He nodded and wrote something down. Then he asked whether I had been influenced by Grip's reputation or by the promised money. It was a fair question, though it hurt to hear it put so plainly. I explained my original four-hundred-dollar invoice, the separate gift, and the decision to stop short of releasing the bike before an independent inspection.
Ellen asked that the records reflect each payment accurately. Daniel agreed. The interview lasted nearly three hours, and by the end I was drained in a way no physical job had ever left me. I had been asked to trust my own memory without decorating it, to accept that uncertainty wasn't failure, and to say "I don't know" more times than I could count.
Outside, Ellen handed me a bottle of water. "You did well."
"It didn't feel like it."
"Good testimony usually doesn't. The point isn't to win an argument. It's to help somebody determine what happened."
I thought about Hector's notebook. A complaint, a test, an observation, a result. I was beginning to see that the same discipline could apply to something much larger than a machine.
During that period, Patrick Reed closed Valley Iron Works. The sign came down from the Sacramento shop, and its phone went to voicemail. That made people around the charter angry, but Miriam refused to treat the closure as proof of guilt. Businesses close for many reasons, she reminded them. What mattered was whether records, payments, and witness statements supported the allegation that Reed had knowingly helped conceal a dangerous modification.
The first stronger evidence came from Pruitt's former bookkeeper. She had retained copies of disputed invoices because she believed Pruitt was hiding income from his creditors. The documents showed a special fabrication charge billed through an intermediary associated with Vincent Shea. The description was vague, but the timing, amount, and subcontractor reference aligned with Delgado's account in ways that deserved closer scrutiny.
Investigators also learned that a prepaid telephone used to threaten me had been purchased by a young employee connected to Reed's shop. The employee admitted sending the message after hearing that the part had been found. He claimed he'd been told only to frighten me into silence and that he had no role in the motorcycle's original alteration. I wanted to call him a coward. Instead, I thought about how many people in this story had convinced themselves that a small dishonest act would never turn into anything serious.
Shea was interviewed separately. At first he denied knowing Pruitt and minimized his relationship with Carver's development companies. Later, confronted with records and witness accounts, he began cooperating through counsel. I never learned all of what he said at that early stage. What I did learn was that there had been more than one discussion about making the charter's property opposition go away, and that a few people had interpreted those words in the ugliest possible way.