Olivia lay awake long after Tasha had turned toward the wall. She thought of Marcus Johnson's inconsistent timestamps and realized that the pattern she had been studying on paper was now sitting beside her in the dark. Tasha was not merely a data point in a file; she was a person who could describe the day she had lost her livelihood in exactly the same way Olivia would describe Tuesday night. The human cost of the pattern had become impossible to summarize with a chart.
On Thursday, Officer James Foster requested a visit. Olivia recognized neither the name nor the man when he entered the visitation room, and his first words did little to reassure her. He said he had transferred to Milfield from Chicago three months earlier and had heard about her work on police accountability. He wore an ordinary jacket over a dress shirt, leaving his department badge clipped discreetly near his belt.
"I don't know you," Olivia said into the visitor's telephone.
"That's fair," Foster replied. "I've seen enough in this department to understand why you wouldn't trust a stranger in uniform."
He described evidence logs with unexplained amendments, officers' equipment that failed at suspicious times, and an atmosphere in which asking routine questions could ruin an employee's assignment. He did not demand that she believe him. Instead, he named an innocuous discrepancy from a case Olivia had reviewed months earlier, a fact that had never appeared in the newspaper and which she had shared with very few people.
"How do you know about the property number in that case?" she asked.
Foster hesitated. "A legitimate investigation is underway involving more than one jurisdiction. I'm limited in what I can tell you here."
"That's a convenient claim from somebody who works for Reed."
"It would be convenient if I asked you to hand me your evidence. I'm not asking for that. I'm telling you not to surrender your right to counsel, not to accept a bargain without discovery, and not to assume every officer in that building agrees with what happened to you."
The guard announced that their time was nearly over. Foster gave her the name of an outside attorney associated with the inquiry, intending that Price verify it independently before any trust was extended. Olivia memorized the name rather than accepting his offer as proof. As Foster stood, she asked whether he had known her father.
"Only by reputation," he said. "The people who actually worked his cases remember him differently from the stories printed after he died."
Something warm and painful stirred behind Olivia's ribs. She had not realized how badly she needed to hear somebody say that without prompting. Foster added, louder for the nearby guard, "You should consider your options carefully, Miss Turner," and left without another word. Olivia watched him go, uncertain whether she had met an ally or a skilled participant in another trap.
While Olivia waited for the next hearing, Maya visited their father's old house, where their mother had lived until a few years before her death. The family had sold it after the funeral, but the memories remained attached to ordinary objects Maya had carried to her apartment. In a closet beneath winter coats sat Thomas's tackle box, dented at one corner and secured with a metal clasp that always stuck in damp weather. Maya lifted it onto her dining table, remembering Olivia's request to check their father's fishing spot.