by Dale Mayer
“It’ll become public?” she asked in horror. “They hire an awful lot of people. I’d hate to think they could all lose their jobs over this.”
“Well, what we don’t know at the moment,” Johan said, “is how many people are involved.”
She turned up her nose at that. “Over 240 staff work there,” she said, “so I can’t imagine that very many have anything to do with the issue we’re dealing with.”
“No, but we’ll probably find one in every department,” he said. “How else do you hide office theft otherwise?”
She thought about it and shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe someone just in accounting and somebody who had physical access to nick the drugs.”
“What about the purchaser who brings it in?” Johan threw it out there for her to think about. “What if the research lab is bringing in way more than they need and charging Westgroup for it, and then only so much is showing up on the shelves?”
“That’s possible, but then I wouldn’t have seen it noted as inventory, and, in that case, it wouldn’t have gone missing,” she said slowly. “So, that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense or—” and she stopped.
Both men looked at her and nodded in approval. “Or?” Johan prodded.
“Or,” she said, “more than one person is involved.”
“Not only more than one person is involved,” he said, “but more than one person is trying to steal the drugs, from the things we’ve found so far.”
She stared at him. “How high is the rate of employee theft in something like this globally?” she asked curiously.
“Globally?” Galen turned to look at Johan. “Not sure about globally but I’d say it’s pretty damn high. Probably ten percent.”
“Ten percent of companies have internal theft problems?”
“Not all companies suffer from employee theft,” Johan added. “I’m sure all the drug companies have a much higher incidence of that crime, due to the money to be made on the black market. And the percentage of internal theft is much higher too when you’re talking about medications, drugs, or any addictive substances like this. Now, if you’re just talking about office supplies, many people don’t even consider that theft. Tons of people take stuff home. Pads of paper, printer paper, notebooks, diaries, planners, and lots of other office supplies—like, you know, just pens stuck in their pockets or purses absentmindedly—and not necessarily with the intent to steal but to work at home, even though they haven’t signed it out or whatever.”
“Yes, I’ve seen a lot of that too,” she murmured. “Even things like, you know, packages of coffee disappear far too quickly.”
“With that kind of office supply stuff, the incidence of employee theft is extremely high, yet the cost to replace those items is nothing compared to replacing drugs. But picking up a whole case of ketamine? That is something entirely different.”
“Right,” she said, “and it makes absolutely no sense to me.”
“What do you know about a woman named Chelsea?” Johan asked.
“Don’t even know the name,” she said promptly.
“Interesting,” he said.
She studied Johan for a long moment. “Obviously it’s important, but I don’t know who she is or why you’re bringing her up.”
“She had your job before you did.”
“I don’t remember them saying I was replacing somebody. I thought they said they had split the job duties and now needed a new person.” She found herself trying to think back to exactly what happened. Then she shrugged. “I don’t remember what they said,” she confessed. “Is it important?”
“Not necessarily,” he said. “We do know that she used to work at the company, and she held your position.”
“So, whatever I was told was a lie?”
“Or potentially a job reshuffling did happen, and the title was changed,” Galen suggested.
“That’s possible too. So, what about this Chelsea?” She looked from one man to the other, waiting to hear more.
Galen nodded to Johan, who spoke up. “Well, that’s one of the things we wanted to know, if you’d heard anything about her from anybody.”
“Honestly, no. Nobody has mentioned her at all,” she said. “Now you’re worrying me as to why not.”
“Well, she’s dead for one thing.”
As bombshells went, that was a big one. Any reaction by Joy was cut off just then, as the waitress arrived with large plates of food. She put burgers and fries down in front of the guys and a big salad in front of her. Joy looked at it, then looked at theirs. “Dang, yours looks better than mine.”
Johan immediately offered her some of his.
“No. The salad’s better for me.” But she reached across to snag a fry off his plate. “I will take this though.”
He smiled and said, “Plenty more if you want them.”
She nodded and dug into her salad, while she tried to figure out who this Chelsea person was. “I work with two women. We’ve done some talking, not much,” she said. “They don’t seem to like each other, and they both really don’t like me. But so far neither has mentioned a Chelsea.”
“And, if you were to bring her up now,” Johan said, “it would be suspicious.”
“Very,” she said. “I’m not sure how I can find anything out.”
“Well, we’ve been into her employee file, and we’ve certainly checked what she was doing within the computer system, but there doesn’t appear to be anything suspicious, outside of the fact that she’s dead.”
“How did she die?”
“A hit-and-run,” Johan said.
Joy sank back in her chair. “Murdered, you think?” she asked, looking around to see if anybody heard her.
“Well, vehicular, as in manslaughter, is probably the charge that would be brought if the cops ever found out who did it,” Galen said. “But, according to the police, they don’t have a lead.”
She stared at her salad, suddenly not hungry. “Is there any reason to think it was deliberate?”
Both men shook their heads. Johan added, “Not at the moment.”
She let out her pent-up breath. “Well, that’s something at least,” she murmured.
“It is,” Johan said, “but we’re a little worried and want to make sure you stay safe.”
“Is there anything in her history that shows she raised the alarm over any other missing stuff?”
“No. Nothing we’ve found so far,” Johan replied. “Yet files can be deleted, altered, or made into what they weren’t.”
“What about her friends and family? Can you talk to them?”
“She was new to town, and her apartment has already been leased. Her mother didn’t have anything to offer and didn’t want to talk much about her daughter.”
“Can’t you find any of Chelsea’s friends, at work or elsewhere?”
“The cops already have,” Galen said, “and we have a copy of their file on Chelsea, but we don’t have anything to go on yet.”
Knowing she needed the food, even though her stomach was now churning uneasily, she finished her salad and put the plate off to the side, pulling her large mug of coffee toward her. “That’s a little unsettling,” she announced.
“We’re not telling you to upset you,” Johan said. “We’re telling you so you stay aware.”
She gave him a flat stare. “Aware of what? Being run down in the dark? Aware of an intruder? Aware that somebody may want to target me? What are you saying?”
“All of the above,” Galen said.
She just stared at him in shock.
Johan nodded. “What you may have just opened up is one huge can of worms,” he said. “It could be that it’s not just centered within this company, and it could have been operating for a very long time, considering that Westgroup has been in operation for forty-odd years. Just think about how many drugs could have potentially gone missing if there was cooperation within the company?”
“That’s all a little raw to think about,” she said slo
wly.
“It’s more than that,” Galen said. “It’s dangerous as hell. We don’t have any connection from Chelsea’s death to the company, but we don’t want to find a connection too late and take any chances by not giving you a heads-up.”
Her breath let out with a heavy whoosh. “And I live alone, so thanks for that. Now I won’t sleep again,” she snapped, looking from one to the other.
“Better you sleep aware and wake up versus not being aware of the dangers and risk never waking up,” Johan said.
The waitress came and took away Joy’s plate. Joy watched as the woman strode off toward the kitchen, Joy’s mind already on a million other things. It was the mundane reality of the everyday world that often helped Joy to reset her mind. “Sounds like a pattern is here,” she muttered.
The men looked at her. “In what way?”
“It’s hard to say,” she said, “but one of the things that I do like, or seem to find, are processes. Whether it’s a process within the company, and that’s a good process, or it’s a process that, in this case, is not good. I think a process is working inside the company’s processes,” she said. “I know that sounds confusing as hell, but someone somewhere along that line has a pinch point,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest, and she leaned back against the chair. “And I intend to find it.”
*
Johan knew a bit about what she had mentioned with pinch points and internal corporate processes from a previous job or two he had done. But those were dealing with chemical pinch points or mechanical pinch points, where physical problems could occur with employees. She was talking about theoretical pinch points or software pinch points here, like a double set of books or cooking the online books.
Even though the cops had been cooperative in sharing with Johan and Galen what little they had in Chelsea’s investigation file, the police had confirmed what Ice had said earlier. The detective was very clear and told Johan to back off the missing ketamine case and any attempts into delving further into Chelsea’s death. Those were his cases.
Still, like Ice had informed Harrison about the art theft case, Ice also instructed Johan that he and Galen would continue with their investigations into all elements as needed. That easily took care of that.
However, Johan didn’t know if Joy had taken the possible threat against her life seriously or not, given Chelsea’s fate, but everything inside Johan said that, instead of making her wary or more alert, the crime had fascinated her and had made her more determined to get to the bottom of it. And somebody who followed software processes to figure out where the pinch points were must have an interesting turn of mind. The fact that she was even intrigued by it fascinated him. Galen was right; something was very unusual about her. And Johan wanted to know more.
After they dropped her off again at the front entrance to the building, Johan drove around to the far side of the parking lot and parked. He hopped out, and Galen switched over to the driver’s side.
“I’ll be back with a different vehicle in an hour,” Galen said.
“Right. I’ll head back to the books,” Johan said.
He wasn’t really looking at the books, of course, but at the network, the security access for each employee, and the timing throughout the day when files were accessed and things like that.
When he came to the States to temporarily stay at Levi’s compound, Johan hadn’t really expected to be doing cyberwork. But he should have because that was a lot of what Levi did. As Johan walked down the hall toward his assigned space near the back exit, he passed a couple people who completely ignored him. Of course that had been the way of it since he’d arrived. He and Galen were strangers. Nobody knew anything about them, but nobody seemed to care one way or the other. And that was good with Johan. Being a shadow in the hallway gave him all kinds of access.
Just as the men were about to walk out the exit, Johan turned to catch sight of one of them turning to look at him. Johan smiled when the other man hurriedly turned away.
“Nice to meet you too,” he muttered to himself, as he meandered his way through the building, checking out what was behind various doors. Mostly storerooms were down here and several underground truck accesses, per the blueprints he had seen. He needed to make his way down there to the docks at some point and the lower levels as well.
He paused, thought about it, and, when he came to an exit with stairs going down, he decided it was the perfect time. He slipped through and headed all the way down, noting the cameras on various landings. Only in this one, there wasn’t any at the door he had come through. So far, people could come and go easily.
He’d have to check the hallway to see what cameras focused on that door. And he needed to find out how long they held the video feeds. Some places didn’t have the space to store endless security feeds and ditched them after twenty-four hours, which was completely useless in Johan’s mind.
As far as he was concerned, thirty days was a minimum. Particularly given the high-tech level of what this theft could have been. That also bothered him. Missing a physical case of drugs like that was a very low-tech theft, as if somebody made a quick decision, grabbed it, and ran.
He couldn’t put that thought out of his mind either. It’s quite possible that Chelsea, the woman Joy replaced, could have done just that, but why? Johan knew nothing about her really. She had been here for three months before she died. No, that doesn’t track, Johan thought. If she had come here to work with Westgroup, intent on stealing drugs, she’d have done it her first week here and then disappeared, before all her employee data was proved to be fabricated. Unless she had somehow been embraced by the thieves. Nah, doesn’t make sense either to accept a newbie within a long-term crew. More likely she had found an inventory problem, like Joy had, and had mentioned it to the wrong people.
Johan continued to ponder it further as he headed down yet another set of stairs. There had been one landing above, but, when he’d seen the other stairs, he couldn’t resist. He was now two stories below where he had been. It ended here, so he opened the double doors and stepped out.
He checked the darkened hallway, but he found no signs to direct him down here. And this level wasn’t the actual research lab; that was down the block. This may have been where some of the online research was done behind locked doors, he presumed, but not with animals. He sure hadn’t seen any here.
He wandered all the way down on that level, going to every door that he couldn’t access, only to find his key card didn’t let him into very much at all. He’d been told he’d have full access but apparently not down here.
And, of course, every time his card was swiped, it should have shown up on the security feed. So, if somebody was watching what he was doing, they would know exactly where he was. If this were his company, he’d make damn sure that every time somebody’s security card didn’t work in an unauthorized area, somebody armed and in uniform would be checking, in person, to see where the offenders were. Johan could only hope that was the case here. Yet he had already been at this for a good fifteen minutes, and no one was chasing him down. Johan shook his head. Still, he’d also been given clearance at the highest level, and he could go where he wanted without question.
He wandered down a little farther and found several more locked doors that didn’t have security card readers. He checked to see if any cameras were in this area but didn’t find any. That concerned him too. He snorted. “It’s a wonder they aren’t missing a ton more drugs.”
He had his wallet out and his tiny pick in hand a moment later. He’d learned a lot of skills on the job, and making sure he was never stuck without a way to get in and to get out of places was one of them. He had the lock picked and the door open in thirteen seconds flat.
By the time he slipped in and turned on the light, he could see he was in yet another storeroom full of boxes. He just didn’t know what they were full of.
He wandered through, looking at shipping labels, trying to tell what the boxes held. He quickly took ph
otos and sent them to Levi. But, interestingly enough, nothing that he did allowed the photos to send. The icon on his phone just kept spinning. Studying the concrete walls, he noted he was too deep underground and the walls were too thick to allow the signals to go through.
He wandered through the boxes before taking out his pocketknife and cutting one of them open. It appeared to be medical supplies, but nothing he opened revealed any drugs. Just cotton swabs and tongue depressors and medical tape mostly. Why were medical supplies here? Was this just an overflow area for the real lab down the block? Like a place to store stuff they couldn’t take all at once? But why would you do that? That’s a recipe to lose things. Plus, if all this was for the big lab down the street, how the hell did they do inventory if stuff was left here? Johan shook his head. “Not a profitable way to do business.”
The shipping docks weren’t here, so somebody would have to hand truck all this stuff here from the bays and leave it. Then hand truck it all back out to retrieve it to possibly transport it to the lab. Granted the truckers making the deliveries couldn’t know what was inside these boxes any more than Johan could tell, not without opening them up. Yet the random labels Johan had checked were all for this building. Why?
Frowning, he stepped out of this storeroom, with as much intel as he could get from that room in one efficient visit, then went through the next room and did the same thing. Again he found more stuff, but this stash was separated into different groupings. One area appeared to be office stuff. Another had old newspapers, cages, feeders, and that type of thing for animals. Shaking his head, he went through the whole room, spot-checking and taking pictures again, then headed to the third and last locked room on this level. He wondered what the hell was going on here, and what kind of a crazy filing system they had for all the random stuff stuck down here.
He bet that Joy knew nothing about all this and that her records wouldn’t entail any of it as well. What was going on here?
As he stepped through the door into the last room, he froze because it sounded like somebody was inside. Then he noted a flashlight beam. So Johan didn’t turn on the overhead light and immediately dropped to the ground and crept onto the other side behind the doorway. He waited and listened. He was a pro at this. Whoever was in here had to be aware that he’d entered, and now they would be worried about what he was up to.
