Critical Reaction

by Todd M Johnson

  The elevator reached the ground floor and he left past the front desk of the retirement home, unmanned at this late hour. The skeleton staff must have been making their rounds.

  As he stepped through the exit into the cool evening air, Adam decided he’d send a coded report to Vice-President Foote about Dr. Schutten yet tonight. He liked the idea of Foote receiving an email from his project supervisor with a time stamp of four a.m.

  And as a topper—as a cherry on the dish—he’d mention what a great day was approaching for America, laced with some veiled excitement. That should make the old man’s morning.

  Chapter 15

  FORTY-FOUR DAYS UNTIL TRIAL

  PRINCETON UNIVERSITY

  Ryan stood in the shadow of Princeton’s Firestone Library, searching the adjacent plaza for a campus map. A student in shorts with a messenger bag over one shoulder passed his view.

  “Excuse me,” Ryan called out. “Can you tell me where Jadwin Hall is located?”

  “Other end of campus,” the boy said, gesturing past the tall gothic chapel on the far side of the plaza. “Down Washington Street by the football stadium.”

  Ryan nodded as the boy turned away.

  Emily was pulling the fundamental tasks of trial preparation today: interviewing witnesses, preparing witness testimony, outlining a trial strategy. She had grudgingly accepted the notion that she had no time to do all that plus address the critical expert issue, and so had agreed to Ryan taking this meeting with Dr. Nadine.

  It was Ryan who decided a face to face with the expert was worth the time and expense. With his greater experience, Ryan saw more clearly than Emily that this case rested on the fulcrum of a scientific explanation for the explosion—and Kieran’s innocence in setting it off.

  The “other end of campus” was a longer walk than he’d expected—and hotter, too. By the time Ryan reached Jadwin Hall, the physics building next to the football stadium, he was not only sweating but fifteen minutes late for his appointment.

  To his relief, the genial bearded man who greeted him at the door of Dr. Nadine’s sixth-floor office looked unperturbed. He simply waved Ryan into a windowless office so tight there was little room for more than a desk and a visitor’s chair.

  Ryan had barely settled into his seat when the professor volunteered that he’d only just read the Covington amended report faxed days before. “And I’m afraid I haven’t got good news. I tried calling before you made the trip, but you’d already left on your flight.”

  “What do you mean?” Ryan asked, worried.

  The professor shrugged. “I mentioned to Pauline when I prepared my first report how extraordinary it was that Mr. Mullaney entered the mixing room in LB5 just as the tank was about to explode. Of course it’s possible that your client had the misfortune to arrive at the precise moment the contents of Vat 17 had evaporated down to the point of reactivity. But I’d always been troubled by the coincidental timing of the event.”

  The professor picked up his copy of the amended report from Covington. “Covington’s current explanation—that your client turned a valve below Vat 17 seconds before the explosion, bleeding off fluid and accelerating the explosion—frankly, makes more sense.”

  “Allegedly turned the valve,” Ryan said.

  The professor smiled. “Of course. I understood from your email that Mr. Mullaney denies turning the valve. But Covington’s description of events makes more scientific sense than the alternative your client posits—with the extraordinary coincidence of timing.”

  “But,” Ryan protested, “what about the fact that the tank was sweating and showing signs of significant pressure before my client even approached it. Doesn’t that imply the timing could have been accidental?”

  The professor’s eyes were skeptical even before he spoke. “Well, I suppose it does—assuming, of course, that your client is accurately describing what he observed about Vat 17.”

  “And there’s nothing in the data you reviewed to counter Covington’s conclusion?”

  The professor shook his head. “Nothing in the documents Pauline shared. If there’s something more you have, I’d be glad to look at it.”

  Given how detached he’d been about this case, Ryan was surprised how much he dreaded calling Emily with this disappointing news.

  Ryan turned to his last hope for this visit. “Pauline said you were working on proving radiation exposure as well.”

  The professor shrugged. “Not precisely. I told her that we could do blood studies to see if he showed exposure to radionuclides. Those have become quite refined these days. But I also told her it would cost tens of thousands of dollars.”

  “How many tens?”

  “Fifty thousand dollars, I’d imagine.”

  “Can it still be done?” Ryan asked.

  He shook his head. “I don’t see how in the short time you have before trial.”

  Ryan quizzed the professor for another hour, trying unsuccessfully to nudge an acknowledgment of some weakness in Covington’s position. It was finally clear there was no purpose in prolonging this.

  Ryan stood—and Dr. Nadine with him.

  “Of course I understand my opinion may not be terribly helpful now,” the professor said. “But I’d move quickly for other expert assistance. I’m sure you appreciate that it might not prove so easy to find.”

  “I know that time is short,” Ryan responded.

  “Yes. But more than that.” He pulled a thin book off a bookcase to his left—the size of a pamphlet. “This is a registry of nuclear scientists in the United States. If you page through it, you’ll see that the vast majority of its limited members do plenty of work in the public sector—for projects supervised by the DOE or for the few large nuclear companies like Covington. Over the past thirty years, Covington Nuclear has had research contracts with dozens of universities. I’m aware of three Physics Department chairs endowed by Covington. This is a small research field, Ryan. There aren’t a lot of physics departments or professors willing to risk burning bridges with the government or the nuclear industry for a few weeks of work with a plaintiff’s lawyer in Sherman, Washington.”

