TWO POLICE OFFICERS SHAVED MY HEAD—THEN DISCOVERED I WAS THE JUDGE ASSIGNED TO THEIR CASE.

Pruitt’s daughter was placed under protective watch. Once his lawyer confirmed she was safe, he resumed speaking with the investigators.

I learned the outline from a later public filing.

The empty equipment box had carried a portable drive removed from a city evidence archive. A technician named Lydia Franks had copied the archive when the original system was retired. She was following an ordinary retention order, unaware that one folder contained video from Isaiah Bell’s arrest.

That copy mattered. The officers had claimed the only recording was the one they deleted from Isaiah’s phone. If an earlier synchronized backup existed, it could settle the question of what happened before the weapon appeared.

Pike had tried to stop Lydia from handing it over. When she refused, he moved the drive without authorization and ordered Keene to conceal the transfer in the service elevator.

I finally understood the plan. The hearing had not been about a technical delay. Prosecutors were about to ask Judge Ames’s predecessor—me—to compel access to an archive Pike had already begun moving.

“Why did they need to hurt me?” I asked Leah during a properly recorded witness meeting.

“Because delay gave them time to destroy the copy,” she replied. “And making you look unstable could cast doubt on anything you later reported.”

The answer made me feel sick. They wanted two forms of silence: mine and Isaiah’s.

Investigators located Lydia. She had taken leave after receiving a threat about her elderly father, but she had not abandoned her work.

“She kept a second verification record,” Leah said. “A list showing when each file was copied, with checksums and transfer logs.”

“That could establish whether the video was altered?”

“It could help us test authenticity. We still need the actual data.”

An hour later, the technician’s vehicle was found in a shopping-center parking garage. The doors were locked and her handbag sat on the passenger seat.

Lydia was nowhere in sight.