The Auditor Followed Twenty Four Bills While I Finished The Mirrors

I met the auditor at seven the next morning. Nadine's appointment was at nine.

We had been asked not to compare what we were asked until both interviews ended. I understood why. Two useful witnesses could ruin their value by polishing their memories into the same story.

The auditor gave me water and asked me to start with the delivery.

I told her what I remembered. When I did not know a time, I said so. When I had a photograph or email, I pointed to it.

“Did you pay the disposal referral?” she asked.

“No.”

“Did anyone remove waste from your chamber on the billed dates?”

“Not those collections. My routine drum pickups are in this ledger.”

She checked the vendor names and receipt numbers. The honest waste I had paid to remove mattered as much as the waste that never existed.

“We're checking all twenty-four,” she said. “Your scale is one source. We'll compare customer records, disposal receipts, and the vendor's dispatch files.”

“Do you think the whole amount is false?”

“I think the whole amount needs checking.”

I liked her answer, even though I wanted a stronger one.

Before I left, she showed me a blank form for recording losses. I had kept my bills, but I had not counted the work I could no longer take.

I wrote down overtime help, outside testing, extra freight, and the small job I had turned away to keep the observatory order alive. Asha told me to include evidence of the lost profit, not pretend the entire price would have been mine.

By ten, I was back at the chamber.

Before opening the canister, I logged the removal of the replacement seal and kept it in an envelope with the inspection inventory. I called the shipper to confirm that none of the blanks had shifted in their foam. The clerk thanked me for letting her know how it ended. I told her the glass part had ended. The paper part was still growing.

I washed the glass, rinsed it, and let it dry under clean covers. The metal surface had to grow on a clean face. A fingerprint could leave a mark larger than the thing I was being paid to see.

My pump drew the air down. I watched the gauge, checked the seals, and waited.

Through the view port, the blanks looked dull and almost cheap.

Then the aluminum began to settle.

I had seen that change thousands of times. I still leaned closer when gray glass became a mirror.

Nadine brought soup at lunch.

“How was nine?” I asked.

“Long.”

“Did you eat?”

“That's why there are two cups.”

We sat outside in the thin sun. A cold wind moved down from the peaks and pushed grit along the fence.

Her interview had covered the books, recorder access, and every repair. She had given the auditor her full appointment calendar, including entries that made her look forgetful.

“I wrote the wrong month once,” she said. “Better she finds it with me.”

We talked about ordinary mistakes for a while. Neither of us wanted an honest clerk punished for a wrong date. We wanted to know who had kept billing trips that never happened.

Late that afternoon, the city manager's office sent a notice. Curtis had been placed on leave. He no longer had access to my site or the city's inspection files. Another employee would handle my permits.

The notice gave a phone number for any contact from him.

I saved it beside the appeal order.

On Saturday night, I put the first finished mirror into my small test telescope. A faint star sat above the dark pines. I checked the spread of light around it and compared the result with the bench test.

Clean edge. Low scatter. The smallest visible star stayed visible.

I wrote the result in the job book.

On Monday, the observatory accepted all six mirrors. Its manager paid the $12,600 balance and sent a photograph of the empty shipping cradle.

“Glad we waited,” he wrote.

I read that line three times.

Work had returned. Sleep took longer.

For weeks, I woke whenever tires stopped outside. I checked the chamber lock more than I needed to. Nadine kept opening her scale on time, which helped more than any speech could have.

The auditor's questions continued through spring. We answered them without posting accusations or calling the local news.

One afternoon, a man from Juniper Draw came to the gate. He offered $25,000 to buy the old recorder and all its stored data as a package.

“Obsolete equipment has value,” he said.

“This one's under a preservation hold.”

I took his business card, wrote his exact offer on the back, and gave it to Asha.

Two days later, a process server arrived.

The envelope held a subpoena, a courtroom date, and my name listed beneath the words WITNESS FOR THE STATE.