Doubt (Caroline Auden Book 1)

by C. E. Tobisman

  Caroline said nothing.

  “Just for six days,” the man continued. “A little vacation for a hardworking lawyer.”

  Caroline froze. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end.

  This wasn’t an innocent conversation with a stranger. This man knew who she was. This man was trying to bribe her. Her mind understood what was happening, even as it tried to reject the reality. This man was Kennedy’s agent.

  She was in danger.

  “I don’t need a vacation,” she said, noticing the birthmark on the man’s cheek, near his mouth. Pigmented red, it looked like a dead bug with its legs in the air. “I appreciate the education in cryptocurrency.” Caroline watched the airport terminal passing in the bus window. There was one more stop before the bus made its trip to the off-site parking lots.

  “Everyone needs a vacation,” the man said. “You could take a break or maybe even help out a struggling relative without worrying about work.”

  Caroline shivered at what might or might not have been a reference to her uncle.

  When the shuttle stopped at the international terminal, Caroline leaped up. In one fluid motion, she grabbed her suitcase and charged off the shuttle. Hitting the last step of the bus, she pushed off hard, hurtling herself toward the waiting crowd. Then she ran down the terminal sidewalk, looking for a police officer. Someone. Anyone.

  Behind her, the revving of an engine startled her.

  When she spun around, the shuttle was gone. She was alone.

  The first thing Caroline saw when she got back to her office was the package. Four inches tall and twenty inches long, it sat atop the legal pads and books strewn all over her desk. Cardboard and white, the package bore no markings except for her name, which had been scrawled in thick black ink across the center of the top.

  Caroline’s first thought was to call for a bomb squad. After her experience on the shuttle, her nerves prickled, filling her with edgy agitation. The appearance of the strange package seemed another ominous portent in a day filled with threats gathering like storm clouds.

  She stood frozen in the doorway of her office for another few seconds before forcing herself to exhale. She ordered herself to chill out.

  It was just a package. It wasn’t ticking. Audibly, anyway.

  Sitting down at her desk, Caroline lifted up the box. Someone, probably her assistant, had already created a long slit along one side so she could easily open it.

  She eased the contents of the package onto her desk. Pictures and letters. Loosely shoved into the package, they looked as if someone had printed them out then hastily sent them to her.

  A short cover letter from the Plaintiffs’ Steering Committee’s webmaster informed her that these materials had been sent to the Committee’s public e-mail address in the last eight hours in response to a posting on the victims’ Listserv and Facebook page. Seeing Caroline’s name at the top of each letter, the webmaster had printed out and messengered the materials to her so she could “learn a little bit about the real people this case affects.” The webmaster reported that many of the letters followed a similar script. They urged her “to spend some time getting to know the victims and their families.”

  Caroline’s eyes widened. Strangers were writing to her? About SuperSoy?

  She picked up the top photograph. A picture of a child wearing a reindeer hat smiled back at her. The little boy’s feet were tucked into red-and-green socks with little antlers sticking up from the tops.

  Reflexively, Caroline smiled at the sweet image. Clipped to it was a short letter.

  Ms. Auden,

  Jasper Wilkens says you’re helping us. I just wanted to thank you and tell you who I am. This is my son, Henry. He’s three. This picture was from last Christmas. He doesn’t look like this anymore. He’s currently at Children’s Hospital. He’s stable at the moment, thank God, but his right kidney had been failing, so we went to the hospital. The medication seems to be helping him for now. I just wanted you to know how much it means to me that you’re out there fighting for us.

  God bless you.

  Aubrey O’Malley

  Fascinated and appalled, she flipped to the next picture. This time, twin infants lay in matching hospital gowns, awaiting treatment. The accompanying letter told Caroline to “nail the bastards to the wall.” Filled with vitriol and fury masking what Caroline knew had to be abject terror for the health of his children, this father had poured his desperation into the letter.

  Caroline put the letter aside. It was too hard to read.

