An Invisible Client Read online

  The total bill for the depositions had risen to $275,000 so far. I was now using eight attorneys, eight paralegals, and three law clerks, who couldn’t do anything else. Considering the lost revenue from other cases those lawyers could’ve been working—and some of them could have been billing hourly on divorces or other cases—Joel Whiting’s case had already cost our firm around $500,000. We’d spent about fifteen percent of our total cash on hand.

  Though it was late, I threw on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt and headed up to the hospital and sat in the hallway across from Joel’s room. The nurses no longer enforced visiting hours for Joel.

  The door opened and Rebecca, bleary-eyed, stepped out of the room. A look of surprise came over her.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Couldn’t sleep.”

  “It’s okay. I was just heading down to the cafeteria to get some juice for him. He’s awake right now if you want to go in.”

  I nodded. She walked past me and gently put her hand on my shoulder before heading down the hall. I rose and entered the room.

  Joel had his eyes closed. I sat down in the recliner against the wall and watched him. Each breath seemed to be a fight. When his chest rose, it looked as though he had forced it up, as if each inhalation was a conscious act because his body had already stopped working.

  Slowly, his eyes opened, and he looked at me, a slight grin lifting his face.

  “If you’re tired, I can leave.”

  “No. I want to talk. Some of the medicines I’m on make it hard to sleep.”

  “We have a big hearing on your case tomorrow. If we win, they’ll probably make a big settlement offer. If we lose, the case is over.”

  “If we lose, then my mom doesn’t get anything?”

  “Afraid not.”

  He thought for a second. “I’m scared, Noah. My mom will be all alone.”

  “She seems like the kind of lady who can take care of herself. You just work on getting better. I’ll take care of your mom.”

  “You’ll check in on her and make sure she’s okay?”

  “Yes, I will.”

  He exhaled forcefully and tilted his head back up, his face toward the ceiling. We were silent for a couple of minutes.

  “What’s it feel like to kiss a girl?” Joel asked.

  I grinned. “It’s like . . . if you take everything fun that’s ever happened to you and you wrap it up in a ball and put it on your lips, that’s what it feels like. You can feel her heart beating against yours, and it seems like the rest of the world disappears. You don’t remember what you have to do tomorrow or anything like that. It’s just you and her.”

  He smiled. “I thought you were gonna say it’s wet or something.”

  “It can be that, too.”

  We listened for a few minutes to the hum of the machines and a quiet conversation in the hospital room next door.

  He swallowed. “Do you think my daddy’s waiting for me in heaven?”

  I looked away. I felt something in my throat and sensed that I couldn’t talk right then, so I was silent for a long time. “Yes, I think your daddy’s waiting for you.”

  He did one slow nod. “I think so, too.”

  We didn’t say anything for a while, then Rebecca came in. She helped Joel sit up and then gave him his juice. A nurse came in a little bit after that and checked readouts on the machines. The nurse gave him pain medication. Then he drifted off slowly. I rose and went to his bed. Looking down on him—he was so frail—I wanted to do something. It was insanity that this boy had to lie in this bed when I had money: the lifeblood of the world. Something could be done. Someone, somewhere, could help him.

  His hand moved, and it drifted across the bedsheets toward my hand. He held it, his touch like a small child’s. He also held his mother’s hand, and the two of us stood there while the machines carried on in their soft beeps.

  27

  I woke up and realized I had slept at the hospital. I was lying on the recliner in Joel’s room. I stood up and quietly snuck out of the room while he slept, Rebecca in a chair next to him. I rushed home and threw on the first suit that I saw in my closet. The hearing started in twenty minutes.

  Taking the freeway, I zipped in between cars and got there in fifteen minutes. I passed the metal detectors, bolted up to the courtroom, and went in just as Judge Gills was taking the bench. Bob was already there, with four other attorneys, one of whom was Gale Nest. Someone must’ve told Bob that I’d talked to her, and he decided having her on the case might provide some advantage.

  I sat down at the plaintiff’s table by myself. Raimi and Marty were in the audience seats, but I didn’t ask them to join me. Only Olivia, who must’ve been out in the hall or the bathroom, came up without being asked and sat next to me. She reached under the table, grabbed my hand, and squeezed as she smiled, as though letting me know that whatever happened would be okay.

  “All right,” Gills said, “you bastards ready to go?”

  “Ready, Your Honor,” Bob said.

  “We’re ready,” I said, standing up.

  The hearing lasted an hour. Gills went through the main points, but I very quickly picked up what he was looking at: he wasn’t sure there was a link between Pharma-K’s negligence and the poisoning, despite Dan Atkin’s deposition testimony.

  We had made several document requests, asking for emails or intra-office memos pertaining to the rat poison and anything else relevant. As was customary for insurance company and corporate defense firms, when we asked for five or ten documents, they sent thousands. One hundred fifty-two boxes had showed up at our firm, and we’d had to put most of them in a storage unit. The emails I wanted were in there, somewhere, but we would have to go through another two hundred thousand documents to find them. I had three paralegals sifting through the documents full time, and we still hadn’t found any emails pertaining to the rat poison.

  Bob countered that every company with a building in that district used rat poison because of the rodent problem and that we hadn’t presented a shred of evidence that the poison had gotten into the cough medicine at the plant.

  Judge Gills was quiet, only occasionally asking a question, then letting us argue it. Bob and I went back and forth until he finally said, “Okay, I’ve heard enough. You’ll have my ruling tomorrow.”

  We left the courtroom, Olivia holding my hand. Raimi and Marty clearly noticed, and they exchanged glances. We didn’t speak until we were outside.

  “You did an awesome job,” Olivia said.

  Marty slapped my shoulder. “Top-notch, buddy.”

  I looked at Raimi. He was incapable of flattery. “What do you think, Raimi?”

  “I think it’s a close call. The judge could side either way, and he wouldn’t be wrong.”

  We agreed to meet up again later that afternoon to go over contingencies. If the motion was granted, then we needed to prepare a media statement so we didn’t look like idiots to the public. If the motion was denied and the case was allowed to carry forward, we needed to decide how much to settle for.

  I couldn’t eat—my guts were in knots—so I went back to the office. The FBI reports relating to the Pharma Killer were on my desk now. The investigation by the feds hadn’t added anything other than a couple of extra interviews and a better timeline of when everybody had known what. The most interesting part was that their Behavioral Science Unit had come up with a profile of the Pharma Killer.

  The profile said he would be white, in his mid-thirties, possibly living with his mother or grandparents, with a string of firings from menial jobs behind him. He might have a genius-level IQ but not one person in his life he could consider a friend. The profiler had called him a cowardly killer who needed to distance himself from his victims because he didn’t have the fortitude to see the harm he’d actually caused. I looked up the agent online: he had been profiling cases for less tha
n a year, and he didn’t have a degree in psychology.

  The reports included notes about an ongoing FDA investigation, as well. The FDA consisted of people who had worked for the meat and dairy industry or the major pharmaceutical companies, and people who wanted to work for those companies. A typical career track consisted of gaining ten years of experience at the FDA, then getting a high-paying job in one of those industries. Anyone who wanted one of those high-paying jobs would have to make rulings against those companies for violations of the law—that almost never happened unless they were investigating a smaller company. That relationship set up a system in which the people who were supposed to be watching out for consumers were actually the consumers’ biggest threat.

  The FDA reports said they were testing other products for contamination, but I was certain they weren’t going to find anything.

  I was about to take a break and go to the gym when my phone rang. I hit the intercom button and said, “Yeah, Jessica?”

  “Judge Gills’s clerk called. He has a decision and would like both counsel there.”

  28

  Apparently, Jessica had called everyone, because within ten minutes of arriving at the courthouse, I saw Raimi, Marty, several other attorneys from our firm, and Olivia. She came up to the plaintiff’s table with me again and sat down. Bob was there, still wearing his eye patch, along with all his other attorneys. He looked over at me and winked.

  “That was quick,” Olivia whispered. “What does that mean?”

  I shrugged. “It means we either won or lost.”

  “All rise,” the bailiff hollered, “Third District Court is now in session. The Honorable Judge Nathan Gills presiding.”

  The judge hurried out. “Sit your asses down, Counsel.” He leaned back in his chair and groaned. “All right, let’s get to it. We on the record yet?”

  The clerk nodded.

  “Okay, Mr. Byron. It’s weak. You’re assuming there’s negligence because some people got hurt without having any actual link to the company. You’re hoping the jury will be moved by emotion and ignore the fact that you don’t know exactly what happened, because no one knows exactly what happened.”

  Bob grinned at me. He looked like a cat about to eat a mouse.

  “And, Mr. Walcott,” the judge said, “the very poison that harmed those children just happened to be lying out on the plant’s floor ten feet from where the medicine is made. I don’t believe in coincidences. Not to mention the fact that the little tidbit about cyanide being near the medicine was not disclosed to law enforcement during the investigation, and the rat poison just happened to disappear days after the injuries were reported. It stinks to me. I don’t know which way I would rule on this yet, but I know some more discovery needs to be done. I’m denying defense’s motion to dismiss. My clerk will set up a trial date and discovery schedule that works for everybody. Thank you.”

  The judge rose and left. I sat there, stunned, still processing the words. I only realized we had won when I looked at Bob and saw he had turned a furious red. I looked behind me, and Marty came up and shook my hand.

  “I was wrong,” he said.

  “You were right,” I said, and clapped him on the back. “Remember? You told me to take the case in the first place.”

  Marty, who had known Bob longer than I had, went up to him and spoke quietly. Probably rubbing a little salt in the wound. I turned to Olivia.

  “You did it,” she said.

  “I haven’t done anything yet.”

  The bailiff approached us. “Counsel, the judge would like to see you and Mr. Walcott in chambers.”

  Bob, Olivia, and I headed back with the bailiff to the offices behind the courtroom. Judge Gills’s office had a window, a couch, a desk, and almost nothing else. I didn’t see a single photo of his wife or children.

  We sat down and Gills rubbed his stomach, a grimace on his face. “Damn gas,” he said. “Don’t get old. That was the advice my father gave me. I wish I would’ve listened.”

  “Your Honor,” Bob said, “frankly, I’m a little surprised about your ruling.”

  “I’m sure you are,” he said, reaching for a bottle of antacid in his drawer. He popped two in his mouth and chewed loudly. “The ruling’s made. But I didn’t like it. I liked it more than if I’d ruled the other way, but I don’t like this case. Bob, your client’s acting shady. And Mr. Byron, your case is shit. This needs to settle. I’m not taking up eight weeks of my time and a jury’s time on shit. What’s the current offer?”

  Bob said, “One million.”

  “Mr. Byron, that sounds like a fine offer considering the question of liability.”

  “I think we can get more from a jury, Your Honor.”

  “Not with all the bullshit caps we have on punitive damages in state court. What did your client say?”

  “She’ll do what I advise her to do.”

  “Bob, offer more.”

  Bob smiled placatingly, but I could see anger behind the smile. “Judge, it’s not the bench’s position to even discuss settleme—”

  “Oh, cut the shit. Offer more and be done with it. I have a trip coming up and don’t want to be stuck here listening to you two scream at each other like teenage girls. You offer more, and Mr. Byron, you tell your clients how far you are from liability and get them to take it. Everybody’s happy.”

  “That twelve-year-old boy who’s going to die isn’t happy,” I said.

  The judge and Bob stared at me. I held the judge’s gaze and then said, “Is that all, Your Honor?”

  “Yeah, that’s it.”

  I rose and walked out. Bob followed me. “Don’t be stupid, Noah. I’m going to take the judge’s advice. You should, too.”

  “He wants this case to settle so he can go on vacation. He doesn’t give a shit about my client.”

  “You think you’re the only one who cares that a child got hurt? You’re not. We’re all just looking at it more objectively than you are. Once you’ve lost your objectivity, it’s time to get out.”

  “That is such bullshit!” Olivia blurted. “I looked at your client’s stock last night. It’s dropped fifteen percent since this story broke. That’s what this is about. You don’t care about Joel.”

  We both looked at her and she blushed. To her credit, she didn’t back down this time. She held Bob’s gaze like a pit bull about to be unleashed on a rival.

  “I see it’s not just you who’s lost objectivity at your firm,” Bob said. “Take the damn money. Or I swear to you, they will get nothing, and that boy is still going to be dead.”

  29

  When I got back to the firm, everyone had gathered in the reception area. They clapped when I stepped through the doors. The Commandant brought out a cake with a money sign on it. People began shouting, “Speech, speech.”

  I still didn’t know exactly what had happened. I had gone into that hearing absolutely expecting to lose. I mumbled a few words about never giving up and fighting tooth and nail, then we cut into the cake. I slipped away to my office as soon as I could. I stared out the windows, the adrenaline still coursing through me and making me jittery.

  “Hey,” Olivia said from behind me. “Marty’s out there saying they’re gonna settle this case for at least three million. Is that true?”

  I shrugged. “They’ll make a big settlement offer. Winning the motion will be in the news, and the board of directors for Pharma-K will order Bob to make it go away as quickly and cheaply as he can. The families of the other two boys retained lawyers, too. They were waiting to see what happened today before filing suit, but they’ll do that now. They’ll get settlements, too.”

  “So I guess we won.”

  “Guess so.”

  “What did Rebecca say?”

  In the rush, I had completely forgotten about telling Rebecca. “I totally forgot. I’m going to head up there now.
”

  She hesitated, then leaned in and kissed me on the lips. It was soft and quick. Then she pulled away, tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, and left me there, my heart still pounding.

  I reached the hospital around noon, passing crowds of doctors and nurses eating lunch in the cafeteria. I took the elevators up to Joel’s room. Rebecca was outside, crying.

  “What’s wrong?” I said.

  “Joel stopped breathing. He stopped breathing, and they’re . . . and they’re . . .”

  I didn’t wait for a response. I went to his room and saw the doctors working on him. I stood there until someone pushed me aside and ran in. So many people were in there, crowded around his hospital bed, that I couldn’t actually see him. I sat in a chair next to Rebecca as she sobbed.

  An hour went by before we got word that Joel was breathing on his own and his blood pressure had stabilized. We weren’t allowed to see him yet. I stayed in the chair next to Rebecca and turned off my phone. Marty kept calling me. Bob had probably called the office in an effort to settle the case quickly. Bob could wait.

  I went to the cafeteria and hung out there for a while. I got a soda and sat at one of the tables, listening to people’s conversations, the way I had as a new lawyer looking for clients. But now I didn’t want them as clients, and I actually listened to what they were saying. Entire lifetimes were recounted there. People reminisced about things that had happened long ago, because the future was uncertain, and all they had was the past. A lot of pain was there, but I heard a lot of joy, too. I had never heard either when I was looking at them as potential clients.

  At one point, after I returned to the hallway, Rebecca fell asleep and put her head on my shoulder. We sat there like that until Dr. Corwin came to speak with us.

  “You can see him now, if you like,” he said.

  Rebecca got up and went into the room, but I stayed. I stood and faced the doctor squarely, watching as Rebecca ran in and sat down next to Joel, running her hand over his head.