Blood Brothers

by Rick Acker

  He clicked the mouse again and Henrik’s words vanished from the screen. They were replaced by an image of the verdict form the jury would receive. “So when you come back with your verdict, I ask you to answer yes to the special interrogatory asking whether Gunnar Bjornsen should return the Neurostim formula to Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals”—he highlighted and enlarged the interrogatory as he spoke—“and no to the interrogatory asking whether the company should be deprived of its duly elected president and chairman, Karl Bjornsen.” He highlighted and enlarged that one too. “And I ask you to order Gunnar to pay for at least some of the hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of damage he did to the company.”

  He clicked again and the screen went blank. “This is an important case. I know you know that. Billions of dollars are at stake. Karl Bjornsen’s career and reputation are at stake. Thank you for taking time away from your jobs and families to be here. I know you had no choice, and that only makes your sacrifice greater. I ask you to take only a little more time, enough time to review the evidence carefully and fairly and make sure your verdict is the right one—a verdict for Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals and Karl Bjornsen.” He paused and smiled. “And may your next jury service end after a morning of drinking coffee and reading the paper in the jury assembly room.” Even Ben and Gunnar had to smile at that one.

  Karl sat in a chair on his balcony and watched the last remnants of the sunset fade from the western sky. A half-empty glass of Petite Sirah sat on a small table by his right elbow. He picked it up and looked at it thoughtfully. In the gathering darkness, the wine looked very much like blood. The consistency and smell were very different, though. He swirled his glass gently for a few seconds, then drained it.

  A hand touched his shoulder and he jumped, spilling several drops of wine on his white shirt. He snapped his head around and saw Gwen looking down at him. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. Here, give me your shirt and I’ll get it soaking. I’ll make sure Maria takes care of it tomorrow morning.”

  “I didn’t hear you come out,” he said as he stood and unbuttoned his shirt. He handed it to her and she disappeared into the apartment.

  She reappeared a minute later with the wine bottle, a second glass, and a fresh shirt. She stood for a moment in the rectangle of warm light cast by the dining-room chandelier through the sliding-glass balcony door. The diamonds at her neck and ears sparkled, and she looked magnificent in her black silk cocktail dress. She embodied the image that aspiring luxury vineyards try to capture in their advertising. “You’ve been so tense recently,” she commented as she filled their glasses. “Is it the trial, or something else?”

  “A little of both,” Karl replied as he slipped on the new shirt. “The jury deliberated for a little over an hour today without reaching a verdict. Bert thinks they’ll go our way, but he isn’t sure.” He took a sip of his wine. “And Gunnar’s up to something. I’ve heard from three different people that he’s been meeting with directors and major shareholders over the past week or so. He has Ben Corbin and Henrik Haugeland and a detective put on a show about what a terrible guy I am. Then he makes a pitch for why they should vote me out and vote him in.”

  “That’s outrageous! Can you stop him?”

  “Bert says I probably can’t. Gunnar is still a director and shareholder, so he probably has a right to talk to other shareholders and directors. Besides, it would send the wrong message. I don’t want anyone to think that I’m afraid to have them hear what Gunnar has to say. Once we have the jury’s verdict, I’ll have my own meetings with the directors—if that’s still necessary. In the meantime, though, it’s putting me a little on edge.”

  “I can tell.” Gwen stood and walked around behind him. She began to massage his thick shoulders. “Your muscles are all knotted up. Do you want me to set up an appointment for you with my masseur? He’s really good.”

  “No.”

  She stopped kneading his shoulders and picked up her wine glass. “Speaking of Gunnar, I saw Anne and Markus the other day. They were having lunch at the University Club with Pat and Jacqui Gossard. Markus was the only one drinking. He had one of those little martini carafes, and it was almost empty. Jacqui told me later that he actually drank two of those during lunch.” She sighed sadly. “We both felt so sorry for Anne. It must be humiliating for her to have a son who behaves like that.”

