She opened the door. “Do I need my vest to come in?”

“I’m not in the mood for jokes, Holland.”

“I’m aware. The question was serious.”

“Come in and shut the door.”

She did as she was told.

He was seated behind his desk, one leg raised by bracing his foot on an open desk drawer. “What do you want?”

She laid the reports on his desk.

“What’s that?”

“Reports that Stahl filed in the early days of the Worthington and Deasly investigations. They were separate from the files we pulled.”

Malone held her gaze for a beat before reaching for the reports.

Sam stayed as still as she possibly could while he reviewed them.

“Where did you find these?”

“Gonzo asked Archie to do some digging. They were archived separately from the case files.”

“What are these?” he asked, sifting through the papers.

“We aren’t sure, sir, but that’s what the bosses at the time were seeing. Jeannie confirmed Stahl only met once with LaToya Deasly, and then she never heard from him again. His reports include detailed notes on multiple meetings and follow-ups that never happened.”

He stood so abruptly that he startled her. “Come with me.”

Sam stepped aside to let him lead the way straight to the chief’s office. She nodded to Helen, the chief’s admin, as they went by. That she looked more spooked than usual did nothing to settle Sam’s nerves.

Malone walked right into Farnsworth’s office.

Sam closed the door behind them.

“Tell him what you told me,” Malone said.

“Gonzo asked Archie to look for anything he could find on Worthington and Deasly, and he found these reports in the archives. They were separate from the case files that we pulled when we reopened both investigations.”

“If they were archived,” Farnsworth said slowly, “that had to be done by a captain.”

“Yes, sir.”

He glanced at Malone. “What is this, Jake?”

“I don’t know, sir, but we’re going to look into it, starting with everyone who was a captain eleven years ago.”

“One of them is dead,” Sam said.

“There’s no way your father had anything to do with hiding Stahl’s bogus paper trail,” Farnsworth said, his gaze heated.

“Maybe it’d be easiest to go to the source,” Sam said. “Ask Stahl why he created bogus reports and who helped him hide them. He’s facing life in prison with nothing else to lose, and knowing him, he’d love to take someone else down with him.”

“What do you think?” Farnsworth asked Malone.

“It couldn’t hurt anything to try. But who’s going to be the one to go there?”

“It can’t be me,” Farnsworth said. “I’m the one who fired him and had him charged.”

“He and I have too much history,” Malone said, “and it can’t be Sam, for obvious reasons.”