"So do I," Diana said. "And we can ask the court for it."
The neighbors began arriving as soon as the sun rose above the rooftops. Sarah Thompson brought heavy garbage bags and gloves, Mr. Wilson offered tools to repair the shelving, and Mrs. Martinez arrived with breakfast sandwiches for anyone helping. They stopped when they saw the damage and waited for Angela to tell them whether she wanted company. She nodded, grateful, then asked that nobody discard anything damaged until it had been photographed and listed.
Mrs. Carter stood beside the shattered display case, her hand resting on the back of a chair. "Harold used to say there are men who confuse being obeyed with being respected," she murmured. "He said those men have to make the room smaller for everybody else so they can feel tall."
Angela picked up a bent photograph of her medical unit. "Holt doesn't make me feel small," she said, examining the faces beneath the cracked glass. "He makes me worried about what he'll do to someone who doesn't have neighbors like mine."
A knock sounded from the front porch while the cleanup continued. Marcus glanced through the damaged window and recognized Detective Rosa Delgado standing in plain clothes with a small briefcase. She looked exhausted and kept her eyes on the street for a moment before stepping inside. When she saw the destroyed cabinet and the broken bedroom doorway, the careful composure she had maintained at the diner gave way to visible anger.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I know that doesn't fix anything. But I've come because I think I can show investigators something they've needed to see for a long time."
Diana joined the conversation by telephone before Delgado explained further. The detective had retained copies of certain departmental communications and reports as part of her attempts to document misconduct, and she had recorded her concerns with an independent oversight channel months before the raids. Some of her material could be protected by whistleblower procedures, while other items would require careful review to ensure their provenance and admissibility. Diana warned that distributing raw police evidence indiscriminately could compromise witnesses, investigations, and privacy, and Delgado agreed to bring the material directly to authorized federal investigators with the originals preserved through appropriate channels.
"I don't want anything disappearing because somebody decided I obtained it the wrong way," Delgado said. "And I don't want a single innocent person named in an old report becoming public collateral damage. This is about Holt's conduct, not showing off what I can access."
Angela studied her. "What made you decide to speak now?"
"Because I watched that first raid happen," Delgado answered. "I saw the way the report was written afterward. Then I learned Holt pushed for a second warrant while people inside the department were already questioning his first account. I realized waiting quietly for the right person to notice had become one more way of helping him."