The first folder contained the restraining order Raymond had referenced.
Specifically, it contained the court’s dismissal of that restraining order, dated September 9th, 2022, with a one-page judicial notation finding the filing to be without evidentiary basis.
The second folder contained the federal indictment.
Marcus Webb, thirty-nine, of Montclair, New Jersey — charged on eleven counts of wire fraud, contract fraud, and falsification of public records. The indictment named four municipalities. It named three shell companies. It named the dates, the amounts, the forged signatures.
My name appeared in the indictment once, in paragraph forty-four, as a cooperating witness.
The third folder was a printed email chain.
It ran nineteen pages.
It was a correspondence between Raymond Alcott and Marcus Webb beginning in October of last year. In it, Marcus described me as a threat to his case and suggested that Raymond could help neutralize my credibility before the trial’s jury selection phase.
Raymond had responded. Enthusiastically.
He had written, and I am quoting precisely: “If she’s the one who tanked your deal, we take her down before she can do more damage. I know exactly where to start.”
I slid the folders toward Donna without a word.
She read in silence for almost three minutes.
Carol Petersen, the mayor’s liaison, leaned over Donna’s shoulder and read along with her.
Raymond said, “Those could be fabricated.”
Nobody looked at him.
Donna set down the last page and looked up at me.
I said, “The email chain was preserved by Marcus’s own attorney as part of pre-trial discovery. It was shared with me by the DA’s office two weeks ago because my attorney requested it.”
I paused.
“I didn’t come here tonight to embarrass Raymond,” I said. “I came because this board deserves to know what’s been happening.”
Raymond pushed back from the table.
He said, “This is a setup.”
Board member Gerald Torres said, flatly, “Raymond, stop talking.”
The vote to table Raymond’s motion against me was unanimous.
The vote to ask Raymond to temporarily step down from the community board pending a conduct review passed nine to two.
Raymond left before the meeting adjourned.
He knocked his chair back when he stood and the sound of it hitting the linoleum floor was the loudest thing that had happened all night.
Three days later, the DA’s office confirmed to my attorney that Raymond had been contacted for questioning regarding potential obstruction. His communications with Marcus Webb were already part of the federal file.
I don’t know what came of that inquiry. I wasn’t kept informed, and I didn’t ask.
What I know is that on the following Tuesday, I was back at the center at 4 p.m. running the after-school tutoring session.
Eight kids. Third through sixth grade.
The radiator ticked. The fluorescent light over the whiteboard still buzzed the way it always had.
A girl named Amara was stuck on long division, the same problem she’d been stuck on for two weeks, and when it finally clicked for her that evening, she grabbed her pencil and worked the next four problems without looking up once.
I watched her work.
The center smelled like old carpet and dry-erase markers, the same way it had always smelled.
Marcus Webb’s trial was set for the following autumn in federal court in Newark.
Raymond had returned to Scottsdale by April. A cousin mentioned it in a group chat. I didn’t respond.
I submitted the center’s summer programming grant application on April 30th, two days before the deadline, the same as I had every year.
We were approved in full.
