His Loan Story Collided With the Equipment Room Checkout Sheet

"Did you ever borrow it?" Mara asked.

"No. I tested it in March while June watched. I never took it away."

"Put both facts in your statement."

I wanted a clean denial. She wanted a full one.

We wrote that I had handled S-17 during a spring radio test. I listed the work order, the room, and the witness. Then I wrote that I had not possessed it on Monday or during the week before.

The outside examiner received both accounts.

Renata was ordered to provide records through the investigator. She stopped sending me internal sheets herself. Neither of us wanted Sloat to turn her help into a reason to question the evidence.

"I'll answer what they ask," she told me. "They'd better ask well."

On Friday, Mara and I sat across from an investigator named Ada Keene in a borrowed conference room. Keene worked for the county prosecutor. The city had referred the records after seeing the packet extract.

She did not tell me I was cleared.

"Explain the receiver as if I have never seen a radio," she said.

I drew two boxes and an arrow.

"The controller spoke. The valve heard it. My receiver heard both."

"Could your receiver speak?"

"No transmit board. No antenna path for sending. You can open it and check."

"Could you change the saved file?"

"Someone could edit a copy. That's why you need the original card, the signatures, and the other records."

She wrote that down.

I signed a receipt when she took the receiver and its original card for examination. She photographed the blue thread before packing it.

"You want the knot left on?"

"If it doesn't interfere."

"We'll document it."

Keene showed us a copy of the equipment room checkout sheet. Sloat had signed out S-17 at 5:51 Monday morning. He had returned it at 7:08.

"He says he gave it to you in the lot at six," she said.

"I was at the pump shed."

"We requested the gate camera."

Mara leaned forward.

"Which gate?"

"Both."

The pump shed camera showed my truck entering at 5:58 and leaving at 6:37. It also showed me unload a ladder and carry it through the door. The restricted valve was across town.

Sloat could still claim I sent a command from inside the shed. But the city had taken my service handset for examination too. Its command rights did not include restricted overrides.

The yard camera showed Sloat carrying S-17 to his city truck. Nobody met him there.

Keene asked whether I knew Ellis Venn.

I knew the name from a development sign beyond the last houses on the southeast edge of town. Dry Mesa Homes had graded a road through tan soil. The lots still needed water approval.

"I never worked for him," I said.

"Did he offer you money?"

"No."

She let the silence sit a moment.

"If there is something you left out, now is a good time."

"I label wires with thread," I said. "That doesn't mean I missed what you're asking."

Her pen stopped.

"Fair enough."

I wasn't proud of sounding sharp. I wasn't sorry, either.

That afternoon, the city auditor visited the pump shed with a water engineer. I attended with written permission and a city escort. My access card stayed disabled.

The engineer traced the line on a printed map.

He showed me photographs of a split fitting at the temporary connection. The emergency crew had replaced that fitting and damaged pipe around it. Their repair tickets carried dates, crew hours, and parts costs. I asked for copies through Mara.

Valve Nine normally stayed locked closed. Beyond it, an old construction branch ended near Dry Mesa's temporary storage tanks. A meter on that branch had recorded flow during the override.

"Was any of this approved?" I asked.

"We have no approved delivery order," the auditor said.

It was a small sentence. It changed the shape of the case.

Someone hadn't merely pushed a wrong button. Water had reached a place that had no right to receive it.

Before we left, I noticed a sensor cable with its label peeling away. I reached into my pocket for thread, then stopped.

"May I?" I asked my escort.

She nodded.

I tied yellow around the power lead. My hands were steady while I worked.

They shook again when I got home and found my truck insurance renewal on the kitchen table.

Mara called that evening.

The city auditor had checked a disclosed outside business on Sloat's annual form. Basin Review Services had one owner: Warren Sloat.

An invoice in Dry Mesa's permit file listed a $2,400 payment to that business for "water availability monitoring."

"That might have an innocent explanation," Mara said.

Then she read the note attached to the invoice.

"First of four payments. Delivery before inspection."