The Associate

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by Rachel Sinclair


  “I guess so, yes.”

  “So, if somebody kidnapped your child for ransom, and you refused the ransom, and the kidnapper killed your child, it would be your fault for not paying the ransom. Is that what you’re saying?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Then what is the difference, here? You tried to blackmail your child, she refused the blackmail, and you blamed her for refusing. How is that different than the kidnapper blaming you for refusing the ransom?”

  “I guess it’s not.” He straightened up his spine and looked me square in the eyes. He was going to try to intimidate me, because he was a bully, but I wasn’t going to allow that.

  I turned my back and looked at the jury while I asked my next question. I had a theory on what happened, and I wanted to see what he said about it. “Mr. McMason, were you aware that your child, Shelly, was working with your rival, Andrew McMason, and feeding him confidential information about your business?”

  I turned back around and saw his face. His dead eyes were focused on me, and he looked like he wanted to kill me. I was bluffing him, but he didn’t know that. He didn’t know that I didn’t actually have any information backing up this question. If he lied, then I didn’t have a way to prove that he was lying.

  At the same time, I knew that I was onto something. I knew that Shelly was communicating with Wells, and Wells was paying her richly, because she had inside information about her father’s business. She was a hacker, and it would have been not difficult, at all, for her to get into her father’s confidential files. It wouldn’t have been hard for her to give Wells confidential drug formulas, or information about Argyros’ Pharmaceuticals’ financials, or anything else. She was the ultimate corporate spy for Wells Armstrong.

  I had a strong hunch about that, and I also had a strong hunch that Andrew McMason was behind the downfall of Armstrong Pharmaceuticals. Armstrong Pharmaceuticals had seen its stock price crash because of the media fallout behind a drug failure, specifically the fact that some of its chemotherapy drugs were tainted with chemicals that made the drugs less effective. But what really did the company in was the media fallout. It was the screaming headlines, day after day, about the tainted chemo drugs. The newspaper made this look like a huge scandal, when, in all actuality, it was simply a mistake. I did my research on the chemotherapy “scandal” and it was caused by lax oversight by one of the regulators within the company. It could happen to any company, really, and nobody actually died from these tainted drugs. People who received these drugs just had to increase their dosage to get the same effectiveness as before.

  Andrew McMason had clout with the newspaper. That was demonstrated with Lena Williams’ testimony – she stated that she sent Shelly on that dangerous assignment because Andrew McMason, Shelly’s father, wanted her to. That also looked suspicious to me.

  No, it didn’t just look suspicious to me.

  It looked like vengeance to me.

  Andrew was still staring at me, still looking like he wanted to crush me like a particularly vile and loathsome bug. But he wasn’t saying a word.

  “I plead the Fifth,” he finally said.

  “Your honor, I would ask you to direct this witness to answer this question. Whether or not somebody else was working with his daughter to undermine his business is not going to self-incriminate him.” I had to admit that Wells had a reason to plead the Fifth on this particular question, because he was open to liability for corporate espionage. But Andrew would have been the victim in this scheme, not the perpetrator. I couldn’t see where self-incrimination would lie in this particular scenario for Andrew.

  “Counselor is correct,” Judge Clarion said. “I fail to see how you being a victim of something like corporate espionage, not the perpetrator, would involve self-incrimination. Please answer the question.”

  He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Yes.” That was all he said.

  “Yes, you knew that your daughter was working with your chief rival, Wells Armstrong, to undermine you with confidential information that she obtained about your business?”

  “Yes. I knew that. I never gave her information about our business. She hacked into my business’ database and she stole highly valuable blueprints for some upcoming drugs that we were going to submit to the FDA early next year. She gave him information about the chemical compounds and interactions and the uses for these drugs.” He glared at me. “But I took care of that. I tamped that down.”

  “You took care of that,” I said. “You mean, you manipulated the Kansas City Star into running article after article about an allegedly tainted chemotherapy drug that Armstrong Pharmaceutical was producing. Isn’t that how you took care of Armstrong? You made sure that the stock tanked because the public was fooled into being afraid of taking their drugs, which, in turn, forced Wells out of his position? Isn’t that how you deal with your rivals? By bullying them into submission?”

  He crossed his arms in front of him. “That wasn’t bullying, that was telling the truth. His company actually was producing tainted chemotherapy drugs, and I felt that the public should know.”

  “The public should know? Mr. McMason, is your company, Argyros Pharmaceuticals, pristine?”

  “Yes.”

  “You mean that your company has never produced a drug that turned out to have harmful side-effects? Or a drug that had to be pulled from the market?” I knew the answer to that question. Argyros Pharmaceuticals had actually produced a drug several years back that had to be pulled from the market after it was discovered that it caused cardiac arrest in many of the people who took it. It was supposed to be a cure for depression, but it caused death. Argyros was forced to recall the drug, but, since Argyros had an excellent crisis manager, they were able to survive. The Star didn’t run continuous front-page articles about this incident like they did for Armstrong, and that made all the difference.

  “Yes,” he said, his teeth gritted. “Of course, our company had made some mistakes. Every company does. No company is perfect.”

  “Yet you made sure that the one mistake that Armstrong made, and it wasn’t all that serious of a mistake, was blown up in the media, didn’t you? You got your revenge on Wells for undermining your company, for stealing your trade secrets, didn’t you?”

  “No. I had nothing to do with that.”

  “You didn’t? Are you telling the court that you didn’t have a thing to do with the front page stories that ran about that tainted drug, day after day, in the Star?”

  “That’s right. I don’t have influence like that.”

  “You don’t? Then why did Lena Williams, who is a prominent editor for The Star testify in court that you had profound influence over the paper? She testified that she sent your daughter on a dangerous assignment because you asked her to do so. Sounds like you have influence to me.”

  “I did ask that Shelly take that assignment, but that doesn’t mean that I have editorial influence over at the paper.”

  “Oh, so you did ask Lena to make sure that Shelly took a dangerous assignment. With a dangerous clan. Isn’t it true that you specifically asked for that because you wanted there to be a fall guy for when you killed Shelly?”

  He narrowed his eyes and crossed his arms. “I resent your insinuation that I would do that to my own daughter.”

  “Oh, so it’s a coincidence that Shelly was killed, and my client, Erik Gregorian, was charged with her murder? You arranged for Shelly to work for Erik because you wanted Erik to be the one who would take the fall for killing her. That’s pretty brilliant chess-playing right there, but it wasn’t brilliant enough, was it?”

  “I didn’t kill her.”

  “Mr. McMason, what did Shelly call you?”

  “Dad or father.”

  “She didn’t call you Andrew? I’ll remind you that you are under oath, and I have witnesses lined up who were around the two of you.”

  He looked out the window and then looked back at me, daggers in his eyes. “Yes. She called me Andrew
.”

  “Yet she called her mother, Emma, ‘mom,’ isn’t that right?”

  “She was closer with her mother than she was with me.”

  “Wasn’t she closer to her mother because her mother never judged her?”

  “Emma was always too lenient with our daughter. That was why she grew up as spoiled as she was.”

  “By lenient you mean that your wife allowed Shelly to love who she wanted to love, right?”

  “Yes. Emma approved of Yasin. I didn’t. I told you why, and I feel that I had a good reason to stop that relationship.”

  “And leniency also meant that Emma didn’t actually want to have Shelly killed, isn’t that right?”

  “Of course she didn’t want to have Shelly killed.” He shook his head. “Emma loved our daughter, as did I.”

  “Did you know that Shelly was pregnant with a baby? It was either the child of Yasin Ahmadi, or possibly my client Erik, but, either way, that baby was going to be half-brown and had a fifty-fifty chance of being the child of a Muslim. I’ll bet that really chapped your hide, didn’t it? Didn’t it?”

  He looked away again, and I knew that he knew all about the baby. And I suddenly knew the real reason why Shelly got an abortion. “Yes, I knew that she was pregnant with a filthy child,” he spat.

