And then he thought about the woman sitting in front of him right now who was about to get on a conference call with the man who'd written confirmed, move about her dying wife, and conduct her board meeting with the same composure she'd maintained through all of it. Okay, he said. Go she left. Marcus sat in Patricia's office. He couldn't go to the building.
He had had no role there, no authority, and showing up would be exactly the kind of visible action that a defense team would later characterize as a vendetta rather than justice. He had to stay where he was. He had to wait. He was not good at waiting. He'd never been good at it, but he'd had 5 years of practice.
At 1:48, his personal phone buzzed. Evelyn, stepping off call now, walking to car. Holt had no idea. He stared at that last sentence. Holt had no idea.
Raymond Holt who had typed confirmed move in response to an email about Marcus Carter's dying wife had spent 30 minutes on a routine board call with Evelyn Brooks discussing Q3 projections and upcoming city council presentations with no idea that in 12 minutes at federal agents were going to walk through the lobby of the building he'd helped corrupt for 4 years. At 2:03, Patricia's phone rang. She answered it, listened for 45 seconds, and hung up. She He at Marcus. Gerald Pruitt was taken into federal custody at 2:01 p. m., she said.
Raymond Holt was served a target letter at his home address at the same time. Sandra Weiss, the finance subcommittee chair, is being interviewed as a material witness." Marcus nodded. He sat very still. He thought that he would feel something large in this moment, something commensurate with what the moment was.
What he felt instead was quiet. A very specific, very deep quiet that he recognized as the absence of something that had been making noise in him for 5 years without ever being loud enough to name. "And Evelyn?" he said. "Her attorney, her personal attorney, not the company retainer, has been notified," Patricia said.
"She'll be meeting with Denise Chow's team tomorrow morning to formalize her cooperation agreement." "Her board?" Patricia's expression shifted slightly. "Raymond Holt had already sent a message to three other board members before the agents arrived," she said. "We expected this.
His message characterized Evelyn as, and I'm summarizing the source of the investigation, motivated by personal liability concerns. He tried to turn the board against her." "From a federal holding facility," Marcus said. "He sent it 17 minutes before his target card letter arrived," Patricia said. "He was faster than we expected."
"But Denise's team anticipated this move and has already been in contact with two of two or three board members Holt messaged. They've been advised of their legal obligations under the preservation order. They've also been informed that Holt is currently under federal investigation, which changes the calculus of whose characterization they trust." "And the third board member?" Marcus asked.