Doubt (Caroline Auden Book 1)

by C. E. Tobisman

  Suddenly, she couldn’t get enough air.

  “I’ll walk.” She pulled a ten-dollar bill from her purse and dangled it over the divider.

  The driver didn’t notice. He was too busy texting.

  “Excuse me,” Caroline said, a little more desperately. “I’m just going to get out here.”

  This time the driver looked up long enough to recognize that his fare was fleeing. He made a halfhearted effort to find a safe place to stop before letting Caroline exit in the middle of the street.

  “Keep the change,” Caroline called as she climbed from the cab and tried not to get run down by a bike messenger threading his way through the gridlock.

  When she reached the relative safety of the sidewalk, she put her hands on her knees and drank in the cool air, trying to stop the dizziness that fragmented the street scene in front of her. The streets of New York were the worst possible spot for an anxiety attack. She imagined her frozen remains and bones picked over by scavengers. At least she had a driver’s license. Someone could identify the body if she passed out.

  Reaching into her pocket, she felt for the worry beads, letting the sensation ground her.

  Gradually, her breathing calmed.

  But her calm was short-lived. With a sudden bolt of awfulness, she realized she’d forgotten to grab her rolling briefcase.

  She spun around, casting around for the cab, but it was gone.

  Panic threatened to rise again in her chest, constricted and crushing.

  Caroline forced herself into equanimity. The briefcase contained only hard copies of the articles. She still had her laptop containing the downloaded articles, all bookmarked and organized. She’d be fine, she told herself. She just had to be.

  She had to stay calm. She just had to get to court.

  Facing the rising sun, she began to walk.

  Three long New York blocks later, Caroline’s feet screamed in protest at her heels. Business attire sucked, she decided. Fortunately, her destination was ahead—a hulking gray structure with overwrought gray pillars and a statue of Lady Justice mounted before it.

  Tourists clogged the sidewalk, all wearing matching shirts or caps, clustered around docents carrying flags bearing the names of different tour companies. Apparently, the historic courthouse was on an architectural walking tour. Weaving through the throngs of people, Caroline scanned the exterior of the building for an entrance.

  Finally, she saw it glowing in the pale-yellow sunlight of early morning.

  She jogged toward it and stopped at the security checkpoint. A line of litigants and lawyers stretched out onto the sidewalk, all waiting to pass through a single metal detector manned by a bored-looking marshal whose bloodshot eyes scanned a small screen.

  She glanced at her watch. She had only ten minutes before the hearing. Louis would be wondering where she was. Forcing herself not to panic, she waited for the marshal to wave her through.

  When she’d passed the checkpoint, Caroline entered the green marble rotunda.

  She found the list of courtrooms posted on a dog-eared piece of paper on a pillar. Judge Todd Jacobsen’s courtroom was on the second floor.

  But while Caroline saw the down escalator located across from the exit to the courthouse, she didn’t see an up escalator anywhere. She huffed in frustration, contemplating writing a sternly worded letter to the architect. While she appreciated the efforts of those who’d tried to locate the escalators in a manner that retained the building’s original decorative details, it would have been nice to have up and down in the same general location.

  Resisting the urge to check her watch again, she began to methodically check each hallway and corridor, hunting for the up escalator. She found it on the far side of the building, over a quarter mile away from the down escalator.

  Finally, she stood at the doors to the courtroom.

  She reminded herself this would all be over soon. She remembered her guided meditation from one of her favorite tapes. She imagined roots forming from her feet, traveling down into the loamy soil, gripping, grounding.

  Then she entered.

  The moment Caroline stepped into the courtroom, Deena approached. The New York associate’s gold-link necklace turned a plain black dress into a backdrop for a bolt of fabulousness. It hadn’t occurred to Caroline that an attorney could wear something other than a suit to court, but seeing Deena, it now seemed obvious.

  “Dale’s all ready to go,” Deena said. “I worked with him all night.”

  Caroline raised a mental eyebrow.

  “The PowerPoint looks good,” Deena continued. “He’s good to go.”

