Taking Stock (40 page)

Brad had done an excellent job setting
Eric
a up, but Stan knew he was guilty and that was more than he ever expected of this job. The evidence was somewhere in the office and together they could find it. He wasn’t sure how they’d convince Marty that his brother-in-law was a crook, but he’d worry about that later. First, he had to convince Sarah to help.   

All morning, bits of dialog ran through his head. Nothing in his imagined conversations convinced her of Erica’s innocence, so he lay awake searching for something stronger.

At
7:56
a.m
.
he found Sarah’s bag on her office chair, her laptop running, but no Sarah. She wasn’t in the cafeteria, the computer room or Gregg’s office. On a whim he jaunted up to twenty-three and found her in the boardroom with an interesting cast of characters: Brad, Herman, Cathy and Marty. Cathy’s presence meant this was serious trouble for someone. Herman and Sarah together meant the trouble was related to an IA project. Brad’s sorry carcass meant the person in trouble was from IT and by the expression on his face, it wasn’t him. Stan thought about barging in, but had nothing to offer but his conviction. He swung by
Eric
a’s office instead, came up empty and parked on Sarah’s desk by
8:25
a.m
.

Fifteen minutes later Sarah rushed around the corner with a wide grin. When she saw him perched on her desk she stopped dead, her pride wiped away by an expression of shock. She cautiously circled to her seat as if she were intruding in her own office.

“What got you out of bed so early
?
” she asked.

“Early meeting
?
” Stan countered.

“Yeah. You
?
”

“Interesting group up there. You should have invited me.”

She smirked as if Stan was useless in that context. He shook off the insult knowing this was the man he’d shown her, the old Stan. The guy who’d washed out and given up. That was going to change. He wouldn’t fail
Eric
a.

“If you were talking about
Eric
a Fletcher, you’re dead wrong.”

“I can’t discuss it.”

“You’re going to be embarrassed when the truth comes out. Not a great first impression on the almighty Marty Finch.”

“If anyone’s going to be embarrassed, it’s you. Marty said so himself.”

“I’m trying to help,” Stan pleaded, hating the sissy voice he used.

“I like you, Stan. No one’s trying to make you look bad.”

He wished that was true. “I’m sure you stuck up for me in there.”

Sarah looked like she was going to be sick. Of course she hadn’t. She couldn’t say so, but he didn’t blame her.

“Don’t let your feelings color your judgment,” Stan said.

“Don’t even go there.”

She was insulted and angry at the insinuation. She wanted to explode, but something inside her wouldn’t allow it, probably the same compulsion that had her lining up desk accessories.

“Brad’s setting her up.”

“The facts point to
Eric
a.”

“Brad’s facts. Look at the access logs if you’re interested in facts. The system says she was in the computer room a dozen times when she wasn’t.”

“What were you doing in the security room
?
”

“Saving your butt.”

She laughed in his face, looking at him like a clown. “It’s your butt that needs saving. She’s been stealing under your nose and you’re still sniffing around her like a puppy dog.”

He hadn’t taken this job seriously before Sarah arrived, but he knew she was wrong about
Eric
a and it was going to blow up in her face. She was going to help Brad push this all the way to trial. By the time she figured out
Eric
a was innocent, correcting her mistake would be messy and public. Firing a senior vice president for embezzlement would be front page news. The trust of every BFS customer would be shattered, the firm devastated. Hundreds of jobs would be lost, jobs Stan could have saved if he’d lived up to his responsibilities.

He tried to keep a steady fatherly voice. “Don’t rush into this.”

“I can’t discuss this with you. Marty’s keeping a tight lid on it.”

“He trusts me. You know that.”

“No, I don’t.”

“She’s being framed. If you weren’t so star-struck, common sense would tell you I’m right.”

“You think you can read people in five minutes. You should try working a little longer than that.”

“It takes a certain kind of person to steal. She ain’t it.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I went with her to the security room last night.”

Sarah stood up in a panic. She glared like she was ready to whip out the cuffs and haul him away. “What were you thinking?”

“The access list’s been doctored.”

“You don’t know what you’re getting in to.”

“I was there. Someone’s screwing her over. It’s got to be Brad.”

Sarah got up and closed the door. She sat beside him like a parent about to have
the talk
with a teenage child.

“Accuse Brad and you have a big problem,” she threatened.

He told her about the blank security tapes, the way the dates were misaligned and what that meant. They both knew it was Brad’s job to handle them. Sarah listened without emotion. He couldn’t tell whether she was ready to join him and help vindicate
Eric
a or rush upstairs and use this information against her.

Stan wrapped up his case. “We need your help to prove it’s Brad.”

