Not Quite Dead Yet, page 22
A list of employees’ names down the left-hand side, starting with those who worked full-time in the office, Scott Mason and Luke Mason at the very top, moving down through names Jet recognized to ones she didn’t: the contractors. Their salary or pay rate. Hours worked. Any overtime. Then a highlighted column for Gross Pay, the total amount at the bottom.
Jet scanned the list of names for Henry Lim. He wasn’t on here. But there was another name missing too, nagging at the back of Jet’s mind, she was sure. No, she wasn’t. She went back over the list of names, those who worked in the office, these desks right in front of her, these people she knew, many since she was a kid. Under her dad and her brother, there was Carl, yes, Maria, yes, Amal, yes. Jet’s eyes skipped ahead. Wait, where was Angie? Angie Rice? She’d worked at the company for over twenty years. Had she retired and Jet missed it? Her name wasn’t here.
Jet used her elbow, rolled away from the desk, pushed herself to her feet.
She grabbed her flashlight and stumbled out of Luke’s corner, crashing into Carl’s desk with the arm she couldn’t feel, searching. Scanning the desks with her eyes and her light.
Not that one.
No, that’s Amal’s.
Didn’t know this person, must be new.
Here.
The flashlight reflected off the dead computer screen, and then off something else. A photo frame propped up on the desk, beside a pot of pens.
Jet put the flashlight in her mouth, between her teeth, and picked up the frame.
It was Angie Rice, grinning at the camera, her arms around her two grandkids.
“Knew it,” Jet whispered to herself, awkward with her teeth gritted around the flashlight. She put the frame back, the light catching something else.
A Post-it note, stuck to the monitor screen: Angie—can you get back to Reid about the new designs on Maple?
Angie Rice did still work here; this was her desk. So why was her name not on the payroll last month?
Jet hurried back to Luke’s desk, back to the screen. She studied the list of names again, going through them all, pressing her finger to each cell of the spreadsheet, checking them off.
“No Angie.”
Back to the files, Jet opened the payroll from September. Scanned again. No Angie, no Henry. August. The same: no Angie or Henry. July, June. Nope. May, April. Nothing. All the way back to March, then February. Back when Jet was still with JJ, when she knew Henry was working for Mason Construction. But the spreadsheet called her a liar, because his name still wasn’t here. And neither was Angie’s.
Something cold danced up her spine, spider-leg fast, setting off the pain in her head.
She grunted, pressed her palm to her eye, to the invisible knife behind it.
Why were their names missing? Was it just an error—Luke forgot to type them into the spreadsheet?
Jet clicked the back arrow on the files, again and again. Came out of Payroll and into a folder named Tax Filings, then Payroll Taxes, then FICA.
She clicked on a file, opening a 941 form for October’s tax return.
She studied it, made her head hurt more. Thought this was supposed to be fun.
It matched. The numbers matched those on the spreadsheet.
And for September, August, July.
So, if it was an error, then Luke had made the same one here. And people like Luke didn’t make errors on something as important as federal taxes.
Jet clicked out of taxes into a folder called Insurance, then Workers’ Compensation Insurance. Clicked the document for the most recent filing, the premiums Mason Construction was paying to the insurer. The records matched; it detailed the same number of employees as listed in the payroll, the number that didn’t include Henry or Angie.
“Did you call me?” Billy’s voice sailed through the dark office, making Jet jump, the arrow careering off the screen.
“No,” she said, watching as he came around the corner, a small pile of papers clutched in his hand.
“Oh.” Billy flexed his lip, lighting Jet up with his phone. “Thought I heard something. You found anything?” He gestured to the screen.
“Maybe,” Jet said. “Did you find anything?”
“Maybe.”
“You go first.” Jet spun in her chair to face him.
“OK, so I was looking through the files at random.” Billy leaned against Luke’s desk. “Really boring, by the way. And then I found a folder for a project labeled 19 Pleasant Street.”
“19 Pleasant Street,” Jet repeated. “That’s Gerry Clay’s house.”
“That’s what I thought.” Billy saluted her with his papers. “Most of it looks fine. They were doing a front extension about twelve months ago, remodeling the front of the house and fitting a new kitchen, right?”
“Right.”
“And then, for the kitchen stuff, I found this invoice here, a client invoice, so this one was for Gerry, from Mason Construction.” He held up one of the sheets of paper.
Jet pretended to scan the page, but her eyes tripped up over themselves, not just doubled, doubled on top of doubled, a tangled mess of black lines. Didn’t help that Billy couldn’t hold it still.
“So here”—he pointed—“they charged Gerry twelve thousand dollars for White Calacatta Marble, for the countertops. Sixty square feet. For materials alone, right?”
“Right.”
“But.” Billy held on to the word, switching to the sheet of paper below. “This here is an order confirmation form, from a place called Imperial Marble. And the order was for sixty square feet, right, but it was for Standard Italian White Marble. And it cost seven thousand dollars.”
Jet swallowed, felt it slide all the way to her gut.
“That’s…different,” she said.
“Five thousand bucks different,” Billy added, holding up the two pages side by side.
