Sutcliffe stopped near Clayton as the server passed between them. "Your little camera story ends today," he said quietly.
Clayton looked at the inventory form in the deputy chief's hand. "Then sign for every item. Every drive, every tape, every cable they disconnect. If something goes missing, I need the record to say whose custody it entered."
Sutcliffe wrote an inventory quickly, listing the server, external drives, thumb drives, and tapes. Rosa made him correct two vague entries so the seized devices could be distinguished from one another. He signed at the bottom. Clayton checked the date and the time, then accepted a copy.
As Lel carried the last box past him, Clayton noticed the officer's left breast pocket. Something small made the cloth bulge beneath the button, about the size of a ring of keys. He did not accuse Lel in front of the other officers. A shape beneath fabric was not proof. But he wrote the observation in his notebook as soon as they were gone, alongside the exact inventory entry for the seized equipment.
At the gate, Rosa asked where the items would be stored. Sutcliffe named the department evidence room. She asked whether that was the same evidence room where he had said Clayton's father's key ring was logged. Sutcliffe answered that all evidence was handled according to policy. Rosa told him she would request the relevant logs and custody records in writing before the end of the day.
When the vehicles left, the technical room looked almost abandoned. A clean rectangle on the rack showed where the server had stood. Wires hung neatly labeled but disconnected. The ordinary buzz of the shop returned slowly as employees picked up tools and tried to resume work, though none of them could stop thinking about the police carrying away the records that might prove the arrest had been staged.
Jaylen slid down the wall and sat on the floor. "They took everything," he said. "I should've hidden a drive. I should've taken something home."
Clayton sat beside him. He was tired enough that for a moment he had the same thought. They had spent days preserving the truth, and men who seemed determined not to hear it had just removed every recording device from the room. Then Rosa lowered herself onto the floor in her expensive blazer, opened her briefcase, and held up a white piece of paper.
"October fifth," she said. "Nine fourteen in the morning. Ingrid Sato's receipt. Two archived copies, complete manifests, and signed custody acceptance in the city's contract records. We still have the lawyer's secured preservation copy, too."
Jaylen looked up. "They didn't take that?"
"They searched this shop under a warrant," Rosa said. "That doesn't make the purchasing office's independent contract archive vanish. And it doesn't erase the copy held under preservation with counsel. We are going to verify every copy against the integrity list before anybody plays a second of it in public."