Part 6
Nolan kept his voice level. “You knew about it.”
Curtis rubbed his jaw and looked past him at the workers leaving through the gate.
“You don’t understand what all this can do.”
“Then explain.”
“People have mortgages. My wife has medical appointments that don’t pay for themselves. There are families living on these checks.”
“Mateo has a family.”
Curtis’s face tightened. For a moment Nolan thought he might say something more. Instead, he picked up his pen.
“Go home, Voss.”
Nolan waited long enough to make Curtis look at him again.
“You’re making a decision every time you keep this quiet.”
Curtis turned toward the trailer. Nolan let him go.
Joanna called while Nolan was measuring Gusset’s dinner. She had compared the certificate copies with the preliminary project records.
“Repeated numbers could be an administrative error,” she said. “We need the issuing records before drawing a conclusion. But there’s also an inspection entry clearing the northern scaffolding two days before Mateo was injured.”
Nolan set down the scoop.
“His complaint was about that same section.”
“Yes. We need to establish what was inspected, what was reported, and what changed.”
After the call, Gusset waited beside his bowl with one foot lifted. Nolan realized he was still holding the food container.
“Right. Your problem’s simpler.”
He put down the bowl and watched the puppy eat.
The next worker who came to Avenza brought a shoebox secured with elastic bands. Leonard Fiske was sixty-seven, with a narrow face and fingers that didn’t quite straighten. Hospital bills lay on top of old pay statements and correspondence from three businesses.
He placed the box before Joanna.
“I’d like to know which one I worked for.”
Two years earlier, Leonard had been hurt on another construction job. He’d eventually returned to light duties. The bills had continued arriving.
“The name on the check changed,” he explained. “Then that office said it only ran payroll. Another one told me I was an independent contractor.”
He took out a letter and smoothed it with his palm.
“Never got to be very independent about when I showed up.”
Teresa sat nearby taking notes. Nolan watched Leonard sort the documents in the order he had learned from years of trying to explain them.
“My wife says I ought to stop looking at these,” the older man said. “Probably right.”
“Why keep them?” Nolan asked.
“Because those are days I worked.” Leonard tapped a pay statement. “They don’t get to turn them into days I didn’t.”
During the following week, more workers brought records. Some described late wages. Others had certificates for instruction they hadn’t received. A carpenter had overlapping employment records from two businesses for the same stretch of work. Another worker’s labor supplier had changed while his supervisor, duties, and worksite stayed exactly the same.
Joanna reminded them that inconsistency alone didn’t establish misconduct. She documented it anyway.
At a conference table one afternoon, she showed Nolan and Teresa the chain beneath Veydran: subcontractors, staffing businesses, labor suppliers. Some shared contact information. Others had changed registration details or names.
“Common addresses don’t automatically mean a sham,” Joanna said. “We’re looking for who directed the work, supplied the training, received the warnings, and had the duty to act.”
Teresa pointed to two entries. “Mateo had forms from both.”
“We’ll follow both.”
Outside, a bus stopped, and a man carrying a lunch cooler hurried aboard. Nolan waited for it to pull away before looking back at the table.
At the site, conversations shortened when he approached. Owen avoided his eyes. Frank continued to greet him, but always looked toward the trailer afterward. Curtis seemed to spend most of his day behind the office door.
Then Adrian Sloane arrived.
The regional operations director was fifty-five, silver-haired and impeccably dressed. He stepped from a dark sedan without hurrying, checked something on his phone, and went inside with Curtis. By afternoon, supervisors and senior tradespeople had been gathered for a discussion of schedules and documentation.
Adrian spoke quietly enough that people leaned forward.
“Our partners are responsible for meeting their obligations,” he said. “Veydran has procedures for reviewing concerns.”
A supervisor asked about the training discrepancies.
“Those records are being assessed.”
Nolan waited until Adrian looked his way.
“What should a worker do when every company says another company employed him?”
Adrian’s gaze settled on him. “Mr. Voss.”
“Yes.”
“The agreements establish those relationships. People with relevant documentation should submit it.”
“They’re trying.”
“Then allow the review to take place.” Adrian straightened a sheet on the table. “Speculation won’t improve the result.”
Nolan opened his mouth, felt the anger rise, and closed it. The man beside him stared at his boots. Adrian moved on to the next item.
That evening, Curtis stood in the director’s temporary office with a draft statement in his hand. It said Mateo had not been assigned to the project at the relevant time.
“I can’t say this,” Curtis told him.
“The staffing records support it.”
“Not what I remember.”
Adrian leaned back. “Then check your recollection carefully.”
