Chapter 77: Detention Hearing

Reed’s letter to the GC went out at seven forty on Friday morning. Lucas read the draft at Reed’s desk while Reed stood at the window with his jacket on, drinking coffee that, for the second time that week, did not smell burned.

It was four sentences long. Mr. Vintage declined to resign his contractor engagement. He requested that the internal review proceed to its conclusion on the record, with counsel present at any interview. He would not discuss the review with any director individually. Any further proposals regarding his engagement should be directed to counsel.

"Short," Lucas said.

"Short is what you want when someone’s going to read it out loud in a deposition." Reed turned around. "Anything you’d change?"

Lucas read it again. He thought about the version of himself from two months ago who would have taken the deal. No findings, no record, a quiet exit and a clean reference. It would have sounded like mercy.

"No."

Reed sent it.

[Quest Generated.]

[Objective: Refuse Philip Danner’s proposal in writing through counsel. Sign nothing.]

[Reward: 200 AP.]

[Quest Completed!]

[Current AP Balance: 5350.]

The brackets came and went so fast that Lucas almost laughed. Fifty-three fifty. The system seemed to have decided that some things did not need suspense.

"Miller has the letter too," Reed said. "And a memo from me with what Victoria told you at your door, in her words, as close as you gave them to me. Miller called back at seven fifteen. She’s moved her own timeline. She wants Danner this week, not next."

"Can she do that before the courier records come in?"

"Brandt sent them overnight. Elena’s firm produced them to her own lawyer at six last night, which is the fastest I’ve ever heard of Pell and Garrity producing anything." Reed set his mug down. "There’s something else. Morgan found it in the board materials around midnight."

He handed Lucas a printout. It was an email, eleven days old, from Philip Danner to the Vertex GC. Two lines.

Under the litigation hold, I assume we are preserving the CEO’s security detail logs. As audit chair I’d like to see them when the review of the contractor matter concludes.

Lucas read it twice.

"He wanted the logs," he said.

"He wanted proof of where she slept," Reed said. "Eleven days ago he had six photographs and no dates he could prove. The detail logs would have given him dates. He asked politely and for a reason that sounds like governance."

"Did the GC give them to him?"

"No. He said he’d consider it when the review concluded. Which, if you’d resigned before Friday, would have been today."

Lucas put the paper down on the desk very carefully, the way Reed squared his sleeves.

The detention hearing was set for eleven. Lucas did not go. Reed went with a briefcase and a folder of copies he would not be allowed to hand anyone, and Lucas stayed in Reed’s office with the assistant, who brought him a sandwich at ten thirty without being asked and told him the chair he was sitting in was the one clients used when they were waiting to hear whether they were going to prison.

"Is that supposed to be reassuring?"

"Most of them don’t," she said. "Go to prison. That’s the reassuring part."

The texts started at eleven twelve.

Kaplan has filed a supplemental. Wants release to home detention with a monitor. Offering Richard’s passport and his house as surety.

Miller opposing. Charlotte, dawn wire, burner numbers, the Arlington signing, three texts and a voicemail to a cooperating witness.

Miller just asked to approach. Handed up something under seal. I can see the courier logo from here.

Lucas sat forward.

Judge read it for about two minutes. Asked Kaplan if his client had distributed photographs of a witness to any third party. Kaplan said his client’s correspondence with a fellow Vertex shareholder was a private matter.

Judge said a man whose bail argument is that he poses no danger to witnesses should be careful calling the distribution of a witness’s photographs private.

There was a gap of six minutes. Lucas ate half the sandwich without noticing what was in it.

Detained pending trial. No contact order extended to all Vertex directors and officers. Kaplan says he’ll appeal. Richard looked at the back of the room the whole time. I’m the only one in it he knows.

[Antagonist Status: Richard Sterling.]

[Custody: Detained Pending Trial.]

[Active Channels: Counsel only.]

Lucas let the overlay fade and looked at the window. The sky over the river had gone flat white. He waited to feel relieved and found that he mostly felt like a man who had been carrying a heavy box up a staircase and had just been told there were more stairs.

Reed came back at one fifteen and sat down without taking his jacket off.

"Miller’s office contacted Danner’s personal lawyer at twelve thirty," he said. "Not Vertex counsel. His own. He’s had one since at least Tuesday, which is interesting all by itself. Miller asked for a voluntary interview next week."

"What did he say?"

"His lawyer said he’d get back to her." Reed rubbed his eyes. "Then at one o’clock the GC got an email from Danner stepping down from the audit committee, effective immediately. Personal reasons. He’s still on the board. He didn’t resign. He just stepped away from the one committee that has your file in it."

"So who has my file now?"

"The board chair, temporarily. The GC wants to restart the review with an outside firm. He asked whether you’d sit for an interview with them, counsel present, in the next two weeks." Reed looked at him. "I said yes. I assumed."

"Yes."

"Good. That’s the first piece of this I’ve liked in a while. An outside firm doesn’t have pictures in its house."

