When the marshal's team reviewed that footage three hours later, it would take them approximately forty-five seconds to identify the problem: the timeline in the official police report and the timeline on the witness's recording did not match. Not by a little. By enough.
The investigator arrived while the documentation was still ongoing. She was forty-seven, with close-cut hair and the focused energy of someone who had been doing difficult work for a long time and had learned to contain that energy rather than perform it. She ran Internal Affairs with the same methodical patience she had brought to every position in her career—a patience that people who didn't know her sometimes mistook for slowness, and that people who did know her understood was something else entirely.
She had been summoned by a call that described only the broad outlines of the situation, but she had understood from the outlines alone that this was not going to be a one-day matter.
She walked the scene without speaking first. She looked at the position of the cruisers. She looked at the motorcycle. She looked at the officer who was standing near his vehicle with the careful stillness of someone trying very hard not to look like they were waiting to be saved. She looked at the sergeant, who had adopted a posture of administrative authority that was doing him very little good.
She stopped beside the marshal. "How many recordings?" she asked quietly.
"Twenty-three devices minimum," he said. "We're collecting contact information. Footage range appears to start before the search request."
She absorbed this. "Anyone get audio on the plate check result?"
"One civilian recording, clear audio. Shows the result coming back clean."
The investigator was quiet for a moment. "Then we have a timeline problem with the report."
The marshal nodded. "Yes, we do."
She looked at the officer again. The officer was looking at his shoes.