“Invoice fraud?” Jet said in a small voice. “Has Luke been committing invoice fraud? Pocketing the difference?”
“This is the only example I found, but I can keep looking.” Billy sniffed, shuffling his papers. “But I think you’ll want to see this first. You know Henry Lim was acting strange, told us he didn’t ever work for the company when you know he did?”
“Yeah,” Jet said, turning to the screen, “about that—”
“—Well, I found a folder that had a lot of paperwork for the project on North Street.”
Jet turned back. “You did?”
“Haven’t been through it all yet, but look.”
He handed her a sheet of paper. Jet laid it on the desk, picked up her flashlight.
“It’s a delivery notice, from a scaffolding rental company, to North Street. Look who signed it off, who accepted the delivery.”
Jet could read this one, big looping writing in the box that said, Sign here.
“Henry Lim,” she said, reading out his signature. “I knew it. And he was on the North Street project too. When was this from?”
Billy prodded his finger against the top of the page. “Third of March, this year,” he said.
But Henry hadn’t been on the March payroll. What the fuck was going on here?
“March,” Jet said. “That must have been right before his accide…” she trailed off, abandoning the word, her mind busy with other words, what ifs and maybes.
“Jet—”
“—Shh, thinking.”
She looked back at the screen, the pieces slotting into place, not a puzzle but a house, four walls but no roof, and somehow there was space for it inside her busted-open head.
“Oh my god, Luke,” she whispered.
“What?” Billy dropped to his knees again, eye to eye.
“It’s not just invoice fraud,” Jet said, voice coming back to her, bringing her heart up to her throat with it. “It’s tax fraud too. Luke is the one who does the payroll, the taxes. There are employees and contractors who are missing from the payroll, and the tax filings. There’s Henry but there’s also Angie Rice, and I know she works here because her desk is right over fucking there.” She pointed. “That’s only two of them, but there must be more we don’t know about. Luke must be paying them, but not on the books. Under the table. Maybe cash. Maybe from his own money, I don’t know. Then he doesn’t have to file payroll taxes for them—he saves that money for the company. Federal taxes, Medicare, Social Security, he wouldn’t have to pay any of it if their wages aren’t reported. He’s been doing this for months, maybe even years, since he took over all the finance stuff.” She swallowed, pointing to the screen. “Insurance fraud too. Because he’s misreporting the number of employees to their workers’ comp insurance provider. And if one of those unreported employees doesn’t have workers’ comp, it means that if something happened at work, if they got injured, they wouldn’t have access to healthcare or salary compensation.”
“Wait,” Billy said, catching on, building a picture of his own.
“Remember that prick Jimmy, the foreman?” Jet said. “He mentioned there was an accident on North Street. That a roof collapsed, injuring the worker who was still inside. And the project was delayed and Luke had to change his plans.”
“Do you think that worker was—”
“—I think that was Henry.” Jet nodded. “I don’t think he got drunk and fell off a wall in March, blinding himself in one eye and shattering his kneecap. I think it happened while he was at work, for Mason Construction, working on Andrew Smith’s old house when a roof collapsed on him.”
“Fuck,” Billy said, his mouth staying open, long after the word.
“And Henry would have been fucked,” Jet said. “He would have had to pay for all of it himself, the hospital stay, the surgeries, the treatments. That could have cost, like, tens of thousands of dollars.”
“Maybe more,” Billy said. “And remember, he said he needed another surgery now, to save his other eye, but he couldn’t afford it.”
Jet nodded, adding that to the picture as well. “Luke would be fucked too, the one actually committing the crime here. If Henry ever told anyone, if anyone found out what Luke…” She swallowed, and by the look in Billy’s eyes, she could tell his mind had gone to the same dark place.
“Does this mean—” he started. “Would this give Henry a motive? If Luke did this to him, if he hated him for it, could he have—”
“—killed me, to hurt Luke, or send him a warning, or blackmail him for the money he desperately needs?” Jet completed their shared thought. “I don’t know.”
“And he worked on the North Street site,” Billy thought aloud. “Maybe he kept track of the work after—maybe he knew about the foundations going in the morning after Halloween. Fuck.”
“Fuck,” Jet agreed, standing up, the chair spinning a full circle without her. “I should email these files to myself. The payroll, tax returns. You go back to the files, see if you can find—”
Jet choked on air as it erupted with sound.
A sharp wailing noise, screeching ear to ear, and between them too, inside, Jet’s skull vibrating with it.
She clapped one hand over one ear, Billy covering both of his.
“What the fuck?” Jet screamed over the two-tone high-pitched whine. “I disabled the security alarm! You saw it, it said disarmed!”
Billy stared across at her, his phone and its silver light pressed against his face, making his watery eyes glow in the dark.
They shifted, something new in them, shock giving way to something worse.
“I don’t think that’s the security alarm!” Billy screamed back. “Jet, do you smell smoke?!”
Twenty-Two
Jet didn’t need to smell it; she could see it now, dancing in the beam of her flashlight. Smoke creeping out of the carpet beneath their feet and up, gathering into a dark cloud against the ceiling, skulking over them.
