Critical Reaction (13 page)

Her face was crimson. “I don’t know what you think you were doing in there, but you made it clear this is my case, so stay out of it. And what did you do just now—punch King out?”

“No,” Ryan said. “I should have.”

“Don’t you
ever
do that again,” she repeated through tight lips. Ryan saw Kieran place a restraining hand on her shoulder.

Ryan didn’t reply. Emily’s eyes wavered as she glanced at the binder in his hand. “What’s that?”

“We’ve got to talk, Emily,” Ryan said quietly.

His daughter recognized the tone in his voice. She reached for the binder as the red drained from her face.

CHAPTER 11

Ryan finished reviewing Covington’s amended investigation report for the third time. Then he set it beside him on the living room love seat—next to the report he’d just reread from their expert, Dr. Philip Nadine of Princeton University.

Dr. Nadine’s report was scrap paper now. The new “amended” Covington report made Dr. Nadine’s expert opinions about the explosion irrelevant.

Ryan looked to Emily, seated across the room at the kitchen table. She was staring back at him with a lost gaze of rising anxiety.

“So what’s this ‘amended’ investigation report from Covington mean?” Kieran broke the silence from his chair by the front window.

Weary of playing the bad cop, Ryan was relieved as Emily turned to Kieran to respond. “The report implies you caused the explosion,” she said softly.

Kieran looked like she’d slapped him across the face. “What do you mean?”

Emily didn’t go on.
Great
, Ryan thought.

“Their experts,” he stepped in, “say that that natural concentration of fluids in Vat 17 from water evaporation wasn’t the only cause of the explosion,” he said. “Evaporation contributed, but the explosion was finally triggered when somebody opened a
valve below the vat, draining more fluid. Since you were the last person in the room, they’re obviously going to argue you did it.”

Kieran’s eyes grew defiant. “Okay. But I didn’t.”

“Did you fight with one of the techs before going on duty?”

Kieran looked perplexed at Ryan’s change of subject. “No,” he said. “I gave the supply tech a hard time because he’d been a jerk to Taylor and me the whole two weeks we’d been working out there. I told him I wanted my boots back that’d been confiscated my first night at LB5. It wasn’t a fight.”

Emily was watching Kieran carefully, but still lying back from joining the fray.

“Did you come into contact with Vat 17 before the explosion?” Ryan asked.

The boy closed his eyes, exhaling slowly. “No. Absolutely not. Other than to touch the side to see how hot it was.”

“No contact,” Ryan pressed harder. “That’s what you’re telling us. None . . . at . . . all.”

At the edge of his vision, Emily’s eyes sharpened—angry, Ryan thought, at the inquisitor’s tone in his voice. Her mouth opened, then shut as they both saw Kieran’s face go blank.

“I . . . my T-shirt did get caught on something under the vat,” Kieran said. “It might have been a valve.”

Emily closed her eyes. “That’s contact,” she muttered.

“But I didn’t touch it.”

“Kieran,” Emily said roughly, “I don’t think you’re getting it here. The report doesn’t say you were ‘giving the tech a hard time.’ It says you were so angry that your supervisor, Taylor, had to intervene. That implies you opened the valve on Vat 17 deliberately—to make trouble your last night on LB5.”

Kieran leaned over, his face flushed so deep Ryan thought he was going to be sick. When he sat up again, Kieran’s angry tone matched Emily’s.

“That vat was getting ready to explode before I got near it,” Kieran insisted. “I didn’t do anything to set it off.”

“How do you know?” Emily responded before Ryan could. “You just admitted your T-shirt caught on the valve.”

“Because my T-shirt just hooked the valve for a moment,” Kieran shot back. He stood and started to pace.

How long does it take to turn a valve, Ryan thought. “When you were deposed five months ago,” he said instead, pointing across the living room to the partially emptied boxes of records and depo transcripts from Pauline Strand, “you didn’t mention your T-shirt getting caught on the valve at all.”

“I didn’t remember it until now,” Kieran answered defensively.

