Lena looked at her pad. "Nathan submitted a complaint saying the footage had a missing section. When I tried to check the source, it was gone. That's when I stopped being comfortable with assurances from the vendor. A person had been detained based on an event that the complete recording was supposed to establish."
Maya studied the frozen image of Nathan standing beneath the service entrance lights. She had worked fraud cases where the apparent victims were corporations that could absorb the loss, and civil-rights cases where a single false official statement had altered the course of an ordinary life. An incomplete storage project might be measured in dollars and gigabytes. An altered piece of evidence could cost somebody his job, his reputation, or his freedom. She did not know yet whether that had happened here. The possibility was enough to make Nathan's records as important as the invoices.
"Preserve every version associated with this case," she told Owen. "The original identifiers, the exports, the complaint history, and every administrator event touching the files. Give the procurement records equal priority."
He nodded. "We'll create a controlled working copy once the originals are secured."
Elise returned from the equipment cabinet carrying a configuration summary. "We also need the contractor certificate list. One active account appears to have privileges broader than ordinary maintenance."
"Don't revoke it yet," Maya said. "Record every connection and action while we establish what it has been used for. No changes without a safety assessment and an authorization record."
Rebecca looked from the monitor to Maya. "You think my brother is involved."
"I think his company has credentials whose scope we need to explain. That's what the record currently supports."
Rebecca almost answered, then stopped. The refusal to accuse her was becoming harder to manage than an accusation would have been. Without an accusation she had nothing to disprove, and the inquiry kept advancing toward questions she did not want asked.
Maya's black case gave a soft chime from a nearby counter. The red indicator turned green after the remote authority confirmed custody and authorized the seal's release. Maya documented the change and opened it in front of the evidence agent. Inside were sealed preservation orders, blank chain-of-custody forms, tamper-evident bags, clean storage media, and authorization packets. There were no mysterious electronics concealed in its lining, no device built to penetrate the network, only the ordinary tools required to preserve what other people might later dispute.
She handed Mercer the relevant order. He read the scope carefully and said, "This authorizes preservation of grant-funded infrastructure and the records connected to it."
"Yes. We are not taking over your police functions. We're determining whether the records your department certified actually correspond to the systems it operates."
Maya turned to Lena. "Let's look at what Asheford paid for."