Now it was Caroline’s turn to be silent.
“Everyone has a first day,” Joanne said. “Even superheroes.”
“You mean wannabe superheroes.”
“That’s all anyone is,” Joanne said softly. “No one expects you to have all the answers. Not yet, anyway,” she added with a smile that Caroline could hear on the line.
“Thanks, Mom,” Caroline said, and she meant it. Even when her mother had grappled with her own sometimes formidable demons, she’d supported her daughter. As much as she could, anyway, with brain chemistry that made stability an occasionally visited province, seen only fleetingly on Joanne’s swing from emotional pole to emotional pole. Meds had helped. Fortunately.
The thumping in Caroline’s chest began to slow to a tolerable cadence.
Soon, rational thought reasserted itself. She still had many avenues to research before she wrote her professional obituary. It wasn’t time to panic. Not yet, anyway.
“I promise I’ll take care of Uncle Hitch while you’re gone,” Caroline said to her mother. “But right now I’ve got to get back to work.”
Hanging up, Caroline took a long, slow breath.
Then she turned back to her laptop. Someone in the dead scientist’s life had seen that article. She just needed to figure out who that person was.
Caroline ran another search, this time for “Dr. Franklin Heller.”
Hundreds of search results spilled onto her screen, blaring headlines:
Scientist Found Dead on Beach
Jogger Falls from Popular Running Path
Tribute to Dr. Heller, Scientist, Doctor, Visionary
Other headlines described the dedicated scientist’s stunning achievements on a shoestring budget and speculated about what would happen to his lab now that he was dead.
Caroline opened the first obituary.
Dr. Heller had been running alone on August 21 when he’d fallen from a scenic overlook in Malibu and broken his neck. Friends and family expressed shock and dismay that someone so worthy could die so ignominious a death. He’d been survived by his wife, Yvonne Heller, who requested that all donations in her husband’s memory be made to Children’s Hospital.
Caroline checked the scientist’s age. Fifty-four. He’d been younger than she’d imagined.
For some reason, she’d envisioned an old guy standing on the cliffs admiring the view. She hadn’t considered that he might be a fit middle-aged man out for a run. That he’d been about the same age as her own father made Dr. Heller’s death feel . . . personal.
A tap at her office door startled Caroline from her research reverie.
She found Silvia standing in her doorway, holding a thick file in her arms. The assistant’s red hair stood out in jagged angles, as though she’d just jogged down the hall.
“Louis asked me to give you this.” Silvia handed the file to Caroline. “There’s a status conference tomorrow. He’d planned to attend, but he’s got a scheduling conflict, so he wants you to cover it for him.”
Caroline’s mind reeled, trying to catch up.
“He said you did a competent job evaluating the science,” Silvia said, mimicking Louis’s eastern accent in a way that let Caroline know that the words were his. “He’s quite confident you can handle this hearing for him. He asked me to apologize for the short notice, but today’s been a total clusterfuck. My words, not his.” Silvia smiled and used one fire truck–red fingernail to push an errant strand of her hair behind her ear.
“What happened?” Caroline asked.
“Greg Portos let Alexei Harod sneak out of a deposition yesterday,” Silvia said.
Caroline recalled hearing something about Greg. Something bad.
“Who’s that?” Caroline asked with morbid fascination.
“Harod is the president of Telemetry Systems,” Silvia said. “Greg saw him duck out of a bathroom during a break, but he didn’t realize what was happening. By the time he told Louis about it, Harod was gone.”
“Wow. Louis must be furious.”
“He hasn’t had time to be. Harod had a ticket to fly back home to Greece this morning. We had to file a bunch of emergency motions to stop him.”
“This all happened today?” Caroline asked, amazed that in all of her conversations with Louis, he’d never revealed any hint of the inner turmoil the emergency must have caused him.
“Yep, Louis moved for a contempt order, an order to compel attendance, and an injunction enjoining Harod from boarding the plane.” Silvia released a puff of air and shook her head. “It wasn’t pretty, but we got it done.”
“What happened with the motions?”
“Oh, the usual,” Silvia said. “Louis got everything he wanted. He convinced the court to order Harod to stay at the airport for twelve hours so he could depose him in one of those little conference rooms.”
The pride in Silvia’s voice echoed Caroline’s admiration. This was the Louis at whose feet she’d come to learn. The creative litigator who found solutions to impossible problems.
But then Caroline thought of Greg Portos. The failed associate whose tenure at Hale Stern had come to an abrupt end. That, too, was the Louis for whom Caroline had come to work.
The thought sobered her.
“Just tell me where to be,” Caroline said.
“North Hill Street at the Central Justice Building. Department C-23. Louis says to make sure you’re there by nine.”
Caroline scribbled the information on her legal pad. At least it was a morning hearing. That would leave the rest of the afternoon and the whole next day to locate the missing article and finish the outline.
Silvia pointed at the file on Caroline’s desk. “You’ve got the docket there, plus all of the complaints and answers that have been filed by everyone in the case so far. Those should help you in case the judge has any questions.”
Caroline eased the ream of papers from the file folder. The docket alone was over fifty pages long. Single spaced.
