Page 33 of Carnival’s Playground

"Bastard shoved that pipe right into the drive cog while the mid-show rush was hitting the exit," Dutch snaps, pointing a thick, calloused finger at the metal teeth without getting close enough to disturb it. "Could’ve caused a fatal crush if you two hadn't cleared the side gates."

Footsteps pound hard over the hardpacked dirt, and Petey comes sprinting up from the haul road path near the west fence, chest heaving like he just ran a marathon.

"Got something," Petey wheezes, white-knuckling his phone like it’s the only thing keeping him tethered to the dirt. "A motion sensor tripped on the perimeter path twenty minutes ago. I checked the preview feed on the app, but I left the trail cam and the card untouched on the trunk just like you said."

"Show me," I demand, stepping forward.

Petey brings up the screen with shaking fingers. The footage is grainy and washed in infrared green, framed by cedar branches and timestamped right at the start of the exit surge. A shadowy silhouette cuts low along the ditch line, moving fast and intentional. Right near the edge of the frame, something catches the ambient halogen glow from the midway lights.

"Pause that," Avery orders, leaning in close against my chest. "Right there. What the fuck is that reflection?"

"Could be a heavy belt buckle," Petey proposes, squinting. "Could be a wrench. Or the blade of a hunting knife."

"Or a goddamn camera lens," Dutch growls, his voice thick with venom. "Sonofabitch’s taking trophies of his work."

"Keep that raw file clean on the card," I tell Petey. "Don't sync or delete a single bite of data until the cops look at the original drive."

"I'm not stupid, Wyatt," Petey thunders out, tucking the phone securely inside his zipped jacket. "I didn't even breathe on the housing."

Twin headlights cut through the gloom near the main access road, throwing long, stark shadows across the dirt lot. A county cruiser with Grimwood Crossing Sheriff's Department stenciled across the doors rolls to a halt ten feet from the gate. The engine cuts out, and a tall, lean woman in uniform steps out into the cold night air, her gun belt creaking slightly as her boots hit the dirt. Her notepad is tucked under one arm, and her eyes scan the four of us with sharp, clinical precision.

"Dutch Lawson?" she asks, her voice carrying a dry, no-bullshit authority.

"That's me," Dutch replies, stepping forward. "You Deputy Renn?"

"Deputy Cassidy Renn," she confirms, nodding once. "Sheriff Caffey had dispatch patch me over while he clears the highway incident. He told me you had an intentional obstruction and possible criminal sabotage on a live crowd exit."

"More than possible," Dutch grunts, leading her toward the turnstile and hauling the plastic crate out of the way. "Look for yourself. Rusted steel conduit jammed straight between the primary drive teeth. Locked the turnstiles tight right as hundreds of folks were trying to cram out of the main tent."

Renn pulls a pair of blue nitrile gloves from her pocket and snaps them over her hands. She crouches low, pulling a heavy tactical flashlight from her duty belt. The white beam illuminates the twisted gear teeth and the scarred surface of the pipe. "Nobody touched this after it stopped the gears?" Renn asks, looking up at us.

"Wyatt and I manually kicked the emergency release latch on the bypass gate to relieve the pressure," Avery explains, stepping up beside me. "We didn't lay a finger on the pipe or the drive box."

"Good," Renn acknowledges, pulling out a camera from her cruiser, then proceeds to take a half dozen high-resolution photographs from multiple angles, then carefully extracts the heavy conduit from the mechanism and seals it into a heavy evidence bag. "I'll run this down to the county lockup for latent prints, but if whoever did this wore work gloves, we'll need more than tool marks."

"We've got more," I tell her, the words grinding out of my chest. "We found a boot print out by the west fence line earlier tonight. Vibram lug tread. Tripped a motion sensor right before the crowd hit the exit. And he pinned a fresh photo of Avery to a damn tree trunk to make sure we knew he was watching."

Renn's gaze snaps directly to Avery, then to me, evaluating the heat in my eyes. "Escalation. Somebody's targeting your crew specifically."

"We have a name worth running," Dutch adds, crossing his arms over his chest. "Fella named Rourke. Used to rig for Vesper Crow Traveling Circus before he was fired over a severe rigging accident that put an aerialist in the hospital. Found an old employee ID card with his name on it near the haul road."

"Anybody physically lay eyes on him tonight?" Renn presses, pen hovering over her pad.

"No," I growl, the bitter taste of frustration burning my tongue. "Just the tracks, the card, and the bastard's wake."

"Then Rourke is a person of interest, not a confirmed suspect," Renn flatly rasps, her pen scratching against the paper. "I'll run his priors and reach out to his probation officer if he's on paper. What else do you have?"

"Trail-camera clip," Petey chimes in. "Caught movement near the haul road right as the surge started. The original SD card is locked in the field housing on the perimeter tree, untouched."

"Good work," Renn tells him. "I'll pull the card with you before I leave. Transfer a copy to my county email right now so I can flag dispatch to look for any vehicles idling on the outer farm roads." Petey nods, pulling out his phone to send the file while Renn points her pen toward the folding table. "I need formal statements from each of you," she exclaims, looking between Dutch, Petey, Avery, and me. "One at a time. Every detail, from the moment you heard the alarm to the second the gate was clear."

For the next forty minutes, Renn works through us methodically. She separates us, grilling every timeline detail, making us walk through the exact sequence of events twice to check for discrepancies. Avery gives her statement with a calm, steel-jawed clarity that makes me want to pull her against me and never let go. When it's my turn, I give the deputy every scrap of tactical observation I caught—the cadence of the crowd, the exact angle the conduit was driven into the housing, the aggressive tread depth of the boot print in the cedar mud.

By the time Renn bags Petey's SD card and closes her ledger, the sky to the east is bruised into a raw, bleeding shade of violet and slate. The cold wind bites through my denim jacket, smelling of spent engine oil, damp earth, and ozone. "I've got two extra county units running rolling patrols along your perimeter roads until daybreak," Renn tells Dutch, stowing her gear in the back of the cruiser. "Sheriff Caffey and I will compare these logs with the Vesper Crow records first thing in the morning. Keep your gates locked, keep your people paired up, and if a damn leaf moves out of place, you call my cell directly."

"We will," Dutch says. "Appreciate you getting out here fast, Renn."

"Do your job and keep this place locked down, Lawson," she replies, climbing behind the wheel. "Whoever is doing this isn't playing games."