“Can we get a new judge?” Caroline asked.
“No. Jacobsen’s involvement in asbestos litigation isn’t enough to require him to recuse himself. We’d have to move to disqualify him, and I’m not comfortable with our chances of success. If we fail, we’ll have poisoned the well. If you shoot at a king—don’t miss.” Louis shook his white-haired head. “I’m afraid we’re stuck with him.”
“So what do we do?” Caroline asked.
“We write a singularly compelling brief. We make it impossible for Judge Jacobsen to deny the existence of a link between SuperSoy and kidney damage.”
Caroline nodded. It was a good speech. A great set of aspirations. Unfortunately, reality wasn’t being so cooperative.
“I’d feel better about our chances if we had some science showing a direct link,” she said.
“Agreed,” Louis said, letting the mask slip enough for Caroline to see his concerns. When she’d told him about Dr. Heller’s death and Dr. Wong’s apparent disappearance, he’d taken the news with the grim determination of a cavalry lieutenant facing a wall of cannons.
Now he exhaled softly.
“All we can do is to play the hand that’s been dealt to us,” he said.
“But what if it’s a bad hand?” Caroline asked.
“Then unless you play very well or you are very lucky, you lose.”
Louis’s eyes flickered over to the chess game on the small table by his window. Caroline noted that neither side had moved since her last visit to the senior partner’s antiquated domain. It was a slow, deliberate game that Louis played. But while he might win his chess match, Caroline couldn’t see how he’d win the SuperSoy case.
Litigation wasn’t chess. A game of chess always began the same way. The pieces lined up, identical on both sides. Who won and who lost depended on each player’s skill. Litigation was different. Sometimes the evidence just didn’t fall into place. Sometimes you couldn’t win.
The thought depressed Caroline. Still, she waited for Louis to say something inspirational. Something hopeful.
But the only sound she heard was the ambient hum of activity in the firm’s halls. A hum that had nothing to do with SuperSoy.
Caroline studied Louis’s face. She worried she’d started to see traces of disappointment. In the faint tightening of his mouth, in the soft sigh of his breath when she’d told him that she hadn’t managed to locate the Heller article, she feared she saw his interest in her waning like a balloon with a slow leak, its bright sheen growing limp before crumpling into a rumpled heap.
“The transfer of this case to New York is going to create some issues for us,” Louis said finally. “I need you to prepare a pro hac vice application for me so I can appear before the district court there.”
“Will do.” Caroline had googled pro hac vice at a stoplight on her way back to the office from the hearing. Wikipedia had provided a superficial description of what the Latin phrase meant. Translated as “for this one occasion,” pro hac vice was a lawyer’s request for permission to appear in a court where he was not licensed.
“New York allows appearances by out-of-state attorneys so long as they’re sponsored by a local attorney and they provide a Certificate of Good Standing from the state bar,” Louis said. “Silvia has my Certificate of Good Standing on file. Please arrange to have Anton Callisto sponsor my application.”
“I’ll get right on it,” Caroline said. She kept her face neutral even as she noted that Louis only planned to request permission for himself to appear. She wondered if he’d even ask her to attend the hearing in New York. Or whether she’d be staying home.
Louis removed his wire-rimmed glasses and placed them gently on his ink blotter. Without his glasses framing his light eyes, his gaze held a pale vulnerability. He looked out the window, his aristocratic features distracted.
“I suppose it might be time to give up on finding that article,” he mused aloud. Unsaid was since you failed abysmally at finding it.
Unsure what else she could say, Caroline nodded her understanding and left his office.
As she walked away from Louis’s office, Caroline didn’t notice the staff at the workstations in the halls. She didn’t notice the box of doughnuts laid out on the credenza, a gift from some grateful client. Instead, she chewed the inside of her lip and considered her dilemma.