“You said this is just a status conference, right?” Caroline asked. She knew the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure required periodic meetings between the judge and the attorneys, but she didn’t know what exactly they met about.
“Yeah, should be short. The judge probably just wants to discuss the procedure for the Daubert motion or something.” Silvia shrugged. “I doubt he wants to talk about discovery issues or settlement negotiations, but you never know.”
Caroline’s eyes traveled back to the thick pile of paper. “Will anyone else from the Steering Committee be there?”
“No one’s told me, but I’m guessing not. None of the members of the Committee are from California. I’m sure everyone will show up for the Daubert hearing, but for this little status conference? Probably not. Then again, you never know . . .” The assistant turned to go. “Remember to report to Louis when you get back from court.”
“Will do,” Caroline called to Silvia’s departing back.
Caroline looked at the clock. It was already 6:13 p.m.
The day was ending too soon. Everything was happening too fast.
She needed to find Dr. Wong. She needed to draft the outline. And now she needed to learn the procedural posture of the case and get familiar with all of the key players and theories of relief. The flurry of assignments reeled in her mind like a blizzard, piling up and weighing her down.
But Caroline forced her attention to the near path ahead.
She had no time for fear. She had no time for dead scientists or missing research partners.
She had a case to master. She had a hearing to attend.
She settled in to study deep into the night.
CHAPTER 4
Caroline didn’t know what she’d expected from her first trip to court, but this wasn’t it.
Sickly white-green lighting.
Chipped floor tiles.
The occasional child running down the corridor, oblivious to the strained formality around him.
A knot of people at one end o
f the hall attested to the location of the SuperSoy hearing. Their voices echoed, humming like a hushed note of anticipation, an orchestra tuning up for a concert.
Caroline wove through the dense throng.
She found an empty spot on the stone bench outside the locked doors of the courtroom. With the close proximity of so many people, she could almost feel the pulsing of thoughts and sound through the soles of her feet.
Trying to ignore the oppressive sensation, Caroline sat down and placed her brown accordion folder beside her laptop bag at her feet. Across the top Silvia had pasted a big “SuperSoy Litigation” label, as if Caroline had some other case with which she might have confused the folder. Caroline took the label as a sign of Silvia’s optimism about her future at Hale Stern.
But first she needed to make it through the hearing. Without fanfare, she was about to become a true lawyer, allowed to appear in court because she’d passed the licensing exam.
Hooray for me, Caroline thought, wondering how much longer she had to wait before she lost her courtroom virginity.
She pivoted her body so she could read the calendar tacked beside the doors.
There was only one case listed: In re SuperSoy Litigation, 9:30 a.m.
Caroline’s eyes widened. The judge had reserved the entire morning for SuperSoy?
Silvia had said this was just supposed to be a short little status conference. Quick and easy. Nothing major. Blocking out a full three hours of court time suggested the judge had something more substantive in mind.
Caroline’s stomach clenched.
If the hearing lasted long enough, the judge was bound to ask her something she didn’t know. Even after studying, she had only a thimbleful of knowledge about an ocean of a case. She knew only a few of the procedural twists. She knew even less about the individual plaintiffs and their claims. Or the discovery motions. Or the potential settlement overtures.
This was insanity. Other than appearing for jury duty, Caroline had never been to court, much less as the sole representative of thousands of people gravely injured by a multi-billion-dollar biotech company . . . and after practicing law for exactly a day.
A fearful rhythm struck up in Caroline’s chest.
No, she told herself, don’t think about it.
Caroline pulled her laptop from her bag. Action often bound her anxiety. Distraction might help now.
She resolved to use the time before the hearing to find the missing article. But how?
Running a hand across her forehead, Caroline bent her mind to finding potential avenues of research. Perhaps Dr. Heller had teased his article at other conferences? Or maybe someone at his lab, perhaps a lab tech, had some fragment of it? Or a lead on where to find the whole paper?
Caroline focused on the screen, waiting for the laptop to connect to the Internet.
Instead an image of a dinosaur appeared beneath a message: You are offline.
She tried again.
But still, she couldn’t connect.
Sitting back, Caroline looked around at the jaundiced cinder-block walls of the courthouse. Built with a 1960s nuclear apocalyptic sensibility, the thick concrete walls were preventing any signal from reaching her laptop.
She exhaled in frustration. She needed to give Louis her outline in thirty-six hours. She didn’t have time for technical difficulties.
She snapped her laptop shut. She couldn’t worry about it now.
She moved down to the next worry on her list. The outline.
Opening her bag again, she pulled out the legal pad where she’d written her notes from her initial evaluation of the scientific literature. She found a blank page and resolved to write as much of the outline as she could before the hearing began.
But as she stared down at the vast expanse of empty lines, a pang of dread ricocheted around her chest before finally settling in the deepest part of her gut. She still had nothing beyond her initial theories. Her underwhelming plan to use Feinberg, Ambrose, and Tercero to draw inferences about SuperSoy. She had no new insight. No spark of inspiration. Just three weak, tangentially relevant scientific articles. Three rotting pieces of timber with which to try to keep the case afloat.
