"Miriam Keene. She requested preservation immediately after the detention. Don't put her in a position where she has to fight her own supervisor alone."
Torres made a note. "We're arranging independent custody of the department recordings. I also have a digital examiner coming for the station system. Do not let the presence of a general turn this into an interagency showdown."
"It hasn't," Danielle said. "The general understands his role. He's been useful mainly because he makes the people in this parking lot remember that they are being observed."
"You sound tired."
"I was handcuffed to my own SUV before breakfast. I'm entitled to a little fatigue."
Torres laughed once. It relieved the pressure for a second, then she returned to business. "Take the time you need to preserve the scene. I'll be there shortly. And Danielle? Don't let them rush you."
Danielle ended the call and turned back toward the office. Leah was waiting at the entrance with a notebook pressed against her chest. She had recovered enough confidence to bring over the original station reconciliation reports without being asked a second time.
"These are the numbers I couldn't balance," Leah said. "I wrote them down by hand because the reports kept changing. I know that sounds ridiculous."
"It sounds like you realized a system you depended on might not be trustworthy."
Leah opened the notebook to a page dated five months earlier. Neat columns of figures lined the paper, each total written twice as though she had checked the arithmetic and then checked it again. Some pages contained tiny questions in the margins: WHY NIGHT ONLY? WHO AUTHORIZED? NO TRUCK AT PUMP?
"When I asked the service company, they said they couldn't find my work order," she said. "Then Voss came in and told me to stop calling. He said the system wasn't my responsibility."
"Who changed the reports?"
"I don't know. But the next morning, the discrepancies would disappear from the daily summary. The original customer totals were still there if I printed them before midnight."
Danielle photographed the notebook and obtained Leah's consent to have a forensic examiner make a digital copy of the station's records. She also asked Leah to prepare a written statement when she felt ready. The notebook was valuable precisely because it contained ordinary, contemporaneous observations, not a polished narrative created after the crime became public.
A young Army technician named Luis Ortega joined them at the counter. He worked in digital forensics, and his uniform pockets held pens, evidence labels, and a small notebook full of checklists. He spoke to Leah in an unhurried way, describing how he would preserve her private camera files without altering the originals.
"I don't need your password spoken in front of anybody," he said. "You can enter it yourself. I'll document the process and verify the copy so we can prove it hasn't changed."
Leah looked toward the back office. "The main security recorder is there. Shaw wanted to take it."
"We'll image it under the warrant," Ortega answered. "But I'd like to preserve your system independently."