It would make what came next land harder.

But I want to be fair to the wider truth here, beyond the one frightened detective, because it would be easy to tell this story as though the whole justice system had failed my daughter, and that is not quite what happened, and the distinction matters.

The system did not fail her because it is rotten to the core.

It failed her, at first, because it had been reached — because at the precise local point where her case entered it, three families had applied money and pressure and fear, and bought or bent the handful of specific people who happened to stand at that entry point.

That is how power like theirs actually works.