Gray Mountain (28 page)

Samantha watched and listened and had late-night drinks with Donovan and Jeff. Diet soda for her, Dickel for them. Strayhorn might have been posturing when it promised an appeal, but Donovan said the company really wanted to settle. With two dead kids at issue, the company knew it would be difficult to ever win. The punitive damages would be automatically reduced from a million to $350,000, so roughly a quarter of the verdict was already gone. The company offered $1.5 million to settle on the Tuesday after the verdict, and Lisa Tate wanted to take it. Donovan let it slip that he was getting 40 percent, so he could smell a nice payday.

On Wednesday, he, Jeff, and Samantha met with Buddy and Mavis Ryzer to discuss the potential lawsuit against Lonerock Coal and Casper Slate. The Ryzers were devastated to learn that the law
firm had known for years that Buddy was suffering from black lung, yet hid the evidence. Buddy angrily said, “Sue the bastards for everything,” and never, during the two-hour meeting, backed down. The couple left Donovan’s office mad and determined to fight until it was over. That night, again over drinks, Donovan confided to Samantha and Jeff that he had mentioned the lawsuit to two of his closest trial lawyer buddies, two guys in different firms in West Virginia. Neither had an interest in spending the next five years brawling with Casper Slate, regardless of how egregious its behavior.

A week later, Donovan flew to Charleston, West Virginia, to file the Hammer Valley contamination case. Outside the federal courthouse, facing a gang of reporters and with four other lawyers beside him, he laid out their case against Krull Mining. “Russian owned,” of course. He claimed the company had been polluting the groundwater for fifteen years; that it knew what was happening and covered it up; and that Krull Mining had known for at least the last ten years that its chemicals were causing one of the highest rates of cancer in America. Donovan confidently said, “We’ll prove it all, and we have the documents to back it up.” He was lead counsel and his group represented over forty families in Hammer Valley.

Like most trial lawyers, Donovan loved the attention. Samantha suspected he rushed the Hammer Valley filing because he was still in the spotlight from the Tate verdict. She tried to back away and ignore the Gray brothers for a few days, but they were persistent. Jeff wanted to have dinner. Donovan needed her advice, he said, because both of them represented Buddy Ryzer. She was aware of his growing frustration with his trial lawyer friends, none of whom were showing any enthusiasm for tackling Casper Slate. Donovan said more than once he would go solo, if necessary. “More of the fee for me,” he said. He became obsessed with the case and talked to Marshall Kofer every day. To their surprise, Marshall came through with the money. A litigation fund was offering a line of cash of up to $2 million for 30 percent of the recovery.

Donovan was again pressing Samantha to work in his office. The Hammer Valley case and the Ryzer case would soon be all-consuming,
and he needed help. She felt strongly that he needed an entire staff of associates, not just a part-time intern. When he verbally settled the Tate case for $1.7 million, he offered her a full-time position with a generous salary. She declined, again. She reminded him that (a) she was still wary of litigation and not looking for a job; (b) she was just passing through, sort of on loan until the dust settled up in New York and she could figure out the next phase of her life, a phase that would have nothing to do with Brady, Virginia; and (c) she had made a commitment to the legal clinic and actually had real clients who needed her. What she didn’t explain was that she was afraid of him and his cowboy style of lawyering. She was convinced that he, or someone working on his behalf, had stolen valuable documents from Krull Mining and that this would inevitably be exposed. He was not afraid to break rules and laws and wouldn’t hesitate to violate court orders. He was driven by hatred and a burning desire for revenge, and, at least in her opinion, was headed for serious trouble. She could hardly admit to herself that she felt vulnerable around him. An affair could flare without much effort, and that would be a dreadful mistake. What she needed was less time with Donovan Gray, not more.

She wasn’t sure how to handle Jeff. He was young, single, sexy; thus a rarity in those parts. He was also hot on her trail, and she knew that dinner, wherever one might find a nice dinner, would lead to something else. After three weeks in Brady, she rather liked that idea.

