“The delivery app.” Reeves stared at the ground. “I’m a DashDrop driver. I deliver food a few nights a week.”
Every assumption we’d built over the past three hours—the suspicion, the Porter connection, the growing certainty that we’d found our dirty cop—landed in a heap at our feet.
A delivery app. The kid was delivering fuckingfood.
“The second phone,” I said.
“My delivery phone. Prepaid, bought it with cash so the notifications don’t pop up on my personal line at work. Last thing I need is Briggson seeing ‘Your DashDrop order is ready’ on my screen during a briefing.”
“Why did you need a second job?” Donovan asked. His voice had changed. The edge was gone.
Reeves let out a short, humorless laugh. “Have you looked at the cost of living in this town? Ski resort corridor. My apartment is twice as much as most places in the state, and it’s the cheapest thing I could find. I’ve been on the force eighteen months, bottom of the pay scale. After taxes and rent and insurance and my car payment, I’ve got about enough left to eat if I don’t do anything crazy like buy gas.”
He pulled his hands from his pockets and looked at us with the weary defiance of a man who’d made peace with his choices even if he hated them.
“I’m saving for a ring.” His voice was quieter now. “My girlfriend’s been with me since college. Three years. She moved here when I got the job. She staffs the front desk at the resort, seasonal hours. We’re making it work, but I wantto propose, and I’m not doing it with a ring I can’t afford and I’m not putting it on a credit card.”
He reached through the Civic’s open window and pulled one of the insulated bags from the back seat. Unzipped it. Inside were two sealed containers of food and a small receipt taped to the lid.
“Pad Thai and green curry. Going to an address on Birch Street.” He zipped it back up. “That’s my night. Every night I can manage it. Pick up, deliver, wait for the ping, do it again. And if I keep it up for three more months, I’ll have enough saved.”
“The houses you’ve been delivering to,” I said. “A lot of them trace back to Jonathan Porter’s rental properties.”
Reeves looked at me like I’d told him water was wet. “Porter owns half the rental housing in this town. You can’t deliver food on the south side without hitting his buildings. His tenants order dinner like everyone else.”
I had no idea if Reeves was privy to the suspicion that Porter was tied to the drug problem in town, so I didn’t say anything further.
Donovan leaned against the SUV and rubbed his jaw. I could feel the same thing in him that I felt in myself: the heavy, humbling weight of having been completely wrong about a kid whose only crime was working too hard for not enough money.
“Does the department know about the moonlighting?” I asked.
“No.” Reeves’s chin came up. “And I’d appreciate it if it stayed that way.”
I shook my head. “Shane, departments have policies about secondary employment. Most require disclosure. If someone finds out before you file the paperwork, that’s a problem you don’t need.”
“I know.” He looked away. “I’ve been meaning to. I justdidn’t want to draw attention. Plus, I’m hoping not to have to do it for long.”
“Get the paperwork squared away,” Donovan said. “Sooner rather than later. Protect yourself.”
Reeves nodded. He looked exhausted, relieved, and still a little angry, all of it sitting on his face at once. He straightened off the Civic, picked up the delivery bag, and looked between us.
“We good?”
“We’re good,” I said. “And your secret’s safe with us. Be safe out there.”
A single tight nod. He got into his car and pulled away. His lights disappeared around the corner, and the street settled into the type of quiet that made you aware of your own breathing.
“Well,” Donovan said. “Best lead we’ve had, and the kid’s delivering Pad Thai.”
“We eliminated a suspect. That’s progress.”
“Is it?” He rubbed his eyes. “Because it feels a lot like standing still.”
I didn’t argue. He was right. The dirty cop was still out there, still wearing the badge, still feeding information to people who moved poison through a town full of families. And we were two men standing on a dark street with nothing to show for the night except the knowledge that Shane Reeves loved his girlfriend enough to drive food around Summit Falls five nights a week so he could put a ring on her finger.
The Porter connection was coincidental for Reeves, but it underscored something that made the real investigation harder. Porter’s portfolio was so vast that any movement across the south side overlapped with his properties. The actual dirty cop could hide in that noise indefinitely.
We drove back across town without talking. Donovan dropped me at my house a little after two. I stood outside for a minute after he pulled away, every house around mine dark, the neighborhood silent.