  “I’m going to bed,” Karl announced. He stood abruptly, knocking over the wine bottle. He grabbed the bottle and set it upright with a quick move of his hand, but not before a splash of red spread across the glass tabletop and began to drip onto the floor. He turned and walked through the door. “Good night.”

  “What has gotten into you?” Gwen demanded.

  He stopped momentarily but didn’t turn to face her. “I’m under a lot of pressure. It will be over soon.”

  “I certainly hope so,” she said icily as he walked away. “I’d better get the old Karl back soon.”

  Later that night, Anne Bjornsen woke to find herself in an empty bed. She looked at the clock. It was 11:35. She got up, pulled on her robe, and went to look for her husband. She found him in the den in his recliner. A brass floor lamp surrounded him in a pool of light, and a thick leather-bound book lay open on his lap. He looked up as she came in. “Trouble sleeping?” she asked as she stood blinking in the light.

  He nodded. “I thought I’d come down and read something that would put me to sleep.” He gestured to the book in his lap. “Markus got me thinking about the Norse sagas, so I pulled out my father’s copy of the Heimskringla, the stories of the ancient Norwegian kings.”

  She smiled. “That would put me to sleep in ten minutes. How’s it working for you?”

  A low chuckle rumbled in his throat for a moment. “Not very well. I read the Saga of Olav Tryggvason and I’m more wide awake than ever.”

  “Is it a good story?”

  “I suppose so. It’s the tale of a king who liberates Norway from a Swedish jarl and builds it into a strong company.”

  “You mean ‘country,’” interjected Anne.

  He chuckled again. “I suppose I do. King Olav was a good ruler in many ways and accomplished a lot, but he could be . . . undiplomatic. He offended people. Eventually, his enemies gathered together against him and ambushed his fleet of longships at sea. There was an epic battle, and he lost. As the battle ended, he fell into the water and vanished. No one ever saw him again.”

  He stopped and dropped his eyes to the book in his lap. Anne stood in the doorway and waited for what was inside him to work its way out. After a long moment, he looked up again. “I was wondering what . . . after all of myself that I’ve invested in the company, what will happen if I lose?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, if the company’s gone, what’s left of me?”

  She smiled gently. “Will you have disappeared in defeat like King Olav?”

  He closed the book and set it on an oak reading stand by the chair. “Yes.”

  She walked over and sat on the arm of the chair. “What will be left of you? Nothing—except the man I married almost thirty-five years ago.”

  By nine thirty the next morning, Dr. Antonio Gomez had the preliminary autopsy reports ready. He saved the report for Bedford Lavelle and e-mailed it out. That one had been easy—multiple skull fractures, torn cranial artery, and massive brain damage. There had been alcohol and trace amounts of steroids in his blood, but nothing that contributed to his death.

  Dr. Gomez pulled up the preliminary report for David Lee and frowned at it. This one was a problem. The cause of death listed was “heart failure due to unascertained causes,” but that was simply medspeak for “I don’t know.”

  Lee’s body had several contusions, two broken ribs, and a broken bone in his right hand, but no injuries that could explain his death. The emergency-room staff thought they had detected intracranial swelling, and an emergency craniotomy had been performed. But Dr. Gomez saw no noticeable swelling and ruled out both the
alleged swelling and the craniotomy as potential causes of death.

  There were two tiny holes in the left side of David Lee’s chest where the Taser needles had hit him, but Dr. Gomez discounted these as a cause of death. He had seen the literature and knew that deaths allegedly due to Taser strikes almost invariably had other causes—generally lethal levels of illegal drugs already in the body.

  Based on those studies and the behavior recorded in the police reports that accompanied Lee’s remains and medical records, Dr. Gomez had therefore expected the toxicology reports to show very high levels of cocaine, PCP, or some other controlled substance. But they hadn’t. Unsurprisingly for a med student several hours after a big exam, Lee had alcohol and caffeine in his system, but not in concentrations remotely near lethal levels. His adrenaline levels were also high—even for someone who was in the middle of a fight—but, again, not high enough to contribute to his death.