O
n November 12, Donovan, with no co-counsel in sight, marched into the federal courthouse in Lexington, Kentucky, home to an eight-hundred-member law firm officially known as Casper, Slate & Hughes, and sued the bastards. He also sued Lonerock Coal, a Nevada corporation. Buddy and Mavis were with him, and, of course, he had alerted the press. They chatted with some reporters. One asked why the lawsuit had been filed in Lexington, and Donovan explained that he wanted to expose Casper Slate to its hometown folks. He was aiming for the scene of the
crime, and so on. The press had a grand time with the story, and Donovan collected press clippings.

Two weeks earlier, he had filed the Hammer Valley lawsuit against Krull Mining in Charleston and received regional coverage.

Two weeks before that, he had won the Tate case with a spectacular verdict and got his name in a few newspapers.

On November 24, three days before Thanksgiving, they found him dead.

T
he nightmare began in the middle of Monday morning, as all the lawyers were working quietly at their desks, not a client in sight. The silence was shattered when Mattie screamed, a painful, piercing cry that Samantha was certain she would remember forever. They raced to her office. “He’s dead!” she wailed. “He’s dead! Donovan’s dead!” She was standing with one hand on her forehead; the other hand held the phone in midair. Her mouth was open, her eyes filled with terror. “What!” Annette shrieked.
“They just found him. His plane crashed. He’s dead.”

Annette fell into a chair and began sobbing. Samantha stared into Mattie’s eyes, both unable to speak for a second. Barb was in the door, both hands over her mouth. Samantha finally walked over and took the phone. “Who is it?” she asked.

“Jeff,” Mattie said as she slowly sat down and buried her face in her hands. Samantha spoke into the receiver but the line was dead. Her knees were weak and she backed into a chair. Barb collapsed into another one. A moment passed, a moment laden with fear, shock, and uncertainty. Could there be a mistake? No, not if Donovan’s only sibling called his beloved aunt to deliver the worst possible news. No, it was not a mistake or a joke or prank; it was the unbelievable truth. The phone was ringing again, all three incoming lines blinking as the word was spreading rapidly through the town.

Mattie swallowed hard and managed to say, “Jeff said Donovan flew to Charleston yesterday to meet with some lawyers. Jeff was out of town over the weekend and Donovan was by himself. Air traffic control lost contact with him around eleven last night. Somebody on the ground heard a noise, and they found his plane this morning in some woods a few miles south of Pikeville, Kentucky.” Her quivering voice finally gave out and she lowered her head.

Annette was mumbling, “I can’t believe this. I can’t believe this.” Samantha was speechless. Barb was a blubbering mess. More time passed as they cried and tried to come to grips with what was happening. They calmed a bit as the first hint of reality settled in. After a while, Samantha left the room and locked the front door. She moved quietly around the offices, closing curtains and blinds. Darkness engulfed the clinic.

They sat with Mattie as the phones rang and rang in the distance and all the clocks seemed to stop. Chester, with his own key, entered through the rear door and joined the mourning. He sat on the edge of the desk with one hand on his wife’s shoulder and patted gently as she sobbed and whispered to herself.

Softly, Chester asked, “Have you talked to Judy?”

Mattie shook her head and said, “No. Jeff said he would call her.”

“Poor Jeff. Where is he?”

“He was in Pikeville, taking care of things, whatever that means. He was not doing too well.”

A few minutes later, Chester said, “Let’s go home, Mattie. You need to lie down, and no one’s working around here today.”

S
amantha closed her office door and fell into her chair. She was too stunned to think of anything else, so she stared at the window for a long time and tried to organize her thoughts. Organization failed her, and she was consumed with the sudden desire to flee Brady and Noland County and all of Appalachia and perhaps never come back. It was Thanksgiving week and she was planning
to leave anyway, to head for D.C. and spend time with her parents and maybe some friends. Mattie had invited her to Thanksgiving lunch, but she had already declined.

Some Thanksgiving. They were now staring at a funeral.

Her cell phone vibrated. It was Jeff.

A
t four thirty that afternoon, he was sitting on a picnic table at a remote scenic overlook near Knox in Curry County. His truck was parked nearby and he was alone, as expected. He did not turn to see if it was her, did not move as she walked across the gravel toward him. He was gazing into the distance, lost in a world of jumbled thoughts.