  Especially since the incident on the airport shuttle had made her rethink her mission to find Dr. Wong. She shivered. One of Kennedy’s agents had approached her, had tried to bribe her. Now that she’d rebuffed that attempt, what would Kennedy do next?

  She needed to stop looking for Dr. Wong. Even if it meant losing, she couldn’t risk her safety. No one could expect her to. Not even the victims. She felt bad for them, but she couldn’t help them. Not without putting herself at great risk.

  Caroline’s hands traveled back to the pile of letters and pictures. She thumbed through the faces of the victims. Babies. Children. Sometimes adults. All of them depended on the SuperSoy litigation to ensure their treatment. To vindicate their injuries. To avenge loved ones who’d been ripped from the embraces of their now-bereaved families.

  Caroline tried to distance herself from the onslaught. This was a blatant manipulation. Same as Jasper’s brother’s students showing up in court to try to influence the judge, this was a craven ploy intended to curry favor or sympathy from someone involved in the case. They wanted her to feel the weight of their sorrows, the heft of their nightly terrors, the full measure of their suffering. They wanted her to save them.

  But she couldn’t save these people. Heck, she couldn’t even save herself.

  Suddenly, her hands stopped at a familiar image.

  The mother holding the child looked older, more worry worn and exhausted, but Caroline recognized the face of Amy Garber, the younger sister of her college roommate. During freshman year, Amy had visited often, sleeping on a futon in their dorm room.

  Even after graduating, Caroline had followed Amy’s blog. She’d read Amy’s accounts of her time in Japan teaching English. More recently, Amy had chronicled her journey toward motherhood.

  Caroline recalled the baby shower. Amy had already picked out a name for the baby. Liam. Named for her grandfather. Amy had beamed as she’d opened little towels and burp cloths and even the diaper disposal unit. And Amy had posted pictures of Liam after he’d been born. Scrunched up and pink, he’d looked like a stricken chicken. But Amy had thought him to be the most beautiful creature in the world . . .

  Now the image of Liam hit Caroline like a swift punch to the solar plexus, leaving her dizzy and reeling. The baby she remembered had been so healthy, so full of the promise of a whole life ahead of him. Now Liam’s four-year-old visage stared wanly up at his mother, his arm hooked into a dialysis line.

  Caroline could barely bring herself to read the letter clipped to the tragic image.

  Caro—

  I couldn’t believe it when I saw you were working on this case. I’m so glad it’s you. You won’t let Liam die. I know you and I know you’re going to make sure Med-Gen pays for him to get the treatment he needs. I left my job to take care of him. Things are getting pretty desperate. We really need this, Caro.

  Love, Amy

  Tears welled in Caroline’s eyes. The idea that Amy’s son was sick was almost too much to bear. She knew she should feel the same way about all of the pictures now strewn across her desk, but this child wasn’t a statistic. He was Liam.

  The phone on her desk rang.

  The number glowing on the phone’s blue screen revealed who it was.

  “Hi, Louis,” she answered, wiping the moisture from her eyes and standing up, trying to get away from the pleading voices shouting at her from the pile of letters on her desk.

  “I just picked up your voice mail
. This is most disturbing,” Louis said. “How are you doing?”

  Caroline struggled for half a second to recall what he was talking about. She’d called Louis on her drive into the office, after she’d fled the man on the bus. Now she hoped her voice mail hadn’t too obviously held the blinding fear she’d felt as she’d described what had happened to her.

  “I’m okay,” she said, even though it wasn’t really true. She donned the headset and set out to wander the firm’s halls. She needed to walk. She needed to settle her nerves.

  At the late hour, only a handful of other lawyers occupied the offices ringing the windows of the firm. The rest of the offices were dark except for the ambient light from the neighboring buildings, seen like dark shadows up against the night sky.

  “Much as it pains me to say it, I’m afraid we cannot hunt for Dr. Wong,” Louis said in her ear. “It’s too dangerous. I won’t jeopardize your safety. Not for this case. Not for any case.” His voice held a note of finality.

  Caroline said nothing. He was right. Things had gotten too hot. Way too hot.

