CRIME WRITING MONTH

Apparently, May is National Crime Writing Month.  The following story is one of my contributions to that genre of fiction.

BACK-UP

            Brandy took her time ending her day’s work in the office so she could be the last to leave.  She didn’t want anyone to know what she was going to do, especially if she was making a big mistake.

Through the window, she saw the construction crews arrive and knew they were parking their company trucks in the back yard.  The men walked through the back shop and came to the front office.  Twenty three men all said good night to her as they handed in their time sheets and left.  Their day ended half an hour before the office closed.

Jim, the owner, was already gone.  She just had to wait for Marianne to leave.  Marianne was reception.  Brandy was accounting.  They were the only two in the office who worked nine to five.  Everyone else worked seven till three, so they could communicate more easily with contractors and suppliers back east in different time zones.

            Brandy shuffled some invoices on her desk and scrolled through reports on her computer to make it seem like she was still working in her own office.  She could hear Marianne rinse out the coffee pot and put away the coffee mugs, and then shut down her own computer and printer, getting ready to leave.

Finally alone in the office, Brandy took out a brand new USB flash drive and inserted it into her computer.  Earlier she had made her usual daily back-up of company accounting records and put it in her office drawer.  It was her insurance in case the computer died.  Now though, she made her own extra back-up of all the accounting data that was on the hard drive.  In addition, she went into the email account and copied all the emails sent and received in the past six months, and then copied all the bids made for jobs.  She would take it all with her when she left.  As the extra back-up completed and she removed the flash drive, she heard footsteps out in the shop.  They were the sound of hard work boots on cement.  And it sounded like more than one pair.  She quickly put the flash drive in her pocket, just as someone opened the door into the main office.

            Mark Sutton stopped suddenly when he saw Brandy.  The younger Ryan Phelps did too.  They were both project supervisors for Dynamic Construction.  Mark jangled a large ring of keys in his hand.  “How come you’re still here?” he demanded, as if she had no right to be in the office.  The construction industry was still a man’s world.  Women were not wanted, accepted or respected.  They were usually treated like servants.

            She looked straight at him and noticed his eyes shift away.  “I was just finishing up some paperwork and waiting for everyone to leave so I could lock up and set the alarm,” she told him, turning off her computer and standing up.  The two men were clad in jeans and sports jackets, with safety vests over top, and wearing hard hats as well.  “You two just back from the job site?  Did the latest order of materials arrive?  Is it secured?” she asked.  “I didn’t think you’d be coming back to the office, especially on a long weekend.”

            Ryan shuffled his feet and moved back a step, refusing to look at her.  Mark raised his head and looked at her defiantly.  “No, the material didn’t show up.  Maybe first thing Tuesday.  We have some paperwork of our own to take care of,” he said, turning around and heading for his own office with Ryan close behind him.  “If all the time sheets are in, you can leave, Brandy.  I’ll do the locking up.”  He ordered her around as if payroll was her only duty and she was an underling!

            Her irritation with the man simmered just under the surface.  She took a deep breath to keep her voice neutral, “Fine.  Do you want to set the alarm on the warehouse, too, or would you like me to do that before I leave?  With the high tariffs on steel and aluminum from out of country suppliers these days, we don’t want any of our materials to go missing now, do we?” she countered.

            “I’ll lock the warehouse.  No problem.  You can leave to start your weekend,” Mark barked, as he entered his own office with Ryan on his heels.  He shut the door before Brandy could reply.

            She picked up her purse and slung it over her left shoulder, as she surveyed her office to make sure all was in order before she turned out the light and headed for the door, with her left hand fingering the flash drive in her pocket.

            Sitting in her car with the motor running and the air conditioner on full tilt to cool things down, Brandy pulled out her cell phone and called her boss.  He didn’t answer, so she left a message.  “Jim, this is Brandy, five-thirty p.m. Friday.  Mark says the materials never made it to the job site today.  Thought you should know.”

