Sharon took the glass from his hand and set it down. They stood in the quiet kitchen for a while without speaking. Her presence did not solve the injustice, and she did not pretend it could. But Byron was grateful that, in their house, he did not have to turn every injury into a carefully framed public statement.
The investigation entered a more serious stage when analysts finished tracing the cash discrepancies. A review of the evidence-room access system showed that Hollister had entered the storage area on days when seizure amounts later changed in the accounting records. A separate comparison of digital property forms revealed revisions entered after the original roadside paperwork had been completed. Some changes could have been legitimate corrections, but several had been made without required explanations or the signatures of the officers who supposedly verified them.
One of the most troubling files involved a driver whose cash had been counted on video as forty-six hundred dollars. The formal inventory showed a smaller amount, and the driver's claim had been denied on grounds that the funds were suspicious. Later account activity associated with Hollister included deposits that investigators believed could be connected to the missing difference. The evidence was examined carefully, with alternative explanations checked before prosecutors decided which transactions they could prove.
Another problem surfaced in the records from Byron's stop. The original property report showed the search as consensual, but a revised version had added language asserting that Byron's behavior suggested concealed contraband. That language appeared only after Hollister knew the driver's identity. The system preserved the revision timestamp, and it did not match the sequence recorded on the body camera.
Porter reviewed the change with an investigator who specialized in digital records. "He didn't merely remember the stop differently," the investigator said. "He tried to make the paperwork say something the recording doesn't support."
"Then show every step," Porter replied. "Who opened it, what changed, and when. I don't want a conclusion we can't recreate in court."
The technical team produced a documented audit trail. Prosecutors considered whether the record changes supported obstruction-related allegations, including whether there was proof of intent to affect the inquiry. They knew that carelessness and misconduct sometimes coexist, and they intended to distinguish them. The strongest charges would be those anchored by footage, authenticated documents, reliable witnesses, and financial traces rather than the dramatic significance of Byron's job title.
Hollister's lawyer filed requests challenging the scope of the searches, arguing that some seized records lay beyond the immediate incident. The court heard arguments about relevance, warrants, privacy, and the extent of the investigation. Certain disputes were resolved through narrower production requirements; others were decided in favor of the government after the judge examined the evidence supporting the authorizations. The process was slower than television made criminal investigations appear, and it was precisely the kind of process that Hollister had failed to respect when others invoked their rights by the roadside.