Chapter 5 - THE BOXES IN THE BACK
Jace tried to stop us when I asked to see the adaptive equipment purchased through the grant.
“You can’t just inspect private inventory.”
I removed my identification and the written authorization from my canvas bag.
“You agreed to unannounced compliance reviews when Cutler’s accepted public funding.”
His face reddened.
“The owner isn’t here.”
“She has already been contacted.”
Nora Cutler arrived twenty minutes later.
She was fifty-nine, white-haired and walking with a cane after a recent hip operation. Cutler’s Firearms had belonged to her parents before it belonged to her. The store’s reputation meant something to her in a way Jace had never understood.
Jace was her sister’s son.
She had placed him in charge of Saturday operations while she recovered.
When Nora saw the documents, she did not defend him immediately.
She asked to see the equipment room.
The storage door was behind the range office.
Inside, unopened boxes were stacked beneath a dust-covered tarp.
An adjustable shooting bench remained unassembled.
Two adaptive supports were still wrapped in factory plastic.
A low-recoil training system had never been removed from its shipping crate.
The grant had paid for all of it fourteen months earlier.
According to Cutler’s reports, the equipment had been used during forty-eight appointments.
Nora touched the dust on one box.
“How were the sessions conducted?”
Jace glanced toward the doorway.
“We adapted with what we had.”
Walter stepped forward.
“You told my nephew the program no longer existed.”
“I didn’t know whether he was medically safe.”
“You never asked about his training or condition.”
“I made a judgment.”
“Yes,” Walter said. “You looked at his hand and made one.”
The attendance files produced a second problem.
Several signatures appeared in the same handwriting.
Some listed veterans who had canceled appointments months earlier.
Two names belonged to people who had never contacted the store.
One participant had died before the date of his supposed session.
Nora sat down heavily in the office chair.
“Who completed these reports?”
Jace looked toward the floor.
May you like
The answer was stored in the document metadata.
He had.
