I explained the blue tape I had recognized.
I did not use the hearing to insult Allison or Preston.
The story was humiliating enough without extra language.
Outside, Rachel told me I had stayed steady.
I said my hands had been trembling beneath the table.
She answered that steadiness did not mean having no fear.
I went home to a rented apartment with a narrow kitchen and slept for eleven hours.
It was the first uninterrupted sleep I had enjoyed since the canceled flight.
Chapter 65: The Last Invoice
The final disputed subcontractor invoice belonged to a family roofing business that had closed during the investigation.
Its owner, Dennis Falk, moved to another state and was difficult to reach.
Grace spent weeks identifying the remaining partners and determining who was entitled to the recovered funds.
We did not want the payment to land in an account that no longer represented the workers.
Daniel helped arrange appropriate documentation.
Dennis finally answered a letter and called us from a job site.
He said he had stopped expecting anything.
I explained the recovery and the remaining paperwork.
He laughed once, bitterly, and asked whether the payment included the months he had lost trying to keep his crew together.
I told him it did not make him whole.
He was silent.
Then he asked where to sign.
A week later the transfer was complete.
I put a check beside the last line on Grace’s ledger.
It was not an ending for Dennis or his workers.
It was the completion of an obligation I had carried as carefully as I could.
Grace looked at the checked ledger and said we had made it through something ugly.
I said we had, although I knew many people would remember it longer than we wanted.
Chapter 66: The Accounting Room
When I first visited Nora’s office I expected walls covered in dramatic evidence photographs.
Instead the room contained filing cabinets, a humming scanner, and a whiteboard listing dates.
Nora showed me how she categorized evidence by source.
Bank records occupied one column.
Witness recollections occupied another.
System logs were kept separate from opinions about what they meant.
She asked me to identify which facts I had observed personally and which came from someone else’s account.
I found the exercise humbling.
I had repeated several claims about Preston as though I knew them, when in truth I had inferred them from his behavior.
Nora did not tell me to stop being angry.