            Brandy sensed there was something nefarious going on, but she didn’t know what, exactly.  She was going to spend the weekend doing an audit of accounting, and checking emails to see if she could figure it out.  The company was going into a lot of serious debt, and even though bidding on jobs had escalated to take care of increased tariffs on materials, they were still going under financially.  She had worked for Dynamic for ten years and did the accounting, so she had better damn well figure it out or she’d be out of a job, too!  Divorced and living on her own, and supporting a son at university, she couldn’t afford to be out of work for even one week.

            Feeling in need of a cold drink and food for nourishment, she put her car in gear and started to leave for home.  She pulled onto the roadway that led out of the industrial park where the office was located.  Most industrial sites had shut down at three-thirty, so there was hardly any traffic, except for one large semi pulling a trailer.  As she slowly moved further down the road, she watched in the rear view mirror as the semi pulled into Dynamic’s yard and up to the warehouse.  Brandy pulled a U-turn and went into the parking lot of the appliance distribution center across the street.  They would stay open till nine for pick-ups, so there were still some vehicles sitting in their lot.  She parked in between two SUVs that faced the road, and Dynamic Construction across the street.

            Brandy pulled out her cell phone again and turned the camera on, ready to record whatever was going to happen.  None of the accumulated material in the warehouse was slated for delivery anywhere until the latter part of next week, when the general contractor would give them the go-ahead to proceed with their specific work on site, in the carefully co-ordinated timeline of any large construction project.  They were to install steel beams and a steel roof on a massive warehouse for the budding marijuana market that would become legal in a few months’ time.  The material in their own warehouse had been purchased and stored long before the tariffs came into effect.   The newer, more expensive steel, direct from the supplier, was to have been delivered to the job site that day.  No matter where or when it was purchased, it was all precious cargo these days.  The job site had their own security staff watching everything, but Dynamic didn’t have security on their own premises.

            As Mark and Ryan came out of the office’s side door and walked to the warehouse, Brandy started recording.  The massive roll-up door was lifted while the semi backed the trailer up to the loading dock.  She could hear one of their own noisy forklifts being started and kept her phone recording as bundle after bundle of steel panels were loaded onto the trailer.  In horror, she watched as they also loaded the forklift onto the trailer.  When the semi left with its load, she snapped pictures of the tractor and its licence plate.  Then for good measure she took a picture of the driver as he went by her. 

She knew the job site was shut down for the weekend.  With severe labour shortages in the trades these days, there was no way overtime was going to be paid to keep working through a long weekend.  So where was the material going?  Had she just watched it being stolen?  The trucking name on the tractor wasn’t one they had ever worked with before.

She ducked down as Mark and Ryan left in quick succession, each driving a company pick-up.  Leaving the parking lot, she just hoped she could gain some insight from the data she was going to look at when she got home.  Before reaching the main highway, she pulled into the drive-thru at the lone fast food outlet in the industrial park.  She ordered a chicken dinner and a root beer to take home as she didn’t think she would have time to cook that night.

Later at home, she wiped her greasy fingers from eating the chicken as she waited for her own computer to boot up.  When it was ready, she inserted the flash drive and went into inventory to check the amounts of materials ordered against materials received.  She also checked materials ordered and delivered directly to the job site.  There were major discrepancies in both areas.  Then she went into company emails and checked the figures for materials ordered against amounts listed in bids for jobs.  Those figures didn’t match up either.  She also checked the emailed purchase orders sent by job supervisors to suppliers, which gave job numbers and addresses for deliveries.  Then she checked the job numbers with actual job site addresses.

After several hours of back and forth between email and accounting data, she had the gist of what was going on.  Materials had been ordered for their jobs, but not delivered to the job sites.  Then the same materials were re-ordered and sent to the job.  There were no credits from suppliers, so the original orders had not been returned.  The company was paying for double the material needed for the last five jobs they had done since the price of steel had skyrocketed.  The stolen material could be sold cheaper to a competitor who could then under-bid them.  Unfortunately, Jim thought the company didn’t need extra staff to do job-costing, where job expenses were compared to original estimates.  He had just assumed all his employees were honest, since he paid well and gave yearly bonuses.