She kissed him on the cheek and said, “I’m so sorry.”

“Me too,” Jeff said, and managed a quick smile, a forced one that lasted only a second. He took her hand as she sat beside him. Knee to knee, they silently watched the ancient hills below them. There were no tears and few words, at first. Jeff was a tough guy, far too macho to be anything but stoic. She suspected he would do his crying alone. Deserted by his father, orphaned by his mother, and now left abandoned by the death of the only person he ever truly loved. Samantha could not imagine his anguish at this awful moment. She herself felt as though there was a gaping hole in her stomach, and she had known Donovan for less than two months.

“You know they killed him,” he said, finally putting into words what they had been wondering throughout the day.

“And who are they?” she asked.

“Who are they? They are the bad guys, and there are so many of them. They are ruthless and calculating and for them killing is no big deal. They kill miners with unsafe mines. They kill hillbillies with contaminated water. They kill little boys who are sound asleep in their trailer. They kill entire communities when their dams break and their slurry ponds flood the valleys. They killed my mother. Years ago they killed union men who were striking for better wages. I doubt if my brother is the first lawyer they’ve killed.”

“Can you prove it?”

“I don’t know, but we’ll try. I was in Pikeville this morning—I had to identify the body—and I stopped by to see the sheriff. I told him I suspected foul play and I wanted the airplane treated like a crime scene. I’ve already notified the Feds. The plane did not burn up, just crashed. I don’t think he suffered. Can you imagine having to identify the body of your brother?”

Her shoulders slumped at the thought. She shook her head.

He grunted and said, “They had him at the morgue, just like you see on television. Open the vault, slide him out, slowly pull back the white sheet. I almost threw up. His skull was cracked.”

“That’s enough,” she said.

“Yes, that’s enough. I suppose there are certain things in life you’re never prepared to do, and after you do them you swear you’ll never do them again. Do most people go through life without ever having to identify a body?”

“Let’s talk about something else.”

“Okay. Good idea. What do you want to talk about?”

“How do you prove it was a criminal act?”

“We’ll hire experts to examine the plane from prop to tail. The NTSB will review the radio transmissions to see what was going on right before the crash. We’ll piece this thing together and figure it out. A clear night, perfect weather, an experienced pilot with three thousand hours in his logbook, one of the safest airplanes in history; it just doesn’t make sense otherwise. He finally pissed off the wrong people, I guess.”

A breeze blew in from the east, scattering leaves and bringing a chill. They huddled closer together like old lovers, which they were not. Not old, not new, not current. They’d had dinner twice, nothing more. The last thing Samantha needed was a complicated romance with a definite expiration date. She wasn’t sure what he wanted. He spent a lot of time away from Brady, and she suspected there was a girl involved. They had absolutely no future together. The present might be fun, a romp here, a frolic there, a little companionship on cold nights, but she wasn’t about to rush in.

He said, “You know, I’ve always thought the worst day of my
life was the day Aunt Mattie came to my classroom at school and told me my mother was dead. I was nine years old. But this is worse, much worse. I’m numb, so numb you could stick knives in me and I wouldn’t feel anything. I wish I’d been with him.”

“No you don’t. One loss is enough.”

“I cannot imagine life without Donovan. We were basically orphans, you know, raised by relatives in different towns. He was always looking out for me, always had my back. I got into a lot of trouble, and I wasn’t afraid of my relatives or schoolteachers or the cops or even the judges. I was afraid of Donovan, and not in a physical sense. I was afraid of letting him down. The last time I went to court I was nineteen years old. He had just finished law school. They’d caught me with some pot, a small amount that I was actually trying to sell but they didn’t know it. The judge gave me a break—a few months in the county jail but nothing serious. When I was about to walk up to the bench and face the judge, I turned around and looked at the courtroom. There was my brother, standing next to Aunt Mattie, and he had tears in his eyes. I’d never seen him cry. So I cried too, and I told the judge he would never see my face again. And he didn’t. I’ve had one speeding ticket since then.” His voice cracked slightly as he pinched his nose. Still no tears, though. “He was my brother, my best friend, my hero, boss, confidant. Donovan was my world. I don’t know what I’ll do now.”