Blood Brothers

by Rick Acker

“One last question, Ms. Corbin. Aren’t you married to that pathetic lawyer over there, who’s so desperate that he’s putting his pretty little wife on the stand to try to save his case?”

  Noelle smiled and got her mace out of her purse. “I’m sorry, Mr. Siwell, I couldn’t hear that last question. Could you come a little closer and ask it again?”

  Ben and Sergei laughed. “If I actually thought you might get to mace Bert, I would put you on the stand,” said Ben. He looked at his watch. “We’ve got to get going. Sergei and I have to meet Gunnar and Henrik at the Italian Village in fifteen minutes.”

  “Eric and I will see you at home,” said Noelle. “How late do you think you’ll be?”

  “Based on our last three dinner meetings, I’m guessing that we’ll be done by nine or nine thirty, so I should be home around ten.”

  “And then you’ll have to do more work to get ready for tomorrow, right?” she asked.

  He yawned. “Unfortunately, yeah. I don’t know when I’ll actually get to bed.”

  “You’ve been getting about four hours of sleep a night, even when Eric cooperates. How many more of these things is Gunnar going to schedule?”

  “I think he’s trying to put together one more meeting after tonight, but that will be it.” He smiled. “I’ll bet it makes you miss the old days when I used to sleep until eight and then watch ESPN or the History Channel until noon.”

  “Let me think about that for a second. No.”

  At eight thirty the next morning, Dr. Daruka Reddy was pulling into the Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals parking lot when his BlackBerry buzzed at his hip. He eased into his parking place and pulled the device out of its holster. There was a red-flagged message from Dr. Corrigan to him and Dr. Black that read: Neurostim Phase I participant just died. Meeting in my office to discuss at 8:45.

  Dr. Reddy swore and hit the steering wheel with his fist. This was very bad news. If there was even the remotest chance that the death had any connection to the drug, the FDA was virtually certain to shut down their clinical trials indefinitely. He’d been on the Neurostim research-and-development team for almost two years, and it was his ticket to either a big promotion in the company or a cushy job someplace else. But if Neurostim turned into a black eye for the company, it could be a career killer.

  He got out of his car and hurried up to Dr. Corrigan’s office. He walked in at 8:40 and found Dr. Black already there. “Have a seat,” said Dr. Corrigan. Sharp lines of concern showed on her forehead and at the corners of her mouth, accentuating her somewhat severe, no-nonsense demeanor. “When I got in this morning there was a voice mail and an e-mail waiting for me from UCLA Medical Center. They admitted a David Lee yesterday afternoon. He was the med student from Phase I. He arrived in the emergency room unresponsive and with no heartbeat. They declared him dead an hour later.”

  “What happened to him?” Dr. Black asked.

  “He got into a fight in a bar, and one of the bouncers Tasered him. He collapsed, and by the time the police got there, he had no pulse and wasn’t breathing. UCLA is doing an autopsy now, and they promised to send us a copy of the results. They wanted the chemical profiles for Neurostim and its metabolites so they could look for them in his blood and tissues.”

  “But there won’t be any Neurostim in him,” objected Dr. Reddy. “Phase I ended two months ago. His body would have been clean two weeks after his last dose, three weeks maximum.” He leaned forward as he spoke and waved his finger authoritatively. “There are very likely other compounds in his body. He was in a bar, so there is likely alcohol. He is a medical student, so there is likely caffeine or other stimulants. Maybe there is cocaine or heroin or some other narcotic too. I saw a study a few months ago about the interaction of illegal drugs and Tasers. The authors examined all deaths in which a Taser was implicated and found that high doses of illegal drugs were the primary cause of most deaths.

  “His body probably has all sorts of chemicals in it. What if some inexperienced lab tech finds a compound that looks similar to something from Neurostim and puts ‘significant levels of Neurostim’ in the report? The FDA will shut down our clinical-testing program like this.” He snapped his fingers. “We should not give them the Neurostim profiles. We should ask for tissue samples and run our own tests.”

  Dr. Corrigan pressed her lips together into a grim line as Dr. Reddy spoke, but said nothing.

  Dr. Black cleared his throat. “Daruka has an interesting point,” he ventured.

