Critical Reaction (30 page)

Emily seemed cooler today than at the lead-up motions. He knew that her energy, commitment, and obvious belief in her client would be attractive assets to a jury. Plus her style would make for a good contrast with his own, and a father-daughter team would generate jury interest.

All these were helpful. And they’d need all the help they could summon in the coming weeks.

Butterflies roiled Ryan’s stomach, driving a soft tapping of his shoe. He was curious why these signs of adrenaline seemed odd to him today. Didn’t he always react this way the first day of trial? Then he thought of the half a dozen cases he’d tried since Carolyn’s death and realized that he hadn’t experienced pretrial nerves before any of them.

Ryan allowed himself a final glance at Emily, organizing her notes for the start of trial. Her hair was pulled back like he’d seen it the last time in the King County Courthouse. She also wore the same no-nonsense suit, which hid none of her beauty.

What would his wife have thought if she could’ve seen their daughter at counsel table at his side?

“All right,” Judge Johnston announced, raising her eyes from her bench papers. “I have a few procedural matters to attend to with counsel, ladies and gentlemen of the jury. So you will be dismissed until tomorrow morning.”

The bailiff directed the jurors out of the box and into the jury room. As the door closed behind the last of them, Judge Johnston turned her gaze back to the attorneys.

“Mr. Hart,” she began, “you mentioned a motion you wanted to raise before we do opening arguments tomorrow?”

Ryan stood. “Yes, Your Honor. We wish to renew our motion to inspect the lower levels of LB5 building.”

The judge nodded with an expression of skepticism. “Judge Renway’s prior ruling was very clear on this matter, Mr. Hart. I hope you don’t expect me to revisit every one of my predecessor’s pretrial rulings.”

“No, Your Honor,” Ryan responded, though he planned to do just that if necessary, “but we were only aware of the need for this inspection when our expert, Dr. Trân, presented us with his conclusion that the cause of the explosions harming Mr. Mullaney originated in the lower levels of LB5 and not in room 365.”

Ryan went on to cover the ground Emily had already struggled over with Judge Renway—was it only a week ago? He focused especially on the unfairness of being denied access to evidence so critical to a fair jury decision.

As he finished, the judge shook her head gently. “I understand the plight of new counsel on a case,” she said. “But I’m also sympathetic to a defendant faced with new evidence on the first day of trial.” She cocked her head toward opposing counsel. “Mr. King, I imagine you have an opinion on this matter.”

Eric King stood at counsel table, unbuttoning his suit coat as he reached his feet.

“Judge, of course you’re right,” the Covington lawyer began collegially. “Their expert’s wild speculation about explosive materials elsewhere in LB5 is imaginative, but pure conjecture. As for arranging a tour of LB5, Counsel seems to forget that the building is a former plutonium manufacturing facility. It would take
considerable
effort
to make that facility safe for tourists such as Mr. Hart’s expert. Not a single argument made by Mr. Hart is any different from those presented earlier to Judge Renway. This motion is an irresponsible fishing expedition—and too late.”

Ryan was on his feet before King could sit down. “Your Honor, Mr. King’s argument that LB5 is unsafe for an inspection is interesting, given that his experts’ investigation report concludes
that no serious radiation was detected inside the building
even after
three explosions
shook it
up last fall
. Unless Mr. King wishes to amend his expert report and acknowledge hazardous radionuclides in LB5 since the explosion, an inspection should require no special precautions at all.”

He had her attention. It was a mistake, Ryan thought, for King to adhere to a style that had worked with Renway. Johnston wasn’t King’s dancing partner like Renway had been.

But though Judge Johnston studied Ryan and Emily for a few long minutes, she finally shook her head.

“I’m sorry, Counsel, but your motion is denied,” the judge called out. “You make . . . good points. But it is simply too late.”

As the judge left the courtroom for the noon recess, Ryan deliberately glanced away from his opponent, refusing to give King the satisfaction of seeing disappointment. This wasn’t over—they’d revisit the motion after Dr. Trân testified.

As he packed his papers, Ryan glanced at Emily, whose face displayed her own dismay at the judge’s ruling. The sight of it took him back to his first trial against Lester Schmidt.

“Mr. Hart, you did well,” Judge Freyling had said the day that trial ended, reemerging from chambers into the courtroom where only Ryan remained, gathering his papers. “I just have three suggestions about your courtroom demeanor: never let discouragement show in the courtroom; never signal to a jury that you’ve lost a round; and never gave an ounce of satisfaction to an opponent.”

It was advice he’d have to pass on to Emily before the next day of the trial.

“No, Mr. Martin. This is a big complex, and I’m just the records manager. I see that a Mr. Lewis Vandervork rented an apartment in building 3 for several months last fall and winter. But he gave up the space in February and moved out.”

Poppy thanked the landlord and ended the call. He set his phone on the kitchen counter.

For a week since his conversation with Beverly Cortez, Poppy had used every spare moment to try to track Lewis down in Savannah River, South Carolina—all by long distance. First, he’d called the Personnel Office at the Savannah River facility. They’d told him they could only confirm from records that Lew had been working out there for four months before quitting. Then he’d reached Lew’s parents in Missouri, who said he’d texted them about his move to Savannah River, then kept in touch by text sporadically. His last one had said he was leaving his job and would be traveling and out of touch through the summer. Now this conversation with Lew’s former landlord.

