Camille found her packing a bag at home.
"I can arrange a county escort," Camille said.
Jordan pulled a sweatshirt over her head. "That will prove their point for them."
"Then let me drive you somewhere safe."
"The doctor still hasn't cleared you."
Camille had an answer for every operational problem and none for the look on her daughter's face. "I should have protected your name from this," she said.
Jordan stopped packing. "You should stop deciding alone what protection looks like."
It was the same mistake Camille had made on the pavement: she had chosen for everyone because she trusted her own restraint more than she trusted other people to share the risk.
"What do you want?" Camille asked.
"I want to testify. I asked the manager to preserve the recording. I watched him lock the file and write the receipt. If they call that manipulation, I want to answer it myself."
Camille wanted to refuse. Instead, she sat beside the open bag and listened while Jordan set her own boundaries.
Laya made the same choice. City Council offered to restore her immediately if she signed a memo stating that opening the CAD audit pane had fallen outside ordinary dispatch practice. She declined. Through Naomi, she requested permission to authenticate the export at the public hearing.
"Tell Camille not to trade a true record for my paycheck," her message said.
The city rejected Pike's settlement. The next morning, Naomi prepared the witnesses by separating each source's function: the radio established what Pike heard; the CAD audit established sequence and session; the gas recording showed compliance and officer positions; Sloan's file proved the registration existed before the inventory changed; Van's notebook preserved his contemporaneous observations.
"The board is not deciding criminal guilt," Naomi reminded them. "It is deciding whether the city had sufficient cause to terminate Pike. A separate prosecutor will decide what, if anything, can be charged."
Five weeks after the stop, the Harbor Ridge hearing room was full. Pike sat beside his union attorney. Camille wore her sheriff's uniform for the first time since the injury, its right sleeve altered around the burn. Jordan occupied the seat beside her by choice.
Pike's attorney began with the edited radio call. He played Camille's order forbidding county units to respond, then suggested she had deliberately isolated the encounter because she intended to convert a routine stop into a political case.
He called Van first. Van admitted Pike's session remained open inside the shared cruiser, that he sometimes used the passenger terminal, and that he kept his notebook overnight before sealing it.
"So you had access to the session?" the attorney said. "You had access to the notebook, and you faced dismissal unless someone else carried the blame."
"Yes," Van said. "I had access."
The answer rippled through the room. The attorney displayed the notebook page. "Nothing here records an exact creation time. Nothing identifies which officer touched the keyboard. Isn't it true that you created the caution and blamed Officer Pike only after learning the rider was the county sheriff?"
Van looked toward Camille, then at Pike. Before he could answer, Pike leaned toward his attorney and whispered something. The attorney smiled and withdrew the question.
Camille understood the maneuver: they did not need Van to prove their version; they needed only enough uncertainty to make Pike's version possible.
The board chair called a recess with the city's evidence still unheard. As Pike passed Camille, he kept his voice too low for the microphones.
"Reasonable doubt," he said.
"Wrong forum," Camille answered.
When the board returned, one member asked Naomi whether any single record could conclusively identify the person at the keyboard.
Naomi answered honestly, "No single record can."
The board member's question hung over the hearing room. Pike's attorney leaned back as if the case had already ended. The city attorney looked down at his exhibit list. Naomi did not move.
Camille wrote one sentence on the legal pad before her and slid it forward: Stop trying to make one record do the work of five.
The city called Laya Gomez. Laya authenticated the original CAD event and the independent export produced by municipal technology staff. She explained that the audit recorded not only Pike's authenticated session, but the hardware identifier of the passenger-side terminal inside his assigned cruiser. The caution could not have been created through a handheld radio or Van's personal device.
Pike's attorney stood. "But Officer Van could use that terminal."
"Yes," Laya said, "if he was physically inside the cruiser during the 83-second interval."
The gas station recording supplied the next piece. Its internal clock had been checked against the payment system before the manager exported it, and Jordan's signed preservation receipt established when the untouched file left automatic rotation. On the screen, Van stood several yards behind the Harley with both hands visible. Pike stepped out of the passenger side, looked toward Camille, then leaned back through the open door. The CAD event marker appeared beside the video at the instant the caution was saved. Pike emerged, closed the door, and drew his weapon.
The attorney objected that the camera could not show Pike's hands touching the keys.
"That is true," Naomi said from the witness chair. "It shows access and opportunity. The audit establishes the terminal and session. The remaining sources establish knowledge and conduct."
Van returned to the stand. This time, he answered the question Pike's attorney had withdrawn.
"I did not create the caution," he said. "I read the clear return aloud. Pike told me to cover the rear of the motorcycle. When he came back from the terminal, he said there was a local caution."
Now, the union attorney attacked his notebook, suggesting Van had written the words later to save his job. Van acknowledged his own failures without bargaining around them.
"I pointed my weapon at Sheriff Bennett. I helped put her on the pavement. I delayed the medical call, and I should be disciplined. But I did not create that entry."