Chapter 6 - Closed Was Not Repaired
June Cho met Nia in a conference room beside the equipment laboratory.
The civilian biomedical technician had been asked to explain the findings relevant to what Nia had observed. Agent Bell attended, and the cylinder remained with the people authorized to examine it.
“It failed under controlled testing,” Cho said. “The valve assembly wasn’t delivering reliably. Your report of the hiss is consistent with what we found.”
Nia let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding.
“Was the gauge wrong?”
“A pressure indication didn’t establish that the equipment could deliver as intended.”
Cho turned a diagram toward Bell, not an instruction sheet for fixing the problem but a record of which components had been examined.
Nia asked about Ward’s maintenance request.
“It was closed as a duplicate,” Cho said. “There was an earlier request on the same cylinder.”
“So someone had already repaired it?”
“No. The earlier request remained unresolved.”
The distinction was almost offensively small.
Closed request.
Unrepaired equipment.
Nia had seen both words in status summaries without understanding what had disappeared between them.
“How did it leave maintenance hold?”
“That’s what the document trail needs to explain,” Bell said.
Cho had located the earlier intake photograph. With permission, she placed the printed copy in front of Nia.
The tag had been legible then.
REMOVE FROM USE—VALVE FAULT.
Beneath it was Victor Hale’s signature.
Nia stared.
“He ordered it taken out.”
“Yes.”
The photograph was dated nine days before Eli collapsed. Three days after Ward’s stopped exercise.
Nia had assumed Hale’s signature meant he’d originally approved the faulty cylinder.
Instead, he had known enough about the problem to remove it.
She looked up.
“Did he receive a completed repair report afterward?”
Bell closed her notebook.
“We’re establishing what he was told and what he authorized. I don’t want your assumption added to the record as something you witnessed.”
“Understood.”
The photograph changed the question, not the responsibility.
Outside, Nia sat in her car with the engine off.
She pictured Hale in the hangar saying the problem was handled. Then the tag from nine days earlier. His own handwriting. His own decision that the cylinder wasn’t safe.
She didn’t know yet why he had reversed himself.
May you like
But she knew the warning hadn’t merely failed to reach his desk.
He had held it in his hand.
