Breach of Trust by David Ellis

in this office. I hoped it couldn’t be chalked up to nerves, but after listening to him ramble for a few minutes, I concluded that his natural equilibrium was hot-nervous.
    A few minutes turned into ninety, as Lemke gave me an overview that was essentially a repeat of what I’d already read in a thick manual. The state gives out hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts annually, and they can give them out all sorts of ways. They can do the traditional “blind” bid—everyone makes their best offer, under seal, and the lowest bidder gets the bid, regardless of who they are or whom they know. That was the easy part; the rub was all the different exceptions to that rule, where it was impractical, impossible, or unnecessary to go through the sealed bidding process.
    Only one of us grew tired during this lecture. This guy was like the Energizer bunny, and I was getting a headache. Finally, after offering to answer any questions several times, and appearing disappointed that I had none, he told me that he was “very busy” and “really had to go,” as if I were clinging to him to stay, and rushed out of my office.
    It was my office but I was sharing it, or at least it was big enough to share. There were two desks and five file cabinets and a small window that looked into another building and a radiator with peeling yellow paint that appeared to cough and hiss more often than it provided heat.
    “Oh, and one more thing,” Lemke said, bouncing back into the room and startling the bejeezus out of me with that high-pitched voice. “Nothing leaves this office. You can’t take any of the documents out of here. And no emails.”
    “No emails? Isn’t this the twenty- first century?”
    Patrick didn’t seem to be one for humor. He stared the wall and said, “Don’t email documents or say anything sensitive over email. It can get hacked. Okay, I really gotta go now. Oh, and you have your ID? You have to have an ID to get in and out—”
    “I have my ID”
    “You have your ID, okay, good. I’m going to be late now—”
    Out he went. I’d been given five contracts to review for next week’s meeting. I calculated the amount of time it would take to pore over these specifications, multiplied by how boring it would be, and came up with multiple headaches and many cups of coffee. I had a purpose for this gig, and it wasn’t driven by money, but as I thought about it, I was taking a real flier that any of this would even result in anything that would give me a hint as to who killed Ernesto Ramirez. Well, at a minimum I would do some legal work and make a few bucks—
    “Oh, and do you play music loud?”
    “God, Patrick.” I turned away from the box I was emptying and looked toward the door. This guy moved around so quickly, his footsteps didn’t even make noise. “Do I—”
    “They don’t like it when you play music too loud. If you have a stereo or whatever.” He was staring at the carpet.
    “I won’t play music at all.”
    “No, you can play it, just don’t play it loud.”
    “I’ll just hum to myself.”
    “Okay, so, I should go.”
    I waited patiently, hands folded, humming to myself quietly, for Patrick to return. It took three minutes.
    “Oh, so this is the last thing, unless you have any questions.”
    “I do have a question,” I said, startling him. His face lit up. He even looked at me for a brief second. A question!
    “How far back do the files go for the PCB?” I asked.
    “Okay. The governor just started this board when he took office a year ago. I mean, he had it in the lieutenant governor’s office, but he transferred the PCB—”
    “Patrick. I was just wondering, if I needed to refer to past practices, if I would be able to access prior documents. Maybe even back to when the PCB was under the lieutenant governor’s office.”
    “Oh, sure you can. I can show you where to look. It’s in one of these cabinets, the hard copies I mean, but it’s also online, and I really have to