“And you were shocked to learn that Griffin gave Gooch the entrance codes for the Sarnia plant.”
“I still find that disturbing, sir.”
“And the alleged break-in occurred on the one night Gooch was assigned to guard the plant. Your investigators suspect that was not coincidental.”
“They raised that possibility.”
“And it follows that Howie Griffin may have been in league with those who pilfered files from the laboratory.”
“As I understand it, our detective agency was unable to confirm that. Mr. Griffin declined to talk to them.”
“But they raised the possibility, as you’ve said. Indeed, it’s possible that Mr. Griffin set the whole thing up.”
“Why would he do that?”
“Because head office gave him a nod and a wink. Because the Sarnia factory was losing money. Because it was well insured.”
Five points and a bonus to Arthur for whaling away at this dubious scenario that we were used as pawns in a nefarious scheme. I get it — he wants to give the jury something to latch onto as a backup to the necessity defence.
Khan, who has been patient, can take it no longer. “I am registering a continuing objection to my learned friend’s tendency to pretend he’s cross-examining when he’s actually arguing his case. And doing so without evidentiary basis, just surmise and conjecture.”
Donahue: “I’m afraid the witness asked for it, didn’t he? Objection denied.”
The gawky student returns. She won’t look at me, though I shoot fire at her. She confers with Khan. He nods, glances my way. I return a cold stare — he disrespected me by doubting my word.
Arthur changes direction. “Mr. Wakeling, in your former role as PR director for Chemican, you were consulted when the company’s reputation was under threat?”
“If you could be more specific, sir . . .”
“Major suits in damages. Threats to drag the company into court. Your advice was often sought, yes?”
“If the company’s good name was at risk, yes.”
“What good name is that?”
“Objection. Baiting the witness.”
“Upheld.”
“Mr. Wakeling, you often sought to tamp down complaints before they went to litigation.” Pulling a paper from a file. “For instance this memo from 2015 about meeting with an organic farmer in California whose spinach fields became infected by Vigor-Gro.”
“That, as I remember, was settled out of court.”
“After you talked him into it. According to your memo, one of your levers was a threat to sue him for slander.”
“That was a confidential memorandum, and so is the settlement agreement. It has a non-disclosure clause.”
“Which can be overridden by the courts.”
Donahue looks impatient. Khan rises. Arthur ducks. “Let’s put that aside for the moment. Let’s go back to 2005. What was your capacity with Chemican that year?”
“Well, I would have been thirty-five, so . . . yes, I had just been promoted to publicity director.”
“And that was around the time Vigor-Gro won EPA approval?”
“Yes. I was part of a campaign team tasked with earning it market awareness.”
“All your testing on Vigor-Gro had been completed by 2005?”
“Yes.”
“And did Chemican-International settle any court actions that year?”
“You would have to ask our legal department.”
“I may. But in the meantime are you personally aware of any civil actions in damages that year?”
“None in particular come to mind.”
I’d found myself yawning, but now comes a spurt of wakefulness. Arthur has my memorandum about the Dover settlement in July, 2005. This is my baby, I found the fax sheet. Maybe it’s nothing, but if so why has Ms. or Mr. Dover been scrubbed from the company records?
“Surely all settled damages claims against Chemican are filed somewhere.”
“You would have to ask Legal, in Missouri.”
“What was the Volunteer Testing Program?”
Wakeling’s face kind of flinches, a threat reaction, but he’s quickly back to form: bland, serious. “I’m afraid testing programs were not exactly in my bailiwick. Our science people might know. I believe Dr. Jinks, our head of science, is in the witness room.” He shoots a look at us miscreants in the box. “Of course many of our files were stolen from the laboratory.”
“But not destroyed, Mr. Wakeling. In fact, it’s on record that they’re extant.” Arthur smiles over at Inspector Roberts, who nods in affirmation, then catches herself, and reddens.
“No more questions,” Arthur says. He has decided to keep the Dover fax under his vest for now.
Donahue: “Redirect?”
Khan: “No, M’Lady.”
