Tomorrow, he would interview Patricia Greene.
He would also meet with Paul Harlan.
Between them, he hoped to establish what had happened to the missing witness statement and why the official investigation had failed to account for it.
But he knew that the answers might lead somewhere nobody had yet anticipated.
Because David Carter's letter suggested that, before his death, he had witnessed something that could have threatened the interests of a powerful city official.
If that information was connected to the handling of his arrest, then the missing statement might be only one piece of a much larger puzzle.
And if the connection proved real, the investigation would no longer be about a single police department's failure.
It would become a question of whether people in positions of public trust had used their authority to protect one another at the expense of an innocent man's life.
Marcus turned off the office lights and left the building.
Across Westbridge, the evening news was preparing another report about Ethan Miller.
His face appeared on a television screen above a crowded restaurant counter. The presenter described the public response to the video and announced that the Office of Public Integrity had expanded its review to include previous complaints against Officer Brooks.
Ethan watched the report from his father's living room.
He did not like seeing himself on television.
He disliked even more the feeling that his life had become a symbol before he had fully understood what had happened.
But when the report ended, the presenter made an announcement that caught his attention.
A retired police records administrator had agreed to provide information in an independent investigation into a decades-old case.
No name was mentioned.
No details were given.
Yet Ethan immediately thought of the anonymous message he had received.
Someone had known that the old complaints mattered.
Someone had known that the records might contain answers.
He looked toward his father.
“Do you think this is all connected?”
Richard remained silent for a moment.
“I think the evidence is beginning to show that the past was more complicated than we were told.”
“Do you think we'll ever know the whole truth?”
Richard looked at the photograph of David Carter resting on the coffee table.
“I don't know,” he said. “But for the first time in a long time, I think we have a chance.”
Outside, the streetlights flickered on one by one.
In another part of the city, Patricia Greene sat at her dining table, looking through an old box of papers she had not opened in years.
She had kept a copy of the letter she wrote to the police department after David Carter's death. She had also kept the name of the officer who told her to leave the precinct.
She had never forgotten his face.
When the investigator contacted her that afternoon, she had almost refused to speak. The years had taught her that telling the truth could be exhausting, and she had long ago decided that protecting her quiet life was more important than reopening an old wound.
But something in the investigator's voice had been different.
He had not asked her to defend a theory.
He had asked what she remembered.
So she had agreed to meet.
Now she opened the old letter and read it again.
At the bottom, beneath her signature, she had written a sentence she barely remembered composing.
I hope someone will eventually want to know what happened more than they want to protect the people involved.
Patricia folded the letter and placed it inside her handbag.
Tomorrow, she would tell her story.
And when she did, the investigation would finally have something it had lacked for twenty-two years: a living witness willing to explain what she had heard, whom she had seen, and why she had been afraid to speak.
For Richard Miller, it might be the beginning of an answer.
For Marcus Reed, it might be the evidence needed to determine whether the old investigation had been compromised.
And for Paul Harlan, it would be the moment when the choices he had made as a young officer could no longer be dismissed as forgotten administrative details.
The past was returning, one witness at a time.
And this time, the people who had once controlled the records would not be the only ones deciding what the world was allowed to know.
Patricia Greene arrived at the Office of Public Integrity twelve minutes before her scheduled interview. She carried a small leather handbag, a folded umbrella, and a manila envelope that had been handled so many times its edges had softened and begun to separate.
Marcus Reed noticed the envelope before he noticed anything else.
She held it against her chest as though someone might attempt to take it from her.
“Ms. Greene?” he asked, approaching her in the reception area.