  The sound of Deena’s razor-edged voice was a buzz saw, its blade shredding the imaginary roots Caroline had just sent down to the ground. Something about the woman set her nerves on edge.

  Beside Caroline, the door of the courtroom swung open. A familiar face appeared. Jasper, the gruff retiree who had elicited a promise from her to win the case. An absurd promise that she still irrationally hoped to keep. With his neatly pressed trousers and collared shirt, he looked like he’d donned his Sunday best for the occasion of the Daubert hearing.

  Caroline wasn’t sure which was worse: talking to Deena or talking to this poor soul whose brother’s life depended on Dale’s performance.

  Excusing herself from Deena, she made her way toward Jasper.

  He extended a hand.

  She took it and found it rough and strong, callused from a lifetime of physical labor.

  “Did you fly all the way out for this?” she asked.

  “Nah. Too expensive. I drove. Can’t do nothing about the result. But I can watch the hearing. And pray.” Jasper squinted at Caroline. “You gonna be doin’ the arguing today?”

  “No,” Caroline said. “I’m going to be doing my best to make sure the guy that’s handling the argument does the very best he can.” She patted the laptop bag slung over her shoulder.

  “Good,” Jasper said.

  Caroline wished she could offer this man some help. Real help. As a child, she’d saved birds when they’d crashed into the dining room window. Befuddled and stunned, they’d lie in a shoe box until they got their bearings again, then they’d fly off. The same urge descended on her now as she looked at Jasper’s hangdog face. But she had nothing to offer him except an encouraging smile and some false enthusiasm.

  Caroline looked around the courtroom. “Where’s Tom?”

  “He couldn’t come,” Jasper said, looking down. “The kids at the school started a fund for him to cover the cost of his medication for another few months. Just to give us a little more time. After that . . . we’re all out of options.”

  “I’m sorry,” Caroline offered. The words felt inadequate to capture the enormity of the personal stakes this case had for this man.

  “Everyone’s sorry,” said Jasper, his voice holding bitterness. “I don’t need sympathy. I need you to win this thing so my brother can get his settlement.”

  Caroline inclined her head in sympathy.

  “If we don’t win here today, I don’t know what’s going to happen . . .” Jasper trailed off.

  Caroline knew. Tom would die. The look in Jasper’s eyes said he knew it, too.

  The stern man cleared his throat. “I know you’re going to do fine. You’re our lucky charm, we’ve decided.”

  “Why?” Caroline blurted, appalled. She was just an associate. A lowly first-year.

  “Because you care,” said Jasper. “It’s in your eyes every time you ask about my brother. That’s how I know you’re gonna save him,” he said, his gruff facade cracking, showing the scared younger brother who desperately wanted his older brother not to die.

  Caroline didn’t know what to say.

  “I’ll see you afterward. After you’ve won,” Jasper said before turning away and ushering himself to the back of the gallery to stand with the other family members of victims.

  Turning away from Jasper, Caroline scanned the courtroom for a familiar face. Som
eone to help shoulder the load of the expectations that shone from the faces of the victims’ families. But she didn’t see Louis anywhere. Nor did she see Eddie.

  Eddie had promised he’d make it in time for the hearing. With a kiss on the forehead, he’d vowed he’d see her just as soon as he arrived. But there was no Eddie. Just two teams preparing to do battle. Attorneys, paralegals, and support staff scurried around the clerk and audiovisual stations, testing the Elmo projector and arranging documents. Court staff took business cards and filled-out appearance forms. Marshals shifted from foot to foot, practiced movements honed by long hours of standing.

  Caroline watched the proceedings with a deepening sense of doom. All of these lawyers, all of these preparations would amount to nothing if Dale couldn’t pull off the argument. And she remained unconvinced that he could. She’d drilled him on the plane. She’d tried to stick her finger in the cracks of the dam . . . but would it be enough?

  Her eyes settled on the door.

  There was still time to flee the impending debacle.

  Caroline sat in the bathroom stall with her head bent down, with the stench of race-day poop all around her. The smell of fear. The putrid odor that clung to the athletes’ bathrooms and airport bathrooms and anywhere else where people’s lower limbic nervous systems kicked in and told the body that death was imminent.

