A few minutes before Arthur got shot...
The meeting ran long.
It always did when the department heads gathered in the same room... each one with an opinion, each one with a figure to dispute, each one waiting for Arthur to look away before exchanging the particular glance that meant 'he's wrong but none of us is going to say so.' Arthur always noticed. He said nothing about it. He corrected whatever needed correcting and moved on, because the meeting ending correctly mattered more than the meeting ending... comfortably.
Today he had less patience for it than usual.
He sat at the head of the table with his good arm resting on the surface and his injured one held carefully at his side and listened to the head of the eastern division explain why the quarterly projection was optimistic, and he thought about Noel.