  “Yes, he does,” said Dr. Corrigan. “We can’t really withhold the profiles, because there are a few pieces of information I haven’t told you yet. UCLA knew he was part of Phase I, because our former intern, Kim Young, told them. He was her boyfriend, and she was in the bar when he was Tasered. Kim also told the UCLA emergency-room staff that she believed Mr. Lee had taken large doses of Neurostim recently.”

  All at once, the puzzle pieces fit together in Dr. Reddy’s brain. The man who’d blackmailed him had known about his personal life and about Neurostim. Kim knew about both and probably gossiped with her boyfriend. In fact, he had a vague memory of her being the one who’d suggested Lee for Phase I. And the post-office box to which he’d mailed the box of drugs had been in LA.

  He stared at Dr. Corrigan with a fixed, stunned gaze. Did she know? His ears rang and he felt paralyzed. Sweat began forming on his forehead and hands.

  “But how did he get it?” asked Dr. Black. He glanced at Dr. Reddy. “Hey, are you okay?”

  “I . . . I’m fine,” he stammered. “I just . . . This is a terrible development. Terrible.”

  “It is,” agreed Dr. Corrigan, nodding her head gravely. “I’m as shocked as you are. We don’t know where he got the drug, but the police are grilling Kim right now. She’s a sweet girl, and I don’t want to jump to any conclusions about her, but . . .”

  Dr. Reddy took a deep breath and wiped his hands on his pants. “It’s hard to believe she would put the entire company at risk just to steal some drugs for her boyfriend,” he said, shaking his head sadly. “How terribly irresponsible.”

  “Do we tell Karl?” asked Dr. Black.

  “I’d like your feedback on that before I make a decision,” said Dr. Corrigan. “What do each of you think?”

  “Well, he’s got a lot on his mind with that trial,” said Dr. Black. “Do we really need to say anything to him right now?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Dr. Reddy. “Also, we don’t know enough to say anything. Better to wait until we hear from UCLA.”

  Dr. Corrigan nodded. “I need to tell him that one of our Phase I participants died and that an autopsy is being done. Anything more is unnecessary at this point. It would simply worry and distract him. There’s nothing any of us can do until the autopsy results come back, in any event. I will ask for tissue samples so that we can perform our own parallel tests, though.”

  Karl was not the last witness to testify, but he was the last one to affect the dynamics of the trial. After the last witness left the stand and the lawyers had their final squabble about the evidence, Judge Reilly informed the jurors that it was time for closing arguments.

  Ben stood up from his table and walked up to the podium with several sheets of scrawled notes. There were dark circles under his eyes, and his face was pale and drawn. His voice, however, remained bright and lively. “Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. At the beginning of this trial, I asked you to keep a question in your minds as you listened to the evidence: Do you trust Karl Bjornsen? Do you trust him with a three-hundred-million-dollar company? Do you trust him with an incredibly powerful drug that affects the brain?

  “I told you that the evidence would show that he is an embezzler, and it has. You heard witness after witness, from Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals, testify that there were two sets of books and that they showed fraud had been committed. By whom? The Bjornsen folks were a little vague on that.

  “Could it have been Karl Bjornsen? He denied it, of course, but the rest of the witnesses put on by
Mr. Siwell didn’t. All they said was that someone in Norway was involved and that there was a fire that destroyed all the evidence. But it didn’t. It didn’t destroy those damning documents in Karl Bjornsen’s own files. He has a convoluted story to explain how those got there, how they were planted by a brilliant, bold, and lucky criminal in Norway with a day job as a warehouse accountant. But there’s a much simpler—and more believable—explanation: those documents were in Karl Bjornsen’s files because he put them there.

  “And if those investigators from Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals really wanted to know what the destroyed documents showed, why didn’t they ask Henrik Haugeland? He had been an accountant at Bjornsen Norge for nearly three decades. He knew its books. Moreover, he knew exactly what those destroyed documents showed. They showed that someone had been embezzling money from Bjornsen Norge and using it to pay for extravagant vacations and gifts for the very people who put Karl Bjornsen in charge of Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals.

