He went back to work. The deposition happened on a Friday morning 3 weeks after the warrant. Malcolm sat across from a federal prosecutor for 4 hours and answered every question with the same quality of attention. He gave a maintenance log completely accurately without embellishment or omission. Patricia Oay sat beside him and intervened twice both times to clarify a question rather than block an answer because the answers were solid and she knew it.
The prosecutor, a young woman with the efficient energy of someone who had already read everything and was confirming what she knew, asked him at one point, "Mr. Hayes, when you first identified the anomalous component in the flight control assembly, what was your primary concern?" Malcolm thought about it. the aircraft. He said someone was going to fly it. Not the invoice dispute. The invoice dispute was a business problem.
He said the component was an aircraft problem. Those are different categories. How do you separate them in the moment under that kind of financial pressure? He looked at her. The same way I separate everything, he said.
I ask one question. Would I put my daughter on it? She wrote something down. When he walked out of the federal building at 2:00 in the afternoon, Patricia was beside him. "That went well," she said.
"I know," he said. "You're not a natural witness," she said. "You're too specific, but in this case, specific is exactly right because every single specific thing you said is documented." She paused. "Malcolm, I've been practicing law for 22 years. I have represented contractors in safety disputes more times than I can count.
I have never had a client whose documentation was so thoroughly its own defense. She looked at him. You know that most people would have signed the certificate under that financial pressure with that deadline with Sterling Crown's legal team threatening litigation. Most people would have signed and walked away. I know, he said.
Why didn't you? He thought about the answer he'd given a federal prosecutor an hour ago. about his daughter, about the aircraft, about different categories. But the real answer was simpler. Because I'm paid to make sure it comes back, he said, not just that it takes off. She looked at him for a moment.
Then she nodded once with the expression of someone who has just heard a thing they are going to remember for a long time. She went to her car. He went to his truck. He drove back to the shop. Three months after the morning, Victoria Sterling laughed at his invoice.
Malcolm Hayes stood in hangar 7 of the Sterling Crown Executive Airfield and watched the first flight of the restored Bombardier Global 7500. He'd spent 9 days in that aircraft with his team. After the fleet audit concluded 9 days of replacement and inspection, every questionable component removed and replaced, every system verified against its original specification. Every wire run traced and confirmed. No shortcuts, no executive deadlines, no pressure.