Critical Reaction (4 page)

Poppy stepped back another full stride, then glanced to his right. The nose of the plume was now approaching the roofline in that direction, to the west.

The HVAC workers leaving the building on the knoll, he thought. They were walking on that side of the building, into the path of the cloud.

Poppy pivoted right and forced his legs into a stumbling run. His weakness still slowed him, like he was immobilized in a dream. Poppy cursed himself and his inability to accelerate.

“Roof security,” the walkie-talkie came to life. “Please repeat. You said a plume?”

How many times did he have to say it? “Yeah,” Poppy said, still jogging. He forced out a description of its color and movement between gasping breaths, ending just as a final stride brought him to the western roofline.

Sucking air, he scanned the paved path three stories below, leading from the knoll to the plant entrance.

The workers were visible now, moving slowly and uncertainly—but directly into the path the plume would soon take when it fell from the roof of the building.

Poppy realized that the walkie-talkie had gone silent. His throat felt raspy and he coughed as he pressed the Call button. “Listen, you’ve got personnel out here. On the west side. Repeat, west side. You’ve gotta sound the take-cover siren. Repeat, there are personnel out on the grounds.”

As he finished, Poppy felt his chest tightening and a thickening in his throat. The plume, he thought; he’d swallowed some of it. He turned his head to spit and clear it. Why weren’t they firing up the sirens?

“Do you hear me?” he called again into the walkie-talkie. “Please respond.” It crackled with static.

The workers were stopped in confusion—one looking back toward the cafeteria on the knoll, the other pointing the other direction, toward the front of LB5. Their hands were waving hurriedly.

Poppy tried to shout a warning, but his throat caught.
It’s settling into my lungs
, he thought, as in that instant, his lungs spasmed. He doubled over in a fit of wracking coughs, so violent he felt as though he were trying to tear his lungs right out of his body. He forced his lids open.

Through eyes drowned in tears, he saw that the men had turned toward LB5’s front side and were beginning to pick up speed—still unaware of the plume rolling off the roof and toward their path.

Poppy tried to relax and slow the coughing that tore at his lungs. His mind and chest filled with rage at his impotence to stop the cloud rolling to embrace the men below—or even shout out a warning.

Poppy’s breath still came in wheezing gasps too weak to call out, but he felt the coughing taper for a moment. He dropped to his knees, unslung his rifle with arms weak from the convulsive coughing, and pointed it skyward. Another spasm was coming on. He ignored it and cupped the trigger in his finger to squeeze.

There was a crackle of a rifle. Poppy’s finger still rested gently on the trigger. He hadn’t fired yet.

He twisted to look across the roof to the east. There he saw Lewis, leaning far out over the other edge, his rifle extended past the roof line and pointed toward the ground.

What had Lewis shot at? Because if Lew pulled the trigger, it was nearly a sure thing something went down.

Another wave of retching coughs overtook Poppy. Before they could double him over, he squeezed the trigger three times in succession. Then the barrel came down and the weapon dropped with a clatter onto the roof.

His eyes were misted over, his lungs aching, as Poppy forced himself to look down his own side of the building. The men had stopped and were looking up in his direction, a dozen feet from the cloud splaying across the yard toward the path, widening as it rolled. Poppy waved frantically back away from the plume, toward the knoll and the cafeteria. The men turned and ran an instant before Poppy was down on all fours, shuddering with spasms again.

In the next seconds, just as Poppy gained a moment’s break from his retching, two things happened so quickly he could barely tell which came first.

A rising chorus of take-cover sirens screamed from the four corners of the grounds, blasting with such fury that Poppy fal
tered—barely catching himself from tumbling over the edge to the ground below.

In that same instant, the grounds were plunged into darkness with such suddenness that Poppy felt as though he’d been dropped dizzily into a deep, black hole.

CHAPTER 2

E
IGHT
MONTHS
LATER
P
UBLIC
D
EFENDER
’
S
O
FFICE
, K
ING
C
OUNTY
C
OURTHOUSE
S
EATTLE
, W
ASHINGTON

“You’re not listening.”

Startled, Emily Hart dropped her pen on the carpet. “I’m sorry,” she answered, quickly retrieving it from the floor.

Seated behind his large oak desk covered with the usual stacks of papers in no discernible order, Frank Porter shook his head. “It’s alright. We finished the business end of our talk ten minutes ago. You’ve just deprived yourself of hearing about my new grandson’s Apgar score.”

Emily smiled. “Sorry, Frank.”

“Forget about it.” He dismissed her with a wave of his hand. “Get to work. Or sort out whatever’s got you daydreaming today. See if you can plea out the Henderson case like we discussed. And remember what I told you earlier: two years slaving here and you haven’t taken a day of vacation. Including your comp time, you’re already maxed out on accumulated leave.”

She shrugged. “I don’t mind waiving some of the time.”

“I do,” Frank said with a serious glare. “You take it. That’s not a request. You’re carrying a monster load as it is. Burn out, and I lose my rising star.”

Emily smiled, then grasped her notepad and left the room. Passing Frank’s secretary outside his door, she crossed the hallway into the small, windowless space that served as her office.

She didn’t bother to sit down or turn on the light. Pulling the door shut behind her, Emily grabbed her cell from the desk and found the voice message from that morning.

“
Emily,”
the voice began. “
It’s Kieran. I know it’s been a long time. I’m
sorry I haven’t been in touch for a while. But right now I’ve got a big problem.”

The voice halted and she heard a long roll of coughs in the background.

“I heard about you finishing your
law degree,”
he began again, his voice hoarse and low.
“That’s great. And actually that’s why I’m calling. I need a lawyer myself, right away.”

