Silent Justice

by William Bernhardt

  “And then you changed it.”

  “My conscience bothered me. I felt that someone ought to tell the truth.”

  “How noble. So you took it onto yourself to contradict … virtually everyone else.”

  “I told the truth.”

  “Eventually. But you admit you lied.” Colby drew himself up to his full height. “The question is … which time?”

  Turnbull’s brow creased. “I don’t follow you.”

  “It’s obvious that you were lying at one of these depositions, but which one?

  “I told you—”

  “You admitted to this jury that you lied. The only thing we don’t know is when—and why. Or how much. Or how often.” He snapped his folder shut. “That’s all, your honor. I have no more use for this witness.”

  “Dead?” Mike said leaning practically out of his chair. “You’re telling me the man who stole the sixty million bucks was dead?”

  “So it appeared.” Blaylock’s calm demeanor belied the bizarre nature of the story he was telling. “I assure you, we had researched it quite carefully. An employee named Tony Montague, a senior supervisor in the accounting department, was the only man who could have committed the crime.”

  “But for the minor inconvenience that he was dead.”

  “Or so we believed, anyway.” Blaylock stood on his spindly legs and opened the shutters on the bay window behind his desk. “There had been an accident. A tragedy. Several of our employees were on a company outing. A trip to an amusement park in Oklahoma City. There was an accident on the drive home. The bus they were traveling in caught fire and … well, everyone was killed. Incinerated. It’s been years now. But you may recall reading about it in the papers. I’m told there was something defective about the bus. I don’t know all the details, but I know our lawyers were tied up with it for years, suing Ford on behalf of our employees" families. Seems Ford—then led by a young man named Iacocca—had decided to place the fuel tanks on this model of school bus’s chassis on the outside of the frame, rather than the inside. They saved money—but the bus was much less safe, caught fire more easily. And there were inadequate emergency exits. No breakaway windows.”

  “I remember reading about it,” Mike said. “What a nightmare.”

  “You may also remember that school bus in Kentucky that killed numerous children about the same time. Same model. Iacocca should be ashamed, reviled; instead, the masses act like he’s a hero. Some people have no sense of corporate responsibility.”

  Mike bit his lip, trying not to laugh at the irony of hearing these sentiments from Myron Blaylock. “You said everyone was killed.…”

  “So we believed. The officials counted bodies—what was left of them. The remains were far too charred to identify, even by dental records. But they did determine that the number of bodies was exactly the same as the number of passengers who went on the trip, plus the driver. So everyone had died.” He paused. “Or so we assumed.”

  “But if everyone died—”

  “Do you want the short version, Lieutenant? Or all the details?”

  Mike thought for a moment. “I guess I’ll start with the short. You can fill in the details later.”

  “Montague wasn’t dead. He managed to escape by breaking open a window at the last possible moment. He was the only passenger who survived. What we didn’t know was that he had picked up a young woman at the amusement park, and that she was riding home with him.”

  Mike was beginning to follow. “So there was an extra body.”

  Blaylock nodded. “And after he escaped, the number of bodies was exactly what we expected it to be.”

  “But surely when he turned up—”

  “He didn’t turn up. He disappeared. I don’t know how long he’d been planning this theft, but he took this as his golden opportunity to implement his plan. From his standpoint, it was perfect. The imminent IPO would restrict our ability to investigate. And even in the best of circumstances, how could we catch a ghost?”

  Mike marveled. It was just about perfect. “So Montague kept out of sight, and when the time was right, swiped the loot. And no one the wiser.”

  “Exactly.”

  “How did you finally find all this out?”

  Blaylock’s brow knitted. “Don’t you know?” He smiled slightly. “It seems you’re not as … perceptive as you thought, Lieutenant. Once I became certain Montague was the only man who could’ve committed the theft, I spared no expense having him tracked down. By that time, he’d burrowed himself in but good. He was practically a hermit. But we still found him. Eventually.”

  Mike was almost disappointed. It was such a perfect crime, even a law enforcement officer hated to see it go sour. “But not the money?”

  “To the contrary. We recovered the money. Almost every penny. He’d stashed it in a noninterest-bearing savings account. He was afraid we’d catch him if he started spending big money. He’d only spent what was absolutely necessary to survive—less than a hundred thousand dollars. Can you imagine? The man had sixty million—and he was living like a pauper.”

  “But if you recovered the money—”

  “It was reintroduced into the corporate books just as subtly as it had been removed. Even more so, I suppose—since you didn’t catch that one.”

  Mike frowned. On second thought, forgiving Pfieffer was premature. “But you didn’t file charges against Montague?”

  “No. Under the circumstances, we couldn’t.”

  “How did you get Montague to turn over the cash?”

  “We made a deal. If he returned the money, we’d leave him alone.”

  “You couldn’t prosecute him anyway—not without admitting you’d committed a fraud on your shareholders by not reporting the loss.”

  “I don’t like the word "fraud,"” Blaylock replied, “but your understanding of the situation is essentially correct. We couldn’t go after him. So we made a deal. And recovered our money.”

  “Wow,” Mike said, rubbing his brow. “That’s some story. Where’s Montague now?”

