"We have the structural engineer's report proving the damage went far beyond anything a warrant required. We have three families, the Brooks family among them, who are here today, willing to speak for themselves about what happened to them years before anyone was watching." A murmur rippled through the crowd. Wilbert Brooks stepped forward from where he'd been standing quietly to the side.
He was joined by the other two people Francis's office had reached out to weeks earlier. One by one, they spoke. Brief, plain accounts of doors kicked in, walls torn open, complaints filed, and complaints forgotten. None of it was polished.
All of it was devastating. Francis was midway through explaining why the timeline of the notebook made any conflict-of-interest argument fall apart when a voice from the side of the crowd cut through. Hesitant, but clear. "I can confirm what he's saying about the address."
Every camera swung toward her. Officer Laurelai Oliver stood at the edge of the press area out of uniform, hands shaking slightly at her sides. She hadn't told anyone she was coming. She'd sat in her car outside City Hall for almost 30 minutes that morning before finally walking in.
"I was on the entry team that morning," she said, stepping closer to the podium. Her voice gained steadiness with each word. "Another officer flagged the address discrepancy to Captain Garvey before the search continued." She looked toward the cameras.
"I heard him say it directly. That paperwork didn't matter. To finish the sweep." Her jaw tightened.
"I should have said something sooner. I'm saying it now." The crowd erupted into a wave of shouted questions, but Oliver didn't flinch this time. She'd spent two weeks being threatened into silence.
Watching Francis and Stella and three strangers stand in front of every camera in the city, refusing to disappear, had finally given her the nerve Garvey's warning had taken away. Francis stepped aside slightly, letting her finish. Something close to relief crossed his face for the first time in days. Across town, inside police headquarters, the press conference played live on a television mounted in the break room.
Officers gathered around it in near silence. Oliver's testimony aired. Brooks's voice cracked as he described his own ruined kitchen years earlier. The notebook's timeline was laid out in plain, undeniable language.
Garvey stood near the back of the room with his arms crossed, watching his own name repeated over and over on a screen he couldn't turn off. He watched a case he'd believed was buried resurrect itself in real time in front of the entire city. The special prosecutor's office would have no way to quietly close this. Not anymore.
Not with three victims speaking on camera. A witness confirming the cover-up under her own name. A notebook proving none of it had ever been about revenge. Garvey's jaw worked silently as the broadcast cut to a wide shot of the crowd outside City Hall.