The investigation didn't end overnight.
For an entire week, investigators came in and out of the lab almost every day.
The university's IT department pulled the server logs.
The grant management system exported every submission record.
Years of archived emails were recovered from the lab's email accounts.
Little by little, the scattered screenshots I'd collected were matched with the original records stored in the university's systems. The evidence became complete.
23 full pages of file deletion logs. Every deletion had happened within the three days before my report was submitted.
The lead investigator placed the documents on the table. For the first time, he looked directly at Grace.
"Professor Hall, if you believed you had done nothing wrong, why was the first thing you did afte