Wakeling just sits there, as if needing a cattle prod to get him mobile. Finally, on the judge insisting he’s free to go, he gains his feet, and make a beeline for the door.
9
Now begins the next phase of the prosecution case: expert evidence. The Crown has the burden of proof, so their experts go first, their job being to shield Vigor-Gro from blame for its role in the mass extinction of bees. Meanwhile, I’m enduring serious brain-fade. I need a pry bar to keep my eyelids open. I am kept upright only because I’m tightly bookended between Lucy and Amy, on whose soft, warm shoulder I long to doze.
Proceedings stall over a tedious effort to find seats in this packed courtroom for several of the experts subpoenaed by Crown and defence. Experts, being of a higher class, don’t have to twiddle in the waiting room, they’re supposed to get reserved front-row seating.
Finally, a bunch of lawyers with time to kill are rousted from the front, Donahue telling them they should return to work and get in some billable hours. Their places are taken by Dr. Ariana Van Doorn and some of her team: a wildlife ecologist, an agrologist, and a professional beekeeper. Dr. Jerod Easling, the slickly handsome TV star, enters last, looking around as if for news cameras, hiding his disappointment with a resigned smile as he sits behind the Crown table. Next to him is Dr. Owen Jinks, Chemican’s chief scientist, a biochemist.
When everyone has settled, Jinks is called to the stand. He’s half the size of the last witness, a wiry middle-aged jockey with weird hair that sticks straight up. He regurgitates his resumé in short, sharp sentences. A Kansas farm background, loyal to his roots and his employer. Been with the company since 1991. Ph.D. from Kansas State in 1994. Chief scientist at Chemican since early 2003. Oversees the Sarnia lab as well as others worldwide.
He’s also a regular lecturer at agro events. Doc Knutsen, who looked him up, says he’s mainly a courtroom warrior and defender of Vigor-Gro before boards and commissions.
Dr. Jinks extolls the prime features of Vigor-Gro: safe to use, easy to apply, and, yes, environmentally friendly. He buttresses these sweeping claims with a PowerPoint presentation intended to show Vigor-Gro was rigorously tested from inception through multiple lab and field studies before being met by universal acclaim from satisfied growers.
Dr. Jinks rambles on about how it took a decade and four hundred million dollars to bring Vigor-Gro to market. That involved “rigorous scrutiny” by “independent scientific experts” to ensure the product was safe for humans. Not so safe, however, for the bees they tested, thousands of them overdosed with pollen seasoned with Chemican’s patented neonicotinoid, called ziegladoxin. My weary brain can’t fight off a cynical image of Jinks as a mean little boy, squashing beetles and pulling wings off flies.
I’m yawning as he assures us Vigor-Gro isn’t “the major stressor” causing colony death. “It should not be inferred,” the transcript drearily reads, “that the mortality results are transferable to actual field exposure conditions.” Field doses applied at a “typical” rate of five micrograms to a hundred
kilograms of soil had “negligible effects on honeybee colony health.”
And that’s more or less when the lights go out. My last sensation is of Amy’s healing warmth as I nestle against her.
* * *
“Earth to Levitsky. Come in.” It’s Lucy, into my right ear. “Judge is worried you’re dead.”
One eye pops open. Donahue is indeed studying me. When I open my other eye she decides I’m conscious, and turns back to the shock-haired gnome in the witness box. Dr. Jinks, that’s his name.
How long have I been out? An hour? It’s ten past noon. Nancy is crossing Jinks, and she’s really going after him, about a series of field tests in Alberta, the results skewed, the math made up, micros and kilos pulled out of a hat to minimize the crashing of bee colonies. Chemican had fired a whistleblower whom they’d goaded to alter test results. One of the fallouts from Operation Beekeeper.
Jinks is flailing, red-faced, denying that those field tests helped wangle Vigor-Gro past Canada’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency. The research team that produced those results had been “overly creative” and for that sin they had been “terminated.” Which, in a literal sense, sounds like an extreme measure. A couple of jurors wince.
