As soon as Dale left, Dylan and Tara laid out their case for Jeb. He listened, looked at the chart, shook his head in puzzlement. “I know you’re showing me my own data, but it sounds crazy.”
“That’s why you need to grab some rejects before they get recycled and test them yourself,” Dylan said.
“Guess so.”
“We’d like to talk to Matt, if we can,” Tara said. “See if we can get him to explain his thinking. That okay with you?”
Jeb looked at them both. “I sure as hell can’t talk to him right now. I’ll tear him a new one. Tell him I said to forget the recycling for now.”
“Will do. Thanks, Jeb,” Dylan said.
“Just figure it out. We’ve got production quotas to hit.”
Tara grabbed the digital recorder she used to capture thoughts when she was driving, and handed it to Dylan. “Put this in your shirt pocket. We’ll record what he tells us.”
They spotted Matt walking into a small hangar near some panel trucks. They set off at a lope, strategizing as they went. Closer, Tara saw palettes of parts stacked beside one of the trucks.
“Go time,” she said.
Dylan turned on the recorder and they went inside and found Matt bent over, shifting crates around. “Matt?” Dylan called to him.
“Huh?” He jolted and turned, looking guilty as hell, a dusty box in his hand. “I got the part you want.” He flushed.
“No need. We’ll grab a couple from your stack outside.”
“No,” he blurted, which told Tara their theory was right. “This is what you want.” He thrust the box at Dylan.
“Because these are actually bad,” Dylan asked, “while the others are perfectly good?” Dylan was playing bad cop. Tara would show sympathy when the time felt right.
Matt flinched, his eyes darting everywhere, desperate for escape.
“You put a bad unit in Abbott’s car, didn’t you, Matt?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said flatly, his eyes going cold, his jaw locked.
“Don’t bother to lie. We can prove it.” Not true, but it clearly terrified Matt, who went white except for red blotches on his neck.
Tara’s instincts fired up. It was time for her to speak. “We know you didn’t mean for anyone to get hurt,” she said. “Whatever you did, you did for everyone’s good, to save jobs and help people. We know you’re that kind of guy.” She spoke slowly and warmly, hoping to draw him in with her sympathy.
He softened slightly and swallowed.
“You go to the doctor with your wife, Matt, even when your boss hassles you. You’d do anything for your family. You’re a family man. I admire that. And Wharton’s your family, too. You felt like it was your duty to save them. Because family counts.” Those were the words he’d used in the electric cart that day.
His eyes shot to hers, almost proud. He was breathing fast and shallow, scared, but also strengthened by her kind description of his motives.
She didn’t speak, waiting for his confession to bubble up.
“I had to do something,” he finally said. “Pescatore said they were going to outsource assembly. He saw the proposal on the fax machine. TGR Manufacturing in Tennessee. He got fired for spilling the beans.”
His jaw muscle twitched, his eyes gleamed with fervor. “We work hard. Everybody on the line. The whole plant. We put together a good product. They wanted to go cheaper. It was Banes pushing it. I knew it would ruin us. It would ruin the whole town.”
“So you had to fix it somehow,” Tara said, urging him on.
He nodded once. “You get what you pay for. Cheap vendors make cheap products. I had to prove TGR was a bad company. I had to monkey with the tests. I had no choice. It would have happened anyway, later on. All Ryland had to do was admit it was TGR’s fault, then find a better supplier. Nobody would get hurt. Easy.”
He ran his hands through his hair, then jammed them on his hips, looking down. He swallowed, glanced at Dylan, then Tara. “When Mr. Wharton drove out here a couple weeks ago, it was after hours. I’d come back after the doctor’s appointment to catch up on reports. He said he had a wager going with Sean Ryland about the Ryland assembly. He asked me to put one on.”
It had been her father who requested the installation, after all, Tara realized. She’d been wrong to attack Dylan’s father.
“I got this great idea. If I put in a bad unit, he’d give Sean Ryland