Chapter 11 - THE FALSE STORY THEY WERE BUILDINGMark already had part of it prepared.
Two weeks earlier, a vape cartridge had been found in the employee break room.
Eli had picked it up.
Why?
A nineteen-year-old warehouse employee named Jacob asked him to hide it because a supervisor was coming.
Stupid.
Eli did.
Mark found it in Eli’s backpack.
Eli told the truth.
Mark let him keep working after giving a warning.
Now the old incident became useful.
Mark told Charles:
“We say he was high.”
Denise:
“He isn’t.”
Mark:
“We don’t know that.”
Charles:
“Teenager steals records, gets confronted, runs.”
Mark:
“Exactly.”
Then money.
The main store was missing a cash deposit of $3,700 from the previous evening.
It turned up Monday in a manager’s locked drawer.
An accounting mistake.
But Friday night they did not know that.
Mark suggested implying Eli took it.
Did he explicitly plan to falsely accuse Eli of theft?
Denise said yes.
Mark later denied that wording.
Eli heard:
“Use the deposit.”
Enough to frighten him.
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They were not just keeping him quiet.
They were preparing a version in which anything he said could be explained as revenge by a troubled teenager caught stealing.
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