Chương 7
“Why?”
“Because I was assigned to a procurement command that did business with the company.”
“Did your brother object?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“He needed my voting interest to prevent an outside investor from gaining control.”
“What happened?”
“He borrowed money to buy the shares from the estate.”
“From whom?”
“I don’t know.”
Webb waited.
Josephine recognized the technique and disliked that it worked.
“My mother may know,” she added.
“Why didn’t you include this history in the current conflict plan?”
“The plan identifies the inheritance and disclaimer.”
“It does not identify your brother’s debt.”
“I did not know the lender.”
“But you knew the debt might create financial pressure.”
“Every company has financial pressure.”
“That is true and not responsive.”
Josephine looked toward the window. The grounded prototype sat in the hangar’s shadow, surrounded by maintenance stands.
Webb said, “Captain, I am not investigating your feelings about your brother. I am determining whether information available to you affected official decisions.”
“My decision was to ground the aircraft.”
“After you discovered duplicate data.”
“Yes.”
“Before that, did you advocate for Barrett Aeronautical?”
“No.”
“Did you discourage its participation?”
“No.”
“Did you invite your brother to the safety dinner during an active source selection?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“My mother asked me to.”
Webb’s eyes remained on her.
Josephine added, “And because I hoped we could eat dinner without discussing the company.”
“Was that realistic?”
“No.”
Webb wrote something down.
The interview lasted two hours. By the end, Josephine had explained the inheritance, the promotion ceremony Evan skipped, the Christmas argument in which he called her rank a costume, and the reason she had not entered the family factory since their father’s funeral.
Webb closed the folder.
“One more question. Did your father ever discuss the 2020 material variance with you?”
“No.”
“Did he discuss any concern about Barrett Aeronautical’s testing practices?”
Josephine’s first answer rose automatically.
No.
Then she remembered a voicemail.
It had arrived eleven days before her father died. She had been at sea for exercises, working from a compartment where the air-conditioning failed every afternoon. His voice had sounded irritated, which was how he disguised fear.
Call me when you can. Evan is moving too fast on something. I may need a favor.
She had called three days later. He said it was handled. She had been relieved and had not pressed.
Josephine looked at Webb.
“He left me a message,” she said.
Webb waited.
Josephine described it.
“Do you still have the voicemail?”
“It was five years ago.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
She opened her phone. Her old messages had migrated through three devices. Most were gone. Some remained in cloud backups she had never examined.
“I don’t know.”
“Do not search for it yourself,” Webb said. “We’ll arrange preservation.”
After the interview, Josephine found Evan waiting outside the headquarters building.
Base security had issued him a temporary pass under investigator escort. He stood beside a vending machine, staring at a spiral of crackers he had paid for but failed to receive.
“You still hit the machine when it steals from you?” Josephine asked.
He glanced at her. “I’m considering it.”
“You’ll lose the pass.”
“Your base has strict policies.”
“It dislikes violence against snack equipment.”
He almost smiled.
For a few seconds, they were children again in a hospital corridor, sharing a candy bar after their father’s first heart procedure because neither wanted the other to know they were scared.
Then Evan looked at her uniform and the moment closed.
“They took my phone,” he said.
“They copied it.”
“They took the physical phone.”
“You’ll get it back.”
“You sound very confident for someone who isn’t running the investigation.”
“I’m familiar with evidence procedures.”
“Of course you are.”
Josephine started toward the stairs.
“Did Mom send you the picture?” he asked.
She stopped.
“She thought it would help me,” he said.
“It didn’t.”
“I told her not to get involved.”
“She has ignored better advice.”
Evan leaned against the vending machine. He looked exhausted. Gray showed at his temples, a detail she had not noticed at dinner.
“The note on the board wasn’t about the flight hardware,” he said. “It was about a test fixture bracket.”
“You should tell Agent Webb.”
“I did.”
“Then why tell me?”
“Because you looked at that photograph and decided Dad approved bad material.”
“I decided it was evidence.”
“You always say that as though evidence cannot be misunderstood.”
“It can. That is why it is investigated.”
He laughed softly. “You have an answer for everything.”
“No. I have procedures for when answers are unreliable.”
“Dad hated procedures.”
“Dad wrote half of yours.”
“He ignored the ones that got in the way.”
Josephine studied him.
Evan looked toward the glass doors. An investigator waited inside, close enough to see but not hear.
“The company was already in trouble when he died,” Evan said. “The commercial drone program had collapsed. We owed suppliers. The bank wanted more collateral. He never told you because you were deployed and he didn’t want you worrying.”
“He told you.”
“I was there.”
“That was the division of labor.”
“What does that mean?”
“You were there, and I was useful from a distance.”
His mouth tightened. “You left.”
“I joined the Navy.”
“You left before that.”
The accusation had waited twenty-five years and still arrived poorly formed.
Josephine folded her arms. “Say what you came to say.”
“When he needed somebody in the hospital, I was there. When Mom couldn’t understand the insurance forms, I was there. When he couldn’t walk through the factory without sitting down, I put chairs where employees wouldn’t see them.”
“I know.”
“No, you received updates. That isn’t the same.”
“I was flying operational missions.”
“And I was trying to keep him alive.”
“I did not ask you to choose that.”
“You didn’t have to. You had already chosen.”
May you like
A sailor exited the building and walked between them, saluting Josephine. She returned it. The brief formality made Evan look away.
He said, “The old test was Dad’s decision.”
