She looked back out at the cameras. I keep hearing people ask if this is personal. Of course, it's personal. It happened to me in my house, in my body, but that doesn't make it any less true. And it doesn't mean three other families who went through the exact same thing before me should keep getting ignored.
A murmur moved through the reporters. Anderson was already writing fast. Francis stepped back up beside her. This office isn't pursuing anything out of revenge. We're pursuing it because the evidence demands it.
Evidence that exists whether or not it happened to be my house that got hit this time. I'd be doing exactly this if it were any other family on any other street in this county. The only difference is most families don't have a badge that makes people listen. He let that land then closed the folder in his hands. We'll be taking questions.
The press conference ran long. Reporters pressed on the engineers's report, on the timeline, on the suspended tactical unit, on whether other complaints existed, and Francis answered every question directly without flinching, without the careful hedging his advisers usually recommended. By that evening, the story had flipped entirely. Local coverage led with the engineers's findings and Stella's testimony instead of vague conflict of interest questions. A columnist who'd questioned Francis's motives days earlier published a follow-up walking it back.
Public sentiment, which had wobbled under Garvey's smear, swung hard back in Francis's direction. That night, sitting in Stella's sister's guest room, Francis's phone buzzed with a message from Roxanne. Anderson says oversight board members are already talking about formal charges. This might actually be moving. Francis read the message twice, then looked over at Stella, who was watching the news replay quietly on her phone beside him.
For the first time since the morning their door came down, it felt like the ground might finally be shifting under the right people. The oversight board meeting was scheduled for the following week. And inside police headquarters. That meant one thing to Captain Roger Garvey. Time was running out to find out who had leaked the footage that started all of this.
He'd been asking around quietly for days. Who had access to the raw files that morning? Who transferred data off department servers around the same time the footage surfaced? It didn't take long. Officer Lauraai Oliver had been the newest name on his unit for less than a year, and new officers made mistakes.