Hale Stern didn’t hire the usual way, sorting through hundreds of applicants during the on-campus interviews hosted by the law schools, holding back-to-back conversations with candidates in cramped hotel rooms across the street from campuses. No, Hale Stern handpicked its candidates from clinical courses taught by the firm’s partners at the top law schools in the country. It invested substantial time in selecting its new attorneys. And when those attorneys arrived, they were expected to perform. Immediately.
And she wasn’t performing. Not yet, anyway.
Caroline felt like an Olympic diver attempting a trick with a high degree of difficulty. If she pulled it off, she’d stand on the victors’ podium for sure. But if she failed, she risked braining herself on the diving board. At this point, a belly flop seemed likely. Even inevitable.
She consoled herself that she could go to another firm if things didn’t work out at Hale Stern. But the consolation fell flat. If she left too soon, she’d be seen as damaged goods. Her short stint at Hale Stern—or her gap in employment if she left the firm off her résumé—would be an indictment. She’d be lucky to find another position. And that meant she’d be stuck at home longer. In that house full of ghosts. Full of her uncle . . . She didn’t know if she could stand it.
All of which brought her back to her problem. The Heller article. Because of her inability to find anything else of use in the war room, her success or failure at Hale Stern had telescoped down to a single question: whether she could find Dr. Heller’s missing article. She’d pushed all her chips into the center of the table, gambling on finding it.
But she’d already tried the easy pathways to information about the article. To find it, she might need to try some . . . harder ones.
Her chest grew cold, as if a ghost had passed through her.
She knew the price of information. There were always ways to find things out. Some of those ways were legal. Some were not. She knew the lines of demarcation. After her father had been arrested for hacking, those lines were tattooed indelibly on her soul. Yes, Caroline knew the toll of information. The human toll. To herself. To those she’d loved . . .
She was fairly sure she could find the article through legal means, but the slope was a slippery one. She knew how addicting the hunt for information could become. How difficult it was to stop once she’d started . . . Even when prudence dictated caution, she’d shown herself heedless of the imperative to retreat from the hunt.
Caroline slowed her steps.
Glass windows beside office doors provided glimpses of the Hale Stern lawyers inside. As she passed each one, she studied their faces. Old faces and young. Male and female. Of myriad ethnicities. But all of them practiced at the pinnacle of the legal world. All of them had made a professional home at one of the most well-respected firms in the country.
Their offices reflected their success. Some, like Louis’s, were decorated with antiques. Brass fittings and carved walnut furniture. Persian rugs and elegant lamps. Others had opted for more modern trappings. Caroline idly wondered whether the partners received a decorating stipend or whether they paid for their furnishings themselves. They could certainly afford it.
Caroline stopped before an empty office. A small one. An associate’s office that contained only an oak desk and metal bookshelf holding the ubiquitous Code of Civil Procedure issued to all first-year associates. Beyond the sparse furnishings, a panoramic view of the San Gabriel Mountains rose up in the north.
She read the nameplate on the door: GREG PORTOS.
Pulling back as if touched by electricity, Caroline turned and hurried to her own office.
Before she began, Car
oline shut her door. What she was about to do wasn’t forbidden. Subterfuge might be morally reprehensible, but no law barred it. Still, she didn’t want to explain her methods to anyone. People might judge. Even she herself could not escape the pang of conscience that settled in the pit of her stomach, a reminder of the dread she’d experienced the last time she’d dug too far for information . . .
Bringing her fingers to her laptop, she ran a search for Dr. Franklin Heller.
As before, dozens of obituaries appeared on the screen. But this time, she wasn’t interested in the details of the scientist’s death. Instead, she scrolled down until she found the information she sought: Dr. Heller was survived by his wife, Yvonne Heller.
Perhaps the dead scientist’s wife knew something about the article.
There was only one way to find out: she needed a phone number.
She hoped that finding it would be relatively simple.
As expected, she found nothing in the publicly available telephone databases. A general search for “Yvonne Heller” failed, too. It retrieved hundreds of pages. Too many to be useful.
Caroline knew she needed to limit the universe of results.
She restricted her results to Yvonne Hellers who lived in Los Angeles County.
