I want a safety assessment immediately." Francis assured him he would cooperate. When the call ended, Regina was standing at the kitchen doorway, having heard enough to understand.
"They're opening it?" she asked. "Yes." "Independent investigators?" "Yes." She approached and wrapped her arms around him.
For several seconds, neither spoke. Then Regina stepped back and wiped her eyes. "Then let's finish it properly," she said. Francis nodded. He was grateful not only because the process was moving, but because the woman beside him had insisted that justice and their safety belonged in the same conversation.
The federal civil rights team arrived within two days. Investigators Rener and Castellano established a temporary workspace at the field office, carefully separated from the Hartwell team and from any evidence Francis had previously handled in his professional capacity. Rener was methodical and spoke in short, precise sentences. Castellano had a calmer conversational manner and an instinct for drawing out details witnesses had overlooked. They explained the scope of the inquiry and the necessity of preserving evidence in forms that could later withstand legal scrutiny.
Their first long meeting lasted most of an afternoon. Francis walked through the original encounter minute by minute. Rener stopped him repeatedly to identify what he personally witnessed, what he learned from other people, and what remained unverified. Castellano built a timeline on a whiteboard, placing the dash of the original patrol car at one end and the lost dispatch audio near the middle. They reviewed Regina's video, Oscar's statement, the local hearing record, and the complaints involving Brown and Ashper. They treated the prior cases as leads requiring independent corroboration, not conclusions.
"The public video is important," Rener said, "but it begins after the encounter is underway." Francis nodded. "Regina didn't come outside until she heard the officers." "And the dispatch file is missing." "That's what we've been told."
Castellano looked toward the board. "We need the beginning. Why Mason came there, what he said to dispatch, and what Francis did before the other officers arrived." The investigators could obtain logs and other records, but they understood how powerful a clear contemporaneous recording would be.
Francis described Mrs. Alden's early observations and Harold Price's location. They added both names to the interview schedule. He also mentioned the dash camera as a possibility but admitted he had not confirmed whether it contained the incident. Rener looked up sharply. "Where is the car?"
"At my house." "Don't alter anything on the device. We can arrange a proper extraction." Francis nodded, frustrated with himself for having delayed checking it. The meeting moved on to the other evidence, but his mind kept returning to the small camera mounted behind the windshield.
On the drive home, he nearly missed the turn onto Maple Court. The memory arrived with sudden clarity: when he installed the camera, he selected a parking-monitoring function that saved longer clips when movement occurred near the vehicle. It had recorded a delivery driver backing into his driveway once and a neighbor's cat walking across the hood another time. He had never needed those clips, but the device's storage was relatively large, and the encounter might still be preserved. He pulled into the driveway, parked, and called Rener before touching anything.