drop and tried to ignore the sharp pain of disappointment. She probably didn’t want Slater hearing that she’d been friendly with her ex.
“Will the list be ready yet?” Cruz asked.
“I’m sure it is.”
She led him to her office. It was just as big and impressive as it had been earlier that day but this time, probably because he wasn’t light-headed from just seeing her for the first time in a year, he noticed something else. It was bare, almost stark. Sure, there was the desk, credenza and matching chairs. But where was her collection of miniature glass giraffes? Or the Monet print that she loved? Or the brass bookends that she’d picked up cheap at a flea market but were so damn heavy that she’d had to give the guy an extra twenty bucks to carry them to her car?
“Where are your things?” he asked.
There was a slight hesitation before she answered. “Probably in a box somewhere that I never got around to unpacking,” she said finally.
Maybe. But she wasn’t making eye contact.
There was a manila folder on her chair. She opened it, scanned the contents and handed it to him. It was a list. Behind the single sheet, there was a stack of pictures. Head shots. Smiles. Happy new employees. He counted the pictures. “Only eight?” he asked.
“We have very low turnover,” she said. “Others quit but these were the ones discharged.”
He scanned the photos, separating white males from the rest of the bunch. There were three. Under each photo was a name and what he assumed was some kind of employee number.
He cross-referenced the pictures to the list and started sorting.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Thinking about motive,” he said. “I’m putting them in order of tenure, most to least. With seniority comes paid time off and company contributions to retirement plans. Things a person might not be able to replace right away, even if he did find other work. A guy with ten years of experience is probably more pissed off when he loses his job than the guy with eight months of time into the job.”
“Makes sense.”
There was one who had eight years of experience, one that had three years, and one that had five months. He pointed to the man with eight years of experience. He looked to be in his early forties, with a thin face, dark hair and thick black glasses. “What’s this guy’s story?” he asked.
“Mason Hawkins. Pretty quiet at work, although it was known by most everybody that he wasn’t all that happy with his job responsibilities. He applied for a couple higher-level positions but was never the chosen candidate. His attitude got in his way.”
“What was his job?”
“He was an accounts payable specialist and he made sure our bills were paid. Now, most invoices get paid electronically. Bank transfers from our account to our vendor’s account. He was fired because he processed invoices to vendors that didn’t exist. He’d deposited over thirty thousand into his own checking account over a period of eight months before he had the bad luck to need an emergency appendectomy which required his boss to step in for a few days. Bye-bye appendix. Bye-bye job.”
“Did you get the money back?”
“He was about five thousand short. He’s making monthly payments in lieu of us pressing charges.”
Cruz made a note of the man’s address. “What about Tom Looney?”
Meg studied the picture of the man, maybe early thirties, who had his straight brown hair pulled back in a stubby ponytail. “He worked in maintenance. Had a great record until he suddenly started missing work. Ultimately he missed so much time we had no choice but to let him go. I heard a rumor after he left that he’d lost his house.”
“Everybody’s got a story,” Cruz said, shaking his head.
“It’s what makes management really hard,” she said. “For every story you know, there are six that you don’t. It makes making exceptions really difficult.”
“Good judgment. Isn’t that what managers are supposed to have?”
“Easy to say. Suppose the manager knows that somebody is late for work because they’re working a second job to pay for their kid’s medical bills. He might want to cut that employee some slack. But the minute he does, that’s when he finds out that three other people are working second jobs—each with their own set of sad circumstances. So the manager fires the guy for being late and feels horrible about it or he lets it go and upper management is breathing down his neck