The Docket Files

Leah Sutter has one job: make sure the county's old case files match their digital scans. It's tedious, unglamorous work — until she finds a docket number that doesn't add up. Then a second. Then a pattern that stretches back over a decade, hidden in plain sight by a records system built to be trusted, not checked.The deeper Leah digs, the less this looks like clerical error and the more it looks like design — altered files, missing exhibits, convictions that were never quite what they claimed to be. Every person she finds behind a corrupted docket number is someone who never got the chance to fight back.But the county notices her noticing. The warnings start polite. Then her access disappears. Then it gets personal.Chain of Custody is a slow-burn legal thriller about the quiet machinery that keeps institutions safe from their own past — and the ordinary, careful person who refuses to let it stay buried.