The police station is on Fourth Street, between a vape shop and a bail bonds office.
The bail bonds sign says OPEN 24 HRS in pink neon.
I went straight from work at 4:30.
I brought the folder from my glove box.
I waited twenty minutes on a plastic chair across from a teenager filling out a form about a stolen bike.
Detective Paula Brandt was about my age.
She wore reading glasses on a beaded chain and a cardigan that had seen some winters.
She took me into a room with a table, three chairs, and a box of tissues nobody had touched.
"You're not under arrest, Ms. Hadley."
"You can leave anytime."
"I'll stay," I said.
She asked for my name, my address, and my employer.
I gave her all three.
I watched her write dental office — handles deposits in the margin.
She opened a file.
"Carol Sorensen filed a theft complaint this morning."
"Thirty thousand dollars."
"Over ten thousand, in this state, that's a felony."
She slid a sheet of yellow paper across the table.
A carbon from a checkbook, the old kind with duplicates.
Carol's handwriting, school-secretary neat.
Check 1186 — March 3 — Pay to the order of Richard Sorensen — Thirty thousand and 00/100 — Memo: Emma's wedding
"Mrs. Sorensen cashed a CD to write that," the detective said.
"Her son came in at eleven and gave a written statement."
She turned a second page around so I could read it.
One typed paragraph, with a signature at the bottom.
On March 10, at her office, I endorsed my mother's check over to Jill Hadley, so she could pay the wedding vendors, since she insisted on holding all the contracts.
I read it twice.
Rick has never been to my office.
He doesn't know which building it's in.
In twenty-four years, he has never once picked Emma up from anywhere I was.
"Is that accurate?" she asked.
"No."
I opened my folder.
I don't argue with paper.
I just put more paper next to it.
The first page was a letter from my 401(k) plan.
Loan approved March 12 — Amount: $18,000 — Disbursed March 14
The second was a receipt from Hollis Farm.
March 16 — Deposit: $16,000 — Visa ending 2290
"Nobody borrows against their retirement the same week someone hands them thirty thousand dollars," I said.
The detective read both pages without hurrying.
"People do strange things with money, Ms. Hadley."
"Maybe you paid with yours and kept his."
It was a fair question.
I'd have asked it.
"Then it's in my account," I said.
I slid over three more pages.
My credit union statements.
March, April, May.
"Every deposit is my paycheck, plus the loan on the fourteenth."
"Every other Friday."
"Same amount, to the cent."
She read those too, one finger moving down the column.
"Mr. Sorensen also said he'd been sending you money for the wedding."
I turned my phone around.
$300 — 🙏 wedding stuff
"That's the only payment?"
"The only one the state didn't make him send."
She took her glasses off and let them drop on their chain.
"If he endorsed that check to you, your signature is on the back of it."
"And it cleared into your account."
"Then you need the back of the check," I said.
"I do."
"Carol can see it on her phone."
"Her bank keeps a picture of both sides."
"Mrs. Sorensen doesn't do online banking."
"Her son set it up for her."
"He told me he'd send me the image."
I didn't say anything.
I didn't have to.
She looked at me for a while over the glasses she wasn't wearing.
"Otherwise it's a records request to her bank," she said.
"Two, three weeks."
"Until then, you're the subject of a felony theft complaint."
"I'd keep my distance from the complainant."
I thought about what that meant for a woman who handles the money at a dental practice.
Every co-pay.
Every insurance check.
Every deposit bag.
Dr. Feld had already taken one phone call from this building.
"Can I keep these?" she asked.
"Those are copies," I said.
"I keep the originals."
Something happened at the corner of her mouth.
It went away again.
She wrote a line on her legal pad.
I read it upside down.
Bank direct — don't wait on son.
At the door, I turned around.
"Could I see his statement one more time?"
She held it up.
I read it to the bottom.
I swear the above is true and accurate.
Under that, in blue ink, a signature I hadn't seen since our divorce papers.
Richard A. Sorensen