Vance’s face lost every shred of its practiced corporate polish. His mouth pulled tight against his teeth, a sudden ugly flush creeping up his collar. He did not pull the paper again; he knew that if he yanked it while my full two hundred pounds rested on the sole, the thin tissue would tear straight across the signature block, destroying his clean audit exhibit.
“The driver received a digital dispatch voucher on his terminal handset,” Vance said, keeping his voice down to an urgent, furious rasp. “We don’t run paper duplicates in the cab anymore. The board approved electronic logging three weeks ago to eliminate manual delays. ”
“You can’t run an electronic voucher on a class-three flammable gas carrier with a flagged manifold,” I said. “State law requires the physical pressure certification sheet in the door pocket, signed in ink by the certified mechanic who torqued the relief valve. If state troopers pull that rig over at the scale house in Wanatah, they don’t look at an iPad. They ask for the pink sheet. And when they look at this sheet, they’re going to see my license number stamped over an unauthorized bypass. ”
Vance stared up at me for two long seconds. Then his lips twitched into a narrow, ugly smile that had nothing to do with panic and everything to do with leverage.
“They aren’t going to pull him over at Wanatah,” Vance whispered, rising to his full height until his chest was inches from my jacket, his breath smelling of expensive peppermint and stale espresso. “Rig 414 isn’t taking Route 30 past the scales. We routed him down County Road 400 South through the marsh bypass to hit the Whiting refinery before their noon receiving cutoff. And if that pressure manifold vents on the county blacktop, Miller, the dispatch logs will show that Arthur Miller inspected the secondary housing, signed the clearance voucher, and then showed up at the terminal twelve hours later looking for an hourly watchman job to cover his tracks. ”
He reached out, grabbed the lapel of my old flannel jacket, and jerked his hand sideways. The sudden movement threw me off balance, forcing my boot to lift off the floor to keep my arthritic hip from buckling.
In that single half-second, Vance snatched the pink slip out from under my sole. He smoothed the crumpled tissue against his thigh, slid it into the interior pocket of his charcoal suit jacket, and zipped the portfolio closed with one violent flick of his wrist.
“Marcus called you in here today because I told him to,” Vance said, leaning in until his glasses nearly touched my brow. “You were never getting that gate job, Arthur. We needed you sitting on that chair, signed into the visitor ledger under the security cameras, between ten-thirty and noon. That way, if forty tons of propane blows a seam outside LaPorte while Finch is behind the wheel, nobody has to wonder where the negligent inspector was hiding. ”
He adjusted his silk tie, turned on his heel, and walked straight through the heavy fire doors toward the board room.
Across the room, Rita sat frozen, her trembling hands resting flat against the plastic keys of her keyboard, her eyes wide with terror. On the computer screen behind her, the terminal’s real-time fleet map showed a pulsing amber dot labeled UNIT 414, crawling north along a two-lane county road four miles from the railroad crossing.
CHAPTER 2 CONTINUED
“Look at the manifold diagnostic line on the secondary tray, Rita,” I said, leaning over the counter so my chest blocked the wide-angle security lens mounted in the lobby corner. “Finch isn't just driving an uncertified tank. That rig has a cracked seating flange on the underbelly bypass valve. The vibration from the county blacktop is going to rattle the retaining bolts loose before he clears the swamp bottoms. ”
Rita looked at the screen, swallowed hard, and clicked the cursor over the secondary diagnostic window. A narrow dialog box expanded across the map, displaying the real-time sensor array from Rig 414’s trailer chassis. The bar graph for the belly manifold was already glowing yellow, indicating four hundred and ten pounds of liquid pressure pushing against a relief spring that had only been rated for three hundred and fifty after my last ultrasonic metal test. Beside the pressure bar, a tiny red warning chevron flashed intermittently: MANIFOLD STABILIZER BYPASS ACTIVE.
Someone had manually disabled the automated tractor cab warning buzzer from the terminal dispatch console before Finch pulled out of the bay. Finch was driving down an unlit two-lane road at mid-morning with forty tons of explosive cargo behind him, completely unaware that the pressure vessel inches above his drive axles was expanding toward a structural rupture.
“Dennis Vance sat at Marcus’s desk at ten last night,” Rita said, her knuckles turning bone white against the edge of the desk pad. “He brought in a team from the regional consulting group. They told Marcus that Blackwood Hauling was losing eighty thousand dollars a week by letting sixty-ton rigs sit under red tags waiting for replacement parts from the Ohio foundry. They said your manual inspection protocols were obsolete padding designed to generate union overtime. ”