Curtis looked at the page. There had been other forms, other corrections he’d approved without examining them closely. Each had arrived as something routine that needed to be finished before the next problem could be handled.
“My crews saw him.”
“At what exact time?”
Curtis didn’t answer.
Adrian folded his hands. “Your retirement is still a few years away, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“And your wife’s treatment?”
Curtis looked up.
“I know expenses have been difficult,” Adrian continued. “You’ve built a reliable career here. It would be unfortunate to damage it over confusion that accurate records could resolve.”
Curtis held the statement by its bottom edge.
“Read it at home,” Adrian said.
Curtis put it in his briefcase.
The page remained unsigned when Curtis returned the next morning. He kept the briefcase beneath his desk and said nothing about it.
Nolan was summoned after his first assignment. A human resources representative sat beside Curtis with another statement laid between them.
“We understand you weren’t working in that area during the shift in question,” she said.
“That’s correct.”
“Then this should be straightforward.”
Nolan read the document. The opening described the limit of his firsthand knowledge. The rest went beyond it, treating Mateo’s assignment as already ended and accepting that no workplace incident had been reported.
He put down the pen.
“I’ll sign a statement saying I didn’t see his last shift. I won’t endorse the rest.”
“This is standard wording.”
“Change it to what I actually know.”
The representative glanced at Curtis. He was looking at a seam in the desk.
“We’re trying to complete an administrative review, Mr. Voss.”
“Then accuracy ought to help.”
She drew the page back toward her. Nolan left without signing.
Two business days later, his termination notice arrived. It cited noncompliance with internal procedures and disruptive conduct affecting site operations.
He read it standing near his locker. Around him, the shift continued: boots on gravel, a delivery truck reversing, someone calling for a measurement.
He packed his thermos, his jacket, and the gloves he’d bought himself. The company equipment stayed behind.
Frank found him near the truck.
“They did it,” the older man said.
Nolan put the bag on the seat.
“I could talk to somebody.” Frank glanced toward the trailer. “Might not help, but I could.”
The offer cost him something. Nolan could see it in the way he held his shoulders.
“Keep giving Joanna what you remember. That’s useful.”
Frank nodded. “I’m sorry, Nolan.”
Nolan shut the door gently and drove out.
By the following Monday, two contractors who had previously shown interest in him had declined. One claimed there wasn’t an opening after all. Another stopped returning calls. At a third company, a hiring manager spoke more plainly.
“Your qualifications aren’t the concern.”
“Then what is?”
“We’ve heard unfavorable things about your conduct on the Veydran project. I can’t discuss who said what.”
Nolan thanked him and ended the call before his voice betrayed him.
He wouldn’t assume every rejection came from the same source. Three in a week still made him pull his savings statement from the drawer.
Joanna reviewed the notice, his account of the meeting, and the dates of the calls.
“Preserve all of it,” she said. “Messages, letters, names, exact wording. We need to submit the appropriate retaliation complaint before the deadline.”
He did what she asked. He made a careful chronology, copied the emails, and put the original termination notice in a folder.
That night, the folder lay beside household bills and a page of job listings. Nolan opened the tin box from his bedroom.
Pat’s photograph was on top. They were both younger in it, standing close enough that their shoulders touched. Pat had been laughing when the picture was taken. Nolan remembered what had set him off and couldn’t bring himself to smile.
He’d learned a trade. He’d done good work. He’d kept his hours full, his house paid, and his complaints to himself. Then he’d asked a few questions for a man in a hospital bed, and the work had vanished.
For a few ugly minutes, he wished he’d left the helmet where it was.
A dragging sound came from the hall.
Gusset appeared with an old welding glove clenched in his teeth. He hauled it across the floor and lifted his head high enough to drop it on Nolan’s knee.
Nolan looked down. “What am I supposed to do with that?”
The glove slipped. Gusset retrieved it and tried again, pushing it against Nolan’s leg with his nose.
The puppy had put on weight. His coat had a shine now, and the healed paw bore his weight without hesitation. Nolan laid a hand beneath his belly and lifted him carefully.
Gusset settled against his chest, nose pressed into the worn fabric of his shirt.
“I’m doing the best I’ve got,” Nolan whispered.
He sat with the puppy until his breathing slowed. The bills remained spread across the table. Pat’s photograph rested beside the glove.
The phone rang.
Teresa’s name appeared on the screen.
“How’s Mateo?” Nolan asked.
“Ruth called. There’s a proposal to move him to a rehabilitation facility.”
Nolan straightened. “Where?”
“In Guatemala…”
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