He did not have time to think. He did not have time to plan. He did the only thing he could think of that would force a man on a motorcycle to stop.
He pressed the accelerator hard, pulled out, passed Mason on the left, and then, with both hands on the wheel and his heart hammering against his ribs, he turned the truck sharply across both lanes and put it sideways across the road, directly in Mason's path, blocking the way to the curve.
For one terrible second, the world held still — the truck sideways, the motorcycle coming on, the curve waiting below — and then the truck's tires lost their grip on the wet asphalt, and the whole vehicle began to slide, and the guardrail came rushing toward Daniel's window, and the sky tilted, and the world turned over.
The first police cruiser arrived eleven minutes after the call, and the second arrived four minutes after that, and by the time Detective Maria Ruiz stepped out of an unmarked car near the charity tent, the sun had climbed high enough that the shadows under the rows of motorcycles had shortened to dark lines.
Ruiz was thorough, skeptical, and fair, and Mason could tell all three things about her within the first minute of talking to her, because she asked him to start from the beginning and then stopped him twice to ask him to be precise about times, and she wrote everything down in a small notebook without looking up.
She interviewed Mason first, standing beside his motorcycle with the brake fluid still drying on the pavement. She asked when he had last ridden the bike, when he had last checked the brake line, who had access to the lot that morning, and whether he had any enemies. Mason answered honestly. He said he had no enemies that he knew of, and then he looked toward the registration tent and said nothing, and Ruiz noticed that he said nothing, and wrote that down too.
She interviewed Leah next, in the shade of the charity tent, with Mason standing nearby but not close enough to hear every word. Leah told her about the scream, about the leak, about the photograph, about her father's text message. Ruiz asked her why she had come to the meet, and Leah said she had come to find Mason, and Ruiz asked her how she had known which motorcycle was his, and Leah said she had watched the bikes and listened to the riders and waited until she heard a man called Mason, and Ruiz nodded, as if that were a reasonable answer, which it was.
She interviewed Troy last among the witnesses, crouching beside the motorcycle while Troy showed her the cut with a flashlight, pointing without touching, explaining the difference between a failure and a blade in the patient, exact language of a man who had repaired motorcycles for thirty-two years. Ruiz asked him whether the cut could have been made by road debris, and Troy said no. She asked whether it could have happened by accident during maintenance, and Troy said no. She asked whether it was fresh, and Troy said yes, within hours, certainly that morning or the night before. Ruiz wrote all of it down.
Then she interviewed Ray.
Mason watched from a distance, standing beside Leah, while Ruiz and another officer spoke to Ray near the registration tent. Ray sat in the folding chair at first, then stood, then gestured with his hands as he talked, the silver wolf ring flashing on his right hand every time he moved. He looked calm. He looked reasonable. He looked like a man who was mildly annoyed at being kept from his afternoon.
When Ruiz came back to Mason, her face gave nothing away.
Mr. Mercer says he arrived at the meet this morning at nine, parked his bike in the second row, and spent the morning talking to other riders, she said. "He says he was nowhere near your motorcycle until the crowd gathered. He says he doesn't know anything about a cut line, and he suggests it may have been vandalism by someone at the meet — a prank that went too far."
And you believe him? Mason asked.
I believe I don't have proof yet, Ruiz said. "A cut line is a crime. But suspicion is not proof, and I can't hold a man on suspicion. He'll be released pending investigation. We'll examine the motorcycle, we'll talk to more witnesses, and we'll look at the security footage from the lot. If there's evidence, we'll act on it."
Mason glanced toward the far end of the lot, where a camera was mounted on a pole near the entrance. "Is there footage of the rows?"
There are two cameras, Ruiz said. "One at the entrance, one near the registration tent. Whether either of them covers your row, I don't know yet. I'll find out before the day is over. In the meantime, I need you to do something difficult: I need you to leave this to us. Don't confront him. Don't follow him. If he did this, the worst thing you can do is give him a reason to say you threatened him, because then this becomes two men's word against each other, and the evidence stops mattering."
Mason nodded, slowly. He understood the logic. He hated the logic, but he understood it. Troy, standing beside him with his arms crossed, said nothing, but his jaw was set in a way Mason recognized — the way Troy looked when a machine was broken and the owner wanted to ride it anyway.
One more thing, Ruiz said. "The motorcycle stays with us until the examination is done. You'll get it back. And Mr. Cole — you did the right thing, listening to that young woman. Most men wouldn't have. Most men would have turned the key."