Nancy has timed this perfectly, it’s twelve thirty. Over their cheeseburgers and western sandwiches, the jury will be wondering if there are limits to this company’s depravity.
Donahue cautions Jinks not to talk about the case, and adjourns court. As the jury is let out, Lucy opens my hand and slips me a little yellow capsule. “A waker-upper. Worked for me.”
I tuck it into my bra. I don’t have time to ask about its origins, because here comes Constable Louella Baker, out of uniform, for our lunch date. While being herded out the door, curious reporters catch her shaking hands with Arthur, then embracing me.
They don’t hear her growl to Arthur, “I’m gonna rip that motherfucker’s balls out.” I hope she means my unfriendly neighbourhood Nazi.
* * *
You can call it lunch but for me it’s breakfast — a quiche, strong coffee, and Tylenol — in a crowded, loud bistro up on Dundas. Louella brazenly showed her badge to get a table for three.
Thanks to me, sort of, her career is taking off. She has parlayed our alliance into a posting with the Toronto Police Service’s hate crimes unit, and is tasked to try to nail my stalker for criminal harassment.
Arthur listens quietly, over his bowl of crusty onion soup, as Louella takes me through Sunday’s every seamy detail, from getting stoned with Lucy, abandoning the tawdry funder to grab a streetcar, then being chased by the slow-footed whack job.
Louella asks: “Who did you talk to on the streetcar?”
“There were a handful of us in the back. Bee-lievers, but nobody I knew, and most got off before I did.”
“Any of them take any photos? Like with you? Selfies?”
“No, they were too cool.”
“What about Mr. and Mrs. Willis White? Could they have seen him from their window?”
“Maybe. He saw me turn into their yard. You’ll have to shout through the door. They have a heavy paranoia scene going. Folie à deux.”
Louella fetches an iPad, turns it on. Arthur gives me a severe look. “I fail to understand, Rivie, why you didn’t wake me.”
“Yeah, and you run out of the house in your pyjamas, and he knows where we live and posts it on the White Christian Nationalist Brotherhood listserv. Also, Arthur, be real, you’d be up all night worrying, you needed your sleep. Me, not so much.”
Arthur frowns. “Justice Donahue deserved your cutting excuse for being late, but your plight is all over the news, so this nasty character will be on alert. Given his apparent obsession over you, he may be deranged enough to return to our street so I urge you to refrain from jogging off God knows where in the middle of the night.”
“Five a.m. is not the middle—”
“That’s not the point. You ought not to be going out alone at any time. Anywhere.”
“I’m not going to live in fear—”
Louella referees: “Hey, break it up, go to your corners. You got to take care, doll. I can’t watch Beaconsfield around the clock. I’m going to show you some mug shots, our hate crimes collection.”
“No way I’ll recognize him. It was too dark.”
“Let’s try.” She opens a tablet, six ugly faces stare from the screen.
I study them, shake my head. Louella scrolls to a second set of six. I start. “Whoa. Number three. Where have I seen him?” I concentrate, work through my weariness. It comes. “Oh, my God, the Nazi from the bail hearing. We had words in the hallway, he called us Commie nigger-lovers, Ray almost hammered him.”
Arthur backs me up, he was in court when the judge granted bail. “It was something involving a cemetery.”
“Donald Stumpit,” Louella says. “Beat a charge of desecrating a grave. He did a couple of bits for vandalism and assaulting a couple of women in hijabs. Saddles up with a group called the Final Reich. Hush-hush on this until I track him down, okay?”
I’m excited, it feels like a breakthrough. “He gave me a dirty, drooling slurp as he headed into court. I think I may have given him the finger.” Is that how a rapist’s obsession is sparked? “Hey, maybe we can set a trap. Like, I slip out at midnight to buy some taco chips from the 7-Eleven—”
“That will not happen!” Arthur booms.
This doesn’t sound like Arthur, the calm, courtly counsel. More like the stern family patriarch. I try to soothe him with an earnest promise to be a good girl. No reason to make him anxious, but I’m going to figure out a way, with a few friends, to trip up this cave person, catch him with his dick hanging out. No reason to tell grumpy old grandpa the details.