  I had to suppress a smile. He was becoming unhinged, as white supremacists often do. They can only hide behind their “purity” excuse for so long until they have to come right out and say what is on their minds.

  “And you actually forced her to have an abortion, didn’t you? You beat her up and you forced her to kill her own child, didn’t you? Didn’t you?”

  “She wasn’t going to soil our bloodline with a child that belonged to either Yasin or Erik.” He crossed his arms in front of him. “Again, you wouldn’t understand, but the McMason blood line has been pure all the way down the line. It is going to remain that way.”

  “You know, that’s funny,” I said. “Your name is McMason. That’s Irish, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. Yes, it is.”

  “Do you know that, around the turn of the century, the Irish were the ones who were considered filthy?”

  “Objection,” Nick said. “I fail to see the relevance of this particular question.”

  “Withdrawn,” I said. “I have nothing further for this filthy witness.” I glared at him and sat down.

  I looked at the judge, who was shaking his head at my “filthy” comment, but he didn’t move to sanction me. Something told me that he found Mr. McMason just as abhorrent as I did.

  I was quite sure that the jury felt the same way. I could see it in their faces. They were disgusted with this man. And they knew that he was more than capable of murdering his own daughter.

  I did my job.

  Chapter 28

  I called several more witnesses, none of whom were as consequential as Andrew McMason.

  Then it was finally time for closing arguments.

  Nick went first.

  “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” he began. “You heard the evidence in this case. You heard it. Now, I’ll admit that the attorneys for the defendant did an excellent job of putting up smokescreens. That’s what defense attorneys do. They muddy the water with this suspect or that, so that you, the jury, do not know what to believe. Who to believe. Well, I’m here to tell you that you have to believe one thing, and that is that Erik Gregorian murdered Shelly McMason in cold blood. In cold blood.”

  “Now, you heard the evidence. You heard it. You heard that not only was Shelly about to uncover the evil doings of his organization, the Gregorian clan, which is a part of a larger organization out in Los Angeles called the Armenian Power, but that Erik was in love with Shelly and she did not return his affection. She was in love with Yasin Ahmadi, not Erik Gregorian, and Mr. Gregorian couldn’t stand that. He couldn’t stand that. That alone would give him motive to kill Shelly, but when he found out that she was about to expose him and his men to public scrutiny…” He shook his head. “That meant that it was time to get Shelly out of the way. It was time to make sure that she was permanently silenced. Because one thing is for sure – if she would have lived to publish the stories that she was working on about the clan, public outcry would have necessitated that the clan would have to be stopped in any way possible. Any way possible.”

  He paced around. “Now, the defense counsel would have you believe that maybe Wells Armstrong killed Shelly because who knows why, or perhaps Yasin might have killed her when he found out that Shelly was seeing Wells Armstrong and Erik Gregorian behind his back. Or, God forbid, Andrew McMason would kill his own daughter. His own daughter, ladies and gentlemen. His own flesh and blood. He gave Shelly life, and defense counsel would like for you to believe that he would take it away. Now, I know that Mr. McMason wasn’t the most attractive soul in the world. He wouldn’t win father of the year. Yes, you could even say that he is a white supremacist. I know that’s what you’re thinking, so I’ll just say it for you. Andrew McMason wouldn’t win father of the year, and he also wouldn’t win man of the year, either. He’s distasteful and disrespectful and is not anybody’s idea of a good person.”

  “But a killer? Seriously? Just because the man doesn’t like people who aren’t members of his own race doesn’t mean that he is a killer. And it certainly doesn’t mean that he would kill his own flesh and blood.”

  “As for the other men who might have been suspects in Ms. McMason’s murder, according to the defense counsel, they are even more implausible than Mr. McMason. Wells Armstrong held no animus for Shelly, nor did he have a reason to kill her. He had a business relationship with her, nothing more and nothing less. And Yasin Ahmadi loved Shelly. You saw him on the stand. He was a broken man about Shelly’s death. A broken man.” Nick shook his head. “He didn’t kill her.”