At two thirty Victoria texted.

Philip stepped off the audit committee at one. He won’t take my call. The chair won’t tell me why, and the GC looked at me this morning like a man holding his breath.

A second message, a minute later.

I’m not asking you anything. I’m telling you I noticed. I want that on whatever paper this goes on.

He read both messages several times. He thought about the GC sitting in a meeting with her that morning, keeping the same secret Lucas was keeping, and her reading his face the way she read everyone’s.

He showed the messages to Reed, because he had promised himself he would show Reed everything this week.

Reed read them and handed the phone back.

"She’s allowed to notice," he said. "She’s the CEO. A director stepping off a committee without warning is something she should notice. You can tell her you got it."

Lucas typed.

Got it. I’m glad you noticed.

He looked at it, decided it said exactly what he could say and nothing more, and sent it.

[Target: Victoria Sterling.]

[Relationship Status: Intimate Partner (Probationary).]

[Target State: Unsettled. Patient by decision, not by temperament. She is keeping her own list.]

He turned the phone over on his knee.

At three Reed’s assistant put her head in the door and said there was a Camilla Verman on the main line who said Lucas’s phone was going to voicemail. He checked. It was. He had turned it over so hard he had silenced it.

He took the call at the assistant’s desk.

"Reed’s office called me at one," Camilla said. "Detained pending trial. Is that real, or is that a lawyer being optimistic?"

"It’s real. He can appeal. Reed says it’s unlikely to move quickly."

"So I can go home."

"I think so. Reed’s office would have said if they thought otherwise."

There was a long breath on the line. He heard a television behind her, a game show, and a child asking someone a question.

"My sister is going to be so relieved she might cry," Camilla said. "She’s been sleeping with a baseball bat next to the bed. She doesn’t own a baseball bat. She bought one on Tuesday." A pause. "I’m going to go home tonight and sit in my own kitchen and not answer the phone for anyone."

"That sounds right."

"You sound tired."

"It’s been a long week."

"It’s been a long month." Her voice softened, not much. "I’m not asking what was in the annex room. I can hear that something is still going on, and I can hear you’re not going to tell me, and for once I’m not offended by it. That’s new for both of us."

"Reed says I’m getting better at it."

"Reed’s paid to say that. I’m not." She paused. "Be careful this weekend. People do stupid things when they’ve just lost."

"Richard’s in custody."

"I didn’t mean Richard," Camilla said, and hung up before he could ask what she did mean.

He stood by the assistant’s desk with the receiver still in his hand. The assistant took it from him gently and put it back in the cradle.

"That one sounded like she knew you," she said.

"She does."

[Target: Camilla Verman.]

[Relationship Status: Wary Ally.]

[Trust Trend: Rising. The target has begun to accept silence from you as a form of care rather than concealment.]

He went back to Reed’s office and sat in the chair for people waiting to hear about prison, and read the four-sentence letter one more time on his phone, and found it still said what he wanted it to.

He took the train home at five. The car was full of people going somewhere for the weekend, bags at their feet, one couple sharing a pair of earbuds. He watched a woman across the aisle work a crossword in pen and get one wrong and keep going anyway.

At his stop he walked up from the station through the early dark. The air had turned cold. He thought about Monday and the outside firm and the interview he would sit for with Reed beside him, answering the same questions about page forty-seven he had already answered twice, to people who had never heard his name. For the first time it sounded almost restful.

He was on his own steps with his keys out when the phone buzzed.

Unknown number. A text.

Mr. Vintage. This is Philip Danner. I’d like ten minutes with you. Not about the case or the review. About Victoria. There are things you should hear before she does, and I’d rather you heard them from me than from a lawyer. Tonight if possible. I’m not far.

Lucas stood very still on the step.

Ten minutes. Richard had asked for ten minutes too. Richard had used the same word, same offer, and a door that was never just a door. Danner had written it like an older man being reasonable, which was worse.

He looked up and down the street. A delivery van was double-parked at the corner with its hazards on. A dark sedan sat at the curb two buildings down, engine off, and he could not see into it.

[Warning: Unsolicited contact from a person of interest in an active matter.]

[Priority Quest Generated.]

[Objective: Do not meet or reply to Philip Danner. Report the contact to counsel immediately and preserve the message.]

[Reward: 400 AP.]

[Failure Penalty: Witness credibility compromised; revised instruction breached by proxy.]

[Current AP Balance: 5350.]

He took a screenshot with his thumb steady. He forwarded it to Reed. Then he unlocked his door and went inside and locked it again, and did not turn on the front light.

Reed called almost immediately.

"Don’t answer him," Reed said.

"I wasn’t going to."

"Are you inside?"

"Yes."

"Is anyone outside?"

Lucas went to the window and moved the edge of the blind with one finger. The van was gone. The sedan was still there.

As he watched, its headlights came on, and it pulled away from the curb and drove slowly past his building without stopping, and at the corner it signaled, politely, and turned toward the river, in the direction of Victoria’s apartment.