  “He’s dead. For real this time.”

  “What happened?”

  “He had a stroke, not three months after we found him. Seems life on the run had been too hard on him. His heart eventually gave out. His body was found in a fishing cabin in south Texas. He was alone.” Blaylock gazed out the window. “The man had possessed the riches of Midas. And it hadn’t done him the slightest bit of good. Probably killed him.”

  “There must be a moral in there somewhere,” Mike murmured.

  “There is. The moral is: Don’t steal from Myron Blaylock.” He walked around his desk. “So, Lieutenant, now you know all our darkest secrets. But I’m afraid it has nothing to do with the murders. Montague is dead and gone. And our money has been returned.”

  They exchanged brief pleasantries, and Mike left the office.

  He supposed Blaylock was correct; the theft seemed to be over and done with. Still, it was so extraordinary. He couldn’t help but think there was some connection. Some link to all the killing.

  Or perhaps, as Blaylock had suggested before, that was just because he wanted there to be a connection. Because he didn’t have anything else.

  Chapter 33

  TRYING A LAWSUIT, BEN mused, not for the first time, was a lot like having a baby. Not that he would know personally. But women always said that childbirth was followed by a biological forgetfulness, an erasing of the memory of how painful it was, so that women could conceivably want to have children again. It was much the same for trial lawyers. Trying a case was mercilessly demanding, tiring, debilitating, and typically unrewarding. Every time Ben was immersed in a trial, he swore he would never repeat the agony. And yet, like most trial lawyers, a month or so later, he became bored and restless, itching to go back before the jury.

  A trial lawyer’s life, when the trial was on, was really no life at all. Once it began, there was no time for anything but that, nothing but attending to the needs of the court and t
he client. The days might seem interminable to the jury, but to Ben, they were never long enough. Each day swept past in a mind-reeling frenzy, one must-do task followed quickly by another.

  He rarely slept well during a trial. He’d rise at five to prepare for the day’s witnesses, arguments, whatever. He’d pore over the exhibits, charts, documents. He’d review deposition transcripts. There was always too much data, too much information to be absorbed and recalled, more than could possibly be fed into a single human memory bank. At eight fifteen, he’d trudge over to the courthouse, mounds of information in tow. And then he’d be in court all day.

  While the trial was on, there was no time for random thoughts, daydreaming, a life outside. While the trial was on, total acuity was essential. His full attention had to be focused on the proceedings. Any moment his mind wandered would be a moment opposing counsel would try to slip in something objectionable. He’d rarely go out for lunch; he’d have Christina bring him back a candy bar or a bag of Doritos while he reviewed the afternoon’s witness examinations. At the end of the day, he’d go back to the office to strategize with the client, replay the day’s events, assess damage, consider options, plan tactics, consider settlement offers. And once the client had gone home, he could start doing the real work. And if he was lucky he’d be asleep by midnight—but one or two or three in the morning was more common. More than likely, given how little time there was, he’d sleep on the sofa in his office. And all too soon, five A.M. would roll around again.…

  Actually, most nights, Ben would awake about four A.M. in a blind panic, dripping with sweat. What have I forgotten? What did I miss? These anxiety attacks were inevitable. Modern trials were simply too complex; no one could remember everything, no matter how good they were. Sometimes he would be able to get back to sleep, after running through a mental checklist of the next day’s witnesses. More often he would not. He would try running around the block, or listening to soothing music or playing the piano. Or he would simply give it up and start preparing for the next day’s work early.

  Sometimes he would close his eyes and try to remember the forest behind the house his grandmother had lived in when he was growing up, deep in the rolling green hills of Arkansas. He would recall the crisp, clean air; the blissful silence; the occasional deer or squirrel darting about; the tall trees; the sense of peace. Sometimes that would help calm his anxiety and get him back to sleep.

  But not this time. Not this trial. Grandmother’s house was too far away and the forest had been clear-cut. Instead, all he saw was Cecily Elkins’s tear-stained face. In his mind’s eye, she was leaning toward Ben, keening with the pain of the bereaved mother, shaking Ben back and forth, pleading. Tell me it was not all for nothing, she would say. Tell me it was not all in vain.

  By the third week, the trial was wearing everyone down. Some of the jurors seemed dazed or glassy-eyed; both lawyers occasionally had to resort to cheap tricks to make sure some important piece of testimony was heard.

  The lawyers themselves began to tire. Ben noticed a substantive decline in the enthusiasm levels in Colby’s entourage, not to mention other signs of stress—shirts that needed to go to the dry cleaners, suit coats creased around the seat. Tempers flared more often. Foolish mistakes were made. Sometimes the snipping and squabbling between lawyers became so strident that Judge Perry called a recess, “so you can get a grip on yourselves.” It was no one’s fault, really. But mental exhaustion, relentless pressure, and sleep deprivation will take their toll. This, Ben often reflected, is why this thing is called a trial.

  By the middle of the fourth week, Ben was ready to put on his medical witnesses. This, as he well realized, was probably the most important part of his case. He had evidence that the Blaylock plant used TCE and perc and that those chemicals made their way to the aquifer. Colby could dispute and argue and rebut all he wanted; the evidence was there. But there was one more necessary step in the causation chain that led to liability. Ben had to show that those chemicals Blaylock disseminated caused the children’s cancers. It was the causation problem Judge Perry had warned him about from the outset of the case. Without this essential element of proof, Ben had no case at all.

