Chapter 49

You stopped just outside of the glass wall of the main conference room, out of sight, and took a breath. Then, rushing like you knew you were late, you ran into the pull-door with a clang, trying to push it open.

“Sorry, sorry,” you mumbled, letting the coffee you’d picked up from the staff kitchen splash a little bit out of the mug onto your hand and shirt. “Shit, uh, sorry.”

Inside the room Sabrina’s Uncle Bill was sitting with his back to the bank of windows looking over the street below. Mr Garrisson and Barbara, an associate lawyer at the firm, were sitting with a few neat stacks of documents in front of them and a small camcorder on a tripod.

Bill just looked at you with that passive not-quite-glare, while Garrisson and Barbara glanced over and then turned back to Bill.

You bumbled around them, making sure to knock a couple of chairs and muttering to yourself, before flopping into a seat off to the side and behind Garrisson. Then you took your time, hesitating over where to put your coffee cup (eventually deciding on the edge of the conference room table), and opening your notebook and flipping loudly through the pages before ‘searching’ for your pen and giving it a few loud clicks. “Right, thanks for waiting,” you said.

“Mr Sodemeyer, thanks for coming in today,” Garrisson said, not acknowledging you. Barbara turned on the camcorder, and the deposition began. It started off dry enough, with Garrisson running through the current situation, and Bill acknowledging the facts that weren’t in question. Then Barbara began passing documents over for Bill to review, and when he did, you clicked your pen. Clickclick. Clickclick. It was loud in the silence of the conference room.

Bill didn’t react.

He answered a couple of questions from Garrisson, then had to review the document again. Right when he was opening his mouth to answer, you clicked the pen again while looking down at your notebook. Clickclick. Clickclick.

Bill hesitated, then answered.

And so the games had started. For about thirty minutes, you would click the pen at the most inopportune times you could think of. You even did it once when Garrisson was rattling off a list of property locations, disrupting the flow of his monotonous list.

Bill never glanced over at you, and he didn’t break out in a sweat or anything. There wasn’t any big tension in the room, like Garrisson was trying to get him to admit to something. To be honest, the content was dull as shit - just confirming certain expenditures and profit portfolios, the acquisition of various assets, even down to the warranty terms left on certain machinery.

But Bill wasn’t a complete poker face. As the meeting, and your little game, went on he started to have this little vein bulge just above his ear, and he started to flex the back of his jaw whenever you clicked the pen.

Around forty minutes into the meeting, Barbara had shifted an entire stack of documents over to Bill, and a minute in Garrisson shifted and knocked his own pen off the table. As he bent to retrieve it, he made a two fingered gesture where only you could see it. About thirty seconds after he did that, you made a production of setting your notepad aside and standing up, leaning over the edge of the table to the as-of-yet untouched jug of water and glasses.

You poured for yourself, knocking another glass lightly to make a pinging noise, then noisily gulped down the glass you’d poured and leaned forward to pour more for yourself. This time, about halfway through the pour, you shifted and knocked the half-full coffee cup you’d set down at the beginning of the meeting, spilling it forward across the table. “Ah, crap,” you yelped, hopping away and just so happening to spill the water jug as well, covering the conference table.

“Oh, crap, I’m so sorry,” you said quickly as the water spread and soaked a lot of the paper on the table. Garrison and Bill both quickly moved away from the table, while Barbara - who was out of the splash range - adjusted the camera tripod but didn’t turn it off.