"Why?"
"Our administrative logs are being overwritten on a shortened cycle. I've been watching entries disappear."
Mercer turned sharply. "Lena, we've discussed the vendor's storage optimization."
"We've discussed the explanation," she answered. "We haven't established that it's true."
"When did the retention settings change?" Maya asked.
"About three weeks ago. The system used to keep six months of local administrator history and archive copies beyond that. The recent entries are still detailed, but older ones are being lost much faster than before."
"Who authorized the change?"
Lena looked down at her pad. "That's what I can't find. The administrator event that should identify whoever changed the configuration is already gone."
Mercer looked toward the public windows. Officers were moving through the lobby, collecting radios and accepting calls. He lowered his voice. "We should have this conversation upstairs."
"We can," Maya said, "after the affected records are preserved. Your department will remain operational. Patrol continues, dispatch continues, and nobody touches the systems connected to the evidence archive, contractor access, or administrative retention unless it's part of the documented preservation process."
"You're treating the building like a crime scene," Rebecca said.
"I'm treating its records as records," Maya replied. "A record isn't dangerous because someone wants to inspect it. It becomes dangerous when people can alter it without leaving a trace."
Lena nodded once, almost imperceptibly. It was the first sign of relief she had shown since entering the lobby. For weeks she had carried her observations like a burden she could not safely put down. She had tried formal tickets, emails, meetings with the vendor, and finally a confidential report outside the department. Now there was somebody standing in front of her who asked not whether the problem would make the department look bad, but whether the underlying information still existed.
Ben remained at the desk. The elderly man with the stolen-license-plate complaint had finally been helped by another officer. A young mother entered holding a blue folder. The everyday machinery of the department kept moving around the black case and the two halves of the credential, neither of which anyone now dared touch. Ben looked again at the green verification result on his monitor.
The system had told him the truth the first time. He had obeyed an order to make it disappear from view. He wondered how often the same thing had happened elsewhere in the building with consequences nobody could see from a front desk.
Lena led the way through a corridor whose walls were covered with framed photographs of academy graduations and city award ceremonies. Beneath the smiling faces were dates, and beneath the dates was the reassuring fiction that time moved forward cleanly, every year safely filed after the last.