  He started with the man who became known as the “cluster expert,” Dr. Jonathan Daimler. He’d been recommended to Ben by the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. He was a tall man, lean, with a thin nose and a seemingly permanent intense expression.

  “According to the CDC,” Ben said, as he introduced the witness to the jury, “you’re the world’s foremost expert on leukemia clusters.”

  Daimler grinned sheepishly. “Well, in truth—I’m probably the world’s only expert on leukemia clusters.”

  That’s good, Ben thought. Be modest. The jury likes modest. Especially from someone whose resume is longer than most novels. “Could you tell the jury how you got involved in this line of work?”

  “Of course. About twenty years ago, I was interning at the CDC. I received information about what appeared to be an epidemic of leukemia cases in a small town in Illinois. Six children died in a two-year period—in a town about a square mile in size.”

  “Why did that trigger your interest?”

  “Leukemia is a rare disease—or it’s supposed to be, anyway. Statistically, there should be only one case per one hundred thousand children. This could’ve just been a statistical anomaly … but it was still extraordinary. I thought it merited further investigation.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “I went to Illinois. I was allowed to conduct in-detail examinations of the medical records and the families of the victims. I examined bone-marrow samples, blood, written documents. I checked radiation levels. Family histories. I found no evidence of any hereditary illnesses or predispositions that might be contributing to the outbreak.”

  “So what, if anything, did you conclude?”

  Daimler’s gaze intensified. “I became convinced that there must be some infectious agent, a virus, perhaps, that was causing the disease outbreak. This is not, admittedly, the traditional medical view of leukemia. But previous researchers have discovered leukemia viruses transmitted amongst animals—birds and mice, for instance. And I noted that these cases were principally striking victims preteen or younger—when children are most susceptible to infectious diseases.” He paused, gazing earnestly at the jury. “I simply couldn’t believe this concentration of cases could be random. I couldn’t isolate a causal agent. But I felt certain there was one.”

  Ben caught a quick glance of the jury. He had worried that this medical testimony might soar over their heads, particularly in their current torporous state. But as far as he could tell, they seemed to be following along. “So what did you do next?”

  “I began combing the CDC files, looking for other leukemia clusters.”

  “And did you find them?”

  “In spades. A small town in Texas, with nine cases in nine months. A village in New York, population less than a thousand, with three cases in a year. Six children in New Jersey, all attending the same elementary school. A "leukemia house" in Georgia, where three residents and a visitor all developed leukemia in a single year. All extraordinary events. Too extraordinary for me to write off as coincidental. I was convinced that something was causing these microepidemics.”

  “Did the rest of the medical community share your views?”

  “To be honest, sir, some did and some didn’t. After I published my first paper in the New England Journal of Medicine, I got a lot of comment. Some researchers thought I had been misled by statistical aberrations. Some agreed there must be a cause—but what was it?”

  “I have a question,” Ben said, “and I’m sure this has occurred to some of the jurors as well. If there is something—a virus or … whatever-—causing these leukemia cases—why doesn’t everyone get it?”

  “In my opinion, the causal agent must be a low-potency pathogen—something that would only affect the most susceptible victims. Like children, for instance.
Of course, that very low potency makes it all the more difficult to discover.”

  “Have you made any effort to learn what that pathogen might be?”

  “Of course I have. I have and others”—he nodded toward a familiar face in the gallery—“like Dr. Rimland have. But it’s an extremely difficult process. A low-level pathogen might be too subtle to evidence itself in tests with lab animals. For all our supposed scientific sophistication, our current testing techniques are crude, and the incidence of the disease is too infrequent to readily establish a connection between cause and effect.”

  “But you don’t rule out the possibility?”

  “No. Theoretically, it can be done. And as I said, we are working on it.”

  “Thank you, sir. No more questions.”

  Ben sat down pleased. Not a home run—in fact, Daimler’s testimony could’ve been omitted altogether. But he hoped it would lay the groundwork and establish credibility for the critical testimony from Dr. Rimland that would establish the link between the poisons in the water and the children’s deaths.

  Colby rose for cross eagerly. “Let’s establish one thing up front,” Colby said, his voice loud and confident. “You don’t know the slightest thing about what happened in Blackwood, do you?”

  Daimler drew in his breath and sighed. He’d been cross-examined before. “I would hardly say I don’t know the slightest thing—”

  “You have not investigated the deaths which form the gravamen of the present case.”

  “No. I have not been asked to do so.”

  “You didn’t think that was important.”

  “Not to what I had to say. I was only asked to give an opinion regarding leukemic clusters. I did so.”

  “So you don’t care what actually caused those deaths in Blackwood.”

  Daimler rolled his eyes, visibly irritated. “It’s not that I don’t care—”

  “You just didn’t think it mattered.”

  “Not to what I had to say—no.”

  “So your testimony cannot in any way be said to go toward the question of what killed those boys and girls in Blackwood.”