“Well, Covington’s investigators apparently figured it out,” Ryan said. “They say the valve was turned by someone or something and you were the last one in there. Now that you recall the business of the T-shirt, they’ll say you used your T-shirt to help turn a sticky old valve—and did it deliberately. Even if the jury accepts the valve turning as unintentional, they’ll still conclude you’re responsible for the explosion—especially after not mentioning it at your deposition.”

Kieran threw a fierce glance at Ryan. “So are you representing Covington now?”

“My dad’s right,” Emily jumped in, surprising Ryan at her defense.

The young man fell silent.

In stone. Eric King’s words at the elevators came back to Ryan now. He raised a hand to get Kieran’s attention. “Covington’s lawyer told me at the courthouse that this amended report is now ‘written in stone.’ Do you know what he meant?”

Kieran shook his head. “Sounds like a figure of speech.”

In stone. In stone. “When King offered the settlement,” Ryan pressed, “did he threaten you that Covington might change their investigation report unless you agreed to settle?”

“What do I care if they change the lies in their report,” Kieran muttered, resuming his pacing.

Emily looked like she was sinking into her chair. “Kieran, just
answer my dad’s question,” she said impatiently. “Did Covington threaten to change their investigation report if you didn’t settle?”

Kieran met Emily with a cold stare. “Yes. Pauline told me something about that. They didn’t explain what they meant. But Pauline said that when King offered the settlement, he suggested that if I turned them down and insisted on keeping the case going with new attorneys, I wouldn’t like how the final report read.”

Emily shook her head. “And you didn’t think that was important to tell us?”

It was strange for Ryan to hear Emily’s anger directed at someone other than himself. When Kieran didn’t reply, he spoke up again.

“Let me tell you why you should care. If they can convince a jury that you acted deliberately to cause the explosion, two things are going to happen. First, when word gets out, you will become a
very
unpopular man in a town like Sherman. Second, you’ll likely get charged criminally for sabotaging a secure federal facility.”

Emily watched Kieran resume his seat and cover his face with his hands.

“King implied he’d still be willing to settle,” Ryan continued, gentling his tone. “He said that a settlement wouldn’t change this final report, but that might be bluster. Maybe Emily could still negotiate for Covington to back off on this amended report as part of a settlement.”

They watched Kieran in strained silence.

“What about exposure?” Kieran said at last through his fingers.

“What do you mean?” Emily asked.

“Exposure. Pauline told me their original report claimed I wasn’t exposed to radiation.”

“That’s correct,” Ryan answered. “This report repeats that there was no measurable radiation released by the blast because the mixing room was clean. They said the most you or anyone
else experienced was chemical exposure causing temporary symptoms.”

“Pauline told me they don’t even mention the radiation monitors going off in the hallway.”

“You’re right,” Ryan said. “The report says the monitors showed no radiation detected in the hall.”

“So if I take their settlement, I’m never going to know what radiation I was exposed to. I could go three years, five, ten—and I’ll never know how much I absorbed until I get diagnosed with cancer. Like my father.”

Ryan nodded. “You settle and there’ll be no more investigation.”

Kieran released his fingers and looked from Emily to her father and back again. “That’s why I wouldn’t take their money. Fifty thousand. Five million. It doesn’t matter. I’ve got to know what I was exposed to.”

In the silence that settled again over the room, Ryan looked at Emily—imploring her with his eyes to abandon this. She had to see how necessary it now was to withdraw. She had to convince Kieran to take a settlement. The logic of that decision was unassailable.

Staring at Emily facing Kieran, doubt arose in Ryan’s mind. Why did Covington threaten to amend their investigation report with this new information as part of their settlement offer? Because that meant they already had the information before they made the offer, and were willing, in effect, to hide evidence that Kieran had caused the explosion. If they thought Kieran intentionally caused a near disaster out there, why would they ever agree to do that?

Ryan refused to dwell on it. Except more questions followed, like trickles through a cracking dam.

Why did Covington offer a settlement
at
all
—then
renew
the offer amidst the threats at the elevator this morning? Especially right after Covington scored another blow with this blue-robed judge’s ruling.

