"Thank you," Olivia said. She leaned forward, her expression sharpening. "They want those files because some of the people in them filed misconduct complaints. Make the court decide exactly what they can access, and keep an independent record of every transfer."
Price nodded. He looked exhausted and had clearly slept little, but she could hear determination replacing uncertainty in his questions. For the first time, he appeared less like a colleague helping during an emergency and more like a defense attorney building a case he intended to litigate all the way through.
After the visit, Olivia found a note in the jail library's returned-book stack from Tasha's former attorney, who had arranged a permitted legal message through staff. It contained only a case number and the name of a clinic administrator willing to confirm that Tasha had filed her incident report before being arrested. That was a narrow piece of evidence, but narrow pieces mattered. A contemporary record made before the dispute arose could not easily be dismissed as a story created after someone was charged.
Meanwhile Maya and Sarah were attempting to contact other families without turning their lives into public spectacles. Marcus Johnson's mother agreed to speak at her kitchen table after making Maya promise not to photograph her grandson. She produced copies of the original complaint Marcus had filed after an officer seized his protest sign during a public demonstration. Two weeks after the complaint, Marcus was arrested in a traffic stop involving Daniels.
"He kept telling me not to worry," she said, turning a cup slowly between her hands. "He said the facts would clear him. Then the lawyer said taking a deal might get him home faster, and Marcus started asking me whether a guilty plea could ever be taken back."
Elena Martinez's sister provided a similar chronology. Elena had helped her brother recover from injuries following an arrest and insisted that the department review how force had been used. An officer filed a disorderly conduct citation after she complained, and several months later Reed supervised a traffic stop that led to a narcotics charge. Elena accepted a plea because her teaching job was already in danger and she could not afford the months of detention required to fight.
Luis Lopez's case offered another variation. He had challenged the seizure of equipment from his construction truck and asked for property receipts that never arrived. When narcotics appeared in the vehicle weeks later, the state described his work routes as evidence of distribution. His wife showed Maya maps, invoices, and an ordinary calendar on which Luis had tracked job sites long before the arrest.
The patterns were persuasive, but Maya resisted the temptation to make them identical. Each case had different witnesses, gaps, and procedural complications, and some details could have innocent explanations. Sarah reminded her that proving misconduct against one officer did not automatically exonerate every defendant whose case that officer touched. It would take individual reviews and independent evidence, even if a broader conspiracy eventually became clear.