I know. I have to call her back." " She said don't talk to anyone until you do." I know that, too. Emma sat down behind her workstation and looked at her phone.
47 missed calls had become 53 in the time it had taken her to walk from the sidewalk to her stool. She found Patricia's number and press call. Patricia answered on the first ring. " I've been fielding media calls since 6:00 this morning," Patricia said. " Four national outlets, two local television stations, and a podcast that covers financial crime, which is actually the most useful of all of them." "
She didn't sound stressed. She sounded like a woman in her element. Here's where we are. The DA's office contacted me yesterday evening. They're moving faster than I expected, which tells me that what Derek gave them was even more useful than he indicated when he called our office. "
How much faster?" Emma said. There's a grand jury presentation being prepared. Timeline is not confirmed, but the language they use was not slow language. A brief pause.
The media attention is actually helping. Not because media pressure should drive legal proceedings. It shouldn't, and I'll say that clearly, but because when this kind of case gets public attention, the DA's office knows that any decision to slow walk it will also be public. It creates accountability in the right direction. And the three principals, their lawyers have been making calls since yesterday afternoon, Patricia said, to each other and to the DA's office.
When all three of the top people at a company suddenly need separate legal representation on the same day, that tells you something. " It tells you they're not planning to tell the same story," Emma said. " Exactly right," Patricia said. Which means at least one of them is going to say something the others don't want said. And when that happens, she let the thought complete itself.
Emma understood. When people who had built something corrupt together started worrying about what the others might say, the structure collapsed from the inside. She'd seen a version of it in smaller things arguments between customers, disputes between neighbors who'd both done something wrong. The architecture of shared guilt only held as long as everyone believed in it equally. " What do you need from me?"
Emma said., I need you to do two things. The first is a written statement in your own words covering your interactions with Angela from the beginning. Not a legal document, something human, something that explains how you came to know what you knew and why you made the choices you made. That statement may be used in the grand jury presentation as supporting context. "
I can do that." " The second thing is harder," Patricia said. " There is one journalist I want you to talk to, not a television personality, a print journalist named Roy Castillo, who covers financial crime for a publication that takes its time and gets things right. He's been looking at Pinnacle from a different angle for about 6 months, and what he's built complements what we have. Talking to him tells the right story before someone else tells the wrong one."
Emma thought about this. Angela, she said, "Any conversation about this has to include Angela, not as context, as the center of it." I agree completely. And I've already spoken with Angela about Roy. She's considering it.
She's scared. Emma said, "She is, but she's also been scared for a year, and she's still here." Patricia's voice carried something quiet in it. You might be the right person to have that conversation with her. After the call, Emma set the phone down and looked at William.
He had put the newspaper down. He was watching her the way he sometimes did not intrusively just present. Attentive in the way of someone who has learned that the most useful thing you can offer a person working through something is the knowledge that they are not alone in the room. Angela needs to decide whether to talk to a journalist. Emma said, "What did you tell her?" "
I haven't talked to her yet. I need to." " What will you say?" Emma looked at the helmet behind the counter, at her father's flash sheets on the shelf, at the chair where Teresa had sat, and the spot on the floor where the portfolio had scattered in the back door that now had a new bolt on it that caught slightly when you turned it because the frame had shifted when Derek's man kicked it through. " I'll tell her the truth," Emma said.
That it's her story that she decides how it gets told and when and by whom. That I'll be there no matter what she decides. William nodded. " And if she says no?" he asked. "
Then she says no, and we find another way. You're not going to push her. I'm not going to push her, Emma confirmed. Angela Reyes spent two years working for people who use pressure as their primary tool. The last thing she needs from me is pressure.
The morning appointments were light. Emma had quietly called the day's clients the evening before and given them the option to reschedule, explaining only that there had been a situation at the shop and she wanted them to be comfortable. Two of the four had rescheduled. Two had said they were coming anyway. The first one, a retired firefighter named Dan, who was adding a final element to a half sleeve that had been in progress for two years, arrived at 10 on the dot and looked at the handwritten sign on the door and then at Emma and said, "I heard what happened.
Are you good?" " I'm good," Emma said. " You need anything?" " I need to finish your sleeve," Emma said. " Sit down, Dan."
He sat down. She worked. Den was not a man who talked much during sessions. He went somewhere else the way people do when the needle settles into a rhythm and the ordinary surface of the day recedes. Emma had always respected that she matched her energy to her customers without thinking about it the way good listeners do.
With Dan, she was quiet and precise. With Teresa, she had been warm and patient. With Kayla, she had been steady and anchor. We're a day working on Dan's sleeve while the phone buzzed intermittently on the counter and the morning moved past the window. And somewhere across the city, Patricia Cho was managing a process that was larger than all of them.