Auditors are not immune.
Everyone is tempted to correct reality until it supports what they already believe.
The discipline is leaving ugly parts.
Unknown.
Contradiction.
Acquittal count.
Good acts.
Bad acts.
Missing records.
Things you cannot conclude.
That is harder than storytelling.
At sixty-six, I returned to Harland County for a funeral.
Not the sergeant.
The retired property-room technician.
The man who had first met me in a motel conference room.
He died at eighty-two.
Stroke.
His family asked whether I would speak.
I almost said no.
Then his daughter called.
“He talked about you.”
“What did he say?”
“That you were irritating.”
I laughed.
“That sounds right.”
She continued:
“He said you were first person who did not tell him immediately he was brave.”
That surprised me.
“What did he want?”
“He hated being called whistleblower.”
“Why?”
“He said he waited too long.”
I understood.
At funeral, I spoke for four minutes.
No heroic language.
I said he remembered something after retirement.
He brought questions.
He accepted when some suspicions were wrong.
He signed sworn declaration knowing it might damage people he had worked with.
He also admitted where he had participated in sloppy corrections.
That mattered.
“He did not give us truth.”
I said.
“He gave us somewhere to look.”
His daughter cried.
After service, an old man approached.
Former deputy.
“You know he wasn’t perfect.”
“I know.”
“He drank.”
“I didn’t.”
“He cheated on his wife once.”
I stared.
“That has nothing to do with evidence.”
The man looked embarrassed.
“I guess.”
People have strange need to balance moral accounts.
As if one personal failure invalidates institutional disclosure.
No.
Credibility is issue-specific.
A person can lie about marriage and tell truth about seal number.
A saint can misremember dates.
Evidence does not inherit whole character.
That lesson should be obvious.
It rarely is.
I visited his grave before leaving.
No dramatic promise.
Just stood.
Then went airport.
The young clerk, now evidence manager, drove me.
On way she said:
“He felt guilty.”
“For waiting?”
“Yes.”
“He told me.”
“So do you.”
She glanced.
“How do you know?”
“Because you keep talking about it.”
She was quiet.
Then:
“I was thirty-two when everything happened.”
“I had kids.”
“Mortgage.”
“I thought speaking would end my job.”
“It might have.”
“That’s what bothers.”
“What?”
“If I’d known it would work out…”
I interrupted.
“You didn’t.”
She looked at road.
“Courage looks different when outcome unknown.”
“Yes.”
“You did eventually speak.”
“Yes.”
“That is true without turning delay into virtue.”
She nodded.
We drove.
No resolution needed.
At seventy, I started training federal public defenders and prosecutors together.
That was awkward.
Each side assumed I was secretly aligned with other.
Perfect.