10
An hour into the afternoon, as Nancy continues to poke at Dr. Jinks, I start to flag again, the caffeine losing its bite, Lucy’s Waker-Upper tempting me. When I pressed her about it, I got: “Home remedy, trust me.” From her lab at Ryerson? Then maybe it’s safe. From the personal pharmacy of T.J. Gully? Maybe not so.
Nancy accuses Jinks’s research unit of multiple offences: exaggerated claims, distorted graphs and tables, tweaked statistics. But it’s slow sledding, mathematically dense, and she occasionally has to consult Ariana or Doc on a technical or scientific issue. This irks the judge, who wants her to jack it up or “we’ll be here till kingdom come.”
I guess Nancy is trying to show that this junk science wouldn’t have come to light if we hadn’t pillaged their records, but some jurors are starting to stir and clock-watch. Except Abbie Lee-Yeung, who writes intently, as if covering for me by taking on my suspended role as memoirist — I’m too bagged to make notes.
A gentle bra adjustment drops the capsule into my free hand. I slug it down with water. Miss Pucket watches, suspiciously. Her frown prompts Azra Khan to turn and check me out. I give him my defiant look: I’m strong, unbroken. He’s supposed to be this A-list prosecutor with his unbroken record of thirty-eight convictions, but so far he hasn’t shot out any lights. His mom has cancer, so he’s distracted, but it’s like he’s just along for the ride: Why bother spreading himself when Judge Donahue is sure to gut the necessity defence?
Interest perks when Nancy moves on to the testing on rats and rabbits. Jinks appears to take pride in the “lack of serious ill effects at moderate- to high-milligram dosage ranges.” Fewer than twenty percent of these gentle, little mammals had to be put down, he’s pleased to advise.
Nancy challenges that: “Lack of serious ill effects? And yet many of these animals had to be put down?”
“In most cases, to allow for laboratory analysis. Admittedly a few creatures suffered neurobehavioural impairments, but these were minor and short-lived.”
The yellow capsule — let’s call it Lucy’s Mix Number Two — works its magic fast: I’m wide-eyed with alarm that it’s considered oka
y for researchers to torture bunnies in order to sell a potion that kills pollen-seeking insects and starves swallows and flycatchers and warblers.
Ariana Van Doorn has armed Nancy with other animal studies, one of which she places in front of Jinks.
“I presume you’re familiar with this report from the Bayer Corporation from 2008.”
Jinks scans the first-page summary. “I recall looking at it.”
“The experiment involved pregnant rats that were fed daily doses of Bayer’s patented neonicotinoid. Their offspring matured poorly and showed disorientation during behavioural tests. Brain structures were altered. Do you not find that troubling?”
“Not at all. Those results were not replicated in similar studies we examined. More importantly, our patented compound, ziegladoxin, differs substantially in molecular makeup from Bayer’s imidacloprid. It’s apples and oranges.”
“But both are nicotine-based, yes?”
“As are all neonics, of course.”
All of this is a prelude to the experiments on humans, the Volunteer Testing Program. Jinks has obviously been warned this would arise because he has a spiel ready: “To be absolutely certain that Vigor-Gro could not be accused of having any harmful effects on, say, farmers or other users, we debated whether to develop a program of testing on humans — one that would be carefully calibrated, of course.”
“And you followed through?”
“It came about this way — you might find this humorous — several of my colleagues dared me to serve as a human guinea pig, as it were, and I think I shamed them by imbibing fourteen point five millilitres of Vigor-Gro in a fruit drink, and suffered absolutely no ill consequences. If anything, I felt invigorated, and spent the following hour in the gym doing tumbling and floor exercises.”
Sadly, almost no one finds this humorous, and Jinks breaks the awkward, shuffling silence by adding that he challenged his colleagues to spunk up and do the same. Five of them did so. All got high marks from their physical, blood, and urine tests. One of them, a smoker, claimed to have got a gentle nicotine boost.
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