"The scope is that we have a transportation company, not a charity for mechanics." Norah did not rise to the insult. "Then you should want to distinguish the cost of a delayed truck from the cost of an unsafe one."
She walked Victoria through the 460 supplier valves, the six anomalous tests, the missing traceability, and the fourteen incorrectly closed work orders. Graham interrupted to say six failures out of 460 amounted to roughly 1.3 percent, hardly a reason to suspend an entire fleet. Norah turned toward him. "Six failures among eleven units selected for symptoms," she said.
"Not six among 460 inspected components. We have not inspected the rest, and we don't know how many of those 460 are installed or where. Please don't use the denominator of a test we haven't conducted."
Graham looked down at his laptop. Victoria asked how quickly the trucks could be released, and Norah answered that it depended on how many qualified mechanics they could assign and what a proper screening protocol required. "I can't give you a number before we know what we're doing," she said. Victoria shook her head. "That's exactly the answer that gets companies held hostage by uncertainty."
Norah closed the first tab of the binder. "We weren't held hostage when Owen asked to investigate it in October. We had a choice then. We still have a choice now, but it's going to cost more." By nine o'clock, Victoria had placed three calls to an outside fleet engineering firm in Indianapolis.
She wanted an independent assessment from people who had no allegiance to Owen or the mechanics, an evaluation she could show customers and directors without the appearance of a personnel dispute. The firm's operations manager offered to send its lead consultant that afternoon, provided Blackwell supplied its inspection records, work-order history, and any supplier information already collected. Victoria agreed at once. Graham called the decision decisive action, and for an hour it made the office feel slightly less helpless.
Priya Ragavan arrived close to noon with one rolling case and a laptop whose cover was scratched from years of travel. She was a mechanical engineer who had spent fourteen years working on commercial fleets, including two accident investigations whose consequences still appeared in her training presentations. She had no interest in the company's internal arguments. When she learned that the lead technician had been dismissed the previous day, she asked for the records he had produced, not an explanation of why he had left. "I need to know what we know," she said. "Personnel decisions can wait until the trucks are classified."
Her first meeting lasted less than an hour before the tone in the room changed. Graham had prepared a summary showing six confirmed anomalies and a fleet of four hundred, with a pie chart intended to demonstrate the small observed percentage. Priya removed the page from the center of the table and placed it face down. "Please don't show this to anyone else," she said.