Page 69 of Into the Fire

The two pieces sat under the work light a foot apart, one whole and one in two parts.

The break ran through the body of the link. Part of the face was rough and irregular where the metal had finally torn apart. The rest was flat. Fine parallel tool marks ran across it and stopped at the edge of the fracture.

Somebody had cut it most of the way through and let the load do the rest.

“A saw did that,” Dante said.

“Yes.”

We pieced together the timing. The rig had been put back together mid-morning, with four sets of hands and eyes on every piece. The certification ride was scheduled for after lunch. In between, the tower had stood alone in an empty yard for the better part of an hour while everyone ate chili on bread in the shade of the ready room wall.

Somebody hadn’t eaten. They’d sabotaged it with nobody noticing.

The statements were already on my desk, eleven of them, everything from Hollis’s half-page to Shep’s two pages covering the morning in detail. I read them all twice.

They all agreed with each other. Nobody had seen anyone at the tower.

I took the statements to Operations.

Marty was still there. He had the radio down low. He had the rotation sheet, loft sign-outs, phone log, and the gate movements laid out on the counter in a row.

“Sign-outs first.” He turned the sheet so I could read it. “Nothing came out of the loft after the morning inspection. Every piece on the tower went up before ten, and it’s all on Hollis’s clipboard. The phone log shows Helena at eleven-ten. Prentiss’s office called at twelve-forty confirming she’d call back, and then we have her call at one-fifty, which is the one that pulled Dante.” He moved down the row. “Gate. Nobody went through it all day but our own trucks and the ambulance. No deliveries, visitors, or district vehicles. I checked it against my memory and Ramirez’s. It was all us.”

“Who was off base at lunch?”

“Nobody.” He pushed his glasses up. “If you want me to build you the lunch hour, I can get you close. It won’t be close enough for a court. Men eating in the shade don’t punch a clock.”

“Get me close.”

I wrote the names myself on the legal pad, one to a line. He told me who had reason to be near the tower. Everybody knew the certification ride was after lunch because Hollis’s clipboard had hung on the rack all morning.

Nash was in the loft office through most of lunch with his own paperwork.

Marty was in Operations with the phones. His window didn’t have a view of anything useful.

Hollis was in the shade eating lunch with the rest of the crew as witnesses.

Ramirez, Teller, and the ground crew hands were with Hollis.

I was in my office, then the yard, and then the steps with Marty’s memo.

Dante read the pad over my shoulder. He asked, “Shep?”

“What about him?”

“You didn’t put him down.”

I looked at the pad. I had eight names and no Shepherd.

“I skipped him. How’d I do that?”

Dante didn’t say anything. Shep lived in his own category. I had spent three seasons keeping the kid from hurting himself, and somewhere in there he’d stopped being a person and become a thing I maintained, like the tower. It had never once crossed my mind to ask where Shep was at lunchtime.

Hollis had him in the shade “most of lunch.” Ramirez had him going back for seconds. His own statement had him at the wall for the entire hour.

I remembered him somewhere else. I’d been crossing from the office with Marty’s memo in my hand, thinking about Prentiss, and Shep had come around the corner of the gear shed. He’d been carrying something: a strap, a rag, or a piece of nothing. I’d sent him toward the food without breaking stride.

I wrote SHEPHERD on the ninth line.