  “No, ladies and gentlemen, the killer is sitting right here in this courtroom. His name is Erik Gregorian, and he had not one but two reasons to kill Shelly McMason. I urge you to find Mr. Gregorian guilty of murder in the first degree. Thank you very much for your time and service.” He put his fingers to his lips. “Justice for Shelly. Justice for Shelly.”

  And he sat down.

  I stood up and approached the jury. “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m not going to bore you with a long recitation of what the evidence in this trial showed. You saw the witnesses with your own eyes. You did. Yes, my client isn’t an angel. He is the head of an organization that is less than legal and less than ethical. You know that. But I’ll tell you one thing – the prosecutor in this case has the burden of proof. The burden of proof was on him to show you that my client killed Shelly. And he didn’t meet that burden in any way, shape or form.”

  “Think about it. He didn’t produce any eyewitness to say that my client wanted Shelly dead. There were no fingerprints on the brake line in Shelly’s car. He did produce a guy who said that Shelly and my client fought a lot, but who doesn’t fight? Seriously. Their fights weren’t physical, nobody got hurt and Erik never openly threatened Shelly. So what? They fought.” I shrugged my shoulders. “So what?”

  “Now, I will admit that Shelly was about to run an exposé in the newspaper about what she found out about Erik’s clan. But you heard the testimony of Lena. That expose is going to go ahead and run in the paper. It’s running in the spring. So Erik literally had nothing to gain by killing Shelly. The damage was done, so to speak. She had her notes and the story will go ahead as planned. So, if you think about it, my client didn’t have a real motive to kill Shelly.”

  “Now, Andrew McMason….” I shook my head. “He’s another story, ladies and gentlemen. He had ample reason to want Shelly dead. Number one, she apparently had a taste for the wrong kinds of people. At least, in his book. By that, I mean that Shelly liked members of a different race. Her fiancé, Yasin Ahmadi, is an Iraqi man, the son of Iraqi refugees, and Muslim. He’s modern and you met him on the stand. A very upstanding man. Studying to be a doctor. Handsome, mannerly
, intelligent and loved Shelly. Yet, he is not the right color for Mr. McMason, and he’s not the right religion. Then there is my client.” I gestured to Erik. “As you can see, he’s also not the right color for Mr. McMason. His skin is also too dark. He’s not Muslim, but he’s not exactly Caucasian, and his last name is too foreign. So, as far as Andrew McMason is concerned, Shelly was 0-2 in the man department. And she was determined to one day marry Yasin. That would never do in Andrew’s world. No, Shelly must never marry a man like Yasin. She must never soil his bloodline like that. You heard him. He referred to Shelly’s unborn child as ‘filthy.’ Filthy. That’s the word that Hitler used to describe the Jews. Filthy. Filthy.”

  “So, yes, ladies and gentlemen. Shelly was going to marry a man who was going to father, with Shelly, a half-brown baby who was no-doubt going to be raised Muslim. Andrew McMason’s worst nightmare. There’s motive number one for killing Shelly. Motive number two? The fact that Shelly was conducting corporate espionage on Andrew’s company, in favor of his rival, Armstrong Pharmaceuticals. That made her dangerous. She was a hacker, which meant that she had access to Argyros’ database. That also meant that she had access to all of Argyros’ trade secrets. She was selling these secrets to Wells Armstrong, but this might have just been the beginning. Wells Armstrong was possibly just the first person who Shelly was willing to deal with, in an effort to undermine her hated father’s company. She was very dangerous to Argyros’ bottom line. Extremely dangerous.”

  “So, you have a daughter who was a hacker, who was willing to use those hacking skills to undermine her father’s business. Who knows? She might have eventually brought her father’s business down with her hacking skills. That’s what hackers do. They target companies and steal their secrets and put worms in their computers and do all kinds of nefarious things. If they don’t like you, you better watch out. Shelly didn’t like Argyros. She didn’t like that company because she absolutely hated the CEO. Her father forced her to have an abortion and tried to force her to stop seeing Yasin. She hated her father, and she was going to do whatever it took to bring him down. And he wasn’t going to let her do that. So, he killed her. Simple as that.”

 

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