"Too tight?" Jordan asked.
"No, keep going."
Jordan loosened it anyway. Camille had been discharged into her care the previous night with instructions not to drive, ride, or make critical decisions while the concussion symptoms remained.
The irony was not lost on either of them. Camille's entire job consisted of critical decisions, and the county was still cleaning storm debris while its sheriff sat beneath a kitchen light wearing one sleeve. Her deputy chief had handled the emergency plan exactly as designed; no lives had depended on Camille's personal arrival.
Even so, she kept replaying her command over the radio: No armed response. It had prevented a dangerous confrontation. It had also left Pike in control long enough to injure her, seize the motorcycle, and write the first public version.
Jordan secured the bandage. "You made the safest decision you could while two guns were pointed at you."
"I made the safest decision for everyone standing behind me. That is not the same answer."
Before Camille could respond, the doorbell rang. Naomi Cole from the State Public Integrity Bureau waited outside with Laya Gomez. Naomi was compact, gray-haired, and direct. Laya looked younger than her steady telephone voice had suggested; she carried no files, only a city identification card and the strain of someone who had been warned not to be there.
"Chief Kerr requested an independent review," Naomi said after they sat down. "The prosecutor has paused the obstruction referral, but it has not been formally declined. I need your account as a complainant, not as a sheriff directing an investigation."
Camille nodded. "That distinction matters."
Laya placed her hands flat on the table. "City Council instructed employees not to discuss the event outside the administrative chain. Investigator Cole requested me as the system custodian, so I'm here under her authority."
That was how trust began for Camille: not with loyalty, but with someone naming the boundary and staying inside it.
Naomi opened an encrypted evidence viewer. The first file contained the county radio recording. Pike's voice was unmistakable as he called Camille's radio stolen, threatened responding deputies with obstruction, and continued after Asheford Communications repeatedly used her title.
The second file was Laya's certified export of the municipal CAD event. She explained only what the system could establish: Pike's individual multi-factor session had requested the plate. The state return came back clear. 83 seconds later, the same authenticated session created a local patrol intelligence caution describing a possible cloned plate and armed rider.
"Can the audit prove Pike typed it?" Camille asked.
"It proves his session created it from his assigned vehicle," Laya said. "The terminal camera does not record the cabin. Another person could have used the unlocked session."
"Which is already his defense," Naomi said. Pike's union attorney had submitted notice that Van might have entered the caution while Pike watched the motorcycle. It was an intelligent shift: if the city could not prove who touched the keyboard, Pike could characterize everything afterward as reliance on information supplied by his partner.
Laya enlarged the event history. "Standard reports display the newest caution as though it existed when the plate was first queried. Dispatchers have to open the audit pane to see creation order. Supervisory approval is not required for temporary patrol intelligence."
"So the system concealed its own sequence from anyone who did not know where to look," Jordan said.
"It did not conceal it," Laya replied carefully. "It failed to place the sequence where reviewers would naturally see it."