Page 44 of Oleander

“Who ordered that language?” the prosecutor asked.

Keene looked at Hollis.

“Mr. Burton. He said critical was a word used by people who wanted budgets.”

She testified that she recommended suspending production. Hollis summoned her to a conference room, closed the door, and placed her report face down on the table. He asked whether she had children in college. When she said yes, he reminded her that senior employees held stock grants that would become worthless if nervous engineers frightened the market.

“Did you understand that as a threat?”

“I understood it as company policy.”

The defense attacked her for staying employed. Keene accepted every blow. Yes, she had signed revised reports. Yes, she had taken bonuses. Yes, she had remained silent until Dorothy Martin contacted her.

“I was a coward,” she said. “That does not make the steel less corroded or the dead less dead.”

A former control-room supervisor followed. He described alarms that sounded for weeks and maintenance windows canceled whenever oil prices rose. He showed the jury messages from corporate operations directing crews to bypass an unreliable sensor while continuing production. On cross-examination, the defense suggested the supervisor had misunderstood temporary procedures.

“Temporary lasted nine months,” he replied. “Platform Nine lasted eight.”

The courtroom heard from accountants, dispatchers, mechanics, rig managers, payroll clerks, and one executive assistant whose calendar tied Hollis to meetings his lawyers claimed he had never attended.

A data specialist reconstructed deleted messages from company backups. An EPA investigator traced unauthorized discharges hidden by altered sampling records. An FBI forensic accountant followed money from Burton Drilling through security contractors and shell companies to men hired to frighten witnesses and recover Dorothy’s files.

The Imperium itself entered the case in photographs: its lounges, its secure communications room, the fireproof bin recovered below deck, the scorched drive found in the Gulf.

Prosecutors displayed an image of Hollis’s bourbon glass beside a screen showing collapsing shares. The defense objected that the picture was theatrical. The judge sustained the objection to the bourbon and admitted the screen.

Cam leaned toward Luke.

“Justice hates a garnish.” Luke kept his face straight with visible effort.

Through it all, Hollis wrote notes on a yellow pad. He corrected dates. He underlined names. He pushed pages toward his attorneys with impatient taps. The witnesses were liars, cowards, failures, opportunists. The government was confused. The jury was being manipulated. His company had been stolen from him by people unable to create anything of their own.

Dorothy’s evidence arrived piece by piece, never as spectacle. Her attorney authenticated sealed instructions written months before her death. A forensic examiner verified the archive. The jury heard Dorothy’s voice asking precise questions in rooms where Hollis assumed she was merely his wife.

She had preserved inspection logs, contracts, audio recordings, and lists of people who feared retaliation. Beside each name, she had written what protection that person might need.

Hollis stared at the speakers when her voice filled the courtroom. His face did not soften. It tightened. Dorothy had denied him even the comfort of controlling her memory.

The prosecutor saved Lyle Voss for last.

When the marshal opened the side door, conversation stopped so completely that the ventilation became audible. Voss entered in a plain gray suit. A pale scar crossed his temple. He took the oath, sat, and looked first at the jury, then at Hollis.

Hollis stopped writing.

“Mr. Voss,” the prosecutor said, “what did security mean when you first went to work for Burton Drilling?” Voss folded his hands.

“Protecting crews. Investigating theft. Bringing kidnapped workers home. Work I could explain to myself without lying.”

“Did that mission change?”

“Slowly enough that I pretended it hadn’t. Mr. Burton began asking for leverage on regulators, surveillance on employees who contacted lawyers, and background material on families before settlement meetings.”

“What kind of background material?”

“Debt. Affairs. Addiction. Anything that could be turned into pressure.” The prosecutor let the answer settle.

“Who authorized those assignments?” Voss looked directly at Hollis.