  Ignoring the smell, she forced herself to breathe deeply. In, out, in, out. She willed her mind to find some distraction from the worry that contorted her gut, ping-ponging across her nerves. She begged some other thought to enter her head. Something soothing and grounding.

  An image came. But instead of clouds or rainbows or puppies, she saw . . . monkey poop. She recalled traveling to the Amazon with her family in third grade. Paddling in a dugout canoe on a piranha-infested lake, they’d caught sight of a group of howler monkeys in the trees. The monkeys’ response to the Audens’ appearance had been instant. Showers of feces had cascaded down through the mangroves, a lower limbic system response to imagined danger. Unable to master their minds, the primates had been slaves to their visceral fears.

  “I am not a monkey,” she whispered to herself.

  Water dripped down Caroline’s chin as she leaned over the fountain outside the courtroom. She kept her face tipped over the basin so she wouldn’t drench her suit. She cast a sideways look around for something with which to wipe her chin. Other than her sleeve.

  A hand reached into Caroline’s view, offering a clean, white handkerchief that smelled faintly of a men’s cologne she didn’t recognize.

  She glanced up to see Ian Kennedy towering over her.

  “Thanks,” she said, taking the handkerchief.

  She wiped her chin, then handed the damp fabric back to the tall defense attorney, who gazed at her with an innocuous, friendly expression.

  “I thought I saw you head this way,” Kennedy said, smiling his gap-toothed smile.

  Caroline didn’t smile back. Had he followed her when she fled the courtroom? Had he waited outside the women’s bathroom? Creepy.

  “Remarkable job filing that article,” he said. “I saw the file stamp on it, just seconds before the virtual file window closed. That had to have been stressful.”

  “It was.” She wouldn’t give him anything more than that.

  “Did you actually find the assistant scientist who wrote it?” Kennedy asked. “Or was the article someplace else?”

  Caroline didn’t answer. She knew he didn’t expect her to.

  “It is quite an article,” Kennedy continued. “I read it and the supporting data as soon as they showed up on my desk. Dr. Heller’s research was meticulous, I’ll admit.”

  “That’s true,” Caroline said. “His sample sizes were impressive, too.”

  “Agreed,” Kennedy said. “I’ll do my best to debunk that article, but it has made this a far closer fight.”

  Caroline resisted the urge to respond, to continue talking about the article she’d worked so hard to find. Here, in her adversary, she’d found what she’d wished Dale had provided: a curious mind. That this curious mind also happened to lack all morality or scruples prevented her from speaking further. She shut her mouth and kept it closed.

  “I knew you were something special.” Kennedy smiled, the gap between his two front teeth more evident up close. “Louis is lucky to have you on his team. He really doesn’t deserve someone of your quality. You really could do so much better.”

  Caroline remained silent. She prepared to defend herself. From what, she didn’t know. Some threat. Even though she knew Kennedy wouldn’t do anything in a courthouse. Even though she knew he didn’t act directly. Even though she knew there were marshals around. Still, she feared him and his disarmingly benign demeanor. Benign like a sleeping cobra, she reminded herself.

  “We offer attractive packages to our young associates,” Kennedy said. “We also offer a stipend for a car lease. Plus, our firm banker offers very reasonable interest rates on home loans. The golden handcuffs, if you will.” He paused. “We also offer generous medical benefits. Dental. Vision. Even . . . mental health.”

  Caroline blanched. Outside of a single notation in a student health record at UCLA, she’d never had a formal diagnosis of anxiety. Had Kennedy mined those records? She let none of her discomfiture show on her face.

  “I’ve got to get back in there,” Caroline said, nodding with her chin toward the courtroom.

  “Of course you do,” Kennedy said, inclining his head and stepping back to let her pass. “Just promise me you’ll think about it. If ever things don’t work out for you where you are . . .” He trailed off, raising an eyebrow to complete the sentence.