There was a pause.
“I think I’ve gotten dosed
out at Hanford, Emily—with radiation. Like what killed my
father. It happened awhile ago, and I started a lawsuit, but my lawyer’s withdrawn right before trial and now
I don’t think I’m going to find out
what I got exposed to. It’s . . . all getting out
of control. Please. I’ve got no other options. Could
you give me a call back?”

The voicemail went silent. Emily stood in the quiet darkness for a full minute.

She hadn’t gotten a message from Kieran in nearly three years. She hadn’t heard his voice in four. Yet the only thing unfamiliar about it after all this time was the undertone of fear.

Emily felt a surprising urgency about responding to the message. She scrolled through her cell phone list of contacts until she found the number that she hadn’t called in several months. Part of her felt she should get back to Kieran first. Even stronger was a preference to be able to offer immediate reassurance. Still, given whom she was reaching out to, Emily hesitated another full minute before making the call to the number on her contact list.

A recorded voice instructed her to leave a message.

“I’ve got a problem,” she said after a final moment’s hesitation. “Could we have lunch today, Dad?”

Ryan Hart paced the empty corridor on the fourth floor of the King County Courthouse. He checked the wall clock. Emily was late. He sighed. He was hungry and not in the mood to run into people he knew—which was bound to happen if he kept standing in the hallway.

His cell phone vibrated silently in his pocket. The text from Emily was a brief apology: her boss had her busy, but she’d be down to meet him for lunch in half an hour.

He slid the phone back into his pocket, reminding himself, despite his impatience, that this was the first time Emily had called him in months.

The door to courtroom 431 opened and a man came out, a muttering of voices escaping with him into the hallway. Ryan hesitated a moment, then approached the door. It was better than standing out here with his hands in his pockets.

He slipped through the door before it closed again.

The courtroom was surprisingly full. The case must be a headliner, he thought. “Barflies” drawn to a good fight. With a glance around the room, he took a seat at the rear corner nearest the door.

“All rise,” the bailiff bellowed. Ryan was instantly back on his feet before the rest of the crowd could react.

A black robe billowed around the judge as he swept through the doors from chambers, followed by the entourage of his clerk, a court reporter, and a calendar assistant following. The staff split for their stations around the room as the magistrate dropped into his chair, motioning for the crowd to do the same.

As Ryan and everyone else in the gallery obeyed, a slim young woman to his left fidgeted nervously, bumping his shoulder. Ryan glanced at her before sliding to his right to give her a little more room.

This was a civil, not a criminal, case: only eight jurors occupied the jury box—probably six regulars and two alternates. A corporate case as well, judging from the expensive suits worn by the “civilians” crowded with their counsel at the three attorneys’ tables. Ryan could usually distinguish the civilians from their lawyers by their looks of caution, and the blank pads and pens in front of them.

One attorney stood alone at a podium at the room’s center, waiting for the proceedings to begin. His client was likely the older man at the table closest to the podium, wearing a sport coat a size too small and a necktie a decade too large. The minnow in this shark tank, Ryan thought, likely the plaintiff. And from the legal legions arrayed against him, as well as this gallery crowd, this was either a whistleblower or a fraud case.

Judge Francis Tipton adjusted his nameplate, then leaned forward with a glower, signaling his readiness to devour the entire room if necessary. “You may begin, Mr. Swinton,” he said with a nod to the lawyer at the podium.

A witness occupied the box to the judge’s left, seated in a swivel chair—middle-aged with a mystified look as though she were in a perpetual state of surprise. She wore a navy suit, modest jewelry, and little makeup—well costumed, Ryan thought. Except her dark clothing highlighted a pale face and eyes slightly over wide, and her hands gripped the wood-framed witness box. “Clingers,” Ryan called them—witnesses who clung to the box like shipwreck victims in rough seas.

“Miss Galbraith,” the lawyer at the podium began, “I’d like you to set aside the last exhibit we were reviewing before the break and turn back to Exhibit 41.”

The witness looked alarmed, but stirred herself to rustle through a stack of papers at her elbow.

Ryan didn’t know the plaintiff’s attorney at the podium. The defense attorneys at the next table were lawyers from Feldman, Leif, and Ramsdell. He’d faced the woman before.

His eyes went to the third table, where two senior attorneys from Melander and Stout sat, accompanied by a third, unfamiliar younger associate. They were a nasty crew—and expensive. He could only imagine the transgressions that had led their client to hire them.

The plaintiff’s attorney asked questions about the exhibit for several minutes before he grasped the podium in both hands. “Now, Miss Galbraith, please tell the jury: is the handwritten note on the bottom of that page written in your former employer’s handwriting?”

Five seconds passed. Miss Galbraith had to blink sometime. When Ryan reached a ten count, the judge turned his cannibalizing scowl on the woman and growled, “You must answer counsel’s question.”

Her discomfort turned frantic. “It’s been a long time since I saw this document—before today,” she muttered, glancing toward the Melander and Stout counsel table nearest the jury box. “Could I . . . have a break to think about it?”

Clouds darkened the ridges of the judge’s stare. “No, Miss Galbraith. You will answer the question.”

The gallery crowd and jury were staring expectantly at the stilled witness when the slightest movement drew Ryan’s attention away. He glanced toward the fresh-faced Melander and Stout associate sitting nearest the jury, the table where Miss Galbraith had glanced only a moment before. The young attorney had shifted in his chair until he was sideways to the nervous witness, his fingers perched lightly over the edge of his table. Ryan looked past the young attorney toward Miss Galbraith in the witness box—and saw that she was watching those fingers, too, softly, carefully, from the corners of her eyes.

The fingers began a silent rhythm—tap, tap—the second and third fingers downward; tap, tap—the third and fourth. Three times they traced the rhythm before the hand closed in a gentle fist.

The witness stirred, releasing the witness box and sitting back in her chair. “No. That’s definitely
not
his handwriting,” she announced confidently.