“Then?”
“No watch.”
“No charges.”
“I started thinking maybe they had just needed someone.”
The detective asked whether he ever contacted the airline.
“No.”
“Why?”
The man’s voice became smaller.
“Because insurance had paid me.”
“And because I was embarrassed.”
The chairwoman read that transcript the next morning.
She did not know what to do with the fact that he had doubted the process eventually.
It did not absolve him.
It did not make him responsible for management decisions either.
People often wanted one villain.
Real harm was messier.
A passenger lost property.
A crew member made an accusation.
Managers preferred a quick resolution.
A younger employee had less credibility.
An organization closed ranks around its own confidence.
Nobody needed to wake up planning to destroy a life.
The system did it through convenience.
The old personnel archive arrived before noon.
Three boxes of scanned records.
A corporate lawyer called.
“We found the original witness statements.”
The chairwoman’s stomach tightened.
“Send copies to outside counsel first.”
“You don’t want them?”
“I do.”
“But chain it properly.”
The lawyer nodded.
Outside counsel reviewed.
Then gave her access.
The lead attendant’s old statement ran four pages.
The chairwoman read slowly.
The woman claimed she saw the younger Black flight attendant near the financier’s coat while he was asleep.
She described her “looking around.”
She said the employee seemed nervous after the watch was reported missing.
The chairwoman’s hands tightened.
She remembered being nervous.
Everyone was staring at her.
Of course she was nervous.
Then she noticed the time.
The statement placed her near Row 2 at approximately 4:18 p.m.
Crew-position logs showed she had been assigned to the rear First Class galley during that service phase.
Could she have moved forward?
Yes.
But another service document showed she signed a beverage-cart inventory at 4:17.
Then a colleague’s old statement confirmed she had been in the galley around that time.
Not proof she could not have moved.
But significant.
Why had nobody reconciled the contradiction?
Because management had not treated the internal investigation like an adversarial fact-finding process.
They had treated it like a workplace decision.
Lower standard.
Broad discretion.
Faster conclusion.
Then she saw another name.
Her closest friend.
A statement.
The chairwoman stopped.
Read.
The friend said she could not account for the chairwoman’s location for approximately ten minutes after meal service.
Technically true.
Maybe.
Then handwritten notes.
Witness appears hesitant when asked whether senior crew member entered service-storage compartment after passengers deplaned.
The chairwoman stared.
A second note: