Thriller Box Set One: The Subway-The Debt-Catastrophic

by Dustin Stevens

  “Withdrawn,” Ramirez said, raising his hands by his side and falling back to the defense table, not even waiting for Shane to get out his reason for objecting or for the judge to make a ruling on it.

  An open scowl crossed Shane’s face as he lowered himself back into his chair, looking up to notice the same expression on Judge Lynch’s face. In the witness chair Margie sat with her mouth agape, looking between Shane and Ramirez, trying to make sense of what just took place.

  “Redirect, Mr. Laszlo?”

  “Of course,” Shane said, rising and glaring at Reed and Ramirez, both avoiding his gaze. He walked out into the middle of the floor and fixed his attention on the jury.

  “Ms. Bentley,” he said, his voice masking a roiling anger just beneath the surface, “you mentioned a moment ago what your salary is each year. Would you mind telling the court what you do for a living?”

  Her voice came out from off to the right, but Shane didn’t turn to look at her. “I am a crane operator at the Washakie County Sawmill.”

  “And I imagine you underwent a great deal of training to learn to operate those cranes right?”

  “I had to attend a school and serve as an apprentice for six months before becoming a full-time operator.”

  Shane still kept looking at the jury box, making sure they were following him.

  “And I imagine if someone like, say, myself were to show up and start trying to operate one of them, bad things would happen, right?”

  Shane glanced over just long enough to see Margie’s eyes open wide, a look of shock on her face. “Moving around logs that weigh thousands of pounds? Yes, bad things would happen. Somebody would get hurt or worse.”

  “Get hurt or worse,” Shane said, nodding his head, looking at the jurors. He turned and walked up to the witness stand, his focus now on Margie.

  “Ms. Bentley, are you a doctor?”

  “No.”

  “Are you a lawyer?”

  “No.”

  “So a moment ago, you seemed shocked at the mere notion of me attempting to jump in and operate your crane, is that correct?”

  Margie nodded. “Very surprised, for sure.”

  Shane paused and looked over at the jury, his head angled towards Margie. “So is there any situation in which you would try to do a doctor’s job and diagnose a knee injury?”

  “No.”

  “How about a lawyer’s job, and decipher a college football scholarship?”

  Another twist of the head from Margie. “No.”

  “No further questions, Your Honor.”

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Shane nodded to the girl working the front desk, not bothering to stop and let her interrogate him about where he was going. The sun was already dropping beneath the cityscape outside, the ambient glow of Columbus just starting to rise above the horizon. Within an hour it would be dark, another day fast drawing to a close. Where he was going, he didn’t want to appear like he was in a hurry, but he didn’t have all night to spend in banal chitchat either.

  The heels of his dress shoes clicked against the tile floor as he stepped out of the stairwell and walked the length of the hall. At this late hour the mood in the ward was subdued, a third of the overhead lights already cut for the night. The sound of televisions playing could be heard emanating from some of the rooms as he passed, half-asleep individuals in various states of repair staring at the screen with listless disregard. A handful of orderlies moved between some of the rooms, collecting dinner pans and tending to patient needs, none of them even glancing Shane’s way as he passed.

  His journey ended at the last room in the hallway, a tiny space with a single bed, a couple of chairs, and a television mounted high on the wall above. Shane stopped just outside it as he approached, wrapping on the door with the back of his knuckles before entering.

  “Yeah?” a familiar voice called, pulling Shane into the room.

  In front of him, Heath sat upright in bed, a hospital gown covering the top half of his body, a stack of thin blankets doing the job for the lower half. His entire right arm was bound in a thick white cast, enveloping everything from his fingertips to his shoulder. A diagonal support disappeared under the gown near his ribs, holding the monstrosity up in the air.

  Seated beside the cast was a woman in her mid-fifties with thin blonde hair pulled back and clear blue eyes, not a trace of makeup to be seen. Her head turned as Shane entered, a look of disdain appearing on her features, her eyes drawing narrow.

  On the left side of the bed sat Abby, Heath’s hand encased in hers, embarrassment on her face, though she made no attempt to release the hold.

  “Hey there,” Shane said, walking in and standing at the end of the bed. He had shed his jacket and tie, rolled his sleeves to the elbows. Weeks of insomnia were starting to wear on him too, his eyes feelings puffy and heavy.

  “Hey,” Heath said, a pained smile on his face. “Abby here was just telling me about how you put it on them today.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that,” Shane said, a half smile in place. He shifted his attention from Heath to the woman beside him and extended a hand across the end of the bed. “Mrs. Wilson, I presume? Shane Laszlo, I’ve been working with Heath this summer.”

  Her hand was thin and cold, the grip firm as she returned the gesture. “Charmed, I’m sure,” she said, her eyes boring into his. She held the pose for a full moment before rising, releasing the shake and drawing her purse up from the ground beside her chair. “I’m going to run down to the cafeteria for some coffee, anybody need anything?”

  Shane retreated back to the end of the bed and stared down at it, waiting as Abby and Heath both said they were good and Mrs. Wilson departed. Once she was gone, he looked up at Heath, a questioning look on his face.

  “Don’t worry about her,” Heath said, waving a hand. “She’s a farmer’s wife, her bark is way worse than her bite.”

  “Still, that’s a pretty vicious bark,” Shane said, twisting at the waist to glance out into the hall. “Did I do something to offend her?”

  “Naw, right now she just needs something to lash out at. My folks wanted me to come back and run the farm the minute I was done with undergrad. I told them why I decided to go to law school, but they thought it was foolish, my time was better spent there.

  “This is pretty much their worst fear come true. My very first case, the truck explodes and I end up in the hospital, neither of which comes cheap. She’s angry, and right now all she has to be angry at is this Shane Laszlo she keeps hearing about.”

  Shane slid a low, shrilled whistle between his teeth. “So I could have come in here like Oprah singing songs and handing out gifts and it wouldn’t have mattered, huh?”

  Heath snorted, his head tilting to the side to look at Abby. “I don’t know if I’d go that far. Everybody loves Oprah, right?”

  Abby’s face turned a deep shade of red as she looked up at Shane and shrugged. “I’m a fan. Sorry.”

  A deep laugh rolled out of Shane, his body tilting backwards. “Don’t be, that’s fantastic.” He rocked forward onto the balls of his feet and extended a finger towards them, wagging it at their interlocked hands. “So tell me, was I the matchmaker or the idiot that hired lovebirds and never once realized it?”

  Heath’s head rolled back towards Shane, the smile still on his face. “Yes. You’re the idiot that played matchmaker and never once realized it.”

  “Ah,” Shane said, raising his eyebrows and nodding. “Well, at the very least, it looks like you’re doing well. A lot better than when they wheeled you out yesterday.”

  “Yeah,” Heath said, twisting his head at the neck to glance down at his arm. “Feeling a lot better than yesterday too. They said I should be able to go home the day after tomorrow, be healed up in six weeks or so.”

  “Good,” Shane said, nodding for emphasis, “that’s great news, it really is. Any word from the police? Why this happened?”

  Heath turned to Abby and motioned with chin towards
a small nightstand in the corner. “Not since this morning.”

  Beside him, Abby released her grip on his hands and rolled her chair over, taking up a thin manila folder and passing it to Shane. He accepted it and glanced at each of them in turn before opening it, turning it sideways to look at the photos inside.

  “I guess once they got the truck up and moved yesterday afternoon, they found that spray painted on the ground beneath it,” Heath said.

  Shane raised the photo so it was just a few inches from his nose. It was a glossy color print of charred asphalt, bits of metal and oil stains visible. Sprawled across it in neon green spray paint was the words stay away.

  “Stay away?” Shane said aloud, his face relaying how perplexed he felt. “From who? Or what?”

  “No idea,” Heath said, shaking his head. “I tried every way possible to think about how it could relate to us, but I can’t make it fit. No way a case like ours causes someone to climb under my truck and spray paint that on the ground.”

  The photos came back up to Shane’s face, his features squinted tight as he tried to pick out any little detail that might shed some light on the culprit. After several long seconds he lowered them and extended the folder back to Abby.

  “I’m sorry, but I’ve got nothing. Like you said, doesn’t seem to fit.”

  Abby replaced the folder on the table and wheeled herself back over to the bedside, her hands finding Heath’s again. Shane smiled at the interaction and shook his head, still wondering how his focus in the case had made him that blind for the past few weeks.

  “Alright guys, I hate to cut and run like this, but we’ve got the good doctor and Marty both on the stand tomorrow. I’ve got some more legwork to do tonight.”

  “Do you need me to go with you?” Abby asked, her voice sounding sincere, but the look on her face relaying she had no intention of leaving.

  Shane smiled at the offer and stepped back from the bed, peeking his head out into the hallway. “No, thank you, but unless I’m mistaken, you guys still have a few minutes left before Mrs. Wilson gets back. Consider them a gift from your boss.”

  Heath and Abby both put on matching smiles as Shane excused himself, pulling the door shut behind him. For a moment he stood with his back pressed against it, smiling at the first bit of normality he’d witnessed in weeks, before pushing himself down the hallway and extracting the cell phone from his pocket.

  Christine answered on the first ring.

  “Hey, you got an hour? I need to step away for a bit.”

  Chapter Forty-Three

  For the first time in the entire course of the trial, the roles were reversed. No longer was the person on the stand a sweating, nervous wreck, an individual unaccustomed to having a hundred faces turned their way, withering under their combined stares. No longer was their counselor a calming presence, a guiding hand to help them navigate the situation.

  Today, the steady hand was Manningham, a veritable rock, nothing short of an oak tree as he sat on the stand fielding Reed’s questions. One by one they came flying in, each a bit more outrageous in the direction they were going, a bit more salacious in the insinuations they were laden with.

  Sitting on the outside, watching the scene unfold with a growing sense of rage, an underlying current of indignation, was Shane.

  The direct examination had gone as expected, beginning with Manningham discussing how he was approached to perform the surgery because of his expertise in knee replacements. The discussion went on to include that he had never used the KnightRunner implant before, had no prior experience with its successes or failures. Shane concluded his questioning with both of the surgeries to Tyler Bentley, how well the first one had gone, and how the leg was beyond saving in the second.

  Despite everything that Manningham said, damning the SynTronic product and being quite upset at having to remove Tyler’s leg, Reed came out firing. It only took a matter of seconds for Shane to ascertain that part of the defense was to attribute the fault to Manningham, blaming the outcome on poor surgical work and not on a cut-rate product.

  The moment Shane put together in his mind where Reed meant to take the line of questioning, a white flame started to grow within him. Years of watching his mother had taught him to keep his face impassive, a blank canvas that only looked up to watch the proceedings, back down to take notes. Every other part of him seethed with anger, a coiling and recoiling of tension and rage that ebbed and flowed to the surface, dying for the chance to spring forward and save his witness.

  Despite his inclination to do just that, by every appearance Manningham needed no saving. Prior to trial he told Shane that he had testified in over a dozen cases before, always as an expert and never a material witness, but that sitting in the chair did not bother him. He was a man used to performing eighteen hour surgeries under intense lights and heavy lead gowns, answering questions from an old man in a suit was not a concern.

  For his part, Reed did his best to contradict that statement, coming after Manningham with an aggression he had not yet employed over the first week of trial. Abandoning his statuesque position in the middle of the courtroom, he opted for a back and forth approach, retreating to the jury whenever Manningham spoke, rushing towards him whenever he asked a question.

  To Shane, the movement was recognized as an attempt to add emphasis to his question, to make them more memorable by overdramatizing. What he surmised, what he hoped, everybody else in the courtroom took from it was a man realizing the case was getting away from him.

  “Dr. Manningham,” Reed said, pacing in the middle of the room, his fingers laced in front of another in his unending collection of red ties, “how long have you been performing knee replacement surgeries?”

  Manningham looked back at him, his eyes unblinking, his face void of sweat or even the slightest wrinkle of apprehension. “I performed my first full replacement in my fourth year of residency, so three years as a resident, ten years as a staff physician, and the last four as an attending. Seventeen years in all.”

  “I didn’t ask for the resume,” Reed said, pacing back and forth, “impressive though it may be. Tell me doctor, in those seventeen years, how many knee replacements, ballpark, would you say you’ve done?”

  “Three hundred and forty-three.”

  The number spun Reed back to face him, a look of shock on his features. “Three hundred and forty-three? Exactly?”

  “Yes, that is correct,” Manningham said, shifting his head to stare back.

  Reed nodded twice, collecting himself, before beginning yet another slow march on the stand. “And of those three hundred and forty-three, how many of those dealt with a shattered kneecap?”

  “A fair many, maybe a quarter or so.”

  “Maybe a quarter or so? So, eight-five?”

  Manningham nodded. “I don’t have that particular figure right on hand, but it sounds about right. I’ll be more than happy to look it up and get back to you if you’d like.”

  Reed raised a hand, twisting it at the wrist. “That won’t be necessary doctor. You say eighty-five, that is a number we can work with.

  “Now, of those eight-five, how many had a broken tibia also?”

  A twist of the head as Manningham debated a number in his mind. “The tibia is one of the easier bones in the body to break, narrow, with a long surface area. Probably two-thirds, if not a few more.”

  “So, perhaps fifty-five or so?” Reed asked, creeping up on the stand, his fingers pulling back so just the tips touched together in front of him.

  “Objection, Your Honor,” Shane said, pushing his seat back and rising to his feet, stopping Reed in his march on the stand. “Permission to approach?”

  “You may,” Judge Lynch said, waving Shane forward with his index finger.

  Reed remained rooted in place, a look of incredulity on his face that he was being challenged, waiting until Shane was almost to the bench before shifting himself forward and approaching as well. The look remained on his face as he moved, his
gaze boring into Shane.

  Shane ignored him.

  “Your Honor, Dr. Manningham is not on trial here. He can’t possibly be asked to remember the exact statistics of all three hundred and forty-three knee replacements he has performed over a seventeen year period.”

  Judge Lynch nodded his understanding, shifting his eyes to Reed, the glasses still perched on the end of his nose beneath them.

  “Your Honor, Dr. Manningham has been called to the stand as a material witness and an active participant whose actions may have had a direct impact on how this situation played out. I am trying to ascertain the severity of this case in particular and if that may have had some bearing on the outcome.”

  The judge exhaled, pushing a mighty gust of air out through his nostrils. He looked from Shane to Reed and back again, his moustache twitching as he considered the objection.

  “I’m going to overrule this one, but your objection is noted. Mr. Reed, I would suggest you bring this line of questioning back to the matter at hand, and fast.”

  “Yes, Your Honor,” Reed said, bowing his head in acknowledgment. He cast a sideways glance at Shane as they departed, resuming his stance in the middle of the floor.

  Once more Shane ignored him, his gaze on the front row as he returned to his seat. There, Margie and Abby both stared back, faces drawn, not quite blank. Beside them Prescott sat with a look that relayed approval, a touch of pride mixed in around the edges.

  Tyler leaned over as Shane took his seat, lowering his voice to just a whisper, twisting his body so as to speak over his shoulder. “What was that about?”

  “Interrupting his flow,” Shane said, his voice just as quiet. “Protecting our witness.”

  “So, Dr. Manningham,” Reed began anew in the middle of the floor, resuming his previous stance before the jury. “We were down to the number fifty-five. Fifty-five of an original three hundred and forty three that had both a shattered kneecap and a broken tibia.

  “Might I ask, how many of those also had a broken fibula?”