale.
Marcus Vale had disappeared twelve years earlier.
Officially, he had resigned.
Unofficially, rumors suggested otherwise.
Daniel remembered the name.
His father had mentioned him once.
He had been one of the most respected investigators in the department.
Until one night, he vanished.
Daniel looked at the photograph.
Then at the badge.
Something about the case felt connected.
The question was no longer why Officer Reed had stopped Daniel.
The question was:
Why was a badge belonging to a missing investigator at the scene?
Daniel went home at four in the morning.
He couldn't sleep.
He sat at his kitchen table with the old photograph in front of him.
Marcus Vale.
The investigator who disappeared twelve years ago.
Daniel searched his father's old files.
His father had died several years earlier, but Daniel had kept boxes of documents.
Most were personal.
Some were professional.
Daniel opened an old folder.
Inside was a photograph.
Marcus Vale stood beside Daniel's father.
Two young officers.
Two friends.
On the back of the photograph was a handwritten note.
"Some truths are buried because someone benefits from the silence."
Daniel stared at the sentence.
His father's handwriting.
He opened another folder.