“The building’s on fire!” Billy screamed. “We need to leave!”
Jet’s feet wouldn’t move, rooted there, the floor growing warm through the soles of her shoes, warmer, into hot. They needed to leave, yes, she knew that, but for some reason she couldn’t make herself move, her brain left behind, back twenty seconds ago when it was still quiet, her heart seized in her chest, so fast, like it wasn’t even beating at all, erased by the blare of that alarm.
The building was on fire? How was the fucking building on fire? Her mind stuck on that part first.
“Jet!” Billy screamed over the alarm, in her face now. He grabbed her working arm, pulled her back into life. “Run!”
She finally moved, brain back in her body, moving with her, fear taking over.
“Wait!” Jet snatched her arm from Billy, doubled back toward Luke’s desk. “We need these!”
She grabbed the pile of papers Billy had found, scrunching them around the flashlight, holding it all in one hand.
“Jet, let’s go!”
“Right behind you!”
She ran to catch up.
“No, you go first, I’ve got you!”
Billy caught her, pushed her ahead, his hand pressed to her back, the smoke thickening the darkness around them.
They moved together, past Angie Rice’s desk.
Darting around another.
Steps faster than the repeating pattern of the alarm, racing it to the door.
Billy crashed into it first, grabbed the handle, hauled it open.
A wall of heat slammed into them, clawing at Jet’s eyes, too hot, too bright.
“Oh my god,” she said—not that she could hear herself, over the alarm or the growl of the flames.
It was all gone. Nothing but fire, licking up the walls, hungry, crackling, an angry laugh as it destroyed everything, screamed for more. Everywhere. Reaching up toward them, claiming half the staircase. The metal steps screeched as they buckled and bent in the heat.
Not a corridor anymore, just a tunnel of flame, building, growing stronger as it bent around toward the warehouse. The deepest reds and the blackest smoke spilling out in a firestorm, faster, hungrier. Not a warehouse anymore, it was hell broken open, raging right beneath the office.
Jet coughed, the thick black smoke reaching them first, claiming them. But it wasn’t just smoke she could smell. There was something sharper, more acrid.
Gas.
Billy grabbed Jet by the shoulders, pulled her back, kicking the door shut.
The smoke found other ways in, through the cracks, through the floor.
“Is there another way down?” Billy screamed, scrabbling at Jet’s neck, pulling her shirt up over her nose. He coughed, then covered his own.
“Another staircase at the back!” Jet yelled through the fabric, holding it with her one hand, flashlight and papers still gripped in her fingers.
“Go!”
Billy pushed her ahead, back through the office. The smoke hovered lower now, eye level, blinding them, stealing everything but each other.
Jet crashed into a desk, a sharp pain above her knee. Kept going.
She couldn’t see, she couldn’t see, the flashlight only found more whirls of smoke, lighting it from within. She wanted to take Billy’s hand, but she couldn’t see it, had no hands to spare.
Couldn’t see, couldn’t see.
She planted her foot and the floor cracked beside it, a fault line of bright glowing orange that she could see.
Could see.
The floor crumbled away, down, an earthquake groan as it ruptured, melting into the inferno below.
Jet stumbled away from the hole, that widening mouth, falling back, crashing down.
She watched as it happened. She could see now, too much, the flames finding their way up here, clambering out of that hole down into hell.
With another groan, one of the desks tipped, lost its legs. It slid into that gaping mouth, lost to the flames below. Angie Rice’s desk, the photo frame tumbling in first.
Jet could see Billy now, on the other side of hell.
“No, don’t!” she screamed, too late.
Billy jumped clean over the chasm, crashing to his knees beside her.
He wrapped his arms under hers, dragged her to her feet.
“This way!”
They ran the other side, away from the flames chasing behind them, eating up the carpet in widening rings. Finding more to consume. The desks. The walls.
Heat like nothing Jet had ever felt before, bearing down against her skin, pushing from behind, a sharp stab of it against her fingers.
Jet glanced down.
She screamed.
The papers clutched in her hand were on fire.
She dropped them.
The flashlight falling too.
A little white glowing triangle, abandoned behind her.
The floor gave way and ate that too.
“Run!” she screamed as she and Billy barreled into the hall beyond, past Dad’s office and the filing room, past the kitchen on the left.
Jet’s dead arm thrashed as she sprinted, a puppet arm without a string, unbalancing her, throwing her off.
“That door, down the end!”
They were almost there, and Jet could hear herself now. The alarm wasn’t blaring anymore; must have burned, melted away with everything else.
They reached the door together, Billy slamming down on the handle.
“No!” he screamed. “It’s stuck!” Tried again, double-handed, rattling the handle up and down. “I’ll get this open. Stand back!”
Jet did, clearing the way, choking on the smoke, covering her nose to breathe her own air instead, watching as Billy backed up from the door.
He kicked off his heels and bounded toward the door in three fast strides.
Rammed his shoulder into it, hard.
It jolted but didn’t open.
Billy drew back, three steps, threw himself at the door again.
It buckled, gave him a few inches, not enough.
