After the petition, Reed moved to the one thing that could not be argued with. Paper could be copied. A signature could be lifted. A story could be told two different ways. But the car itself had a number stamped into its metal, and that number was tied to a record that neither Victoria nor I controlled.
"Frank," Reed said, "I am going to run the VIN. That will tell us who the state thinks owns this car right now."
I nodded. I had run VINs myself a hundred times. But it felt different standing on the other side of it, watching an officer walk around my own car with a flashlight, looking for the plate on the dashboard and the stamp on the door jamb.
Reed went to the driver's side first. He shone the light through the windshield at the metal plate where the dashboard met the glass, read the number out loud, and Torres wrote it down. Then he checked the sticker on the door jamb and the stamp on the engine block. All three matched. The Mustang was original.
"All right," Reed said. "Torres, run it."
Torres went back to the patrol car and typed the number into the computer. I stayed by the Mustang, one hand resting on the roof, feeling the warmth of the metal through my palm. Victoria stood a few feet away, her arms folded again, her eyes fixed on the patrol car as if she could see the screen through the windows.
It took less than a minute. Torres came back with a printout in her hand, and her face did not give anything away. She handed the paper to Reed, and Reed read it, and then he read it again, the way he had read the bill of sale.
"Here is what the state has," Reed said. He looked at Victoria first, then at me. "The car is registered to Frank Anderson. The title is clean. No lien. No loan. No pending transfer in the system we can see. No record of a sale."
Victoria's face tightened. "That does not mean anything," she said. "Transfers take time. The DMV is slow. Everybody knows that."
"It does mean something," Reed said. "It means that as far as the state is concerned, Frank is the owner. It means there is no second record that matches your bill of sale. If a sale had happened, we would expect to see something. We see nothing."
Torres added, "And the title history shows no change in the last five years. The last action was a renewal, in Mr. Anderson's name."
I felt a weight lift off my chest, just a little. It was not proof that Victoria had done anything wrong. But it was proof that the car was still mine, at least in the eyes of the law, and that the piece of paper she had brought to my driveway had not turned into a legal fact just because she said it had.
"Can I see that?" I asked.
Reed handed me the printout. I read it the way I used to read reports, line by line. Owner: Frank Anderson. Vehicle: 1969 Ford Mustang GT. Title status: clear. Liens: none. It was all there, and it matched what I knew to be true.
"Victoria," I said, "this is what the state says. This is not my word against yours. This is the record."
She shook her head. "The DMV makes mistakes. They lose paperwork. They are behind. You cannot trust a computer printout over a signed bill of sale."
Reed did not argue with her. He just held up the printout and the evidence sleeve, side by side, as if he was weighing them.
"Ma'am, a bill of sale is a private document between two people," he said. "A title is a public record. When they disagree, we have to figure out why. Right now, the public record says Frank owns the car, and the private document says he sold it."
Torres turned to me. "Mr. Anderson, have you ever applied to transfer the title?"
"No," I said. "Never. I have renewed the registration. I have kept the insurance current. I have never signed a title over to anyone."
"And you have the title in your possession?" she asked.
"I do," I said. "It is in the safe in my house. I can get it if you need to see it."
Reed nodded. "We will need to see it at some point. For now, the VIN check is enough to tell us where we stand. The car is yours. Nobody has a legal right to take it based on what we have seen so far."
Victoria looked at the Mustang, then at the printout, then at me. For a moment, I thought I saw something that was not anger. It was closer to panic. She had counted on the police backing her up and me giving in. Instead, the police had run the number, and the number had backed me up.
"I want a copy of that," she said, pointing at the printout.
"You will get one," Reed said. "It will be part of the report. Everything we find will be part of the report."
I looked down at the VIN plate again, through the windshield. It was a small piece of metal, stamped with letters and numbers, and it had been there since 1969. It just said what the car was, and who it belonged to. For the first time that morning, the facts were lining up in a way that even Victoria could not talk her way around.
Reed put the printout in his folder. "We are not done," he said. "The VIN check tells us the car is still yours. It does not tell us how that bill of sale got made, or what happened to the petition, or whether anyone filed anything with the DMV. We still need to answer those questions."
I nodded. I knew he was right. The VIN check had settled one thing. It had not settled everything. But it was a start, and after a morning of being told I had sold something I had not sold, a start felt like a lot.