Records obtained through the investigation linked the consulting account to a small company controlled by Wesley Crane’s former business partner. The partner, Elliot Sloane, arrived for a voluntary interview with a lawyer and a folder of invoices. He said Vale was a trade name used for project administration. The lawyer stopped him before he could explain further. Keene waited while they conferred. When the interview resumed, Sloane said he had processed documents supplied by Ridgeway but had never personally visited the Alder Creek site.
“Who performed the inspections your certificates describe?” Ward asked.
“Ridgeway’s field people.”
“Which people?”
“I don’t have the names.”
“Did you ask for them before certifying?”
Sloane looked at his lawyer.
The interview ended without a confession. Ward was comfortable with that. A person could decline to continue without supplying proof against himself. The certificates still existed. So did the payments and the contradiction between a personal inspection statement and an account of work delegated to unnamed staff. Investigators would test those facts rather than treat the pause as an admission.
A second line of inquiry followed the serial numbers on manufacturer records. Some units from the disputed batch had been delivered to private storage yards beyond the county. Others remained with a subcontractor who said payment disputes had halted transport. Two had been placed on a private development associated with Crane’s relatives. Keene separated each category. The public phrase “thirty-eight missing homes” was becoming less accurate even as the evidence of wrongdoing grew stronger. The homes were not all missing in the same way.
Ward called the recovery program administrator at the state level and described the urgent administrative problem without disclosing protected investigative details. Families could not remain denied assistance solely because disputed records marked them housed. The administrator agreed to review those cases independently and preserve the existing account histories. That decision would not resolve criminal liability. It could stop a false delivery status from continuing to harm people while the slower investigation proceeded. Ward made sure the families received a contact who actually had authority over the assistance review.
Andre learned about the review from Simone. He wanted to celebrate until she explained that applications still needed individual verification. “They can make a new mistake while fixing an old one,” she said. He knew that was true. At the repair bay, a customer asked whether he was rich now because federal people had shown up for him. Andre pointed at an unpaid parts invoice. The customer looked embarrassed and offered to pay early. Andre accepted the payment for work completed, refusing the pity without refusing what he had earned.
The analyst built a chart linking each serial number to the original purchase, transport instruction, claimed recipient, and last verified physical location. Empty spaces remained empty. Where accounts conflicted, both references appeared. Ward asked for a version that could be read without specialist knowledge, because eventually a person unfamiliar with the program might need to understand it in court. The analyst removed unexplained abbreviations and added dates. The result looked almost disappointingly simple. That simplicity had required hours of resisting the urge to connect uncertain facts with confident lines. When a new record arrived, it changed one box rather than the whole theory. Keene liked that. They were investigating a sequence of transactions, not defending a story they had already fallen in love with.
That afternoon, Mara found Baird standing at the archive cabinet. He asked where the earlier printed routing sheets were kept. She told him the retention location and made a note of the request in the ordinary access log. He stared at her pen. “Everything doesn’t need a record,” he said. Mara closed the log after completing the line. She could feel her pulse in her throat, but she answered without raising her voice. “These do.” For the first time, she watched him leave before she looked down.
The call log did not explain itself. It showed a conversation between Baird and Rusk forty-seven minutes before Andre was detained. Another call followed six minutes later. People who knew one another could speak for innocent reasons. Ward told the team to resist writing the conversation they expected into the empty spaces between numbers. They needed content, context, and corroboration. The timeline was useful because it identified questions. It was not a substitute for the answers they had not yet obtained.
The dispatch recording supplied the next piece. Rusk had asked an operator whether there were active advisories involving a pickup near the highway. The operator mentioned an earlier report from another jurisdiction concerning a gray vehicle with a different partial plate. She also said the report had been resolved when the owner found the truck at a relative’s property. Rusk acknowledged that message. On Pike’s later recording, he described the truck at Harper’s as a possible theft match. The sequence did more than show an error in memory.