I printed them this morning. Why? She said, why now? Why this morning? A long silence.
Because I've known about those access events for 8 days, Stein said. I saw the irregularities when the defense filed their chain of custody challenge and I checked the backend logs and I told myself it was a system error. I told myself it was administrative. I told myself a lot of things that I knew while I was telling them weren't true. His voice shifted thinner, more tired.
And then I watched you sit in that witness stand this morning and tell a courtroom what the records showed. And you weren't afraid. And I have been afraid for 8 days over something I didn't even do. So Victoria exhaled slowly. Mr. Stein, I need you to call Dennis Marsh.
He is the defense attorney. His number is public record. Tell him exactly what you told me and tell him you have the server logs. He will know what to do with them. Will it be enough?
Stein asked. "It's the truth," Victoria said. "That's usually enough given time." She heard him exhale on the other end. "Then, "Thank you, Miss Hayes." "
Thank you, Mr. Stein," she said. "You made a hard call." She hung up. She stood in the hallway for 3 seconds. Then she walked back to the courtroom doors, pushed through them, and went straight to Dennis Marsh.
Dennis went pale when she told him. Not dramatically, he was a professional, and professionals don't collapse where clients can see them. But the color shifted in his face in the particular way it does when someone receives information that is simultaneously exactly what they needed and significantly more than they were prepared for. Server logs, he said very quietly. Printed this morning.
He's going to call you. Raymond Cho. Dennis repeated the name as if tasting it. I know that name. Victoria looked at him.
From where? Pullman sits on the hospital's community advisory board. Dennis said, "I saw the membership list when I was researching the case. He and Cho are both on it." He paused. "
They know each other." So Pullman had access to someone inside the hospital who could review and presumably alter the documentation before it became official court record. "The modified version is what the police used for their report," Dennis said. "Which means the original version that says something different," Victoria finished. They looked at each other.
If the server logs show two access events by Cho and the original records differ from what ended up in the court file, Dennis said slowly, "That's not administrative irregularity. That's evidence tampering. That's obstruction. That is an entirely different conversation." "Yes," Victoria said.
Pullman didn't just lie about what happened on Crestston Avenue. Dennis said, working through it. He built infrastructure around the lie. He had help. He used a connection inside the hospital to modify the medical record that would have told the truth.
Victoria said, "Get your phone out." Dennis got his phone out. It rang 20 seconds later. Gerald Stein's voice was audible from where Victoria stood. Not the words, but the tone, and the tone was steady in the particular way of a man who has committed to a course of action and is past the point of retreating from it.
Dennis listened and he took notes. He asked two precise questions and received two precise answers. When he hung up, he sat very still for a moment. Then he looked at Victoria. The server log showed that the injury documentation was accessed in the document hash, the digital fingerprint of the file changed between the first access and the second.
He modified it. Victoria said Cho modified it. Dennis said, "Or someone using Cho's login modified it with Pullman's knowledge and almost certainly at Pullman's direction." He was already on his feet. I need to file an emergency motion before the afternoon session starts.
I need to get these logs entered as evidence. I need to talk to the judge before Ree gets to him. He was moving. Victoria stepped aside. Then she said, "Dennis, he stopped."
Ethan, she said he needs to know this is happening before the session starts. Not as a full explanation, just enough so he's not blindsided when it changes the shape of the afternoon. Dennis looked at her. He nodded once quickly. Then he turned and crossed the courtroom to where Ethan was sitting at the defendant's table with a paper coffee cup and the particular thousand-y stare of someone who has been living inside a very bad situation for long enough that they have forgotten what outside feels like.
Victoria watched Dennis lean down and speak quietly to Ethan. She watched Ethan's face change. It didn't change in the way she expected. Not with relief, not with the release of tension. It changed with something harder and more complicated.
His jaw tightened. His eyes went somewhere private for a moment. Then he looked up and his gaze found Victoria across the room. She had seen that look before. In emergency rooms in the aftermath of the very worst nights in the faces of people who have just been told that the thing that happened to them was not an accident that someone chose to do it.
Planned it built systems around it. It was the look of someone whose suffering has just been given a specific author and that was in some ways a harder thing to hold than uncertainty. Judge Whitmore came back from lunch 9 minutes before the scheduled resumption of the afternoon session, which told Victoria that Dennis had managed to reach him and whatever Dennis had said had moved the judge's timeline. He called both attorneys to the bench immediately. Victoria sat in the gallery.
Marcus was two rows behind her. He hadn't asked what was happening. He was watching the attorneys at the bench with the particular quality of attention of someone who has learned to read situations from the outside because they are rarely invited inside them. The conference at the bench lasted 6 minutes. Reese's posture changed during it.