Still, a dozen hits marched down the page.
Navigating back to the obituaries, Caroline skimmed until she found the piece of information she needed: Yvonne’s middle name. It was Ophelia.
Caroline breathed an internal sigh of relief. The letter O was unusual enough to limit her results to probable hits.
Sure enough, a search for “Yvonne O. Heller” retrieved two dozen results, most of which discussed Dr. Heller’s death and all of which presumably related to the correct Yvonne Heller.
Caroline digested information as fast as her fingers could probe the corners of each hit. Yvonne had been born in Pasadena. She’d attended high school in Glendale. Her volunteer work at Children’s Hospital garnered the praise of the mayor and other civil leaders.
On the third page of search results, something caught Caroline’s eye: Yvonne O. Heller was a member of the American Institute of CPAs.
Accountants had offices. With phones.
Caroline’s fingers tingled. She was closing in on her prey.
She ran searches for “Yvonne O. Heller, CPA,” “Yvonne Heller, CPA,” and “Yvonne Heller, accountant.”
But she retrieved no hits. Instead, the only reference to “Yvonne O. Heller, CPA,” outside of the AICPA directory itself, was a mention of a seminar a year ago at Claremont McKenna College’s economics and accounting department. Yvonne had sat as a panelist discussing the usefulness of accounting degrees in running small businesses. Yvonne didn’t have an accounting practice anymore. If she ever had.
Caroline sat back and considered how to find another point of entry into Yvonne’s life. Where did Yvonne live? Dine? Play? Who were her friends?
Caroline knew how to find out all of those things: Facebook.
She began with the obvious avenue of attack: Yvonne’s user profile.
As expected, Yvonne had set her privacy settings so that only her friends could view her personal information.
It was time to get creative.
Caroline navigated to Facebook’s home page.
The social networking site asked if she wanted to log in to an existing account or create a new one. She opted for the latter. Then she contemplated what to name her alias. She decided on Taylor Albert. A good gender-ambiguous name that would broaden the pool of potential faces to whom Yvonne might attach the name.
Now Caroline just needed to set up a false e-mail address and fill in the details on the profile, constructing a false identity, the plausibility of which Yvonne would justify for herself.
What kind of stranger would Yvonne accept as a friend? The wife of another research scientist? A neighbor?
Suddenly, a better idea occurred to Caroline.
With rapid keystrokes, she filled in the profile. Taylor Albert would be twenty-one, have graduated from Claremont McKenna College, and be pursuing a career in accounting. He’d like a half dozen accounting pages and organizations, including the Seminars and Speakers Series on the college’s Facebook page.
Now the last step: Taylor Albert needed some friends. Caroline didn’t have time to write her own code, so she navigated to blackhatbots.com to grab the latest Facebook account-creator bot. She loaded Facebook Flooder and set its parameters, and in moments, she had three dozen false Facebook identities with which to populate Taylor Albert’s friends page. Now Taylor would look like a real person instead of a hastily constructed tool designed for phishing.
It was time to bait the hook.
Taylor Albert sent a friend request to Yvonne. If Yvonne probed to see who this stranger was who wanted to Internet-befriend her, she’d assume that he was just an earnest student who’d attended her seminar. Flattery would lead her to accept this stranger’s friend request.
Fifteen minutes later, Caroline’s efforts were rewarded when Yvonne accepted the request. Now Caroline had access to Yvonne’s pictures, timelines, favorite websites, and, most importantly, her personal information, including her mobile phone number.
Grabbing her phone before her nerves could prevent her, Caroline dialed.
A woman’s round, rich alto answered.
Having used subterfuge to find Yvonne’s number, Caroline opted for honesty in her approach to the widow.
“Please pardon the intrusion,” she began. “My name’s Caroline Auden. I’m an attorney working on the SuperSoy case—”
“How did you get this number?” Yvonne asked, her tone so quick that Caroline winced, waiting for the click.