All he got was a cold glare.

“Brad Foster is a senior vice president not to mention that he’s the CEO’s brother-in-law. I’m not running off into your fantasy world. Don’t ask me to.”

“You’re living the fantasy, buying his imperial crap. Just because he’s got a big job and a big title is no reason to trust him.”

“It’s over Stan. She’s suspended. She can’t even get back in the building to pick up her stuff.”

Stan stared back dumbstruck.

“We’re going to prosecute,” she said.

Stan got to his feet and made for the door.

“Not a word to her
Stanley
,” she called after him, “or it’s your ass.”

Sarah kept herself far enough from
Eric
a’s office furniture so she couldn’t accidentally leave fingerprints. She wished they’d brought Stan for his knowledge of police procedure. The thought made her chuckle after his rant that morning, but she wasn’t trained as a detective and she couldn’t imagine Herman was either.

She stood awkwardly self-conscious in the center of the room, more unsure about this case than ever. Herman opened the door for Brad and a guy that looked about eighteen. The kid couldn’t have looked less eager if he’d been asked to flush the fish from the company aquarium. Brad stood behind him, arms crossed, prodding him on. Hacking into
Eric
a’s laptop and opening it up for Sarah to peruse sickened the poor kid. He came from the help desk and like every other guy on this floor he dreamed about
Eric
a. She’d probably helped him dozens of times when no one else would. According to Stan that was her way.

The young man sporadically clicked keys. Brad became disinterested after the first few unsuccessful attempts and picked up some papers from the credenza and browsed until Herman barked at him. This job belonged to internal audit. Chastened, Brad dropped the papers, averted his eyes and slinked out the door.

A knock sounded minutes later and a kid from the mail room swayed in, his body moving to a rhythm in his head. His ridiculously baggy jeans showed red boxers all the way around his hips. He dropped a bundle of folded moving boxes inside the door and fixed his eyes on Herman. When Herman nodded the kid replied with a clenched fist in the air as if knocking on an imaginary door. He hiked up his pants and left. Faces peered past him until the door swung closed. Word was spreading and there would be questions to answer when Sarah left the room.

Sarah popped open a box to get started, but Herman sternly angled his nose toward the kid behind the computer. The clutter would take days of sorting and she was eager to dive in, but she’d have to wait until the kid was gone. He was the only entertainment available, so she moved next to Herman and watched the commands as he typed. The letters didn’t spell any words Sarah recognized and they appeared on the black screen then disappeared faster than she could follow. He paused occasionally to strategize and still the commands made no sense. After the fourth or fifth such pause, he stood up and handed Sarah a sticky note with
Eric
a’s new password, one
Eric
a would never know. He’d found nothing and it was no secret he hoped Sarah and Herman wouldn’t find anything either.

Sarah patted his shoulder and thanked him.

He dropped his eyes to the floor and shuffled out.

When the door closed, Sarah took up her box and started carefully sifting through the piles on the desktop. The white pages held nothing but computer gibberish; lots of semicolons, parentheses, and oddly long words with too many consonants. Some of the handwritten notes in the margins made sense, but she could never turn this into any sort of a case. When she finished her first folder and placed it in the box, Herman cleared his throat. She looked up to find him watching with a smirk.

“If you were stealing big money. I mean big money, would you leave the evidence on top of your desk
?
”

Sarah’s face reddened and Herman paused to revel in his superiority.

“That’ll take days to sift through. Just stuff it in a box.” As he said this, he leafed through books one at a time, holding them upside down and shaking them. Whether he expected something to drop from the pages or he was just being excruciatingly thorough was unclear. When he finished a shelf, he piled the books vertically and moved on.

Sarah didn’t bother looking inside the folders now. To match Herman’s precision would take weeks and to find what they were looking for required expertise she didn’t have. Instead, she lumped the files and papers from the desk into three heavy boxes and stacked them by the door. Finally, she could see the desktop. She pushed the pictures and accessories to the corner, shut down both laptops and stacked them off to the side. Now that she had a clean workspace, she opened the next box on top and was free from bending to the floor for every item she packed away.

The first drawer she opened was stocked with anything you’d need for an overnight at the office. Sarah packed a box with deodorant, aspirin, nail polish, shampoo and dozens of other essentials.
Eric
a had surprisingly little memorabilia for someone who’d been with the firm so long, like a soldier on deployment. Sarah stacked a few framed photos on top of the toiletries box and moved on to more files. Armloads and armloads went into new boxes.

Behind her Herman ruffled through file cabinets as methodically as he’d gone through the bookshelves. He smiled when he noticed her watching. “Not what you pictured
?
” he asked.