  But what about the case? Some part of her mind still protested. They’d be forfeiting any chance of winning if they relinquished the search for the missing scientist. What about all those people? What about Amy and Liam?

  As if anticipating her worries, Louis said, “I know I said we couldn’t prevail without Dr. Wong, but that isn’t true. We can have the other scientists testify about the Heller article. We’ll make sure they read it before the next hearing. We’ll fashion questions to elicit the answers we need to win this thing.”

  Caroline stayed silent. Her life was an exercise in forcing herself to live boldly despite her fears. She knew she worried. Sometimes excessively. Maybe almost always excessively, she amended. But this time her fears were well-founded.

  “Besides,” Louis continued, “Dr. Wong may yet show up of her own accord. She has subpoenas waiting for her at every known location she’s ever frequented. You’ve left messages and sent e-mails to her last contacts.”

  “I could also see if she has a personal e-mail account,” Caroline said, slowing her steps.

  “Good idea. In the meanwhile, keep working on those witness notes,” Louis said, taking it as a given that she’d given up the hunt. “Without Dr. Wong, we’re going to need to push Dr. Ambrose to extrapolate from his studies on rats. We must get him focused on the similarities between rat and human mitochondria.”

  “I’m on it,” Caroline said. Louis’s directions made sense. Drafting witness notes. Conducting mock examinations. These activities were well within the purview of what she’d expected to be doing when she’d stepped into this office two weeks ago. She’d come to Hale Stern to practice law, not become a bounty hunter.

  “Good,” said Louis. Then he cleared his throat. “I want to extend my deepest apologies that your first case has turned out to be so harrowing,” he said.

  Caroline didn’t know what to say. He was consoling her?

  “No, I’m sorry,” she said. “I wanted to impress you—”

  “I am impressed,” Louis said. “Finding that article, handling that argument . . . those were remarkable feats. Please rest assured that I am duly impressed with you. I look forward to our next—hopefully far more mundane—case together.”

  Caroline stopped before Louis’s newest acquisition. Picasso’s portrait of his girlfriend Dora Maar. Abstracted and shattered, the face read more like a mask. Caroline knew that as Picasso had soured on his girlfriends, he’d pulled apart their faces. No less violent than Guernica, Dora Maar’s features were splayed across a canvas. Poor Dora had no podium from which to answer her ex-lover’s ridicule, his almost comical dissection of her face. She was lost to history while the artist was and would always be . . . Picasso.

  At Caroline’s silence, Louis continued. “I’m stuck in New York. The time difference will make conversation difficult. But please, feel free to call me. Any time.”

  Caroline thanked her boss and hung up.

  In the silence, the shattered face of Dora Maar looked back at her suspiciously.

  “What are you looking at?” Caroline muttered at the image.

  “I heard all that,” came a voice from behind her.

  Caroline turned to find Eddie leaning up against the door frame. He wore a cornflower-blue shirt rolled up to his elbows. His dark skin looked like satin.

  “Eavesdropping?” she asked, quirking a smile at him to soften the accusation.

  “You’ve been pacing right outside my office,” Eddie said. “I was just working late on those witness examination notes you asked me to start when I got back.”

  “So, what do you think?” Caroline asked him. She turned back to the portrait on the wall, her eyes unseeing now as she became preoccupied with the question before her.

  Eddie came to stand next to her. Together, they stood silently, facing the portrait.

  When Eddie’s triceps brushed against her shoulder, Caroline could feel the warmth of his skin even through his shirt. She knew he could feel her back, and that they were both enjoying the quiet proximity of each other. In the island peace conjured by the two of them standing side by side, she told Eddie all about Kennedy, about what had happened on the airport shuttle, and about the crossroads she now faced.

  “Is it insane to keep looking for Dr. Wong?” Caroline asked, almost to herself. “These people . . . they probably killed Dr. Heller. They’re seriously dangerous. I’d have to be crazy to keep looking for Dr. Wong, right?”

  She wasn’t sure whether she wanted him to agree.

