Chapter 9 - FIND THE ORIGINAL
The thumbnail metadata gave Seth something he had lacked since Raven Ridge: a specific piece of evidence to chase rather than a reputation to defend. The deleted image existed, Luke created it before the exercise and someone removed the full file while leaving behind a database entry.
Mara's attorney retained a forensic specialist who examined the phone without modifying it. The specialist confirmed that the photograph had been deleted during the period when the device was in official custody after Luke's death. The exact user could not be identified because the extraction logs from eight years earlier no longer existed, but the deletion did not occur before the accident.
That mattered.
Luke had carried evidence into the exercise.
Someone removed it afterward.
Seth and Ben Torres then requested the original evidence inventory through military records channels. The inventory listed Luke's phone but did not mention any extracted image. A later supplemental sheet showed the device had been temporarily transferred for “technical review” at Raven Ridge before being returned to investigators.
The person signing the transfer was Robert Keene.
Seth called him.
Keene answered on the fourth ring and recognized Seth's voice immediately. He had retired three years earlier and now worked as an operations consultant for a logistics firm. Seth asked for a meeting, explaining that Luke's old phone contained evidence that a photograph was deleted while Keene controlled the device.
Keene did not deny taking possession of it.
He said Northstar technicians needed to determine whether Luke had photographed proprietary equipment inside a restricted training environment.
“Did you delete the picture?” Seth asked.
“No.”
“Did you see it?”
A long pause followed.
“Yes.”
Seth felt his grip tighten around the phone.
“What was in it?”
“The waiver.”
The answer closed one loop immediately.
Luke had photographed the missing attachment.
Keene had seen it.
The attachment really listed unresolved Atlas faults.
“Why wasn't it in the final report?”
Keene said he would not discuss the matter by phone.
They met the following afternoon in an empty diner thirty miles from Raven Ridge. Miller did not attend because Seth wanted no audience; Mara waited in a nearby parking lot in case Seth needed a witness afterward.
Keene looked older but still carried himself like someone accustomed to controlling the pace of conversations. He admitted signing the waiver because Northstar and command staff assured him the faults were noncritical calibration issues. Luke challenged him, but Keene believed the engineers rather than a soldier who lacked technical authority.
After the accident, Keene saw Luke's photograph and realized the attachment could make his earlier approval look reckless.
“Look reckless?” Seth asked. “Or prove it was reckless?”
Keene's jaw tightened. “I made a bad decision based on bad information.”
“Then why hide it?”
Keene claimed Northstar attorneys warned that releasing an incomplete technical attachment before the controller logs were reviewed could prejudice the investigation. He allowed the photograph to be removed from Luke's phone as proprietary contractor material, expecting the original waiver to remain available separately.
It disappeared instead.
Keene said he objected afterward but was told the accident board already had the definitive controller summary showing Seth crossed the boundary first.
“So you accepted their timeline because it protected your decision.”
“I accepted the evidence I was given.”
“You also helped remove evidence you weren't supposed to control.”
Keene did not answer.
Seth left the meeting with no confession to falsifying the report, but he gained something more useful: Keene confirmed the waiver attachment existed, Luke photographed it and Northstar participated in removing the image from the phone.
The investigation had moved from technical failure to evidence suppression.
Then Keene called Seth before he reached Mara's car.
“There was another copy.”
Seth stopped.
Keene explained that all training waivers were uploaded before exercises to a joint planning portal used by the unit and contractor. Northstar could alter its own copy, but it could not retroactively change the version originally submitted to the government's contracting archive.
“Where is it?”
“I don't know if it still exists.”
“Who would?”
Keene gave him a name.
Elaine Porter.
She had been the civilian contract administrator for Raven Ridge and had left federal service two years after the accident.
Seth wrote down the name.
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The new objective was clear.
Find the original waiver before Northstar's acquisition closed and before another archive disappeared.
