The Missing Transfer Sheet Named The Man Who Released The Gear

The clerk mailed certified copies to June. She kept the envelope, the cover letter, and the staple marks together.

I had wanted a page that said I was right.

What arrived was worse.

The front of T-77 listed H-218 and H-219 for movement from the locked quarantine cage to a ground training room.

The second sheet changed the destination.

Flight line. Mission R-42. Requested by Major Terrence Bale.

Beside that line was his full signature, with the long tail under the B.

Under technical release, there was a blank space.

Under command acceptance, he had checked a box.

"He treated the power to move gear as the power to clear it," I said.

June looked at the form.

"That's what the reviewer needs to determine. We can point out the missing signature. We don't fill in the finding ourselves."

I nodded. I had spent years being hurt by someone who put his guesses into official words.

I would not do that back.

The records office also found the afternoon load sheet. It listed the reserve harnesses, H-306 and H-307, that had flown safely that morning.

At the bottom, in smaller writing, a note referred to substitutions on T-77.

The old mishap report had quoted the load sheet and left out the note. Its scanned file had contained only the front of T-77.

A chain of pages had been broken in the middle.

Luis had been left holding the loose end.

Three days later, the state military office assigned Major Sloane to the new review. He met us in a plain room with a clock that clicked louder than anyone spoke.

He asked me to describe a gear hold from start to finish.

"You tagged the item," I said. "You logged its serial number. You locked it away. A qualified inspector had to clear the defect before it returned to flight use."

"Could Major Bale order it transferred?"

"Yes."

"Could that transfer serve as a completed inspection?"

"No."

Sloane asked about the morning clearance.

I showed him the inspection sheet and the photos attached to my original complaint. A ruler lay beside the loose stitching in each frame. I had taken those photos at my bench, not after the afternoon mishap.

The time and the complaint receipt mattered as much as the pictures.

"Why did you take them?" he asked.

"Because he told me I was seeing a defect that wasn't there."

Sloane made no face. He requested the repair depot's old paperwork through his own office.

For once, the next step did not depend on me begging.

Outside, Cedric sat on a low wall with Luis. They shared a paper bag of fries. Neither looked like a man waiting to win something.

"They asked the right questions," I said.

Luis passed me the bag.

"That's new."

The depot record arrived the next week. Both harnesses had been returned for ground instruction only. They had failed load inspection and were awaiting a decision on disposal.

The notice had reached our detachment two days before the flood.

The receiving signature was Bale's.

Now there was evidence he had received the warning before he signed his clearance. Sloane added it to the review and sent Bale a formal request for a response.

He also traced the display harness. After the mishap, both bad harnesses had been retired as training props. A later surplus sale had put H-218 in Bale's hands. Owning it had let him carry a piece of the mission around. It had not made his account true.

I went home and washed three coffee cups that had been sitting in my sink.

They were small things. I had room in my head for them again.

Then Della called.

The outside accountant had traced the $18,600 payment. Mesa Spur Supply was a business owned by Bale. The board had never approved a purchase from a director's company. There was no shipping charge, delivery receipt, or stock purchase behind its invoice.

"Could the new gear be somewhere else?" I asked.

"The accountant asked that too. Terrence gave three locations. We checked all three."

"What happens now?"

"We send the report to the prosecutor. We notify our insurer and the donors who funded that purchase. We stop asking Terrence to investigate himself."

I sat down.

A broken buckle had been bad enough.

An officer using a mechanic's name to cover it had been worse.

The new invoice showed that he was still using rescue work as cover. People had given grocery money and retirement money to buy equipment that did not exist.

That night, June called before dinner.

"He filed a civil complaint," she said. "Defamation. Fifty thousand dollars."

"After all this?"

"The filing was made before the depot record reached us. A process server may come tomorrow. Keep the papers. Send them to me."

At eight the next morning, a woman knocked on my apartment door with a court summons bearing my full name.