The audit took 11 months.
Its findings were not comfortable reading.
23 cases were formally reopened.
Of those, 16 produced new outcomes.
Seven individuals who had served time on coerced or fabricated evidence were released and had their records expunged.
Nine received civil settlements from the city.
The settlement process was long and imperfect and did not give anyone back the years they had lost.
But it was something.
In this context, something was not nothing.
Travis Mercer was convicted on eight federal counts, including evidence tampering, civil rights violations, and conspiracy.
He received a sentence of 14 years.
Ethan Row entered a plea agreement and received a reduced sentence of 4 years in exchange for full cooperation with the federal investigation.
He cooperated fully.
Robert Kincaid's trial lasted 3 weeks.
The financial evidence was airtight.
He was convicted on six counts and sentenced to 9 years.
Donna Graves was not charged.
She had been a vector, the investigation determined, rather than a knowing participant in the larger scheme.
She resigned from the county prosecutor's office and relocated out of state.
Caleb Turner was offered a position with a new community legal advocacy program established in Lakeshore following the case, funded in part by the federal consent decree's community investment requirement.
He took the job.
He had, it turned out, a particular talent for talking to people who had been told the system had nothing for them and helping them understand that the system had changed.
He thought about Daniel Reeves often.
Daniel reopened Reeves Tech 6 days after the trial.
There was a small article about it in the local paper, one column buried on page 9, noting that the shop had resumed normal hours.
He hadn't asked anyone to write it.
Someone had done it anyway.
The first week back, he had more customers than usual.
Some of them had broken screens.
Some of them came in and stood at the counter and said they were glad he was still there.
And he thanked them and meant it.
And when they left, he went back to work.
One evening in late January, Maya was at the kitchen table doing homework while Daniel made dinner.
The kitchen window was fogged from the cold outside, and the overhead light gave the room the warmth of enclosed spaces in winter.
Maya had her pencil case spread out and her notebook opened to a page covered in her precise, slightly overlarge handwriting.
Daniel was at the stove when Maya said without looking up, "Dad."
"Yeah?"
"At school today, someone asked me if I was scared when I saw the police arrest you."
Daniel turned from the stove.
"What did you say?"
Maya considered her notebook for a moment.