Haley looked up at him. Lson 14 months of electrical problems starting approximately 2 months after a crash. She said Dany stared at her. The wiring harness took stress in the fall. She said enough to break anything immediately, but enough to compromise a connection inside the insulation.
See it from outside. The insulation looks intact. Inside there's a break that opens and closes depending on temperature and vibration. Opens you lose power. When it closes, power comes back.
Her pattern because the brake isn't consistent. It moves. She put her flashlight away. She stood up. I need to do a full continuity check through the harness, she said.
Take a few hours. I'll need a multimeter. I have one in the truck. I need to know if anyone has the original wiring diagram for this year and model. I can probably find one online, Danny said.
Already have one on my phone, she said. I pulled it last night. Danny said nothing for a moment. Well, then he said, do you prep for everything this much? Haley picked up her tool bag.
I prep for everything I take seriously, she said. Which is everything. She walked back to her truck to get the multimeter. Danny watched her go. He pulled out his phone and texted Cole.
Already here. She's already knows what's wrong with the Sportster. You should come in. Cole's response came back in under a minute. My way.
Cole arrived at 9:47. He came in through the front, which he only did when he wanted to see the whole bay at once, before anyone knew he was there. It was a habit he developed over years, not suspicion. Exactly. But the instinct of someone who'd learned that the most information came in the first unguarded second before people adjusted to your presence.
What he saw in that first unguarded second was this. Morgan was lying on the concrete floor beside the Iron Head Sportster with her multimeter working through the wiring harness with the systematic patience of someone diffusing something that required absolute precision. Reyes was sitting on an overturned crate 3 ft away, but holding a flashlight at the exact angle she'd asked him to hold it, letting her work with an expression of complete and slightly bewildered attention. Third man in the room, a quiet veteran member named Hatch, who'd come in at some point in the last hour, was leaning against the wall with his arms crossed and his coffee cup cooling in his hand. Also watching, nobody was talking.
The garage had the quality of silence that settles in when people have decided discussing it that the work happening in front of them is worth not interrupting. The stood in the doorway for a moment, then he walked in. Haley heard his boots on the concrete. She didn't look up. She said morning.
Cole said. How long have you been here? Since 9. It's not 10 yet. I know.
He crouched down beside her so he could see what she was seeing. There's She was at a section of the harness near the steering neck exactly where you'd expect stress damage from a low-speed fall. Or if you knew to look for it, the crash 16 months ago, Cole said. Yeah. Nobody connected that.
Nobody asked Pete what had happened to the bike in the two months before the problem started. She said asked when the problem started. That's a different question. Cole was quiet for a moment. Do you know to ask it that way?
He said. Haley probed another connection point with the multimeter leads. A reading came back. She noted it on the pad beside her. The same neatical handwriting.
My father taught me. She said he said a machine doesn't lie. People sometimes lie about what happened to a machine, not because they're dishonest, but because they don't know what's relevant. So, you ask backwards. Ask what the machine was doing before the problem started.
Not just what it's doing now. Cole nodded slowly. He's a mechanic. He was, she said. Well, he's in the hospital, she said it flatly.
Not dramatically. You say a thing when you've said it enough times that the sharp edges have worn down to something. Manageable. Cole said. Thank you.
She said, and she meant it not as a polite reflex, but as a genuine receipt of something offered. Me everything I know. I'm trying to run the shop while he's while it's unclear. Hard to keep the customers coming in. She paused.
She hadn't meant to say that last part. She could feel herself having said more than she intended. Said nothing. He filed it. Got it.
Haley said up. She was holding her multimeter and looking at a section of harness about 8 in from the steering neck where the reading had come back with the anomaly she'd been looking for a break in continuity that appeared and disappeared as she gently flexed the harness up so Cole could see right there. She said, "Inside the insulation, you can't see it, but you can feel it when you flex the harness, there's a slightly softer section where the wire inside has broken, makes contact when the harness is relaxed. It loses contact when vibration or heat causes the brake to open." Cole looked at the spot.
He pressed his thumb against it lightly. He could feel what she meant, the faint inconsistency in the harness at that point. He said Pete has been bringing this bike in for over a year. I know nobody found this. Nobody crashed the bike 16 months ago and then asked Pete what had happened in the 2 months before the problem started.