Everything pointed to Lew moving to South Carolina from Sherman, working four months, then falling off the face of the earth. So far as Poppy could learn, the only person who’d actually spoken with Lew since the explosion was Beverly Cortez—that very night. And since her call at the Atomic Café, he couldn’t find her, either.

He shook his head in frustration. Wherever Beverly was, it wasn’t in Sherman—it wasn’t that big of a town. She also didn’t have a Facebook page, didn’t advertise her address or phone number online, and didn’t want to be found—by anyone.

But Poppy was uncertain if it was right to keep trying to find her anyway, given how frightened she seemed. The last thing he wanted to do was drag her deeper into this mess than she was willing to go, especially if it did put her at risk.

Whatever he was going to do, he had to act soon. Janniston was almost through with him: they were down to “a few more sessions,” the shrink had said. So his medical leave was running out, and with it his spare time to try to find Lew.

He heard the door from the garage open. “Patrick, I’m home from the store,” Suzy called out.

Poppy forced himself to shed the malaise he was feeling. “I’m in the kitchen, Suzy,” he answered as cheerfully as he could muster. Then he stood and headed to the door to help her with the groceries.

CHAPTER 33

Early morning sunlight streamed through courtroom windows as tall as a cathedral’s. Ryan grasped the podium and faced the jurors for the opening statement of Kieran’s case.

It had been a quick preparation. Usually Ryan spent days on an opening statement, but with everything else to prepare, he’d had only hours for this one. Still, he felt ready.

As usual, Ryan picked the most sympathetic juror for his focus, watering the plant most likely to thrive. It was the smiling schoolteacher in her forties, with auburn hair and a look of quickness and intelligence. She had two children under the age of twenty, and a father who’d recently passed away from cancer.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” he began, gazing across the box before returning to the teacher. “No one should be sentenced to the purgatory of the unknown. Not when their health is endangered.”

The schoolteacher’s eyes flickered understanding.
Good
. He pressed on.

Ryan’s opening went nearly an hour, touching all the themes of their case: Covington’s failed duty to keep LB5 safe, its failure to adequately test Kieran for radiation, the fear of future cancer with which Kieran had to live. By the end, the recognition and understanding in the teacher’s eyes appeared in a few of the other jurors’ as well.

“The defendant, Covington Nuclear,” Ryan said, nearing the end, “was operating under a
two-billion-dollar contract
with the Department of Energy . . .”

“
Objection
, Your Honor,” King called out, rising to his feet. “Irrelevant and highly prejudicial.”

“Objection sustained,” the judge called back immediately.

Ryan’s gaze never left the jury box. He didn’t care that King had won the objection; he’d expected as much. The nine-figure contract was out there now. He’d never have to remind them again.

He moved on, closing with a promise that Emily and he would prove that the explosion resulted from explosive materials left in the lower levels of LB5—Dr. Trân’s hypothesis. It was, he hoped silently, a promise he could keep. Then he sat down.

Emily slid a note across the table.
“Nice job, Dad.”

King followed, standing to move to center stage. As he did, Ryan eased down in his chair, folding his arms across his chest and examining each of the light fixtures in the ceiling in turn. Boring stuff, he hoped to signal, not worth a juror’s attention. He held the pose, even as low voltage flowed through every muscle in his body at King’s recitation of dosimetry and whole-body-count evidence that Ryan knew they couldn’t directly counter.

It was nearly an hour later when King ended with a flourish and took his seat. The judge glanced at the wall clock and declared a recess. “We’ll pick up again this afternoon,” she instructed the jury. “Be sure you don’t discuss the case among yourselves—until the case is closed and all of the evidence is in.”

Ryan stood, smiling confidently as the jury left the room. It was more posturing. Optimistically, he knew only two jurors had begun the case sympathetic to Kieran: the teacher and the mechanic. It was too meager a beginning.

“Mr. Mullaney,” Ryan said to Kieran from the podium as the afternoon session began. “Describe what you saw when you entered the vat room.”

Kieran was dressed in dark slacks, a white shirt, and a muted tie. It was a statement of respect for the process, but one that avoided portraying him as someone he wasn’t. The young man was clearly nervous, but that was all right. The jury would expect that. At least he was following instructions: answering the questions slowly, looking at the jury, thinking before he responded.

Kieran was not an eager witness. Ryan could see he was uncomfortable talking to the strangers in the box about the past year. But he made up for it with a strong sense of unvarnished truth.

Kieran’s testimony reached his arrival at room 365 that night. Ryan could see from the corner of his eyes that the jury was riveted on this—the droplets clinging to the side of the tank, the puddle beneath, the rumbling of Vat 17 as it prepared to erupt.

“And did you touch the valve under Vat 17?” Ryan asked.

“Yes,” Kieran responded immediately. “I didn’t touch it, but my T-shirt caught it. I had to disentangle it.”

Good, no hesitation. It should take some sting out of King’s cross on Kieran’s failure to mention it in his deposition.

Ryan coaxed the full story from Kieran—including the months of hacking coughs and headaches, the fears of absorbed radiation, even how those fears were compounded by his father’s death.

The jury had gauged Kieran’s credibility for nearly two hours before Ryan circled back to the valve.

“Now, Mr. Mullaney,” Ryan asked, “Covington has alleged in this case that you deliberately turned the valve on Vat 17 out of anger at a fellow employee. Did you?”