  “Now unfortunately, just as Mr. Haugeland finished going through those documents—while he and his team were copying them, in fact—someone apparently got wind of what they were doing, broke into the building, shot everyone they could find, and burned all the records. Someone wanted very much to hide what those records showed, and it’s only by the grace of God and the courage of Henrik Haugeland that they failed and that no one died. You may not have the documents in front of you, but you have Mr. Haugeland’s testimony about them. He sat right there”—Ben pointed to the witness stand—“and answered the hardest questions Mr. Siwell could throw at him. When Judge Reilly gives you your instructions in a few minutes, he’s going to tell you that you can take the credibility of the witnesses into account. I think you’ll agree with me that no witness who testified during this trial was more credible than Henrik Haugeland.” Two jurors nodded slightly and one smiled.

  “A few words about the fire and shooting. We now know that Karl Bjornsen and Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals weren’t responsible, even though circumstantial evidence pointed to them. Good. It’s a relief to my client and me to know that they didn’t commit those brutal attacks. But it really doesn’t have anything to do with this lawsuit. Just because Karl Bjornsen didn’t commit those crimes doesn’t mean he didn’t commit any crimes. I’m pretty sure he had nothing to do with the assassinations of John F. Kennedy or Martin Luther King Jr., but that doesn’t mean he didn’t embezzle money or commit bribery.

  “In fact, the evidence shows that he did exactly that. He wanted control of Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals, and he was willing to break the law to get it. He was willing to use Bjornsen Norge as his personal slush fund. He was willing to bribe shareholders and directors. He was willing to falsify the company’s financial documents to hide what he had done.

  “Karl Bjornsen violated his trust as an officer and director of Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals. It is time for him to go. And on his way out the door, he should hand back the six million dollars he stole. I ask you to enter a verdict requiring him to return that money. And on the section of the form titled ‘Special Interrogatories,’ I ask you to answer yes to the question asking whether he committed serious misconduct, and no to the one asking whether he should be allowed to continue to hold leadership posts in Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals.”

  Ben paused and took a step away from the podium and toward the jury box. “Thank you,” he said as he swept his eyes over the jury, looking each juror in the eye for an instant. “Thank you for your time and for your attention throughout this complex—and occasionally dull—trial. You sat patiently while Mr. Siwell and I put on our evidence and made our arguments. Now it is our turn to sit nervously while you decide which of us is right.” Smiles from a few jurors. “And I have every confidence that you will reach the right decision, a decision in favor of Gunnar Bjornsen.”

  Ben sat down and Siwell took his place as two paralegals quickly set up a projection screen opposite the jury. A projector and laptop already lay humming softly on their counsel table. Siwell laid a neatly organized binder on the podium and put a wireless computer mouse next to it. “Mr. Corbin may be nervous, but I’m not,” he said as he opened the binder. “Why not? Because I saw and heard the same evidence you did and I know that there’s only one verdict it can support—a verdict for Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals and Karl Bjornsen.

  “I’m going to start by talking about the half of the case Mr. Corbin didn’t mention, probably because he had nothing to say. This is a case about trade-secret theft.” He clicked his mouse and the words “Gunnar Bjornsen Admits He Stole Trade Secrets” appeared on the screen under a video still of Gunnar, taken from his deposition testimony. Ben winced internally. Siwell had picked a good picture. Gunnar glared defensively at the camera, his face red and his mouth set in an angry line. “The evidence is undisputed. You heard Gunnar Bjornsen himself admit that he developed the formula for Neurostim while working for Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals. You heard him admit that the formula was both secret and valuable. And you heard him admit that he took it with him when he left. In short, you heard him admit every single element you’ll need to find in order to find him liable for stealing Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals’ trade secrets.

  “The only question left for you to decide is the amount Gunnar Bjornsen should have to pay the company he robbed. He thinks he shouldn’t have to pay anything. He claims that his actions didn’t do any harm to his employer, but that’s not what the evidence showed. I won’t rehash all of the economic analysis you heard yesterday and this morning, but you heard that the drop in Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals’ stock price, combined with delays in its ability to bring Neurostim to market, have cost the company over two hundred million dollars. Two hundred million dollars. That’s how much Gunnar Bjornsen cost the company through his wrongdoing. But that’s not how much the company is asking you to award.”

