A verified copy of the first segment became available at six minutes past one. Renata asked everybody with a direct role in the incident to step away from the screen while her team examined it, then permitted relevant witnesses to confirm identities when necessary. She wanted the recording to be evidence, not a roomful of people reacting to evidence. Nevertheless, the sound carried into the adjoining space.
They heard the patrol cruiser slow. They heard Wade's own voice through an open window making a remark about a man like Lennox driving a car like that. They saw Lennox put both hands on the steering wheel and provide documents. They heard Cara confirm the registration before the first window shattered.
There was no struggle to interpret. The camera angle did not reveal every expression, but it showed the driver's hands, the deputy's baton, and the sequence of events with a clarity that made the report's careful omissions impossible to ignore. On the screen, Wade held up Samuel's photograph and mocked the man in it. Then he dropped it face down into the glass.
Lennox stood outside the evidence room when that moment played. He had confirmed the archive existed and gave Solberg the authorization she needed to examine it. He did not need to watch his father's picture falling for a second time. The sound alone brought back the smell of grease on Samuel's coveralls and the thin smile he wore after long shifts because he didn't want his son to know how tired he was.
In the hallway, Lennox pressed his hand against a window ledge and breathed slowly. An official could use the recording to establish what happened. A son still had to live with the fact that someone had treated his father as a joke and there had been no way, in that moment, to make the insult harmless.
Inside, Wade lost his composure. "He told me how to write the report," he said suddenly, nodding toward Puit. "Every line. He used his red pen on my desk."
Puit turned. "Be quiet, Wade."
"You said not to put the registration confirmation first. You told me the sequence had to make sense."
"Both of you stop," Solberg said. Her voice did not rise. "You will be interviewed separately. Neither of you is to discuss your account with the other."
Wade looked as if he had expected the captain to save him again and had discovered too late that their interests no longer aligned. Puit said nothing, but his silence was not loyalty. It was the calculation of a man deciding which words might still be used against him.
Cara asked to speak to the investigator. Her palms were wet, and she had to hold her notebook with both hands to keep the pages from shifting. She described the roadside registration result, the camera's green indicator, Wade's claim that the media was corrupted, and her observation that the camera had initially responded normally at intake. She made clear which statements came from what she saw and which came from records she had checked later.
Then she told Renata about the interview-room light. The captain had turned the visible recording indicator off, and she had returned the system to its expected state because an interview of a detained person was taking place. She had documented the irregularity at the time. She did not claim she knew the full interview was preserved.