Chapter 7 - The Name on the Ticket
Dana stared at her name on the erase authorization as though it belonged to someone else.
"I didn't approve that," she said.
We were in a conference room with Judge Rowe's appointed technical specialist, a government information-security officer, and Price. Dana had requested independent counsel to advise her about her own potential involvement. That was appropriate; she could no longer simply act as the attorney analyzing a record bearing her name.
The authorization ticket contained a genuine email from Dana requesting preservation of the original file. Someone had attached it to a maintenance order and selected a drop-down field labeled REQUESTING AUTHORITY. Her name appeared there because the system had populated it from the original email sender. The technician who executed the erase used another login entirely.
"Then who initiated it?" Judge Rowe asked during the evidentiary session.
Price pointed to a transaction ID. "The service request came from Major Ellis Rollins's office. The executing technician acted on an instruction from the quality directorate, as entered in this work queue. I still need to determine whether that instruction was authorized."
Rollins was not in court. The military judge ordered his appearance for a limited evidentiary hearing and directed that he be represented if questioning implicated potential misconduct. She also prohibited further changes to the remaining source data without written authorization.
As we left, Dana touched my elbow. "I almost thought you'd believe I erased it."
"I thought I had to find out."
"You didn't defend me."
"I didn't accuse you either."
Her eyes shone for an instant. "Fair enough."
The trial date slipped another week. Leah was furious. Every delay meant another week of being treated as a soldier whose work could not be trusted. She wasn't allowed to handle field water equipment, and her children had begun asking why their mother's name kept appearing in news reports.
"This is never going away," she said.
"Some of it won't," I told her. "Your decisions with the alarm and the badge are real. But the government still has to prove every criminal allegation beyond a reasonable doubt."
She looked at me for a long time, then nodded. "I want Jonah to know I was wrong about the alarm. Even if it hurts my case."
I helped her separate an apology from legal strategy. She could acknowledge harm without rehearsing testimony or approaching a potential witness improperly. We agreed she would write a private letter and keep it until the proceedings were over.
Tasha found a preserved transfer receipt confirming the water-source column existed before certification. It showed a request from Rollins's workstation minutes before the report changed. Price warned a workstation wasn't proof of who typed the command, but the audit trail narrowed the question.
At the next hearing, Rollins arrived in uniform, his face drawn. He acknowledged directing records staff to replace an incomplete quality-control recording with a certified report. He said he had believed the negative-control result was compromised by handling and no longer scientifically useful. Under questioning, he admitted Captain Bell had not signed that conclusion.
"Who instructed you to replace it?" Dana asked through substitute counsel, since she had become a potential witness.
Rollins swallowed. "Colonel Mercer said the incomplete copy was causing unnecessary alarm."
"Did he tell you to falsify the water test?"
"No."
"Did you authorize an entry that said the unit passed?"
He gripped the witness chair. "I authorized a closure code. I assumed the final lab confirmation would arrive."
A closure code. Another phrase that made a human decision sound like software.
Judge Rowe leaned forward. "Major, were you aware that soldiers would drink from that unit before confirmation arrived?"
May you like
Rollins looked down.
"Yes, ma'am."