  He clicked the mouse again and “$100 Million = Less Than Half the Cost of Gunnar Bjornsen’s Theft” appeared on the screen. “In light of Gunnar Bjornsen’s long years of service and his many contributions, the company asks that he pay for less than half the damage he caused. I ask that you award Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals one hundred million dollars.

  “Mr. Corbin thinks Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals should be deprived of its leader at this crucial juncture, just as it is developing a blockbuster drug. The company’s directors don’t want that. They elected Karl Bjornsen just a few months ago, and they can elect someone new anytime they choose. The company’s shareholders don’t want it either; less than a year ago, they elected the directors who elected Karl Bjornsen. The only one who wants him out—other than the company’s competitors—is Gunnar Bjornsen.

  “I think we all know the real reason why Gunnar wants to see Karl forced out on the street. He had wanted Karl to come crawling to him and that didn’t happen. He had wanted to be the alpha dog, the undisputed head of Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals, but that didn’t happen either. In fact, the company’s directors chose Karl to lead the company instead of Gunnar.

  “So what did Gunnar do? He left the company and took the Neurostim formula with him. He held it hostage and tried to use it to blackmail the company into giving him Karl’s job. That also didn’t work—the company called his bluff and sued him to make him give back the formula.

  “Gunnar knew he couldn’t defend his actions, so he did what came naturally for him by this point: he launched another unjustified attack on his brother. He accused Karl of committing a number of very serious crimes, with virtually no evidence. Partway through this trial, he was forced to retract his most outrageous allegations—that Karl had arranged attempted murder and arson. And you heard what happened when Mr. Corbin questioned Karl about the rest of these imaginary crimes—his entire theory blew apart like a ripe tomato hitting a brick wall.” A scattering of smiles and chuckles from the jury, but one well-dressed older woman rolled her eyes.

  “To be fair to both Gunnar and his lawyer, crimes were committed and they did stumble across evidence of those crimes. But no matter how hard the
y try, they can’t pin those crimes on Karl. Mr. Corbin thinks it’s unbelievable that extortionists would try to plant incriminating documents in the files of an executive they wanted to blackmail. I don’t know about you, but that makes perfect sense to me. And if you listened closely, you will have noticed that Mr. Corbin and Gunnar never denied that someone was trying to blackmail Karl. That’s because they know it’s true. So since we know that Karl was the target of a blackmail plot, is it really unbelievable that the blackmailers would have put some blackmail-worthy documents in his files?

  “Mr. Corbin talked a lot about Henrik Haugeland. He said Mr. Haugeland was ‘the most credible witness’ you heard. That’s flat-out false. If he had said Mr. Haugeland was an honest witness, I might have agreed with him, but Mr. Haugeland was not credible. ‘Credible’ doesn’t just mean that a witness is telling the truth to the best of his ability; it means the witness is believable. Those aren’t always the same thing, and they weren’t here. Remember what Mr. Haugeland said, what his whole testimony led up to?” He clicked the wireless mouse again and a quote appeared on the screen: “‘I strongly believe Karl was involved [in the shootings and arson at Bjornsen Norge] . . . I think he discovered what we were doing, probably from a spy in Bjornsen Norge. Then he sent a criminal to stop us and destroy the evidence we found’—Henrik Haugeland.”

  Siwell paused to let the jury read the words on the screen. Then he pointed to them. “We know that isn’t true. I’m willing to give Mr. Haugeland the benefit of the doubt and assume that he wasn’t intentionally lying; that he really did ‘strongly believe’ those things. But it really doesn’t matter. Either way, he was one hundred percent wrong—as even Gunnar and his lawyer now agree. That means Mr. Haugeland’s testimony is, by definition, not credible. If he was so wrong on something so critical, can you really trust his other testimony? And even if you do, all he really said was that there were documents in Bjornsen Norge’s files that were consistent with the blackmail plot Karl Bjornsen described—and remember that his testimony on this point was completely unchallenged by any witness or document. At least one of the blackmailers was an accountant at Bjornsen Norge, so is it really surprising that there would be documents in Bjornsen Norge’s accounting files that would be helpful in the blackmail plot?”