  Ryan didn’t want to hear this. “I’ve worked in products liability cases for a long time,” he pressed back. “I’ve always been able to find expert help.”

  The professor shook his head with a look of sympathy. “Well, this is a small club. Let me give you an example from your case. Your predecessor, Pauline, located me by cold calling a dozen universities on the East Coast, starting in Boston and working her way south. She hadn’t gotten past New York before emails from colleagues had made me aware of her trip. No one was spying on her, Mr. Hart. In fact academics are usually jealous of employment and research opportunities and keep them to themselves. But when Pauline made the rounds, the emails flew like warnings of an approaching plague.”

  Ryan’s disbelief was becoming tinged with anger. “Then why’d you agree to render an opinion in the case?”

  He shrugged. “I’m a curmudgeon, Mr. Hart. Ask my wife. And I already have my tenure. Besides, before Covington amended its report, it wasn’t a particularly controversial opinion anyway.”

  Ryan turned to the door.

  “There is one thing,” Dr. Nadine said, stopping him. “It’s more of an absence of information than a worthy argument.”

  Anything. “What’s that?”

  “Well, witnesses—including your client—described three explosions. The original report and this amended one explain that by saying Vat 17’s explosion must have triggered explosions of other chemicals residing in other tanks around the room.”

  “So?”

  Dr. Nadine smiled again. “Well, it’s a worthy hypothesis, but I’ve seen no records of the contents of other tanks to support it. I asked Pauline about that at one time, but she was very busy with other matters in the case and didn’t get back to me. I didn’t press, since the cause of the primary explosion seemed cut and dry, and supported Covington’s liability. But, well,
it is a curiosity that that loose end wasn’t tied up by Covington in this amended report.”

  Chapter 16

  SHERMAN, WASHINGTON

  “Yeah, Dad,” Emily said. “All right . . . okay. I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon then.”

  She hung up her cell, bitter at the news from her father’s trip to Princeton. Despite holding him at his word about taking a limited role in Kieran’s case—especially after that display in the courtroom—she now realized that part of her still expected him to pull a rabbit out of the hat. She didn’t know if that was an expectation of a father or of an experienced trial lawyer. Either way, it was time to move on from the illusion.

  Emily picked up her keys and left the Annex into the late afternoon sunlight, headed to her car at the curb. The last two weeks were a blur of preparing for the emergency motion, meetings with those witnesses they could interview without a subpoena, mapping out trial strategy, and completing the review of Pauline’s papers. Kieran had helped with the latter task and they’d made progress, though the stacks looked only dented, not beaten.

  But the differences between her experience preparing for two- to four-day criminal trials and this several-week monstrosity were growing more obvious by the hour.

  Which made her ambivalent about her decision to take a break this evening. But she didn’t want to refuse this invitation. Today was Kieran’s birthday. His sister, Laura, had called to tell her that somebody had left a voice message for Kieran to fill in at the union softball game and she and her mother had insisted he go, since he’d missed the games all spring. Could Emily make it on short notice to join them for a small surprise party?

  She started the car and did a U-turn to head across town. A break tonight was probably a great idea, she admitted. It would be good to think about anything except the case for an evening. And Emily had never really met Kieran’s mother, Amanda—or spent much time with Laura these past few weeks.

  Her route took her along Bikini Atoll Avenue. It was several blocks from Sherman’s main street but still busy this Saturday afternoon. The drive allowed her time to think—and her thoughts turned to Kieran.

  Working together with him the past two weeks had started to raze some of the barriers between them again. Especially after his acknowledgment last night that his silence since college was rooted in disappointment at how his life had stagnated while classmates went on to good jobs, travel, graduate school. It was an admission he’d delivered offhandedly, over a stack of documents. But she’d read the apology in his words.

  She also admired his refusal to drop the case—even after she and her father made their doubts so clear. It reminded her of the boy she’d thought her closest friend in college: anchored in principle. He’d changed—his underlying seriousness was deeper than even during those tough times at the university. But he’d lost none of his kindness or empathy—illustrated by his devotion to moving his family away from Hanford.

  Emily wondered how he saw her now. Did he see something in her that reminded him of who she was in college? Did he see anything worth renewing a friendship that neither of them chose to end in the first place?

  Halfway across town, Emily slowed behind a Jeep at a stoplight. She glanced to her right. There, on the sidewalk, she recognized the solitary man walking with a calm, purposeful stride. It was Ted Pollock, appearing as he had at the ranch, with casual work clothes and his twin braids falling out from beneath the wide-brimmed hat. He was looking straight ahead, and didn’t appear to have noticed her. A few steps more and he turned to enter the door of a single story, windowless Chinese restaurant.

  Emily stared after him, immediately reminded of her discomfort at the man’s unrelenting gaze the afternoon of the ride.

