Chapter 21: The Confession
The Foundation office was almost dark when the buzzer sounded, and Nora looked up from the scholarship files she had been stacking for the morning.
"It is after six," Angela said from the doorway of the inner office. "We are closed, whoever that is."
"It is Derek Lawson," Nora said, after a glance at the small security screen. "Still in his bank suit. Let him in, please."
Angela raised an eyebrow but pressed the release. Derek stepped inside with his tie loosened and his jacket damp at the shoulders, and he stopped just inside the door as if he had not decided whether he was allowed any farther.
"Ms. Wexford," he said. "I did not call. I know I did not call."
"You are here," Nora said. "Sit down, Derek."
"I should stand for this part," he said, then gave a short, miserable laugh and sat anyway when she gestured again. "Mr. Pierce sent me to the records room last week. He told me to retrieve the old lease file and refile it, that was the word he used, refile, like it was routine."
"What did you find?" Nora asked.
"Two renewal signature pages," Derek said. "Same document, or it was supposed to be the same document. One page had your father's signature, smooth, from the older file. The other page had a signature that looked nearly identical, only it was not. It sat heavier on the paper. Like it had been copied there."
Nora folded her hands on the desk. "Go on."
"I told myself I photographed nothing," he said. "I have been telling myself that for days. I said it out loud once, in my kitchen, so I would believe it."
"And?" Angela asked, brisk and quiet.
"I lied," Derek said. "To myself, mostly. I did photograph them. Both pages. In the records room, with my phone, before I could talk myself out of it. Then I put the phone away and acted like a man who had seen nothing."
He took out his phone, unlocked it with a thumb that would not quite stay steady, and set it on the desk between them, screen up. The photos were there, clear and time stamped, two pages side by side in the gallery.
"You kept them," Nora said.
"I kept deleting the folder and restoring it," he said. "That is the truth. I would delete it at night and restore it in the morning because I knew what it meant if I kept it, and I knew what it meant if I did not."
Angela picked up the phone carefully. "We will need these transferred and verified tonight, with your consent in writing."
"You have it," Derek said. "That is not all. Yesterday Mr. Pierce called me in and put a memo in front of me. It was dated for last Monday, the day you brought in the check. It said you were aggressive at Counter Nine. It said you were possibly fraudulent. He wanted my signature on it."
"Did you sign it?" Nora asked.
"No," Derek said. "I have not signed it. It is still in my desk drawer, unsigned. I told him I needed to read it properly. He told me to think about my future at the bank, and about who had given me my chances there."
His voice thinned, and he looked down at his hands.
"I laughed at your check," he said. "I want that in whatever I say tonight too. I laughed before I even looked at it properly. I am not here to ask you to forgive that, Ms. Wexford. I am not asking for anything."
"What are you here to do?" Nora asked.
"To tell the audit panel," Derek said. "If they will hear me. The pages, the memo, the order to slow your deposit down, all of it. Exactly as it happened, even the parts that make me look like exactly what I was."
For a moment the office was quiet except for the building settling and a bus passing in the street below. Nora studied him without softening and without cruelty, the way she had studied every document placed before her that week.
"Then write down everything, tonight, exactly as it happened," she said.
Derek nodded once, hard. "Tonight. Yes."
"Angela will prepare a formal statement with you," Nora said. "You will read every line before you sign it. If anything is wrong, you will say so and she will change it. Do you understand?"
"I understand," Derek said.
Derek took the pen Angela offered, then set it down and flexed his fingers, as if his hand needed to learn honesty.
"Good," Angela said, already opening her laptop. "We start with Monday, Mr. Lawson. Names, times, exact words where you remember them. No polish. Just the record."