The dock worker who heard the altercation between Rowe and Marrs is named Pete Solis, and on re-interview he's significantly less certain than his original statement suggested.
Not because he's lying. Renee has a sense for lying and she doesn't flag it when we sit across from Solis in a small office at Bellhaven with the loading dock noise coming through the wall. He's a man in his fifties who works hard and kept his head down and gave a statement at the time because a detective asked him to and he said what he remembered.
The problem is that what he remembered has softened at the edges.
"He said something like that," Solis says, turning his coffee cup in his hands. "About making him pay. But it was loud out there. I caught most of it."
"Most of it," Renee says.
"It was that kind of argument. You don't want to look directly at it." A pause. "I heard the tone more than the words, if I'm being honest."
Renee writes that down and thanks him and we leave.
Outside I say: "The quote in the original report was specific."
"The officer who took the statement wrote it as a direct quote." Renee unlocks the car. "Solis probably said something close to it and it got cleaned up on the page. That happens."
"So the quote might not hold."
"It might not hold the way it's written." She gets in. "It doesn't mean Rowe didn't say something threatening. It means we'd have trouble proving exactly what."
I get in and look through the windshield at the loading dock. A man in a yellow vest moving crates with a forklift, unhurried, just the work.
On our way out the Bellhaven supervisor meets us at the gate. He has one more thing, he says. He's been meaning to mention it. "Bellhaven had a Wayne contract a few years back. Logistics coordination. Ended when they restructured." He shrugs. "Not sure if that's useful. Just, with everything going on around here, I don't know what's relevant anymore."
Renee thanks him and writes it down. I write it down too.
In the car she says: "What does Carver think."
"Of Rowe?"
"He's been leaning that way since you brought the file in. He came to me yesterday."
I look at her. She keeps her eyes on the road.
"What did you say."
"I said not yet." She says it without drama. "I said the witness statement has problems and the alibi is thin but not impossible and we don't have forensics placing him at either scene."
"He didn't like that."
"No."
"He's going to come back."
"Probably." She merges onto the street. "That's his job. Pushing is his job. Mine is to push back when the evidence isn't there."
I look out the window at the wet Gotham streets. Somewhere out there, whoever had followed Joel Marrs through the Narrows was still moving through the city and had not been hurried.
"What does it take," I say. "For you. Before you're sure."
Renee thinks about it actually.
"More than feelings," she says. "But more than paper too. Evidence is what happened. A case is the story you build around it. If the story doesn't fit the evidence you either find more evidence or you find a better story." She glances over. "Right now the Rowe story has gaps I can't fill."
Then, after a moment: "Carver mentioned something else. Last time something like this came up, he said it went to a different kind of desk."
"What kind of desk."
"He said it like he was already moving on. The kind that doesn't send cases back." She doesn't say anything else about it. Neither do I.
I don't know what to do with that yet. I file it the way Renee files things she isn't ready for.