by Margaret Kay
As far as anyone at Carstairs Corporate knew, Devlin was untouched by the authorities. He’d given a sham deposition with a Carstairs attorney present, and then the entire focus of the audit was at the home office in Midland. Devlin was on vacation, officially. Told the home office he was going off the grid for two weeks to deal with the loss of life in the explosion.
“We reviewed his deposition but have not spoken directly with him. From what we understand he is on a leave of absence?” Madison asked.
“Yes, I was told he needed some time to deal with what had happened. He knew many of the men who died. He is not taking it well.”
“One last question, then we’ll let you go, Denise. Why did you take this job as a lateral move?” Garcia asked.
Lambchop watched her closely. Her eyes flickered to her left, which could sometimes be a sign that a person is making up an answer. Then they flashed to the right. She rolled her lips. “If you must know, it was because my ex-husband was a jealous jerk and I was trying to save my marriage. It didn’t work in the end because I realized too late that it was his insecurities, not my job causing the problem.”
“Do you like your current position?” Lambchop asked.
“Yes. I am Dennis’ right hand, am a lot more than just an administrative assistant. We went into the position with the plan that I’d be promoted, and I will be soon.”
“Thank you, Denise,” Madison said. After she’d closed the door on her way out, Madison made a few more notes in her tablet. “Only Napolitano so far has fed us back our false narrative. I was expecting her to as well.”
Lambchop shook his head. “There is still something very off with her. I can’t put my finger on it. Even though Napolitano recited it back to us, he seemed more genuine, somehow. Her delays in answering the questions screamed deceit to me. And given her position, I do not buy for a second she didn’t see those status update emails or hear a lot more about them then she is admitting to.”
“Agreed. By Napolitano’s own admission, she’s in on a lot more than anyone would think. He would have had her involved in the leak mitigation or in the least, mitigating the knowledge of it from fucking up their plans to expand drilling,” Cooper said. “Garcia, you need to pull a rabbit out of your hat, or in this case, deleted emails out of the server.”
Garcia chuckled. “Trying. We’ll see what we can get out of Ruth Arnold this afternoon. I’m going to head back down to her office and check the keystroke tracker to see what she’s been up to on her work computer.”
“Did you figure out the load data you were looking at to determine when the emails may have been deleted from the server?” Lambchop asked, impressed with himself that he actually remembered the correct verbiage.
“Yes, they all disappeared the day the site survey was approved. And it looks like right after each new one came in and it was delivered to the alias, it was then deleted immediately after it was reviewed,” Garcia said.
“Wait, reviewed by whom?” Lambchop asked.
“Someone getting the emails in the alias,” Garcia replied. “I haven’t figured that out yet.”
“That stands to reason that they would want to at least see the report before deleting it.” Cooper came to his feet. “Stay on it.”
Hotel
Lambchop volunteered to go out and get lunch for their group. He passed by the receptionist as he headed towards the door. He stopped and turned back to her. “Hey, Brandie, I’m going out to get lunch. I’m just going to the taco drive through down the street. Can I get you anything?”
Her face lit with a surprised smile. “Wow, that’s very nice of you to offer. Yes, thank you. I was running late this morning and didn’t get the chance to pack my lunch.” She reached into her bottom drawer and pulled out her purse. She handed him a five. “This is enough for two ground beef tacos with everything.”
He returned her smile as he took the bill from her hand. “You’re welcome. Two ground beef tacos with everything it is.”
Then he left the building. He drew in a deep breath of the cool air as he power-walked to the car. It was dreary out, overcast, cool, and the air was heavy with moisture. Even so, he preferred to be outside in it. He would have to make time later to go for a run.
His thoughts were on Denise Paulo as he drove to the taco joint. He couldn’t figure out what would possess her, besides greed, to endanger the lives of the rig workers. She’d been one. Certainly, she would not put other rig workers’ lives in jeopardy.
Then there were the lives of the researchers at the Anchor Point Research Center that were threatened too. He knew he was missing something. Mother’s girlfriend, Annaka, was kidnapped Christmas Eve and forced to enter test results that indicated the leak on rig C-Three was fixed. This was clearly done to influence the board that gave approval for Carstairs’ site survey.
Remington Ipsen, a second researcher, was similarly threatened. Her entire family was held hostage to influence her to alter a report as well. The plan was to kill her family, he was sure. And Annaka’s house was then rigged to explode with her in it. What were they missing that murdering five people was worth?
His phone buzzed, bringing him out of his deep thoughts. He saw the display. “Hi Shereese,” he answered.
“Hi Landon. I didn’t get you at a bad time, did I?”
“No, I wouldn’t have answered if it was a bad time. How are things?”
“That’s why I’m calling. I have a problem with EJ. I could use your help.”