Brandy went back into the purchase orders and checked the destinations for materials that had not arrived at job sites.  She jotted down the address given and saw it was the same location each time, and the purchase orders had been authorized by Mark.  On a notepad, she wrote down the delivery address used for all the material the company never received.  Checking maps on her computer, she saw it was located in another industrial park on the other side of town.  She printed the map and saved a copy on the flash drive.  Then she transferred the video and pictures she had taken from her phone to her computer and then to the flash drive.  She also did another back-up of everything from the flash drive to her own computer.

Feeling overwhelmed, she sat back and thought about how to handle this.  Should she call the police?  Was that her decision to make?  All the evidence on paper pointed to Mark, but Ryan was also involved, and he was the owner’s son.  Should she just tell Jim and let him handle it?  Or would he want to shoot the messenger if she implicated his son?  Brandy didn’t want to lose her job, but she sure as hell didn’t want to aid and abet either, now that she knew what was happening.  As a boss, Jim had been good to her over the years.  She had a higher than average salary, pension, medical and benefits, and six weeks of vacation every year.  Did she really want to rock the boat and perhaps lose her job?  But she was a bookkeeper.  She always made the accounts balance to the penny.  She couldn’t let this slide and watch the company go under.  It was clear to her that her own honour and integrity as accountant were at stake here.

As she teetered back and forth between honesty and duplicity, her cell phone crowed like a rooster and she jumped.  She didn’t recognize the number.  “Hello, this is Brandy,” she answered.

“Yes, this is dispatch with Trident Trucking.  Call answering at Dynamic Construction gave me your number in case of emergency.  Our driver was supposed to pick up a load of steel roofing at your warehouse tonight but when he got there, the whole place was in flames.  He called 911, but you might want to check it out yourself.”

Brandy was stunned.  She shook her head.  Then she tried calling Jim again.  She only got voice mail.  “Jim, this is Brandy and it’s 9:00 p.m. Friday.  Trident Trucking just called to say they saw and reported fire at our office and warehouse.  I’m on my way over there.”

She grabbed a jacket and a bottle of water, as well as the flash drive and her cell phone as she rushed out the door.  Approaching the industrial park, she could see flames lighting up the darkening August sky.  Her heart raced as she got closer.  Access to the office and warehouse was denied.  Police cars blocked the entrance.  She pulled into the parking lot she had hid in earlier.  Getting out of her car, she heard the wail of an ambulance as it raced down the road and stopped by the police cars.  She heard onlookers talking.  They said someone had perished inside the office.  Brandy felt faint and leaned against her car.  She took deep breaths, trying to understand what had happened.

A fancy SUV she recognized as Jim’s screeched to a halt on the roadway, beside the police cars.  Brandy watched as he jumped out and tried running toward the office.  “Ryan!  Ryan!  Where are you?” he screamed, as two police officers gave chase and stopped him.  “My son’s in there!” he screamed in anguish, collapsing as they held him back.

Brandy moved onto the roadway to get a better look at the crazy scene backlit by flames.  There were three fire trucks.  Firemen were moving around with their hoses, trying to battle the blaze.  But close to the office, she could see a company pick-up, the red one that Ryan drove.  Firemen were trying to keep the flames away from it, so it wouldn’t explode.

She walked over to the two police cars by the entrance.  The policemen were bringing Jim back to the roadway.  As he spotted her he tried standing on his own.  “My God, Brandy.  What’s happened?  Ryan said he had to meet Mark here to go over some contract extras for the job.  That was an hour ago.  If Ryan’s inside, where the hell is Mark?” he bawled, resorting to anger instead of sobbing.  But he still looked at her with haunted eyes.

Brandy glanced from Jim to the officer, who was steadying him.  She couldn’t waver now.  Turning slightly from Jim to the officer, she pulled the flash drive out of her pocket and said, “I think I have some information you want.”

She was suddenly very grateful it had been her habit to make a back-up copy of company records.  At that moment, the extra copy she had made now felt like the most important thing she had ever done in her whole life.

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By Lisa A. Hatton