The Aspen Account (24 page)

He watched closely as all three reacted differently. Lance smiled, nodding his head in a springlike motion that slowly wobbled to a halt. Lucas eyed him more carefully, as if waiting for him to add to his statement. And Falcon, lacking any visible reaction, merely looked at the ground in meditation, waiting for someone else to respond.

“Well,” Lance said, “that’s what we were hoping to hear. Yes, that’s very good. Nobody wants any surprises this time of the year.”

Over the next twenty minutes, the tension slid away. Falcon rejoined the conversation as they began discussing the disclosure of necessary items in the financial statements. It all became very routine, as if they all had forgotten their unspoken fraud. And Michael, having a difficult time playing through the haphazard disclosure issues relating to the financials, might have forgotten altogether his implied agreement to remain silent with the conspirators, but for the occasional glares from Lucas in his peripheral vision.

37

MICHAEL WOKE AT ten thirty Sunday morning to the soft sound of snow falling against the window. Last night, he had turned off his cell phone, cut himself off from the world, and gone to the Church alone. A few drinks had helped him escape the dilemmas at X-Tronic for a while. Staring up at the ceiling, he could not recall how much he had drunk or what time he had finally come home. He sat up in bed and looked at his clothes, strewn in a line from his apartment front door to his bed. He got up and took a warm shower. Continuing his Sunday morning routine, he stuck a frozen ham-and-egg muffin in the microwave, turned on his sleeping cell phone, and waited for his breakfast. But a surge of vibration from the cell phone made him forget his boredom. He dialed his voice mail, eager to see who had tried to reach him during his twelve-hour sabbatical from the world.

Five new messages.
The world must have spun off its axis during the night. The first was his mother, begging him to call home immediately. Her voice shook. The second call was his mother again: “. . .
very important, Michael, please call home
. The third: “
Michael, where are you? Please, please call
.” The fourth: his brother: “
Michael, where the hell are you? Don’t call Mom anymore; she’s not up to talking. Call me
.” The fifth: his brother again.

All five messages were from this morning: the first at 7:30, the last just twenty minutes ago. With a feeling of dread, he dialed his brother.

“Michael, Jesus! Where’ve you
been
?” Cody answered.

“I just woke up.”

“You talk to Mom yet?”

“No, your message said to call you first.”

There was silence on the other end. His brother’s voice cracked. “Michael, it’s Dad. He had a heart attack this morning. We’ve been trying to reach you for hours.”

“Oh, my God. Is he . . . ?” His words sounded as if someone else had spoken them. His father, invincible, immortal, had never shown a sign of weakness for as long as Michael could remember. Michael’s grandfather had had two heart attacks before the third one killed him, but Michael had thought his father at least ten years away from being at any real risk.

“How’s he doing?” he asked, focusing his thoughts. “They take him to St. Mary’s?”

“Oh, no, Michael,” his brother said in a half-muffled voice, as if his mouth was pressed against the phone. “Dad didn’t make it.” His voice cracked. “He’s
gone,
Michael.”

“Wha . . . ?” The word fell apart before Michael could finish forming it.

“Mom found him on the floor in the den downstairs. He was already dead. He’d been working on something early this morning.”

“Oh, God . . . ,” Michael whispered as the impossible reality hit him like a sledgehammer. Lowering himself to the carpet, he leaned against the wall and looked out at the city skyline. It had stopped snowing.

“Michael, we need you here,” Cody said.

“Yeah,” he replied, not bothering to wipe away the tears that now blurred his vision. “I do, too.”

“You okay to drive? It’s a long ways across Kansas.”

“I don’t know,” Michael said, still trying to process the reality that their father was gone.

“Be careful. Call if you need to talk while you’re on the road.”

When the call ended, Michael sat motionless on the floor of his apartment, looking out at the snow-covered neighborhood below. He felt as if he had done nothing, become nothing, during his father’s entire lifetime. It just wasn’t time yet to lose him. Leaning against the wall, he curled up and wept, pressing his head to the cold window and listening to the whisper of traffic rushing by on the street below. Then, after several minutes of trying to find the willpower to stand up, he got to his feet and slowly packed what he needed to go and see his father buried.

