I Took a Plumbing Job to Find My Missing Partner—And Found His Badge Inside the Wall

The former officer was Connor Webb. He had worked an overlapping shift with Luis and Jo years earlier before leaving the department under a cloud of allegations that never produced criminal charges. Jo remembered him joking in the locker room about how inspectors cared more about stamped forms than actual buildings. She had dismissed the remark as cynicism.

Kim asked Jo to review her contacts with Webb. She remembered a dinner at a police charity event, two text exchanges about union dues, and one night when Webb asked whether Luis was still pursuing the permit investigation. Jo had answered yes without asking why he wanted to know.

"You told him that?" Kim asked.

"I didn't think the case was sensitive. I thought he was curious."

"Did Luis know you shared that information?"

Jo shook her head. She felt the old shame returning, heavier because it had once been so casual. She had not meant to endanger Luis. She had also failed to protect information that may have mattered to his safety. She couldn't correct it by insisting her intentions were good.

Kim documented the disclosure and referred it for review alongside the larger investigation. Jo was placed on administrative duty. She agreed without argument. She also provided her phone backups to investigators under agreed procedures so they could verify what she had told Webb and when.

At home she wrote a letter to Elena, then tore it up. She wanted to confess everything at once and beg forgiveness. But Rosa's request for facts came back to her. Jo called Elena and said she needed to explain an old mistake that investigators were assessing. She described the exchange with Webb without predicting what it caused.

Elena went quiet. "You told a former officer your partner was looking into corruption?"

"I did. I thought he still had friends in the department. I didn't think it was dangerous."

"He might be why Luis disappeared."

"We don't know that."

"I know. But you didn't give Luis the choice about telling him."

Jo accepted the anger. Elena asked for time and ended the call. Jo sat on her kitchen floor until the light outside faded. She had entered the brownstone wanting to expose someone else's secret; now her own small failure was part of the record.

Webb's employment and banking records were examined through appropriate legal processes. The emergency bonus had been paid by a subcontractor controlled by a relative of Nathan Price. Webb claimed it was legitimate security work during a late-night equipment delivery. Another employee remembered seeing Webb help carry a large wooden crate out of the brownstone's rear entrance. The employee hadn't opened it and could not identify the contents.

Investigators traced the crate to a storage facility used by Nathan's company. The facility had changed owners twice. Most paper records were gone, but an archived invoice identified the delivery vehicle and the name of the person who signed for it. Marco had not purchased the house yet. Still, one of his business partners had funded the storage unit.

Jo gave the information no romantic shape. It could reflect a legitimate business transaction, a vehicle moving stolen records, or something much worse. Her job was now to help assemble accurate documentation from behind a desk, not to decide which explanation felt true.

She organized old dispatch logs for Kim, annotating each with its original source. The work was monotonous. It was also the first honest contribution she'd made since finding the badge. A date discrepancy emerged: Luis's official disappearance report placed him at a restaurant just after midnight, but a dispatch entry showed his vehicle near the brownstone an hour earlier than anybody had recorded.