“What kind of problem?”
“He has senioritis a year early. He’s playing varsity basketball this year, you know, and I don’t like a few of these senior guys he’s hanging with. He’s gone out the last few weekends with a few of the guys and he’s blown curfew. He suddenly has this opinion that he doesn’t really have to study too hard either. After all, he just has to do well enough on the ASVAB, doesn’t have to worry about college entry tests or having good enough grades that will get him accepted at any colleges.”
“I can reach out to him. What have you done to answer his blowing curfew and the lack of studying?”
Shereese sighed loudly. “I talked to him the first time he blew curfew, grounded him the second, but he just went out without my permission the next three nights. He knows I can’t do much about it. I have work and the girls take more of my time. I’m only one person.”
Lambchop sighed as well. He’d heard that from her for years. He knew it wasn’t easy, raising three children alone, but she did and had always had his parent’s help with all three children even though the girls were no blood relation. And she had his financial help. “You are his mother, Shereese. Of course, you can do something about it. Take his phone and his electronics away. Withhold money, withhold anything that means anything to him.”
“He needs his laptop and the internet to do homework and I don’t want him out there without a phone, Landon.”
“Then I’ll threaten to take the funding for his private school and all the extracurricular activities away,” he said, even though he knew that was exactly what Shereese wanted, for him to be the bad guy in EJ’s eyes.
“He doesn’t understand how fast he could get into trouble. He doesn’t realize that the Navy won’t want him if he doesn’t take school seriously.”
“I’ll talk to him. But you have to be ready to get tough, Shereese. Put him in mandatory study hall afterschool until his homework is done and cut his internet. It doesn’t sound like he’s using it for homework, anyway.”
“I don’t understand why he is deviating from the plan. He’s always planned to join the Navy after high school, and he knows what he has to do for that to happen.”
“Have you asked him why he’s fucking off?” Lambchop asked.
“We don’t talk. We yell at each other. You’re the cool uncle and probably the only person he’s going to listen to.”
“Okay, Shereese. I’ll talk to him,” Lambchop guaranteed.
“Tonight, Landon, please.”
“He has practice after. I don’t expect him home until six.”
“Okay. I’ll call him at seven, that’ll give you time for dinner.” He pulled into the long line at the drive thru.
“I’m at work until nine, Landon. We don’t have dinner. The kids all grab something for themselves. Call him at six-fifteen.”
“Fine, six-fifteen,” he agreed.
He hung up and said a prayer to not be judgmental. He knew it was not easy for Shereese. She was doing the best she could. She was a hair stylist. A lot of her clients could only come after work for a cut. She had to be available when her customers were. Her children were not babies, but it seemed even as teenagers, they needed her home more than she was.
Then he set an alarm on his phone to remind himself to call EJ. The line of cars pulled forward. He put the car in drive and pulled up to the menu signage, speaker, and microphone. He placed the team’s lunch order. The incredible aroma leaking from the bag as he drove back to the office made him realize how hungry he was.
He parked at the far end of the lot and powerwalked back to the front door. He handed the receptionist her tacos, which he’d had placed in a separate bag. He also handed her five-dollar bill back. “Don’t worry about it. It was only a couple of bucks,” he told her when she protested.
The team ate in the conference room they were set up in. They communicated through text message with each other the parts they didn’t want those listening in on them to know as they discussed the morning meetings with Napolitano and Paulo. It was just plain absurd that anyone thought it was okay to bug the room the federal auditors were in. That in itself was an arrestable offense. All this play nicey-nice while being spied on was insane.
Garcia messaged that the keystroke tracking program he’d installed on Ruth Arnold’s computer had paid off. Ruth Arnold forwarded just about every email she received to a personal email account. That was a clear sign that she was covering her ass and keeping backup copies because she didn’t trust the emails on the network or her position at the company to be secure.
After lunch, they returned to the small conference room. Cooper swept it again for bugs, nothing, and then he left. They preferred that he not be seen by her, if possible, in case he needed to conduct future surveillance on her. Ruth reported at thirteen thirty hours as requested. Lambchop mentally reminded himself that he was to play good cop to Garcia’s bad cop with her.
“Thank you for coming, Ruth,” Lambchop said. “We’ll try to get you back to your office quickly. I know you have a lot of work to do.”
“Thank you,” she replied cynically and on guard.
“Ruth, I’m going to just dive in. We both know that status update emails to rig C-Three’s email alias were deleted. I just want to know who ordered you to do that?” Garcia charged.
The expression on Ruth’s face was what one would expect if ice cold water had been thrown on her. “We know nothing of the sort,” she replied after she’d recovered from the shock of the blatant accusation in his question. “I deleted nothing. No one ordered me to delete anything.”