  One possible culprit was the experimental drug Lee had taken. Both the drug and its metabolites were in his system, indicating that he had taken it recently. The levels in his blood and liver were above those reported by the drug company for Phase I participants, but well below the toxic levels established during their rat and beagle studies. Could the drug’s interactions with caffeine or alcohol make it lethal? Maybe, but Dr. Gomez doubted it. The drug company had tested the drug’s interactions with multiple common chemicals—including alcohol and caffeine—and hadn’t found anything troubling. Besides, based on the drug’s chemical structure, Dr. Gomez doubted that it would interact negatively with either one.

  So what killed David Lee?

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  BERSERKERGANG

  At two fifteen the next day, Ben got the phone call he had been waiting for. “Mr. Corbin, it’s Lisa Sinclair, Judge Reilly’s clerk. The jury has a verdict.”

  “Great. We’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

  He hung up the phone, took a deep breath, and dialed Gunnar’s cell-phone number. He answered on the first ring. “Ben?”

  “The jury is back. Can you be at the courthouse in ten minutes?”

  “You know I can.” The big Norwegian had spent the last two and a half days wandering around the Loop because he wanted to be in the courtroom when the jury announced its verdict. “I’ll see you there.”

  “I’ll meet you in the lobby downstairs. North side.” Ben dropped the phone into its cradle, grabbed his jacket, and hurried out the door. He speed-walked to the courthouse, cell phone to his ear the whole time as he briefed Noelle, who was at home with Eric, and Sergei, who was in New York on another job.

  He found Gunnar in the courthouse lobby, and five minutes later the two of them walked through the doors of Judge Reilly’s courtroom. The judge wasn’t there, but the clerk and bailiff were in their seats. Karl and his team already clustered around their counsel table, talking in hushed, tense tones. They looked up as Gunnar and Ben entered. The Bjornsen brothers exchanged curt nods as Ben walked up to the clerk’s desk and informed her that everyone was there.

  The clerk disappeared through a door behind the bench, and a few minutes later Judge Reilly appeared. Everyone in the courtroom stood and remained standing as the bailiff opened the door to the jury room and the jurors filed silently into the jury box and took their seats. They didn’t make eye contact with anyone except the bailiff, and Ben thought they looked tired.

  After the last juror took her seat, everyone else in the courtroom sat down. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, have you reached a verdict?” asked Judge Reilly.

  A white-haired man—the retired sales executive whom Ben would have preferred to keep off the jury—stood up. “We have, Your Honor.”

  “All right, the parties will rise for the reading of the verdict.”

  The Bjornsens and their lead lawyers stood.

  “What is your verdict?” asked the judge.

  The jury foreman unfolded two sheets of paper, which Ben recognized as the verdict form. “On the claim of Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals against Gunnar Bjornsen for trade-secret misappropriation, we find for Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals and against Gunnar Bjornsen. We answered yes to the interrogatory asking whether he should be ordered to return the Neurostim formula to Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals. We award Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals damages in the amount of one dollar.” Karl shook Bert’s hand discreetly, but Ben knew that was for the reporters in the back of the room—a show of victory on something that had been a foregone conclusion since the first day of trial. No matter what the rest of the verdict was, his press release would claim no worse than a mixed result. For his part, Ben was encouraged by the one-dollar damages figure.

  The foreman paused to turn the page of the form, and the courtroom was perfectly silent except for the rustle of the paper. “On the claim of Gunnar Bjornsen, suing on behalf of Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals, against Karl Bjornsen for fraud, embezzlement, bribery, and mismanagement, we find for Karl Bjornsen and against Gunnar Bjornsen. The damages amount is therefore zero. We answered no to the interrogatories asking whether Karl Bjornsen committed serious financial misconduct and whether he should be barred from holding a leadership position in Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals.”