When Caroline didn’t hear one, she hurried onward. “I’m one of the lawyers representing the plaintiffs.” At the silence on the line, she kept going. “Our case depends on something your husband wrote. I know that sounds a little dramatic, but it’s the truth.”
Heartened that Yvonne still hadn’t hung up, she got to the point of her call.
“We hoped you might know where we could find your husband’s article on SuperSoy,” she finished.
“I’m sorry, but I really can’t help you,” Yvonne said slowly. The venom had left her voice. Instead, her tone sounded almost . . . regretful.
An instinct tugged at Caroline, a shadow of an idea forming in the far corner of her mind.
“I would prefer that you not call me,” Yvonne said.
The silence hung between them, pregnant and potent.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Caroline said finally. “I won’t call again.”
Hanging up, Caroline pondered the strange conversation. Either Yvonne Heller was a complete freak or . . . or what?
The buzz of a cell phone startled Caroline.
She looked down at the caller. Daniel Hitchings. Her uncle.
Caroline groaned. She didn’t have time for his antics. But she’d promised her mother she’d look after him . . .
“Hey, Uncle Hitch,” she answered.
“I hate to bug you,” her uncle began, his voice gravelly and slurring.
Caroline resisted the urge to disagree.
“I just need you to lend me some money,” he said. “Your mom was supposed to leave me some cash, but she only left me five and I need another twenty dollars, plus fifty-three cents.”
“I’m not helping you buy vodka,” Caroline said.
“Who said anything about vodka, kiddo?”
“Grey Goose costs $25.53.” She’d seen the labels on his bottles. She knew the price.
“No, but I—”
“I’ll see you later,” Caroline said, hanging up.
She flushed with annoyance. She’d been to meetings. She knew alcoholism was an illness, blah, blah, blah. She knew she was supposed to let go of trying to fix her uncle’s disease. But she hated witnessing it. She just needed to move out of that house, with its echoes of her mother’s madness and her uncle’s death spiral i
nto the alcoholic unknown.
The phone on the desk rang.
Gritting her teeth, Caroline answered, “I can’t believe you’re calling me on my work line—”
“Excuse me?” Silvia’s voice asked on the receiver.
“I’m so sorry,” Caroline backpedaled. “I thought you were someone else.”
“Apparently so.” Silvia chuckled.
Caroline thanked the law gods that she hadn’t yelled at Louis. She doubted he’d be as forgiving as her assistant.
“Louis is on the line. I’ll join the calls together now,” Silvia said. Without waiting for Caroline’s assent, the line clicked over, and Louis’s patrician voice came onto the line.
“I’d like for you to come with me to Las Vegas tomorrow morning,” he announced.
Caroline mentally replayed his words. What could possibly be in Las Vegas?
“The Plaintiffs’ Steering Committee is meeting there,” Louis said.
“Are there a lot of plaintiffs in Las Vegas?”
“No, there’s a lot of food. The attorneys on the Committee are all over the country. They meet in Las Vegas every few months to strategize. Their regular meeting was scheduled for this week. Now that our firm is helping out on the Daubert motion, they want me to attend. I’d like you to be there, too.”
Caroline warmed at the invitation. Perhaps she’d been wrong about Louis’s waning interest in her career. But then she eyed the pile of articles. How could she travel to Las Vegas and track down the Heller article and finish the outline? She had time for one task, maybe two. But not all three.
“I know I’ve given you quite a lot to do,” Louis continued, “so it’s your choice. This isn’t a command performance.”
“I’m happy to come,” Caroline said.
“Excellent,” Louis said, his tone leaving no doubt that she’d given the right answer. “Dale is curious to meet you. He’ll be interested to hear your view on the scientific evidence.”
Caroline made a mental note to reread all of her notes before she met Dale.
“Please have Silvia get you a ticket for the nine a.m. flight out of LAX on Southwest,” Louis said. “We’ll fly together so I can bring you up to speed on the dynamics with the Steering Committee.”
Doubt (Caroline Auden Book 1) Page 7