A wave of dizziness roiled through her.
Caroline reminded herself that no one on the Plaintiffs’ Steering Committee had found any direct link between SuperSoy and kidney injury. If the case sank, it wouldn’t be her fault.
But that wasn’t how Louis would see it. He’d given her the assignment to find exceptionality. She needed to show him some.
Except . . . she couldn’t.
Unbidden, she recalled Greg Portos. His fatal offense had been failing to notice a deponent sneaking out of a bathroom. Just a simple mistake. Not even a failure of legal analysis. An error of observation, not a disappointing performance on an assignment.
And yet here she was, sitting at this stupid courthouse instead of looking for the Heller article or making another pass through the war room for material she could use to avert disaster. Trapped in the courthouse, she could only wait until the hearing happened.
The hearing. Her first hearing. Of any sort. Ever.
It occurred to Caroline that the hearing would be transcribed. A court reporter would type every word spoken by the attorneys. Louis would read the transcript. He’d see how well—or how poorly—she’d conducted herself.
Caroline’s heart hammered out a timbale beat of worry.
What if the judge had set aside the entire morning for the SuperSoy case because he intended to pressure the Plaintiffs’ Steering Committee to settle? What if he’d noticed the absence of any direct link between SuperSoy and kidney damage? Maybe he planned to call the lawyers into his chambers to browbeat the plaintiffs’ representative into coming to terms with the unavoidable need to give up the fight. If so, this first court appearance would be a nightmare of the darkest degree.
Taking a calming breath, Caroline reached into her pocket and withdrew a strand of beads. Azure blue and silky smooth, she’d bought them on a trip to Greece after law school when she’d maxed out her credit card to keep up with her best friend, Joey, who didn’t want to stay at youth hostels. In a shaded storefront on an island in the Western Cyclades, a leather-skinned man had shown her how to flip the beads around in a circle, like a janitor twirling his keys over a finger. He’d called the beads komboloi, which meant, “each breath a prayer.” A good motto. Except when the breaths came hard and shallow.
Like now.
The scene before Caroline flickered and fragmented, her vision blotched with patches of darkness.
Gripping the edges of her legal pad, she braced her elbows on her knees.
She knew what was happening. She’d had an anxiety attack once before, after moving home to go to law school. Back in her mom’s house after years of living on her own, she’d witnessed her mother’s disintegration. Her father’s absence. And her own shattering uncertainty about her path. She’d always known how to conduct herself in the tech world. When people hit, she’d hit back. Hard, if necessary. On Quora and Slashdot, she’d defended the little guy, stood up to frat-boy brogrammers, and answered questions about everything from how to mitigate bad code to how to get a good seat at the next Women Who Kick Ass panel at Comic-Con.
In leaving tech, she’d left those moorings. Moving home hadn’t helped. With her dad gone and her mom sinking into a quicksand of meds and booze, the seams of her life had strained until one day, she’d found herself short of breath in Contracts. Dizzy and terrified, she’d fled to the health center, where she’d been offered pills. She’d refused. She couldn’t risk it. Not with her family history of addiction. Instead, she’d turned to other means to calm her mind. Breathing exercises. Meditation. These tools had worked.
Until now.
Caroline’s heart beat faster and faster, thundering in her ears until it drowned out all other sounds. Some part of her mind wondered how much harder it could hammer without stopping.
This is not a heart attack, sh
e told herself, imposing the words like a doctor talking to a small child about a minor cut. But even as she knew the fear wasn’t real, she couldn’t escape it.
Her legs flexed, ready to run.
Sweat beaded on her forehead and palms.
She clamped her eyes shut and bore down.
She could not leave. She had a hearing to attend. She. Could. Not. Leave.
Unable to break free of the terror, Caroline rode the updrafts of the hurricane that tore around inside her chest until gradually, slowly, the attack began to pass.
Her pulse slowed.
The vise around her chest loosened, leaving her hollowed out and exhausted and . . . depressed.
She’d been lying to herself. The realization settled over her soul like a funeral shroud.
She’d always thought that she could manage her demons. That she could tame them, if not into docile house cats, then into declawed tigers safely ensconced in the basement. But maybe that wasn’t true. Maybe she was just like her mother and her uncle. She shared their biochemical tendency to shatter. Their unsure footing on the slopes of sanity.
No amount of will or good intentions could change what she was. Or who she was.
And if that was true, then maybe she’d been lying to herself about reinventing herself. About remaking herself with the better raw materials of her nature into someone she could respect. Into a lawyer who helped people instead of a tech geek with a seriously shady side.
Perhaps she should stop running from the tech world? Even if she couldn’t practice the dark arts that kept calling to her like a Siren’s song, maybe she should’ve remained a software engineer.
But what about all of her efforts to change careers? All of her studies? Maybe those were all folly . . .
Caroline exhaled shakily.
What she needed was some sign, some reassurance that she’d made the right choice.
Like a flare launched out into space, she sent a silent question to the universe:
Why was she doing this?
She waited with her eyes pressed shut. But no answer was forthcoming.
Doubt (Caroline Auden Book 1) Page 5