Five minutes later he was in the car, heading for Kansas, with the Rockies gleaming white in his rearview mirror.

38

A WEEK AFTER his father’s funeral, Michael found himself alone in an elevator riding up toward X-Tronic’s twentieth floor. The past week’s events felt like a blur in his memory. It was beginning to soak in that his father was really gone and that his world had changed. The funeral had been difficult for him. It was the memories of his father’s strong, happy life that had most torn at him as the minister spoke the final words at graveside. Michael felt ashamed that after all the sacrifices his parents had made for him, he wasn’t living a happier life in Denver. All he had been able to do was hold his weeping mother while his eyes looked blankly at the casket. If only he had known how little time his father had, he could have made another trip back home, or even just one more phone call. But there was no warning, just
bam!
—gone. And now came the lifetime of regret.

He had planned to pick up the pieces of his life after he finished at Cooley and White. He had often imagined what it would be like, once he was finished, to tell his father about everything he had been doing these past few years. But now he would never have that chance. He had waited too long. He had lost more than he could bear, and now he was angrier than ever at the people who had poisoned X-Tronic and killed Kurt in the process. His father’s death had quickened him with a sense of strength and urgency that he had never felt before. It was clear now: he had to stop the crimes before things went any further. And that meant stopping the conspirators before they could publish their bogus accounting results to the financial world. At this moment, he knew that he would do whatever it took to expose the rot he had discovered at X-Tronic.

The moment Michael returned to the audit room at X-Tronic, he knew that something was wrong. Only half the document files remained along the wall of the room, and the conference table was bare. The room looked abandoned.

He unpacked his laptop, booted it up, and logged on to Cooley and White’s remote network. Opening his e-mail account for the first time in eight days, he scanned down the list of two hundred unread messages. Half were for basic administrative announcements from either the firm’s Denver office or the national headquarters in New York. The remaining messages related to X-Tronic. He scanned through them. Things had moved fast, starting the Monday after he left for Kansas. Jerry Diamond had e-mailed Falcon to discuss moving up the issuance date for the financials. Apparently, Diamond had wanted to release the annual financial disclosures to the SEC two weeks ahead of schedule, and Falcon had agreed. A number of correspondences had gone between the CFO and the audit committee.

With a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, he realized they had done something horrible while he was gone. His dismay grew with each e-mail chain between the conspirators that he saw. The nightmare scenario he had so feared was now unfolding before his eyes.

He read through more e-mails, his concerns growing. Both Diamond and Falcon had taken advantage of his absence by going forward on issuing the 10-K annual report. And the Seaton twins had been included on all the final e-mails. According to the e-mails, X-Tronic should already have issued the financial statements to the public. He couldn’t believe what he was reading. If Cooley and White had issued its audit opinion and allowed X-Tronic to issue its fraudulent financial statements last Friday, then the market would already be responding to the falsified reports. Tens of thousands of investors would already be pouring their money into the software company’s stock, whose financial position was grossly exaggerated.

Michael opened his Internet browser and typed in the Web address for the Securities and Exchange Commission. On the SEC’s Web site, he navigated through the hyperlinks until he found the listing of all filings for X-Tronic within the past two years. Looking at the top of the list, he saw that the company had filed its 10-K last Friday. The financial floodgates had been opened to the public. He took a long, deep breath as he stared at the SEC’s Web site. It was all over. He had done everything possible to prevent this, and it hadn’t been enough. To confirm his fears, he went to the
Wall Street Journal
’s Web site, entered X-Tronic’s ticker symbol, and discovered that the stock price had increased by fifteen percent since the opening bell two hours ago.

Just as he got off the Web site, Falcon walked into the audit room. “Morning,” he said cheerfully, dropping a computer bag onto one of the leather chairs.

