He left his office and walked into evidence processing. The black metal case sat on the main table. The original seal Mercer had broken remained beside it inside a temporary evidence bag. Several folders were arranged nearby.
Dugan put on gloves. He examined the case inventory, then removed the damaged dash camera from its bag. The property deputy looked up from his computer. You need me to stay?
No. Finish your other intake. The deputy hesitated. You want me to log anything you remove? I'm reviewing the incident personally.
That answer was enough to make the deputy return to his desk. Dugan carried the camera to a smaller workstation out of direct view. He removed the memory card and inspected it. The card itself appeared undamaged.
His expression tightened. He placed it on the table and pressed down until it cracked. Then he separated the pieces and dropped them into a small disposal container. He opened the dash camera housing and loosened several internal components.
He did not need to destroy the entire unit. He only needed it to look unreliable enough that a later technical failure would seem possible. After that, he turned to the black case. The original numbered seal was the first problem.
If someone later compared the seal record with the condition of the case, Mercer's decision to open it would be obvious. Dugan removed the broken tamper strip from the evidence bag and dropped it into the shred bin. He then reviewed the folders Mercer had exposed. Most were preliminary summaries and personnel review documents.
Dugan read quickly, stopping whenever his own name appeared. One file referenced supervisory overrides of evidence classifications. Another listed complaints closed without full review. A third contained a table of unexplained changes to incident reports.
Dugan removed several pages. He fed them into the shredder. The machine ran for only a few seconds. No one came to investigate the sound.
A dispatcher laughed at something in the hallway. A phone rang near the front desk. Someone opened the breakroom refrigerator. Dugan returned the remaining files to the case and placed them in roughly the same order.
He replaced the original evidence bag with a new one and wrote a fresh notation describing the materials as received in compromised condition. At a nearby workstation, Noah noticed the evidence status screen update. He clicked on the case entry. One inventory line was gone.
Another had been reclassified. The dash camera status had changed from received to damaged equipment. Noah looked toward the evidence room. Dugan was still inside.
He checked the system history available to ordinary users. Some of the earlier information was no longer visible. Noah opened the maintenance field he had used before. He entered a second note stating that the original evidence record had existed at 10:14 that evening before supervisory review.
He added the reference number and saved it. No accusation, no opinion, only a timestamp. Then he closed the screen.
At nearly the same time, several miles away, Evelyn Brooks sat at her kitchen table with her phone in front of her. She had made decaf coffee, but had barely touched it. The video from the roadside was still open. She watched the section where Mercer stood beside the Bentley with the baton in his hand.
The broken windows were clearly visible. Maya stood away from the vehicle. Noah appeared several feet behind Mercer. Evelyn replayed the final minute.
She had spent years working in emergency rooms where memory became unreliable quickly after stressful events. She knew the value of writing things down while they were fresh. She took a yellow legal pad from a drawer.
At the top, she wrote the date. Under it, she noted the approximate time, the road, the number of patrol vehicles, what she had personally seen, and what she had personally heard. She was careful not to add anything she had not witnessed. When she finished, she called the sheriff's office.
A deputy answered, "Carver County Sheriff's Office. My name is Evelyn Brooks. I witnessed the traffic stop involving the Black Bentley this evening." There was a pause.