Page 102 - Labelle Gramercy, On the Case
P. 102
Overtime
“Is Perry Farragut in?”
I sucked in air between my teeth. The policewoman was climbing
up the chain of command by leaps and bounds. Who was next? The
chairman of the board of TimeWarper? He, at least, was in another
state of the union. I doubted if the CIO even knew he had an
employee named Vincent D. Kates, much less miss him once notified
of his demise. Perry would blame me for letting this upstart cop get
to him without warning or in the presence of corporate legal.
“Not yet. But he will be at the same meeting with P&L.”
“Then we’ll wait,” said Labelle.
Maud Lynn pointed to a reception area outside the executive suite,
a relatively posh sofa and low table with a fancy lamp in the middle
and a panoply of TimeWarper’s products casually spread about. I
surreptitiously checked the time: a quarter to eleven. We sat down,
Labelle facing Ms. Storry’s desk. I supposed we were not quite out of
the secretary’s range of hearing, but I was nervous enough to break
the silence first.
“Lieutenant, I’m not sure my authority extends to giving you
access to management at this level. Perhaps we should talk with the
people I report to first.”
Labelle gave no sign of hearing me. She had opened her tiny
computer on the table and was clicking away at a pace I could not
have matched, even in my old touch-typing class in high school. I let
it pass. Better to spend these moments making up a good story for
whichever VP came through here first. Had anyone even notified
them of Kates’s death? If so, wouldn’t they be here early today? What
if I were the bearer of these evil tidings? Not good for my career
track; not good, at all. My reverie was interrupted by Labelle.
“Okay. I’ve cracked it. Look at this, Mr. Taper. This word-
processing file I copied from Kates’s computer folders occupies way
too much storage for its format and page count. It has no prior
versions stored behind it, which could have accounted for the size.
So it has to be something else. The word count also seems too high,
if you estimate it based on an average number of words per page.
That is the clue. The document appears to be ordinary double-spaced
text, a rather dry description of the Y2K applications he was working
on. Now watch: I will make a very simple change to the display
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