Michael was startled by the sudden intrusion. He hadn’t expected to see Falcon here at X-Tronic, but then again, all bets were off on just what
to
expect. 

“Hi, John,” he said. “I didn’t realize you were coming out this morning. I’m not sure where Andrea and Dustin are, but they should be here soon.”

“No, neither of them’s coming back out,” Falcon said, fishing his laptop out of the computer bag. “They’ve both rolled off this engagement.”

“I don’t understand,” Michael replied, sitting bolt upright. “How much work did you guys get through last week? Are we still hoping to get the financials issued by the deadline?”

“Actually, a lot’s changed,” Falcon said breezily, suddenly intent on properly connecting the cords to his laptop. “Haven’t you checked your e-mails?”

“No,” Michael lied. “Just getting to it. With the funeral and everything, I didn’t have a chance to check any messages until now.”

“Mm-m,” Falcon mumbled. “I’m sorry about your father.”

“Did something change when I was gone?” The concern in Michael’s voice was clear, but at this point he didn’t care how much of his fears he revealed.

“Yes,” Falcon said, threading the network cord through the access hole in the table. “X-Tronic was able to get us a draft of their financials a lot quicker than we expected. And the audit committee wanted to speed up the process of issuing the report so that the report could provide information valuable for the merger talks.” He paused to look around the room, as if trying to remember where he had left something, then seemed to give up the idea. “Anyway, I was comfortable with all the test work that had been done, so I just spent the week out here with Andrea and Dustin to finish up all the critical test work. Everything went well, and X-Tronic filed its ten-K Friday afternoon.”

“They’ve already
filed
?” he asked, feigning surprise.

“Yes,” Falcon said with glowing eyes, playing the part of the supervisor relaying good news to a subordinate. “That’s why Andrea and Dustin have rolled off onto other engagements. I still wanted you to be out here for the next two weeks to clear all remaining documentation and review my points. It probably won’t even take that long,” he said, double-clicking something on his computer. “Once you’re done, you can head back to the office. You’re on an interoffice engagement in New Delhi for about six months. Exciting, no? You leave in a couple of weeks.”

“
What!
The firm’s sending me to
India
?”

Falcon gave him a surprised look. “It’s a good opportunity. The engagement is very important to the firm.”

“John, that’s insane! I can’t leave the country for that long. My father just died—I need to stay close to my family.” Michael couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He felt as if he were stuck in a whirlpool, spinning around and around, getting pulled ever closer toward the center, from which there would be no return.

“This is something that the firm has scheduled you on. I’m sorry, but you’ll have to talk to the scheduling committee about it. But before you do, think about what a great opportunity an international rotation would be to advance your career at the firm.”

Michael knew that Falcon had influence with the firm’s scheduling committee, which must be how he had suddenly been shunted off to a project that would take him far from the Denver office and the X-Tronic engagement. 

Michael nodded to acknowledge both that he understood and that he had no more reservations. Six months in the middle of India . . . dropped from X-Tronic . . . kept in the dark about the push-up in the SEC filing—how could this be happening! He pulled a workpaper binder from the center of the table and opened it to a seven-page document created by Falcon. It listed small, trivial questions—nothing of any real importance, but they would still take time to answer. He flipped the page to see if any of the numbers in the trial balance had been adjusted to the correct amounts. They hadn’t been changed. Each false number, each financial lie, was signed off and approved by Falcon and the concurring partner. He drew his gaze down the laundry list of numbers marked with blue and black letters, and knew that he was deep in the lion’s den, surrounded by enemies.

39

TROY GLAZIER SAT hunched over a thin file on his desk, flipping through the pages with meticulous concentration. His dark suit only made the graying of his hair more apparent. At six three and two hundred twenty pounds, he was a big man even when sitting down. His large nostrils flared as he read the stressful pages, giving his face a dangerous appearance. Suddenly his phone rang. His dark eyebrows knitted as he snapped up the receiver.