He called Bennett's emergency number at 3:12. She answered on the fourth ring, her voice thick with sleep and immediate concern. Elijah read the relevant passages without embellishment, gave her the file identifier, and explained the missing attachment. When he finished, the silence on the other end lasted long enough for him to wonder whether the call had disconnected.
"Do not send that to anyone else," Bennett said. "Keep the original production intact. I'm going to ask the court for an evidentiary hearing and contact the city's information-security office first thing in the morning."
"What about Pierce?"
"We don't know whether she saw the message, whether the archive is complete, or what was in the missing report," Bennett replied. "The email suggests she knew. We have to establish that, not just believe it."
Elijah gripped the phone. "She told the judge all relevant evidence had been turned over."
"I remember," Bennett said. "And if what you're describing is authentic, we may be dealing with something much more serious than an ordinary disclosure mistake. But if we handle it badly, we give her a reason to argue we're the ones distorting the record."
He could hear her opening a drawer and searching for a pen. She asked him to dictate the exact source path and checksum of the file, then said she would be at the courthouse before eight. The professional discipline in her voice steadied him. For months he had imagined that finding the right document would feel like the end of the struggle, but the truth was that a document had to survive scrutiny before it could protect anyone.
He returned to the records and searched the name Richard Vance. The technician's reports had an unremarkable style, full of qualifications and requests for additional testing. That was part of what made the email credible: its author was not trying to exonerate someone dramatically, only describing what the evidence could and could not show. Elijah found a second internal ticket that referred to the same missing diagnostic report and a request to quarantine the municipal terminal for further examination.
That request had been closed without any explanation beyond the words managerial disposition. A later account-access summary showed the terminal remained in service for several days after the suspicion was raised. Elijah noted both facts and resisted the temptation to invent the reason. Someone had made decisions about preserving evidence, and the defense needed those decision-makers under oath.
At 4:15 a.m., he opened the separate folder dealing with the family's property seizure. He had spent so much of his attention on the criminal allegations that the civil petition had become a different kind of threat, one quietly moving forward while everyone argued about computer logs. The city had relied on Municipal Ordinance 409, a locally enacted forfeiture procedure for property allegedly tied to misuse of development funds. Its language gave officials power to restrain certain assets temporarily, but it also required prompt independent review, notice of the factual basis for the restraint, and an opportunity for the owner to challenge it.