“Man or woman?”
“Man, I think. He was wearing a dark coat.”
“Did you see his face?”
“No.”
“Why didn't you mention this to the police?”
“I did. They said I was trying to introduce an unidentified person to confuse the investigation.”
Laura made a note.
“Do you remember anything else about him?”
“He was carrying a flat black case. Not a briefcase exactly. More like a document case.”
“Anything distinctive?”
“He walked with a slight limp.”
Laura stopped writing.
“Did Adrian walk with a limp?”
“No.”
“Did Robert Kessler?”
“Not that I know of.”
“What about Thomas Whitaker?”
Eleanor looked at her.
“I saw him at Meridian once. He had an old injury in his right leg. He walked unevenly when he was tired.”
Laura slowly set down her pen.
“That is important.”
“It may not mean anything.”
“Correct. It may not. But we need to record it, and we need to establish whether Whitaker was at Meridian that night.”
Eleanor looked toward the closed door.
“Do you think he killed Adrian?”
“I don't know. Neither do you. We are not going to turn suspicion into a conclusion. We are going to establish the facts.”
Eleanor gave a faint nod.
For weeks, she had been forced to listen as strangers explained her own actions to the public. They described her motives, her character, and her supposed greed as if they had been present in every room she had entered.
Laura's refusal to jump to conclusions was one of the few things that made Eleanor feel she still had some control over her life.
Before the meeting ended, Laura placed a document in front of her.
“I need you to review this timeline. Mark anything that is incorrect, even if you think the detail is insignificant.”
Eleanor picked up the pen.
For the next forty minutes, she worked through the document line by line.
She corrected the time she left Meridian. She identified the location of the elevator she had used. She clarified which employee had deactivated her badge and noted that she had received an automated message confirming the deactivation at 10:12 p.m.
Then she reached the entry at 10:23 p.m.
10:23 p.m. — Defendant's badge used to access executive floor.
Eleanor circled it.
“That cannot be right.”
“Why?”
“Because I was already outside the building.”
“Do you have proof?”
She thought for a moment.
“My parking payment.”
Laura looked up.
“What?”
“The garage uses a ticket system. I paid at the exit machine before leaving. I remember because it rejected my first card.”
“Do you still have the receipt?”
“I kept it in the glove compartment.”
“Where is the car?”
“The police impounded it after my arrest.”
Laura immediately wrote a note.
“We'll request the vehicle and the garage records.”
Eleanor looked at the disputed entry again.
“If the badge was deactivated, and I was outside the building, then someone else used it.”
“Or the records are wrong,” Laura said. “We need to rule out both possibilities.”
Eleanor nodded.
But for the first time in three weeks, she could see a way to test the prosecution's story.
The evidence did not have to depend on who sounded more convincing in court.
It could be checked against records that existed before anyone had accused her of murder.
At 1:40 p.m., Rebecca Sloan received a call from an analyst in the inspector general's digital forensics unit.
The analyst had reviewed the preliminary audit trail and found something unusual.
The replacement spreadsheet had not been uploaded from a workstation inside the courthouse.
It had been submitted through a remote administrative session.
The session had originated from an IP address associated with a government-issued laptop.
The device was registered to Thomas Whitaker.
Rebecca read the report twice.
“Can we identify the physical location of the laptop at the time?”
“Not yet. The device's location service was disabled.”
“Can we establish whether the account owner was authenticated?”
“The system shows a valid administrator credential and a second authentication token. We need the identity provider logs to confirm how the token was issued.”
“Could someone else have used the device?”
“Yes.”
“Could someone have used the account without the owner's knowledge?”
“Technically possible, but we need more information.”
Rebecca made a note.
“Preserve everything. Don't attempt to access the laptop remotely.”
She ended the call and walked into the conference room where Helen Park and Patricia Shaw were waiting.
“The altered file was submitted through a remote administrative session linked to a government laptop assigned to Thomas Whitaker.”
Shaw's expression did not change.
Helen leaned back.
“That doesn't prove Whitaker used it.”
“No,” Rebecca agreed. “But it gives us a specific lead. We need to secure the device and determine who had access to it.”
“Can you obtain it today?” Shaw asked.
“If the inspector general authorizes a formal seizure, yes. We are preparing the request now.”
“What about the original spreadsheet?”
“We have an intact archive copy, but we have not yet confirmed whether the file itself contains all the original metadata. The system may have retained the content while altering other records.”
Helen nodded.
“I can compare the archived version against the system backup from the night before the modification.”
“Do that. Use an isolated machine, and document every step.”
Rebecca turned to Samuel.
He had been sitting quietly beside the door.
“Mr. Brooks, we need to discuss your account.”
Samuel straightened.
“Of course.”
“Do you use a personal password manager?”