Rusk nodded once.
"Naomi Ellis," Vance said.
Lieutenant Naomi Ellis had supervised the complaint intake unit for eleven years. She was fifty, meticulous, and respected enough that even people who disliked her called her fair. Three months before my audit began, she had taken medical leave and never returned.
Her name appeared only twice in our records because her system access had been disabled shortly before we requested historical logs.
"What about Ellis?" Cho asked.
"She recorded meetings."
"How do you know?"
"Vale found out."
"How?"
"She confronted him about changing complaint categories. Said she had proof. Two weeks later, she was out. Officially stress leave."
"Did Vale fire her?"
"No. He didn't need to. They opened an internal review on her for mishandling confidential material. Her lawyer told her to take leave."
"Where are the recordings?"
"I don't know. Vale thought Brooks had them."
I did.
Folder Five contained three audio files given to outside counsel by Naomi Ellis under a whistleblower agreement.
Until that moment, only five people knew.
I had never spoken Naomi's name inside police headquarters.
That meant the leak reached deeper than our delivery schedule.
Someone knew what was in the audit.
Naomi had contacted the inspector general before I was retained. Her attorney insisted on a narrow disclosure process because she feared the department would accuse her of exposing protected complaint information. The state where Westbridge sat permitted a participant to record a conversation she was part of, but legality did not erase confidentiality concerns, so the files had been handled carefully.
The first recording was mundane for nearly forty minutes.
Supervisors discussed staffing, backlogs, training deadlines, and quarterly reports. Then Naomi raised three complaints involving Vance's unit.
Her voice was clear.
"I won't reclassify an unlawful-search allegation as customer dissatisfaction. The complainant is specifically challenging legal authority."
Vale answered with the calm tone of an executive correcting a junior employee.
"You're overreading emotional language. Narrow it to the conduct we can verify."
"The conduct we can verify is that he said no consent and they searched anyway."
A chair scraped.
Another voice, later identified as Lieutenant Peter Sloan, said, "Naomi, nobody's asking you to lie."
"Then why are you asking me to change the category that triggers investigation?"
Silence.
Vale spoke next.
"Because not every accusation deserves to become a misconduct case. If we let citizens define the category, Professional Standards stops being professional."
Naomi replied, "Citizens aren't defining the outcome. They're defining what they're alleging. Those are different things."
The meeting moved on.
The complaint was later reclassified anyway.
The second recording concerned body-camera footage.
Naomi asked why a raw segment had disappeared from the ordinary discovery portal. Vale said the clip was duplicative and technically defective.
Naomi said, "It's the only clip that starts before the search."
Vale answered, "And it has a synchronization error that makes it unreliable."
"The vendor says the timestamp is valid."
A pause.