He had done everything short of producing a notarized affidavit on the sidewalk and Hall had absorbed all of it with that same flat, faintly amused expression, the look of a man watching a performance he found mildly entertaining but not remotely convincing.
"Matthew Burke," Hall repeated, drawing the name out slowly and tasting it like something he'd found suspicious. "The police chief."
"Yes," Noah said.
"Your brother-in-law."
"My sister's husband. Yes."
Hall nodded slowly, the way people nod when they want you to know they don't believe a single word coming out of your mouth. He looked down at the registration again, then back up at Noah, then let his gaze travel deliberately, insultingly from the blazer down to the shoes and back up again.
It was the kind of look that was designed to make a man feel like a suspect in his own skin and Hall had perfected it over 11 years of practice.
"That's a real convenience story," Hall said.
Noah kept his hands visible, kept his voice level. "It's not a story.
It's what's on the registration you're holding."
"Lots of people get their hands on registrations." Hall shrugged, casual as a man discussing the weather. "Doesn't mean the car belongs to them."
The audacity of it was almost architectural, the way Hall had constructed an entire alternate reality out of nothing but his own bias and was now standing inside it, perfectly comfortable, demanding that Noah knock on the door and prove himself worthy of entry.
Noah had encountered this before. The wall that goes up when a man in authority decides the facts are inconvenient.
The way evidence stops being evidence the moment it contradicts what someone has already chosen to believe.
He breathed through it.
"Call it in," Noah said. "Run the plates.
Call dispatch. Do whatever you need to do.
The car is registered to Chief Matthew Burke. I am his brother-in-law.
I am taking his dog to a veterinary appointment on Riverside. That is the entire situation."
Hall glanced at Max, who was watching the exchange through the passenger window with his ears forward and his tail conspicuously still. For just a moment, something flickered across Hall's face.
Not doubt, exactly, but the faint shadow of a thought that hadn't fully formed yet.
Then it was gone, buried under 11 years of calcified certainty, and the smirk came back.
"Nice dog," Hall said. "Stolen cars sometimes come with nice dogs."
The words landed like a slap dressed up as a joke. Noah said nothing.