  A horn sounded. Startled, Emily saw that the Jeep had disappeared and the light had changed. She slowly accelerated, looking each direction as she entered the intersection.

  It was halfway down the block to her right, and far enough away that she couldn’t be sure. But it looked like Kieran’s Corolla, parked under the spreading leaves of a linden tree opposite the rear of the Chinese restaurant. She had only the briefest of views before she was past the intersection altogether.

  Corollas weren’t rare in Sherman any more than in Seattle. Besides, Kieran was at the softball game. But it was curious.

  She set the thought aside and drove on.

  Sitting on the couch in the living room, Poppy caught Suzy’s glances from the kitchen. Forty-two years of marriage had given Poppy an advanced degree in knowing when his wife was worrying—and why. Right now, Suzy was wondering why he’d called in sick again last night, after swearing he was done staying home. She was also wondering why he’d stomped around the last thirty-six hours without saying a whole sentence—and trying to imagine what catastrophe could be so bad that he was hunched on the couch watching a Yankees-Angels game, when he hated both teams.

  Poppy knew she’d let him stew as long as he needed, and he’d tell her when he was ready. That was great—except for how much this was bothering her. But he just couldn’t bring himself to tell her that Covington was strong-arming him to change his statement about what happened at LB5. Especially since he was considering doing it.

  He pushed himself off the couch and ambled into the kitchen. “You know, Suzy,” he said, reaching for an apple on the kitchen counter, “I think I’ll head over to the union softball game after all. I hear they’ve lost every weekend I’ve missed the past month.”

  She smiled. “I think that’s a good idea, honey,” she replied.

  “You think Michael’d be there today?” he asked. Their oldest boy, Michael, had followed Poppy into the Guards Union and security work at Hanford.

  Suzy shook her head. “No, you won’t see him at the field. I know for a fact that he and Yvonne took Michael Jr. to the pool today.”

  He leaned over and kissed her on the neck. Then he went to his bedroom to change.

  The drive to the ball field took Poppy down Sherman’s main boulevard for a few blocks, then onto Oppenheimer Avenue. That road soon reached the end of town, weaving beneath cliffs leading to the riverfront and the River Park ball fields.

  Poppy looked up at the sun-bleached bluffs. He’d lived around these hills his entire life, climbed most of them when he was a boy. Except for his time in the navy, he’d never lived anywhere else. But right now, he could be driving through a crater on Mars: that’s how much he felt like a stranger in this place.

  Four decades he’d worked at Hanford after the service and not once had he been treated this way. Making him change his statement—after failing to even interview him for the investigation report in the first place. Poppy’s stomach knotted.

  A twist in the road brought lightning flashes of sunlight reflecting off the Columbia River directly into Poppy’s eyes. He winced in pain, pulled the brim of his cap lower, and reached into his breast pocket for his sunglasses.

  He’d seen the article in the Sherman Courier a few days before that said Covington had released a new investigation report implying a stabilizing engineer on duty that night might have turned a valve and deliberately caused the explosion. That was hard to imagine: why would somebody do something like that? But it didn’t change anything. All Poppy knew was that Covington was acting like no contractor before in its handling of this explosion. And somehow he’d gotten right in their crosshairs as a result.

  He couldn’t complain to Darter Security—they wouldn’t buck Covington and risk their subcontract, even if they thought he was getting treated poorly. He could complain to the union, but they were in wage negotiations with Covington and the subs and weren’t likely to back him very aggressively. Besides, the union didn’t have the clout it used to back in the day.

  The headache was coming on again and Poppy’s chest was filling up once more. He was just starting to wonder if softball was a lousy idea when the park came into view.

  Poppy stopped the truck next to the field fence, grabbed his glove from the passenger seat, an
d walked slowly around the dugout to the dusty third-base line. The Hanford Security Guards team was warming up on the field.

  “Hey, Poppy,” somebody shouted from the outfield. “Great to see you.” The greeting was echoed across the diamond. Poppy felt his enthusiasm rising. He shrugged off the pain in his head and the thickening in his chest, pulled on his glove, and trotted out for warm-ups.

  It was fun for a few minutes to be shagging balls again. Still, all the jokes from his teammates about how rusty he was—all the pats on the back as they ran by—didn’t erase the worsening headache and growing roughness in his throat. By the time he jogged into the dugout for the game to start, Poppy turned down a chance to take first base. “I’ll come in later,” he shouted back at the offer.

  Three innings passed. Poppy’s eyes were strained—even with the sunglasses. He squinted across to the opponents’ bench at their mixed team of engineers and radiologic techs, his frustration mounting.

  The coughing was unavoidable now. The first was little more than clearing his throat, but a hacking cascade followed that left his chest aching and his eyes teared.

  “Poppy. You okay?”

  He rubbed his eyes and looked out on the field. Craig Westin, the security guards’ union steward and softball team captain, was shouting from the pitcher’s mound. Everyone from both teams was watching him.

  Poppy waved Craig off. “Fine,” he called out, then rubbed his chest at the pain from the effort.

  He passed again on an invitation to play the next time the guards took to the field. As play resumed his thoughts meandered until he sensed the field quieting. He looked up.