Buildings often do after fear stops living inside them.
I parked across the street and sat in the car for a few minutes with the briefcase on the passenger seat.
The leather was nearly worn through at one handle.
I had finally bought a replacement months earlier.
It sat unused in my office.
The old case had become inefficient, sentimental, and slightly ridiculous.
I still carried it.
My phone buzzed.
A message from Judge Carter.
She had apparently seen the local article about the follow-up audit.
Only four words:
Still asking the questions?
I typed back:
Always.
Three dots appeared.
Then her answer:
Good. Keep the bag locked.
I laughed alone in the car.
Across the street, courthouse employees were leaving through the side entrance. A deputy held the door for a woman carrying files. A lawyer jogged down the steps while trying to put on a coat. Somewhere inside, records were being entered into systems that would outlast the people typing them.
Some would contain mistakes.
Some would contain assumptions.
Some would describe people at the worst moment of their lives.
The best safeguard was never going to be a perfect person.
There are no perfect people.
The safeguard was a structure that made it possible to ask who changed the record, why, under what authority, and whether the evidence still supported the story being told.
That was what Marcus Vale had tried to control.
Not simply data.
The ability of the next person to know what happened.
That was why the briefcase mattered.
That was why Naomi's recordings mattered.
That was why Jonah's screenshot mattered.
That was why Darius kept asking for a video everyone told him did not exist.
And that was why, when Daniel Vance told me in the courthouse that I did not ask questions there, the most important thing I carried was not hidden inside leather and brass locks.
It was the refusal to accept his premise.
I did ask questions there.
So did the judge.
So did the investigators.
So did the jury.
So did the people who came afterward and asked whether the reforms still worked when the scandal was old news.
The briefcase only carried the answers we had managed to preserve.
I started the car.
Before pulling away, I looked once at the courthouse doors.
Then I drove home.