Andre said, "Ask Richard said Gerald Park." Gondre said his team received my maintenance reports multiple times. Nothing happened. I want to know whether that was negligence or something else. Harris looked at her notes.
We're looking at that, she said. At this stage, it appears to be negligence. Gerald's team was underresourced and was prioritizing reports differently. We haven't found evidence of intentional interference from Gerald's side. A pause.
But that review is ongoing. Okay. Andre said, "I want that answered before I make any decisions about this position because if I'm going to take responsibility for security in this building, I need to know who in this building I can trust." Nobody in the room challenged that. Nobody said it was unreasonable.
Richard simply nodded. Once with the gravity of a man acknowledging a legitimate requirement. You'll have it, he said. Andre stood. I'll need a few hours.
He walked out of the conference room and down the corridor and into the elevator. And he stood in that elevator as it descended. And he thought about Diane. Not the sickness, not the last months, not the hospital, not the particular cruelty of what the disease had done. He thought about the Diane before that.
The one who had sat across from him at a table at a kitchen table in their first apartment and asked him what he actually wanted from his life. Not professionally, not financially, but actually what kind of man did he want to be? What did he want to stand for? What did he want to look back on? He had told her he wanted to be someone who protected things.
Not in a dramatic sense, not in a hero sense, just someone who showed up, noticed what was wrong, and fixed it. Someone who made the places he was responsible for safer for the people in them. She had smiled. that specific smile she had, the one that meant she was satisfied. That meant she had asked the right question and gotten the true answer. He thought about that smile in the elevator going down.
The lobby was quieter now. Most of the investigators had moved to the suble and the executive floor. The SUVs outside had reorganized. Three had left. Four remained.
The building was settling into the strange new normal of a place that has been shaken and is beginning the slow work of writing itself. Andre walked to the security desk. The officer on duty, a young man named Terrence, who had worked the desk for 8 months and who Andre had shown how to reset the panel lock on the side entrance when it froze in cold weather, looked up when he approached. Mr. Williams, Terrence said his voice had an uncertain quality. The tone of someone who is aware that the rules of this morning have changed but hasn't been told the new ones.