Say the words, Emily. Tell Kieran to settle.

And why was there no raw data on the radiation monitors in the report’s appendix? If that data was so conclusive, why wasn’t it included in a formal investigation report?

Finish this now.

Except she wasn’t going to finish this. He watched as Emily reached out a hand to Kieran, resting it on the young man’s downturned head.

Ryan’s hope collapsed. A minute passed, maybe less, but to Ryan it felt like awakening from a long dream. He realized he was absently scanning the room, surveying the tornado of boxes from Pauline Strand’s office, the rented photocopier, the office supplies that Melissa had assembled and they’d retrieved last week from his Seattle office, and the piles of case documents and transcripts they’d already begun to review. It felt like he was searching for something he’d lost.

Fifty days until trial—a little less to get experts to respond to this new amended report. His eyes came back to rest on Covington’s investigation report and their own expert report from Dr. Nadine. Scrap paper now. A final urge gripped him: despite his promise to help, he would pack up and head to the car.

But there sat Kieran across the living room, believing so completely that he’d been exposed that he was willing to put his freedom on the line rather than take easy money to walk. Compared with Covington, claiming its exposure evidence was so strong, yet still offering fifty thousand dollars for this boy to go away.

Ryan reached for the Nadine report and headed upstairs. He’d taken it this far, he’d take it a little further. And they had a lot of work to do between now and the pretrial hearing.

CHAPTER 12

F
ORTY
-S
EVEN
D
AYS
U
NTIL
T
RIAL

Adam came running back down the Riverside Park hillside in the sweltering afternoon sun at a fast pace. He had to hurry. He shouldn’t have gone for a run this afternoon at all; he really didn’t have time for it. But if he hadn’t, this evening his legs would be twitching, torturing him for his neglect like phantom limbs.

He was halfway down the slope when a runner passed him going up—a runner Adam had started noticing in the area the last couple of weeks. Slender and in his midforties, the man’s running style was average—but he ran with a ferocity that resonated with Adam: the pumping arms, high driving knees, and unwavering, fiery eyes. They glowed with a focus that connected to the core of Adam—the unrelenting focus that Adam
always felt
, even when he longed to escape. With those eyes, the other runner could have been kin.

Then the man was past, heading uphill. Adam lengthened his stride as he reached the trail at the base of the hill, heading uptown toward Covington headquarters.

Twenty minutes later, in the basement locker room of the headquarters building, Adam shed his white running shorts and T-shirt, dropping them into a nylon bag. From the locker bearing his initials, he withdrew a fresh towel and strode toward the shower.

He’d received a phone report about the case hearing from King just before his run. As the Covington lawyer described it, they’d largely won the motion and retained their trial date. That was encouraging. Unfortunately, neither the Mullaney plaintiff nor the new attorneys struck King as ready to settle the case. At least not yet—not without more bruising.

Well, they’d have to consider how to land some fresh blows.

The lukewarm shower water coursed over Adam, so refreshing after the intensity of the hot, fast run. If there was any moment when the heated pace in his brain relented—when his thoughts briefly grew more placid and philosophic—it was now, after the catharsis of violently paced exercise.

This was an important time for him, Adam thought, a critical time even. “
When kings arise and walls fall
and worlds are set afire
,” his father would say. More than eight months ago, they’d suffered the explosion and Adam had believed his world was going to crumble. He’d even begun to make plans for exit strategies, expecting Cameron Foote to fire him. All the dreams of the bonus attached to Project Wolffia had evaporated.

But Foote had surprised him, leaving him on as manager of the Project. And now the new replacement team was nearly assembled and singing optimistic appraisals from their predecessors’ records that the Project was poised for success.

Adam rubbed the towel across his back as he left the shower. Inside his locker hung eight crisply starched white shirts, each still surrounded by plastic from the cleaners. He tore the sheeting off one and put it on. Then he raised his chin in the mirror hung from the locker door, carefully retying his green Brooks Brothers bow tie.