“The winter before the crash, a driver reported a braking problem with Bus 214,” June said.
“The driver was your father.”
Rachel leaned forward.
June showed her a photocopy of an intake form with Nathan Miller’s name, the bus number, and a description of intermittent loss of pressure.
The date was four months earlier than the service report Rachel had seen.
The form was initialed by a mechanic named Glenn Rourke.
June explained that Glenn recommended replacing an aging brake component and removing the vehicle from service until it passed a road test.
Martin delayed the replacement because the contract renewal was approaching and the cost would be charged against a narrow budget.
Rachel asked why a later report showed the vehicle as fully repaired.
June’s mouth compressed.
“Because I entered the invoice Martin gave me,” she said.
“I knew there was no matching purchase order.
I assumed the parts had come from existing stock.”
She placed another document beside the first.
It was a shipment receipt for the necessary part, delivered twelve days after the crash.
“I learned about the date later,” she admitted.
“By then everyone was accusing everyone else of lying.”
Rachel felt a sudden surge of hope followed by a fear of believing too quickly.
June’s documents were copies, not original parts or testimony from the mechanic.
A dated purchase receipt alone would not prove what failed at the curve.
She asked where Glenn Rourke had gone.
June said he had moved to Pennsylvania after being dismissed for what Martin called repeated insubordination.
“Glenn tried to call the state investigator,” June said.
“He told me nobody returned his messages.”
Rachel wrote his name and the last address June had for him.
June also described Martin’s private arguments with Carol.
He kept a metal box in the garage with a blue stripe painted across one corner.
Whenever Carol asked about it, he became defensive.
After the crash Martin moved the box to a locked work shed and began drinking before dinner.
June believed it held his handwritten maintenance notebooks, but she had never seen inside.
“He was afraid of that box,” June said.
“Not because it was valuable.
Because it remembered something differently from him.”
Rachel asked why June had stayed silent.
June looked down at her hands.
“I didn’t stay entirely silent,” she answered.
“I gave copies to a lawyer, and the lawyer told me the evidence was incomplete.
I couldn’t afford to be the only woman in town accusing a contractor the county trusted.
