Chapter Nineteen — Wade
The examiner's second meeting request came the following week and Nora drove to the federal office and came back three hours later with the specific quality she carried after a productive professional engagement, contained and satisfied, the kind of satisfaction that came from doing work correctly and having it recognized as such.
She sat down at the table and I put coffee in front of her and she said: He found the third diversion I missed.
I sat down.
She said: There's a fourth shell entity I hadn't mapped. Smaller, older, predating the others by eighteen months. It was the first one Howell used before he had the current structure in place. The examiner found it through a routing pattern I'd identified but hadn't followed far enough.
You told him about the routing pattern, I said.
In the first meeting, she said. He followed it further than I had because he had subpoena access I didn't.
I looked at her. How does it feel to have someone find something you missed.
She thought about that honestly. Good, she said. He used my work to find more. That's what it's supposed to do.
She drank her coffee.
The total is now closer to twenty-two million, she said. The fourth entity accounts for about three million from the early period before the investigation structure gave Howell better access.
He started small and got more efficient as he went, I said.
She looked at me. Yes.
We sat with that for a moment.
She said: Olsen also told me that Mercer's attorney has shifted strategy. They're no longer contesting the underlying fraud. They're arguing Mercer was coerced by Howell, that his cooperation in the redirect was under duress.
Does that hold up.
She considered it. Partially, she said. There's documentation that Howell was connected to Mercer's son's situation before the investigation started.
Whether that rises to the level of coercion under federal statute is a legal question I'm not qualified to answer.
But it explains the relationship between them in a way that makes Mercer slightly less central to the case and Howell significantly more.
Which is probably accurate, I said.
Probably, she said. Mercer was a mechanism. Howell was the architect. That's been true from the beginning.
She looked at the laptop. Then she opened it and started working, and I went back to my book, and the morning moved forward the way mornings at the compound moved forward, with the specific unhurried quality of a place that had its own rhythm and didn't need external validation of it.
Kale called me to his office at two.
He sat with his legal pad and looked at me with the expression he used when he had something to say that was going to cover multiple things simultaneously.
The review is entering its final phase, he said.
Olsen's timeline puts formal findings within three weeks.
Mercer's attorney is cooperating with the examiner in exchange for sentencing consideration.
Howell's attorney is not cooperating, which Darren's contact says indicates Howell believes he has a viable defense strategy.
Does he, I said.
Probably not, Kale said. But viable and correct are different things and the legal process is patient.
He wrote something. Then: How is she.
She's good, I said. Better than she was three weeks ago in specific ways I can name and probably in other ways I can't. The examiner is good and working with him has been useful for her. She's been able to see the case move forward correctly instead of watching it from the outside.
Kale nodded. The room.
She moved in, I said. She gave up the rental.
He wrote something on the legal pad. For how long.
I looked at him. That's not mine to say.
He looked at me steadily. What would you say if it were yours.
I said: I think she's figuring out that she doesn't have anywhere else she needs to be. And that's not something I'm making happen. That's something she's discovering on her own at her own pace.
He wrote something. Then he set the pen down.
She's going to want to leave when the case closes, he said. That's a real thing. She has a career, clients, a professional life that doesn't exist inside this compound.
I know.
You need to know that and still want this, he said.
I know that too.
He looked at me. Then he looked at his legal pad. The compound likes her, he said, which was the closest Kale got to saying something personal about a collective feeling. The table. The kitchen. Rook.
I know.
He picked up the pen. She's good for you specifically, he said. I want to say that directly so you know I see it.
I received that without performing anything around it.
Thank you, I said.
He nodded and went back to his legal pad and I went back to the afternoon.
That evening after dinner Nora and I were on the south step.
She had her coffee and I had mine and the valley was doing the thing it did at this time of evening in this season, going gold and then amber and then the specific darkening blue that happened before the stars came out fully.
We'd been sitting there long enough that the transition had moved through two of those phases while we talked.
She said: Tell me about the associate.
I looked at her.
The one who was hurt, she said. Before you came here. The thing you told Kale.
I'd known she would ask eventually. She was a person who followed things to their source. She didn't leave threads unpulled.
I said: His name is Carl. He's the associate of the club that asked me to do the transport job. The club that set me up for the run without telling me what it actually was.
She waited.
He was at the location when I arrived, I said. I didn't know he'd be there. I didn't do the check I should have done before I went in because I trusted the man who gave me the job. Carl got hurt because I didn't verify. He's not dead. But it was serious.
She was quiet for a moment. Did you go back.
I went to the hospital, I said. He wouldn't see me. His family told me to leave. I left.
She looked at the valley. What happened to the man who gave you the job.
He's still in his club, I said. He's senior there. He told me afterward that he hadn't known Carl would be at the location. I don't know if I believe that.
Do you think about it, she said.
Every day, I said. Less than I used to. But every day.
She looked at me. That's honest.
It's accurate, I said.
She held her coffee in both hands and looked at the ridge.
I said: Is that what you needed to know.
She said: I wanted to know if you'd made peace with it or if you were still carrying it.
What's the difference. For you.
She looked at me. People who've made peace with the worst thing they've done are different from people who are still carrying it, she said. Both are real. Both are okay. I just wanted to know which one you were.
I thought about that. Both, I said. It's both simultaneously. I've made peace with the fact that it happened and that I can't undo it. I'm still carrying the weight of it. Those aren't mutually exclusive.
She nodded slowly.
I said: Is that what you're doing. With Marcus.
She was quiet for a long time.
Yes, she said finally. I think that's exactly what I'm doing.
We sat there as the valley went from amber to blue.
She said: I've been thinking about going to see him.
I looked at her.
Not to confront him, she said. Not to say anything to him particularly. Just to see what it looks like now. Whether the weight of it changes if I look at it directly instead of carrying it in the dark.
I said: Do you want to.
She thought about it. I think I need to.
Okay, I said.
She looked at me. That's it.
That's it, I said. It's yours to do. I'm not going to make it into something.
She looked at the stars coming out above the ridge.
I don't know when, she said.
There's no timeline, I said. Do it when it's right.
She nodded.
We sat on the south step until the valley was fully dark and the stars were the specific impossible density of open sky, and we didn't make anything into more than it was, and that was enough.