Critical Reaction (29 page)

His cell phone rang. “Yes?” he answered.

“Dr. Trân, the package we told you about has finally arrived. It’s waiting at the front desk.”

The call was not unexpected, but the timing was miserable.

“Are you still alright with delivering it?” the voice asked when he failed to answer immediately.

“Yes. It’s fine.”

“Good. Please just leave it at the door. We’ll be in touch.” The line went dead.

Minh let out a sigh at another hour of tasks before supper and bed. He got out of the car and trudged into the hotel lobby.

The desk receptionist smiled when he asked if there was anything left for him. She crouched behind the counter and stood a moment later with a full-sized manila envelope. Minh took it and headed back out to the car.

Once more behind the wheel, Minh set the envelope on the passenger seat. He considered driving straightaway to deliver it, without looking at its contents. But he couldn’t do that. It wasn’t in his nature—as a scientist or a man—and despite his implicit trust in his sponsors, he would not deliver a package ignorant of its contents.

He smiled to see that the envelope was unsealed. Apparently his patrons knew him well. He opened it and withdrew a set of folded papers.

They looked official. He turned on the interior light and held them up.

All of the pages were photocopies.
Promissory Note
, the top document read.
Loan Agreement
was the title on the next clipped bunch of pages.

Minh contemplated why it was better that
he
take the risk of discovery for a task like this rather than his sponsors. He was a scientist, not a delivery boy. But he’d do it, of course. After all his years working with his sponsors, neither pride nor petulance would prevent him from this simple task.

He began to put the papers back in the envelope—then stopped. Out of an abundance of caution, he removed a handkerchief from his hip pocket and carefully wiped the pages wherever he had touched them. He did the same with the envelope.

Minh started the car and then pulled his smartphone from
his pocket. He pressed the GPS app and activated the voice command. When the mechanical beep signaled the phone’s readiness, Minh held it close.

“Directions,” he began, “to Judge Howard Renway, 1965 Alvarado Boulevard . . .”

CHAPTER 31

F
IRST
D
AY
OF
T
RIAL

Emily looked up from the intensity of her work on the laptop, glancing around the kitchen to clear her head. She’d thought the preparation in the month and a half following their arrival at Sherman had been serious. The past ten days had proved her wrong. Never had she worked so hard. Not even for the bar exam.

Dressed in his suit, her father was perched at his usual spot on the couch, organizing his examination, cross-examination, and rebuttal testimony questions for witnesses on his own laptop. All prepared in just seven days.

Emily had slipped away for a quick breakfast with Kieran this morning. Going out the door, she’d heard the sound of her father pounding away again at the speed bag in the basement. This evening, she knew he’d likely go for a run after court—just as he did every evening.

She’d finally asked her father this weekend if the workouts were to relieve the pressure. He’d answered yes, but also for training. Trial was physically demanding, he’d said. “And better than the Atkins diet. I lose a pound a day usually.”

Then he’d changed the subject, for the first time offering her direct advice on trial preparation. He knew that she’d taken
plenty of testimony before, but it was different in a complex trial where witnesses could be on the stand for hours or days.

“Remember, Emily, that when you’re taking a witness’s testimony, you’ve got to elicit the story with enough detail to explain and illustrate, but you can never risk putting a jury to sleep. Once they’re gone in a case of this length, they’re hard to wake up again.” And in the process, he’d cautioned, “Be prepared that some witnesses you thought would be helpful could turn hostile—resisting questions, changing stories from earlier deposition testimony. Think of it like conversing with someone with multiple personalities; be prepared for whoever emerges once the questioning starts.”

She’d tried not to chafe at advice she thought unnecessary after her time trying cases
—
forcing herself to acknowledge that the cases she’d tried at the Public Defender’s office the past two years were one to three day trials, with only a handful of witnesses and few scientific issues.

Emily glanced at her watch. Two hours until they left for the courthouse, where Kieran would meet them.

This past weekend she’d hardly seen Kieran; every minute was crammed with trial preparation. At her father’s suggestion, he was taking Kieran’s testimony. He’d hinted it was just a casual preference, but Emily knew that he had grown aware of her feelings for Kieran. She could guess what he was thinking: that all they needed was for the jury to suspect her personal attachment to the client. Who knew how they’d treat that revelation.

There was a metal clank of the mailbox hung by the front door. The only mail they were receiving here were court notices or letters from Covington’s counsel. Her father got up and walked to the door. He returned a moment later with only a slim envelope in his hands.

“It’s a hand delivery from the court,” Ryan said curiously. He tore it open and held it up to read.

“What is it, Dad?” Emily asked absently as her gaze stayed
fixed on her laptop. When he didn’t respond, she glanced up. His face had a look of pure astonishment.

“Judge Renway just removed himself from the case,” he said.

Adam was stopped on the side of the road where he’d pulled over when King called, clutching his phone like he was strangling it.

“Explain to me again how this happened,” he demanded bitterly.

“I . . . I’m not sure,” Eric King was stammering now, his patented bravado gone. “I got a message from Judge Renway Sunday afternoon, asking me to stop by his chambers this morning. I got there early. He ushered me in and told me he had to recuse himself from the case.”

“Why?”

“He said he owned orchards downwind from Hanford that had been in his family for generations. Apparently he refinanced a loan on that land a couple of years ago. One of the terms of the loan was that it could be accelerated if there was a ‘sudden release’ of radiation from Hanford. Since this Mullaney case is trying to prove a radiation release at LB5, and his orchards are near the building, the judge has a stake in the outcome of the case. It creates a hopeless conflict.”

Adam’s fingers were cramping around the cell.
“And why
did he just figure this out now.”

King was equal parts defensive and nervous. “He told me he hadn’t paid much attention to the acceleration clause before, with Hanford closed down. But somebody dropped a copy of his loan documents at his door Friday night with that clause circled. He thought about turning it over to the FBI—treat it as some kind of extortion. Except there’s no demand attached, of any kind. All it does is point out his ethical conflict. He decided he had to drop out before it got public.”

“Who dropped off the loan papers at Renway’s house,” Adam demanded.

“He doesn’t know. They were left at his door.”

It had to be Hart. Where had he come up with those papers?

“Can the judge be paid to stay on the case?” Adam asked.

“You mean a
bribe
?” King blurted out. “Bribe a federal judge? Renway isn’t
that
kind of asset. He’s just a judge with a soft spot for Hanford.”

Adam’s anger compounded at the lecturing tone. “So who replaces him?”

“It’s a new judge: Celeste Johnston. She started as a federal judge a year ago. Used to be a state court judge in Seattle, so she’s on the bench in King County. She’s African-American. Moderate. Smart.”

Adam’s head was swimming as the lawyer continued. “Listen, Adam, this doesn’t have to be that big of a setback. I contacted the calendar clerk’s office. