The investigation moved on parallel tracks. While Emily was in Helena, Carl Briggs and two colleagues from the state police white collar crime division were at Mountain Peak Supplies corporate headquarters in Billings. Executing a records request that covered every scholarship vendor transaction at all 19 locations for the past three years. It was not yet a full criminal investigation that required another step in the process, but it was the step immediately before that step and everyone involved understood what it meant. The corporate legal team who had been told by Janet that any resolution conversation would happen without NDAs called back that afternoon with a revised position.
They were prepared to discuss resolution terms. They were prepared to acknowledge that the purchase order fulfillment records showed discrepancies. They were prepared to discuss remediation for affected students. What they were not prepared to discuss and what their representative said very carefully to Janet in language that had clearly been reviewed by multiple attorneys was the question of whether the district manager, a man named Gary Pullman, had any knowledge of or involvement in the falsification of records. Janet called Emily at 4:30.
"They're protecting Pullman," she said. Emily was still in Dr. Reyes's car halfway back to Silver Creek. Why? Because if Pullman knew the liability goes corporate, if Richard acted alone, it stays at the individual level and the company can characterize it as a rogue employee situation. Janet paused.
But here's the thing. The records request is going to pull Pullman's communications. If he knew it'll be in an email or a memo or a phone call that someone took notes on, corporate can protect him in their talking points. They can't protect him from his own paper trail. Emily thought about the phone call.
The day in the store when Richard had called the district manager to confirm the policy, the manager who had said that verification requirements were at manager's discretion, who had backed up a policy that didn't exist over the phone in a room full of witnesses. He was on the phone with Pullman when my dad was standing there, Emily said. Janet was quiet for exactly one second. I know. And Pullman backed him up.
I know. So Pullman already knows that there were witnesses to him confirming a non-existent policy. He knew that day. Yes. Which means Pullman has been managing this since the day it went public.
Not since we filed, since the day it happened. Janet's voice when she responded had the quality of someone confirming something they've already calculated. That's my read. Emily looked out the window at the Montana Highway flat and long and running out in both directions. He's going to make a deal, she said.
Probably people in his position usually do once the records request is in progress and they understand what's in their communications history. What does that mean for Richard? It means Richard may end up holding more of the weight than Pullman, even if Pullman was directing the behavior. People who deal make deals. People who don't.
Janet stopped. We'll see. Emily thought about that about the layered nature of institutional wrongdoing, the way it distributed across multiple people. Each person able to point to someone above or below them, the weight never settling cleanly in a single place. She thought about Richard in his locked office with the corporate team outside the door.
She felt something about that not satisfaction. Exactly. Something more precise than satisfaction. She felt the particular sensation of a structural system being tested against the weight it was actually carrying instead of the weight its designers had claimed it could hold. It was breaking in the places it was supposed to break.
That evening, Cole came to dinner. He did that sometimes, showed up at 6:30 with food, usually from the diner on Main Street, and they ate at Emily's kitchen table and talked about whatever needed talking about. He had been doing it since she got her own apartment because the apartment was six blocks from his house and food was his primary language of care. He set the containers on the table and they ate. And Emily told him about Ruth Gallagher and the meeting and the record's request and what Janet had said about Pullman.
Cole listened without interrupting. That was another thing about him. His listening was complete. He didn't prepare his response while you were still talking. He heard you finish and then he thought and then he spoke.
Pullman's going to flip, he said. Janet thinks so, too. How do you feel about that? Emily thought about it. I don't care who makes a deal, she said.
I care that the audits happen all 19 locations because if this was a method and not just one man's behavior, then there are other students at other locations who don't know yet that what happened to them was intentional. Cole nodded. He picked up his fork. Ruth Gallagher, he said, what was she like? Sharp.
Tired in the way that people get tired when they've been maintaining something that has a flaw they didn't see. Emily paused. She cared. I could tell she actually cared. She just didn't have the information.
That's the most dangerous failure, Cole said. Not malice, just a system that makes it easy not to know. Emily looked at him. You've been thinking about this. I've been thinking about it since the drive back from the store.
He said about the way Richard looked at you when you walked in. That look, he paused. I've seen that look before. I've had it pointed at me. But I was always in situations where I understood I was going to get that look.
I built my life around being the person who got that look back then. He set his fork down. You walked in there with your paperwork and your scholarship and your engineering program. You walked in there as yourself and he looked at you like you were someone who had wandered into the wrong room. Emily said nothing.
That's what I couldn't sit with. Cole said, "Not the rudeness, the presumption, the absolute certainty that you didn't belong in a world that you had earned the right to be in." His voice was even controlled. But there was something underneath it. I spent 12 years in a world where people made those calculations about who belonged and who didn't.
And I left that world. I thought I was leaving that calculation behind. He picked up his fork again. Turns out it's everywhere. It just wears different clothes.
Emily looked at her father for a moment. Are you okay? She asked. He almost smiled. I'm your dad, he said.
I'm fine. Dad, he looked at her. Are you okay? I was quiet for a moment. The real kind of quiet.