Vanessa turned the monitor toward the head of legal, Benjamin Foster, and asked whether someone had deleted them. Foster shook his head. "Not necessarily. Access may have changed after the employee's departure. We need a forensic copy of the system and its audit logs before anybody guesses."
Vanessa watched him make notes. "Who has authority to close a safety hold?" she asked. Foster opened the policy manual. "That depends on the reason for the hold. For a potential fuel-system hazard, engineering approval should be recorded."
"Was it?" Vanessa asked. Foster turned to the last page of the file. There was an electronic release attributed to Ron Keller and a handwritten notation that engineering review was unnecessary.
Nothing else. Vanessa read the words twice. She remembered Ron telling her that Eli had been refusing instructions. She had not asked what instruction he refused or why he believed the instruction was unsafe.
Ron arrived with a folder and a carefully concerned expression. "I thought it best to meet before the press started calling," he said. Vanessa motioned for him to sit. Priya remained by the door, and Foster opened a fresh notepad. Ron glanced at the attorney, then back at Vanessa. "We're not turning this into a disciplinary hearing, are we?"
"We're preserving a vehicle failure investigation," Vanessa replied. "I need to understand why the red R4 went back into service after Carter put it on hold." Ron leaned back.
"Because the hold was unfounded. Carter was trying to prove himself indispensable. He kept seeing defects that weren't there and slowing delivery. We followed normal practice."
Foster asked him for the engineering authorization. Ron said it would be in the file. Foster pointed to the blank space where it should have been.
Ron adjusted his cuffs. "I can explain that after I speak to the engineering team," he said. Vanessa felt anger rise, but held it back. "You'll provide the documents you already have," she said.
"You will not ask anyone to create a record now. You will not contact Eli Carter on behalf of this company without legal approval. And you will not decide the cause of yesterday's fire before investigators do."
"Vanessa," Ron said with deliberate familiarity, "we have to manage our exposure. If this gets out of control, we could lose the municipal contract. Three hundred employees could see their jobs put at risk. I need you thinking like a chief executive."
Vanessa looked at the maintenance file and thought of Tommy's small fingers gripping the hospital blanket. "I am," she said. "For the first time in a long while, I'm considering what happens to those employees if we keep building vehicles with a problem nobody is allowed to name."
Ron left the office without his usual confidence. He walked directly to the private room beside his department, closed the door, and made two calls. The first went to an old vendor contact who handled insurance and accident recovery. The second went to a junior supervisor who still owed Ron a favor from a scheduling dispute. Neither call was documented in the vehicle records. Both would become important later.