  Karl shook Siwell’s hand again, much more enthusiastically, and smiled broadly at the jury. Ben glanced at Gunnar, who shrugged slightly but otherwise remained impassive as murmurs rose from the gallery behind them. This wasn’t the outcome either of them had wanted, of course, but it was one for which they were prepared.

  Judge Reilly looked at Ben. “Mr. Corbin, would you like me to poll the jurors?”

  “Thank you. I would, Your Honor.”

  “All right.” The judge turned to the jury box. “Juror Number One, do you personally agree with every aspect of the verdict that was just read?”

  “Yes, Your Honor,” said a petite blonde woman in the far right of the jury box.

  “Thank you,” replied the judge. “Juror Number Two, do you personally agree with every aspect of the verdict that was just read?”

  A tall man sitting next to Juror One nodded. “I do.”

  The only juror for whom Ben had any hope was Juror Nine, the accountant. Ben thought she had reacted particularly favorably to Henrik Haugeland’s testimony, and if anyone on the jury had the financial sophistication to see through Karl’s stories, it was she. When Judge Reilly reached her, she pursed her lips and paused before answering. “Well, I don’t know, Your Honor,” she said at last.

  The courtroom became silent again, and there was an uneasy stirring among other members of the jury. “If you do not agree with the verdict, then further deliberations are necessary.”

  Several jurors frowned, and it appeared to Ben that Juror Eight muttered something under his breath. “I . . . No, I agree with the verdict,” said Juror Nine.

  “Are you sure?” asked the judge. “If this is not your verdict, I want you to tell me now. You should reach your conclusions based solely on the evidence and the instructions I gave you and the other jurors, not the fact that you’ve been deliberating a long time and don’t want to go back.”

  “This is my verdict, Your Honor,” she said with a forced smile. “I’m sure.”

  “All right, if you’re sure.” He moved on to Juror Number Ten, and Ben began to pack his briefcase. It was over.

  As soon as Dr. Gomez laid David Lee’s pathology reports next to each other, the answer was obvious—or at least the question was. He raised his thick eyebrows and put down his coffee cup. “That’s weird,” he said to himself. He picked up the phone and dialed Neuropathology. “Hello. Neuropathology. Dr. Goldberg speaking,” said a familiar male voice.

  “Hi, Larry. It’s Tony Gomez down in Autopsy. I’ve got a dead kid down here—UCLA med student, actually—with some unusual path reports I’d like you to take a look at if you have time.”

  “Sure. UCLA med student—what’s the name?”

  “David Lee.”

  “Didn’t know him,” Dr. Goldberg said with relief. “Still, t
hat’s too bad. What happened?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to figure out. He died after being Tasered during a bar fight with a football player more than twice his size.”

  “I heard about that. The football player died too, right?”

  “Right,” confirmed Dr. Gomez. “His autopsy report was pretty straightforward, but this guy has no obvious cause of death. The injuries from the fight didn’t kill him, the Taser almost certainly didn’t kill him, and the standard tox screen didn’t show lethal doses of any drugs in his system.”

  “Heart abnormalities?” suggested Dr. Goldberg. “Burst aneurysm?”

  “No, we looked for those too. Routine histopathology showed damage in the limbic nervous system, so we did some more in-depth chemical analyses and found a compound I hadn’t seen before. Once I spotted it, I checked the results for the other tissue samples. It’s there too, but in much lower levels.”

  “Ahh,” said Dr. Goldberg as he realized the purpose of the call, “so you’re thinking that this is something that built up in the nervous system and may have been the cause of death?”

  “Yes, or contributed to it, at least. One more thing—he was taking an experimental drug that affects the nervous system. The compound I spotted isn’t part of the drug or one of the metabolites listed by the company that makes it, Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals, but there might be some connection.”

  “Interesting, interesting,” mused Dr. Goldberg. “Yes, please send me the lab reports. I’d also like to see whatever you got from the drug company and anything else you think might be worth looking at.”