The documents were submitted for independent review.
Investigators examined the original notebook, the anonymous letter, surviving municipal records, and archived evidence from the old corruption case.
The handwriting was assessed.
The financial entries were compared against source documents.
The photograph was evaluated for provenance.
Former city employees were interviewed.
Some remembered Mercer.
Others remembered the old towing contracts.
A retired accountant recalled raising questions about duplicated payments during a budget review.
But she could not remember whether she had discussed them with Daniel.
The inquiry proceeded slowly.
Simone was excluded from decisions where her personal connection created a conflict.
She could provide information.
She could identify documents she had previously examined.
But she could not direct the process.
That limitation frustrated her.
It also reassured her.
A trustworthy investigation could not depend on giving the victim's family complete control over its conclusions.
Months passed.
The initial findings established that Daniel's notebook contained genuine financial observations.
Several entries corresponded to irregularities later identified in the federal case.
The records also suggested that certain improper payment practices predated Matthews's employment.
But investigators could not prove that the anonymous letter's author had firsthand knowledge of every allegation.
They could not establish that Daniel's discoveries were the sole or direct motive for his fatal arrest.
And they could not connect Mercer to every fraudulent transaction described.
Those limitations disappointed some people.
They did not disappoint Simone.
She understood what had been established.
Her brother had noticed something real.
He had documented discrepancies.
And he had been trying to understand them before his death.
That was enough to deserve an accurate place in the historical record.
It did not need a fictional certainty to become meaningful.
At the end of the inquiry, the Public Accountability Resource Center prepared a revised historical exhibit.
The old exhibit had focused heavily on Simone's arrest and the subsequent federal investigation.
The new one widened the perspective.
It began with the residents whose vehicles had been unlawfully seized.
It explained how towing contracts worked.
It displayed examples of conflicting records.
It described Arthur Bell's disclosures.
It included Ethan's recording and information about preserving original video evidence.
It addressed the misconduct surrounding Daniel's death.
And it incorporated his notebook as evidence of an earlier citizen's attempts to understand suspicious municipal finances.
The exhibit did not say Daniel had secretly solved the entire case.
It said something more precise.
He had recognized discrepancies that later proved significant.
He had made notes.
He had asked questions.
And his concerns had not received the scrutiny they deserved.
When Simone reviewed the draft text, she made only one request.
"Don't call him a hero for asking about numbers."
The curator looked surprised.
"Why not?"
"Because people shouldn't need to be heroes to ask where public money went."
The curator considered that.