Chapter 8 - ABOVE OWEN
Patricia asked for state investigators before she would speak.
By midnight, an assistant attorney general named Claire Donovan sat across from her.
Patricia's story was ugly because it was ordinary.
The scheme began as small deductions.
Five dollars here.
Twenty there.
Then Owen learned almost nobody challenged payroll if the pay stub used official language.
He expanded it.
Natalie built the accounting walls around it.
'Who ordered the first deductions?' Claire asked.
Patricia looked at me.
'Your father.'
I felt the air leave the room.
Richard Blackwell had been dead seven years.
Patricia called it something else.
'A captive workforce.'
She showed us scanned memos from twelve years earlier.
My father had approved 'retention reserves' for workers likely to quit.
The money was supposed to fund emergency housing, transportation, and childcare.
Instead, managers began treating the reserve like company cash.
When Owen took over operations, he stopped pretending it was a reserve.
Natalie turned it into a profit stream.
I wanted to reject all of it.
Then Claire placed one of my father's memos in front of me.
Keep visible wages competitive. Recover margin below the line.
His handwriting.
June read it over my shoulder.
'Below the line,' she whispered.
That was how my father had described hunger.
A line.
A margin.
A number below another number.
Patricia continued.
Owen was not above Natalie.
Natalie was not above Owen.
They protected each other.
But somebody else had approved the family-office transfers.
'Who?'
Patricia looked at me.
'Your uncle, Malcolm.'
Malcolm Blackwell chaired our family trust.
He had taught me to read a balance sheet when I was twelve.
He had also signed every annual ethics statement in the company.
Claire opened another file.
May you like
The largest Northstar transfer had been authorized from Malcolm's home office.
Yesterday.
