Case file · 026 · aired 2026-07-02
The Next Name in the Tray
What the station's canon holds on this case.
Nothing here spoils a case you haven't heard — banked cases aren't on these pages at all. Horizon · Case 064
Case 026, "The Next Name in the Tray," followed a reporter's family relief application frozen as fraud, which only Dale, the examiner who already knew the detective's true nature, could clear. Confronting her meant letting himself be seen again, and she lifted the flag because the claim was true, not out of favor, filing his advocacy into the record as one more accurate line about him. The card came back clean, but the next flagged name below the Farrows belonged to a family with no detective and no examiner willing to walk for them, and the machine ended the day holding more of him than it started with.
Hear it: the audio and the full transcript.
The flagged, denied family got a face and an ending: eviction in the first hard cold, the honest road too slow, a debt settled at the Blue Room instead. Not saved by the machine, saved anyway at a price it never sees. Closed.
The possibility the detective could help the Farrows again without being seen — dead as of Case 026. He had to walk to the examiner's own desk and ask, in person, a second time.