“Anthony, can we be a little less accusatory? You found evidence it happened. Not that Ruth did it,” Lambchop said, trying to play good cop.
“I found evidence there were deletions from your network on or around December twenty-seventh,” Garcia charged. “That was the date the new site survey was approved in Anchorage. It was also the date that a major discrepancy in the load records showed up.”
“I was out for Christmas break from the twenty-fourth through January second. If it was done, it wasn’t done by me.”
Madison typed a note to check her employee badge records to see if she was in the office at all during that time. Garcia made a note in his tablet to check her digital footprint for those dates. She wouldn’t necessarily need to be in the office to make it happen. She could remote into the server from anywhere.
“Who on your staff who worked over the holiday would have the ability to wipe the servers, Ruth?” Lambchop asked.
“Just about any of the level four technicians, and before you ask, there are three of them.”
Garcia typed that into his tablet as well, though he was sure it had been her. He didn’t think the others had the access or skill to pull it off. “I have their names from the personnel files.”
“Ruth, can you please provide us with the schedule of who worked over the holiday timeframe, their days and times?” Lambchop asked. “I’m sure you want to know who compromised your network as much as we do.”
Ruth Arnold merely nodded. She avoided his gaze.
“I’m curious, you haven’t asked me how I found it, or disputed it is a fact,” Garcia said.
“You’re the auditor. If you say it was done, I have to believe you until I can get back into the system and verify it for myself.”
“The fact is it is your network. You should have known,” Garcia charged.
“Anthony, don’t make her feel worse than she already does. If she wasn’t looking for it, it wouldn’t have jumped out at her,” Lambchop said. “Ruth, do you ever look over object counts?” She stared blankly at him, and he thought maybe he’d used the wrong terminology. Was his lack of knowledge going to ruin this?
“No, I have no reason to look at the number of emails streaming through the system.” Her eyes bounced between Lambchop and Garcia.
Lambchop saw that familiar ‘oh shit’ expression settle on her face. She knew they’d been deleted alright. And she knew they had gone to a lot of trouble to find the date the server had been wiped. If it hadn’t been done by her, she was most certainly aware of it.
“The last item we need to talk with you about is the alias for the status update emails from rig C-Three. We saw that each rig has its own distribution list for their alias. I need a list of all people who were in the alias getting copies of the emails,” Garcia said.
“Troy Davis, the Alaska Operation Manager with oversite over platform C-Three, his assistant manager, Shane Robertson, Charles Devlin, Vice President of Alaska Operations, and Dennis Napolitano, here at Corporate.”
That was true. She hadn’t lied. “Does Denise Paulo have access to everything in Napolitano’s inbox?” Madison asked.
“Yes, she has inbox rights as his assistant.”
“Anyone else?” Garcia asked.
“Not on the alias. I can’t tell you if anyone forwarded the emails to anyone else or not.”
Lambchop was irritated. She was clearly lying. But why?
“Okay, that’s it for now,” Garcia said. “We’ll expect that scheduling information by the end of the day.”
Without a word, Ruth Arnold left the conference room.
“She’s lying,” Garcia said. “Or she’s incompetent.”
“She’s not incompetent,” Madison said.
“Your thoughts?” Garcia asked Lambchop.
“She knew, and she was surprised we found it by looking through the load and item counts.” He paused and shook his head. “But why? Why would she do it? And if it was her boss, Napolitano, who told her to, why not just cop to it?”
“She’s doing everything she can to cover her ass. I’d assume she’d have proof that she did it on orders from above. It makes no sense,” Garcia said.
“Unless she was in on all of it,” Madison said.
“The new oil field would be worth a lot of money if they found untapped reserves,” Lambchop said. “It could be it wasn’t a big deal, but they are just in cover mode because of the loss of life.”
“Well, we’ll know what she does next. That could be very telling,” Garcia said.
The team left the building and went straight to the proctology office to touch bases with the others. Wally Dalton spent his day at his ex-wife’s place. He was definitely lying low. Mother was still surveilling him. Jackson was already following Denise Paulo. She’d left work and was r
unning errands, had already stopped at the cleaners and the grocery store. Sloan had the office staked out. So far, neither Napolitano nor Ruth Arnold had left. Sherman arrived with dinner in takeout bags, and the team discussed where they were in the investigation while those in the office ate. The others were on comms, participating from their locations.
“So, you have proof that the status update emails were deleted, isn’t that good enough?” Sherman asked.
“Not without knowing who deleted them,” Garcia said.
“We know Ruth Arnold did from her behavior, but we don’t have proof,” Lambchop said.
“What’s our next step?” Sloan asked.
“We need something concrete to confront someone with,” Cooper said. “Something so damning that they fold.”