Part 8:
It is a compromise I make with them so they will let me do the rest of what I do. Your security team? Yes. You have a security team? I have a team, yes. Marcus is the lead. He has been with me for 9 years. He does not like me very much this morning because I did not let him drive me yesterday, which was, in his view, a professional betrayal of the highest order.
He has been making me pay for it all night. He’s the one who knocked on my door. Yes. He knocked three times. He always knocks three times. I don’t know why. It is one of his mysteries. Ryan looked at her. There was something in her voice when she talked about Marcus that was almost warm. It was the first time she had sounded warm since she’d gotten into his truck yesterday morning.
Celeste. Yes. Why are you here? She set her coffee down. She clasped her hands in her lap. She looked at her hands for a second as if she were reading something off the backs of them, and then she looked up at him. I need your help, Ryan. With what? With the thing that got you fired. The theft? Yes. I didn’t do it.
I know you didn’t. How do you know? She looked at him for a long second. Because of yesterday, she said. Because a man who would give away his last $40 on the worst day of his life does not move 11 crates of insulin pumps off a truck at midnight on a Tuesday. I am not sentimental, Ryan. I am making an operational assessment.
The math does not work. The math? Yes. The math of human beings. I have been in this business for a long time. I know what thieves look like. Thieves do not give away $40 to strangers. Thieves do not tell their daughters they want them to do hard things. Thieves have certain tells. You do not have any of them. The man who framed you, Ryan, has all of them.
Carl? I did not say Carl. Carl Voss? I did not say Carl Voss. But it’s Carl Voss. Ryan? I’m going to say something to you, and I need you to listen carefully. Okay. I cannot tell you what I know. Why not? Because if I tell you what I know, and you act on it, and you are wrong, then we both have a problem.
And because if I tell you what I know, and you tell the wrong person, then I have a bigger problem than you do. And I am not willing to make that trade yet because I do not know you well enough yet. Do you understand? Yeah, I do. But But I can give you a question to answer, and I can give you the resources to answer it.
And I can tell you that if you answer it correctly, you will find what I have already found, and you will do it in such a way that you will not just clear your name, but you will end a man’s career and possibly put him in a federal courtroom. Ryan was quiet. Carl. I did not say Carl. What’s the question? She opened a folder that was on the seat next to her.
He hadn’t noticed the folder before. She took out a single sheet of paper and handed it to him. The sheet had a table of numbers on it. Dates, times, shipment IDs, and a column of what looked like weight variances in pounds. Those are the dispatch logs for the Regis Hollister facility over the last 14 months.
Every shipment that left that dock. The weight on the loading manifest, the weight at the first weigh station on I-89, and the variance between them. Ryan looked at it. He started reading it. He couldn’t help himself. He felt his brain doing the thing it did when it saw a pattern before he’d consciously recognized it.
Like the feeling of almost sneezing. These variances are tiny, he said. Most of them are under 30 pounds. That’s within normal packing variance. Yes. But some of them aren’t. No. And the ones that aren’t uh Look at the dates. He looked at the dates. He saw it after about 4 seconds. They’re all Tuesdays. Yes. Tuesday nights. Yes. Between 10:00 p.m. and midnight.
Yes. When Carl Voss closes out the dock. I did not say Carl Voss. Jesus, Celeste. She smiled. Small. Well, now you’re just confirming what I already won’t confirm. He handed the sheet back to her. His hands, he noticed, were shaking slightly. Not a lot, just a little. You want me to prove it? No, I can prove it.
I have already mostly proven it. My compliance team has been building a case on this for 3 months. Then what do you want from me? I want you to help me finish it. Why me? Because the legal case requires testimony from a line employee who can speak to the physical operations of that dock. Because my compliance people are excellent at data and mediocre at physical plant.
Because you worked that dock for 2 years and 7 months and you know which loading bay doors close quietly and which ones don’t. And you know how long it takes a forklift to cross the floor and you know where the blind spots are in the camera coverage. You know things that are not in any report.
And because you were the man who was supposed to take the fall, Ryan. And the cleanest way to end this properly is for the man they tried to destroy to be the man who puts the evidence on the table. Ryan was quiet for a long time. I have a daughter. I know. I can’t do something dangerous. I am not asking you to do something dangerous.