  “I’m fine where I am for now, but I appreciate the offer,” Caroline said. Perhaps if Kennedy thought she was vaguely interested, he’d be less inclined to kill her. Or something.

  She turned to walk toward the courtroom.

  The sound of her heels clicking against the marble floors echoed, obscuring her ability to sense if Kennedy was following.

  She refused to look back.

  But as she walked away, she shivered. Kennedy had only asked about the assistant scientist—as if he already knew the lead scientist was dead. While the newspapers had covered Heller’s death, the scientist’s demise wasn’t something Kennedy had any reason to know about. Heller hadn’t published, after all. They had no reason to know the article’s history. Or the sad history of its author.

  Had Kennedy just tipped his hand? Had he just revealed that he indeed had something to do with Dr. Heller’s demise?

  Preoccupied by the ominous possibilities, Caroline stepped back into the courtroom.

  CHAPTER 10

  The courtroom had filled to capacity. The room hummed with an undercurrent of anticipation. Everyone knew what was coming: showdown at high noon.

  Caroline’s heart began to pound in time to the ambient stress in the room.

  “Hey,” said a voice from behind her.

  She recognized it immediately. Eddie.

  She longed for an oasis of optimism. A friendly face. But there was no guarantee Eddie would provide it. Perhaps their night together had been born of euphoria after the breakneck-speed filing of the Heller article. Perhaps their connection had evaporated with the rising sun. Perhaps he was the sort of man who disavowed his sexual conquests with the cold shoulder of selective amnesia.

  Caroline turned to face him.

  In a pin-striped suit and wing-tip shoes, he cut a confident figure.

  When Caroline met his eyes, he looked down.

  Shyness, Caroline realized. She found it endearing. And encouraging.

  “You made it,” she said.

  “My flight got delayed. But I’m on the one ahead of you back to LA, so I might beat you back.” He met her eyes and held them.

  Warmth blossomed in Caroline’s chest.

  “Though after we win this thing today,” Eddie continued, “I’ll have to clean out my borrowed office and go back to A
tlanta.” His dark eyes held genuine regret.

  Caroline knew the expression in her own eyes matched his. She had known their fling would be short-lived. But she hated the reminder.

  A light touch on her wrist brought her attention back to him.

  “That’s nice,” Eddie said, his gaze traveling to her wrist where a bracelet formed of silver and gold Celtic knots hung.

  She knew he was trying to change the topic. She decided to let him.

  “It’s called a Donegal,” she said. “It’s supposed to symbolize the harmonious weaving together of two paths. My dad gave it to me when I graduated law school.”

  “He must’ve been proud of you,” Eddie said.

  “He was, though I think he was also a little bit . . . conflicted.” She shook her head. “It’s a long story.” She hadn’t told her father the date of her graduation. They’d drifted so far apart that she didn’t see the point. But a week after graduation, the bracelet had arrived in the mail, wrapped in raffia and accompanied by a handwritten note from the artist describing the meaning of the Donegal. Caroline knew her father saw symbolism in the gift. But she didn’t call him to ask. And yet, she was wearing it.

  “I’d like to hear the story.” Eddie’s eyes held hers. His fingers remained on her wrist. Intimate. Soft. Warm.

  The heat in Caroline’s chest spread upward to her face.

  She felt a sudden wave of self-consciousness at the intimacy of their interaction in a crowded courtroom. A prickle of awareness caused her to turn.

  She found Louis watching her from across the courtroom. Frowning.

  Her heart sank. She could almost hear his thoughts—I told you not to trust the loaned associates, and now you’ve gone off and slept with one of them? She had no explanation. Except—passion isn’t easily confined? We didn’t pick this, it picked us? It all sounded cheesy and lame.

  So she broke contact with Eddie’s hand.

  “I better go see about Louis,” she said and withdrew.

  Weaving through the sea of men in suits, toward the plaintiffs’ side of the courtroom, she couldn’t help but notice she was a foot shorter than everyone. The conversations going on around her were happening over her head. Literally. She was also at least a decade younger, and one of only a handful of women on either side, all of them junior associates.