She was careful to say that she had not determined whether a crime had occurred.
Her concern was that frightened people had paid money expecting equipment that never arrived.
A retired couple on Birch Lane had paid four hundred dollars for a promised generator delivery.
A single father in the neighboring township had paid two hundred dollars to reserve a unit that was supposedly already in a warehouse.
Neither household had received anything.
I asked how many people had complained.
Denise said six had contacted the county, and she suspected there might be others.
Rachel asked whether the families had been able to find warm shelter during the outage.
Denise said they had, but two had spent an uncomfortable night waiting for equipment that did not exist.
I looked down at my hands and thought about Trish dragging my generator toward the open hatch of her SUV.
For the first time, I wondered whether she had needed it for someone other than her mother.
Denise slid the second folder toward me.
Inside was a photograph taken by a customer outside Pike Equipment and Supply on the afternoon of the storm.
The photograph showed the store entrance, a row of snow-covered trucks, and a black SUV at the edge of the lot.
The license plate was too blurred to read, but the distinctive silver scratch on the rear bumper was familiar.
I had photographed that same bumper in my driveway.
Denise said she was not asking me to draw conclusions about the picture.
She wanted permission to give my contact information to an investigator who was gathering statements.
I said yes.
Rachel asked whether the people who had paid fees would get their money back.
Denise admitted that she did not know.
We left the building after forty minutes, but I sat in the parked truck for another ten.
The windshield was bright with afternoon sun and crusted with salt from the roads.
I had spent weeks trying to make the night on my driveway smaller in my mind.
Now it had become part of something larger.
Rachel waited until I turned the key before she spoke.
She said that we should tell Noah only what he needed to know.
I agreed because I did not want our son to think every neighbor was secretly dangerous.
That evening I called Gerald Pike and asked whether he remembered anyone else trying to buy the last generator.
He said half the county had been trying to buy it.
Then he asked why I wanted to know.
I explained the meeting with Denise without accusing anyone of anything beyond what I had witnessed.
