What would be enough, the only thing that would be enough against people who could out-lawyer and out-maneuver and out-lie me, was evidence, documented, timestamped, undeniable, existing outside my own contestable word.

Photograph everything.

Preserve the timestamps.

Make it impossible to make disappear.

It was the instinct of a person who had spent a day learning, at the highest possible cost, exactly how easily the truth can be erased by people determined to erase it, and who had decided that this truth, at least, was going to be nailed down so firmly that no amount of power or lawyering could ever unfix it.

In a hospital chair, with a dying phone battery and shaking hands, I built the foundation of every conviction that would follow.