Chapter 6 - Chain of Custody
The next stage began with a narrower problem. Camila works with the investigating officer to reconstruct who handled the envelope. What mattered now was not how dramatic the discovery sounded, but whether it could survive someone else checking it.
Camila Price had learned that humiliation worked best when the target reacted on cue. She refused the cue.
Every instinct told her to answer the insult. Experience told her to answer the evidence.
"You want a simple story," Commander Neil Voss said.
Camila Price shook her head. "I want the true one. Those are not the same thing."
Chief Ana Ruiz kept returning to the same question: what happened first, what was documented next, and who had access in between?
The people around her wanted a villain, a victim, and an ending. Real institutions rarely offered clean shapes that quickly.
She photographed the item in place, wrote down who was present, and resisted the urge to touch anything that did not need touching. Later, that restraint mattered.
A sympathetic colleague suggested she compromise. Camila Price asked what part of the record should be compromised first. The conversation ended there.
Every instinct told her to answer the insult. Experience told her to answer the evidence.
"You keep calling this settled," Camila Price said. "It isn't settled just because you closed the folder."
"Watch yourself," Commander Neil Voss said.
"I am," she replied. "That's why I'm still asking."
By the end of the review, nobody was relying on memory alone. The paper trail, access history, and witness accounts began to overlap.
There was a difference between being certain and being able to prove why. She kept returning to that difference whenever the story became personal.
A routine administrative detail became unexpectedly important. A signature, a routing stamp, a time field - nothing dramatic by itself. Camila Price had seen enough investigations to know that ordinary details were often more trustworthy than dramatic memories.
The practical consequence came quickly. Camila works with the investigating officer to reconstruct who handled the envelope. Camila Price wrote down what had changed and what still had not been answered.
Camila Price spent the next hour rebuilding the timeline on paper. She put the first confirmed event at the top, drew a line beneath it, and refused to write a motive where she had only a guess. Chief Ana Ruiz watched her work and finally said, "You know this may get worse before it gets clearer."
"Clear is enough," Camila Price said. "I can work with clear."
Before the chapter of the day could close, one fact shifted the pressure again: A camera timestamp places Voss alone with it.
The review room had no drama in it: plain table, legal pad, water bottle, clock that seemed louder than it should. Camila Price answered each question in order. When she did not know, she said so. That answer surprised the panel more than any accusation would have.
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The next conversation happened without an audience. Commander Neil Voss lowered his voice and tried to make the dispute sound personal, as if the real problem were Camila Price's tone. She kept bringing him back to the same concrete point: the envelope has a resealed slit and the leak printout points to Voss's login. Every time she did, his answer changed slightly.
By then, people had divided themselves into camps. Camila Price refused to join either one. She would not call Commander Neil Voss innocent because he was senior, and she would not call him guilty because she was angry. She wanted the sequence to decide what the titles could not.
