Employee of the Year

Chapter 27 - The Pluto Report

That was the end of my stay at the Leadership Retreat. It was only a month ago, a few weeks before Roland was murdered. That company offsite was the last experience that he and I shared. With the benefit of hindsight, the events at the hotel were as good a reason for his killing as any other.

I sat alone for another thirty minutes in the empty room at FBI headquarters, but I had nothing left to contemplate. The police and the Feds had forced me to analyze everything that had happened since I met Roland last summer, but I was no closer to an answer for his murder. I felt numb and exhausted.

Abolhassani finally came back in, flanked by Chang and Weisbein.

“Now that you’ve had time to collect your thoughts,” she said. “I am going to say it again. You’ll probably be called in to testify in front of grand jury about what happened at the Leadership Retreat. So is there anything else you want to tell me about that meeting?”

I was honest with her about everything that happened those two days in Laguna Niguel. I told her about getting tackled on the beach by the security guards. I told her about the break-in to Charlie’s hotel room. I told her about the final meeting with the board.

“So you never saw a copy of the Pluto Report?” Sherry asked again.

“It’s like I said, ChetCastle pulled out a memory stick and claimed he had a copy. But I never saw what he had on the stick. He could have been bluffing. And besides, Marcus told us that whatever Castle had was a fake anyway. It was all some fabrication by a short-seller starting rumors.”

Sherry laughed and pulled a memory stick out of the breast pocket of her suit.

“Temo, I have a copy of the Pluto Report as well. It was sent to me anonymously from someone inside your company.”

“How do you know it’s not a fake?”

“Whoever sent us the document went out of their way to give us specific proof of authenticity. Digital watermarks. Versions of the document software that Passion has licensed. We know the truth. The Pluto Report was not a fake. It was the real deal. We can prove it.”

“So you think maybe Roland sent the report? You think that was why he was killed?”

They said nothing.

“We’ll be in touch, Mr. McCarthy,” Abolhassani said. They escorted me to the front of the building and had a cab send me back down to Torrance.

I went in to work that afternoon. A note on my keyboard told me to go talk with Teresa immediately.

“Where have you been?” she asked.

“The Feds picked me up when I was getting my morning coffee.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I was going to tell you. I wasn’t due to come in until afternoon. They told me to get in the car and they took me directly to the FederalBuilding, just like the last time. They didn’t ask me if I wanted to make any phone calls. They didn’t seem worried about getting my company’s permission. They just told me to answer their questions.”

Teresa seemed satisfied. There was no reason to get into the details. Teresa hadn’t been invited to the Leadership Retreat since she was just a mid-level manager. I’d never told her what happened at the hotel.

“Gina has been on my ass about you all day,” she said. “Go up to the top floor and get her off my back.”

I took the elevator up and met Gina at her desk next to the CEO’s office. The air across the city was clear today, and you could see the Hollywood sign out the window.