On July 31 I read that the Seventh Circuit had affirmed Conn's conviction the previous day. The news did not describe a new trial. The conviction returned by a federal jury in Chicago stood after appellate review. I read the brief public account before opening the counter, then folded it away. It was a decision about his case, not a judgment against every person who worked in a court.
I had become good at making that distinction aloud. It had not made me good at finishing my own account. Since March, I had supplied no endorsement of Ellis and had left my permanent application aside. Those decisions were real, but I had begun using them as proof that I was doing something while the original confirmation remained uncorrected. Permanent assignments were approaching, and the packet was still in the cabinet.
The affirmance did not give me authority to investigate anyone. It did not turn my complaint summary into a criminal matter. What it did, as I sat there with the folded news beside my bag, was make waiting look less like a process. Other people's public decisions were not going to reach down into our lower cabinet and correct an entry I had signed.
At lunch I took out the sheet I had begun in March and read its opening. It started with Ellis's promises. I put it aside and began again, dating the new account July 31, 1985. This time I began with the monthly summary I had typed from his log and the confirmation I had initialed on April 2, 1984, without checking the packet. I wrote the words on the confirmation as I remembered them, then marked that I would verify them against the original.
I made separate notes for what I had seen and what I had been told. I had watched Ellis put six sheets into the envelope. He later told me where he had moved it. I opened the shared cabinet on April 6 with him beside me and found the complaints together. He told me he had not forwarded them and explained his concern about the training-transfer recommendation. Those were statements I could attribute without claiming access to his mind.
I wrote about the visitor, but not more than I knew. She said she had lost another morning's wages. I did not know her employer, her rate of pay, or what ultimately happened to her request. I crossed out a sentence saying we had cost her the morning, then replaced it with the narrower account of what she told me and what I could not verify for her.
The hardest paragraph concerned the time afterward. I had agreed to give Ellis room to correct the record himself. I had asked Celia about corrections without identifying the specific error. I had accepted an end-of-June deadline, then failed to act when it passed. I had found the unsent draft in the shared packet, and Ellis had confirmed writing it. I had granted more delay.
I wanted to add that the acting wages kept Dean's shop open. That was relevant to my choice, but it could easily become an argument for leniency before I had finished describing the conduct. I wrote instead that financial dependence on the acting assignment contributed to my delay. Dean had not known about the unsupported confirmation until I told him in February. I would not let my account quietly make him a partner in the concealment.
When the counter reopened, I put the pages in my folder. Twice that afternoon I thought of a gentler opening. Once I considered waiting until I could check every remembered date. Then Celia passed with the assignment papers under her arm, and I stood up before I could revise the decision into another preparation.
"I need a meeting about the complaint confirmation," I said. "Before permanent assignments are decided. I have a dated account, and the original packet is in our shared cabinet."
She stopped. "Is this the unresolved matter you mentioned in March?"
"Yes. I need Ellis there. Part of the account concerns things he told me, and I need to identify my own initials."
Celia looked at the folder in my hands. She said we would meet August 2 and told me to bring the original supporting papers without altering them. I repeated the date so there would be no misunderstanding. She did not offer reassurance, and I did not ask for it.
At home I told Dean the meeting was arranged. He asked whether I wanted him to read the account for clarity. I said yes, but not to make it sound better. He pulled out the chair beside mine. We checked where a sentence claimed more than I knew, and left the responsibility where it belonged.