  “I don’t know,” Eddie said. “I can imagine someone going after a key witness like Dr. Wong, but lawyers are replaceable—we’re like cockroaches, kill one of us and another will turn up to take his place.” He smiled in an obvious effort to lighten the dour mood.

  Caroline didn’t answer. It sounded reasonable. It even echoed what Louis had said. But the churning in her gut said she still wasn’t buying it.

  “Do you think we can win without Dr. Wong?” she asked.

  Eddie crossed his arms. “I’m a betting man. I’m always willing to take an across-the-board at the races. Big gambles mean big wins. But I don’t like our odds without Dr. Wong.”

  Caroline considered her options. Louis would accept whatever decision she made. He’d given her permission to be prudent. To opt out of the hunt. But could she do so, knowing that they’d likely lose? That Amy might lose Liam? That Jasper might be left with nothing but memories of his brother? And that Louis, despite his professed understanding, would view her as the associate who’d lost the case?

  “I think we need Dr. Wong, too,” Caroline said finally.

  Eddie turned to face her. His pitch-black eyes held a defiant twinkle.

  “So then, are we going to keep looking for Dr. Anne Wong?” he asked.

  The word yes leaped to Caroline’s mouth, but she didn’t give it voice. She examined her motives for continuing what had to be a foolhardy—if not downright dangerous—endeavor. Was she so desperate for Louis’s approval? No, that wasn’t it. The need to keep going had become something else. A chance to do some good. An opportunity to right the scales, maybe a little, away from the things she’d done that had caused so much harm. If she could help Amy and Jasper and Liam, she couldn’t be that bad a person. Right? The question hung in her mind.

  “Let’s see if we can figure out where Dr. Wong went,” Caroline said, her voice full of sudden resolve. The complex mess of reasons why didn’t matter. Boiled down, those reasons amounted to a simple imperative: she just had to keep going.

  “Good,” Eddie said. “What clues do we have? What do we know about Dr. Wong?”

  “Come on, I’ll show you,” Caroline said, leading Eddie toward her office.

  “What is that?” Eddie asked from over Caroline’s shoulder. His attention was trained on the screen of her laptop.

  “Franklin Heller’s secret FTP site,” Caroline said. “It’s where I found the artic
le. In addition to the article and the backup data, there was also a letter to Yvonne. I’ve been meaning to look at it.”

  She pulled up the document and read the one line hovering in the middle of the white screen:

  I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt you. Love always, F.

  “Weird,” Eddie said. “It’s like he knew he was gonna kick the bucket.”

  “He probably did,” Caroline said. Although Dr. Heller had known what might happen, he’d been powerless to stop it. How horrific, she reflected. How horrible his last moments must have been, knowing all of his fears had been realized. Caroline studied the words of the scientist’s final missive to his wife another moment before closing the document.

  “But this isn’t helping us figure out where Dr. Wong ran off to,” she said.

  “How do you know she ran?” Eddie asked. “How do you know she’s not dead?”

  “She definitely ran. She told her boyfriend she was leaving town and didn’t know if or when she’d be back. As for whether she’s dead, I guess we don’t know for sure that she’s alive. But I think she’d try really hard not to die. She’s got a kid . . .” Caroline trailed off.

  “What is it?” Eddie asked.

  “She has a five-year-old son with asthma. He’s on this experimental drug protocol to control it. It’s called Telexo.”

  Caroline pivoted around until she faced Eddie.

  “The drug manufacturer,” Eddie said, his eyes widening.

  “Exactly. Maybe they’ve got a genetic engineering division? Or the same parent company as Med-Gen?” Caroline turned back toward the laptop and entered a search for the name of the company that made Telexo. Annie’s son, Nolan, needed Telexo to prevent his asthma attacks. A threat to his Telexo supply could have prompted Dr. Wong to run from the article she’d helped to author. That had to be it. That’s why Dr. Heller’s office was so orderly. No need for ransacking. Just a scientist with access who’d purged the computer of all information before she bailed.