Chapter 57: The Custodian
There is a counter at the State Police Troop C barracks on Route 9.
It has a sheet of plexiglass and a stainless steel tray under it, like a bank.
The records window is open Monday to Friday, nine to three, closed twelve to one.
I went on a Thursday in February and used four hours of leave I had accrued at the rate of one hour per forty worked.
My officer has to sign a form for time off like that, and the form took eleven days to come back.
The clerk is a woman of about fifty-five, named on her tag as D. ROURKE.
She has done that job long enough to be neither friendly nor rude, which is the correct way to do that job.
I had prepared, and preparing is the only thing I am good at.
I brought a completed public records request on the state form, typed, not handwritten.
My state ID. A notarized affidavit of identity, because the request concerned my own criminal matter.
A money order for thirty dollars. A stamped self-addressed envelope.
And a second copy of everything, for her to date-stamp and hand back to me.
That last one is the whole trick. If you do not get a stamped copy back you cannot prove you asked.
She stamped it without being asked, which told me she was good.
Good clerks are the reason anything in this country works, and nobody writes that down anywhere, so I am writing it.
The request had six numbered items.
I had drafted them the way you draft them, narrow and specific.
A broad request gets denied as unduly burdensome. A narrow one has to be answered.
Item 1: The Computer Aided Dispatch incident detail record for agency case 19-04477, including all timestamps and unit assignments.
Item 2: All supplemental narrative reports for agency case 19-04477.
Item 3: The vehicle disposition record, including tow, storage, and release documentation, for the vehicle listed as Unit 1.
Item 4: All body-worn or in-car recorded media for units assigned to agency case 19-04477.
Item 5: The evidence and property intake log for agency case 19-04477.
Item 6: Any record reflecting the receipt, custody, or transmittal of a written statement of Cassandra A. Mercer in connection with agency case 19-04477.
Item 6 was the one I cared about. I put it sixth on purpose.
Rourke read all six.
She read them the way I read things, with a finger, and when she got to six she read it twice.
Then she said, “You're the driver.”
I said, “Yes.”
She said, “This case.”
“Yes.”
She looked at me through plexiglass for about three seconds.
Then she wrote something on her copy and said, “Twenty business days. Some of this isn't ours.”
I said I understood, and I asked which parts.
She said the vehicle disposition would be with the tow contractor and the insurer, not with them.
She said item 5 might be with the county, because the barracks does not hold property on a fatal that went to the county attorney.
Then she said, without my asking, “Body cam that old, don't hold your breath.”
I asked what the retention schedule was.
She said non-evidentiary media, three years. Evidentiary media, life of case plus seven.
I asked which one a fatal crash statement would be.
She said, “Depends who tagged it.”
That is the sentence I took home.
Not a policy. Not a rule. A person, at some hour, deciding what to call a file, and everything downstream following from it.
I walked out to the parking lot and stood there for a minute. It had started to sleet and I had four minutes until the bus.
There was a dark blue estate car parked at the far end, near the sign, with a faded university parking sticker on the rear window, one corner peeled up.
I looked at it long enough to be sure. Same rust freckle on the fuel door. Same sticker.
There was nobody in it.
I counted to ten, and then I counted to ten again, and then the bus came.
I got on the bus. It was the 14 and it was eleven minutes late, and I noted that, because I note things.
Twenty business days from the twelfth of February, counting the Monday holiday, is the thirteenth of March.
I wrote that on my hand on the bus because I did not want to take the pad out in public.
The ink came off in the shower, so I wrote the date again on the edge of the mirror.
Then I sat with my hands in my lap and did the other arithmetic, the one I did not want to do.
The thirteenth of March is two days after the eleventh of March.
Which meant the answer would arrive in the same week as the anniversary.
Which meant the same week as the box.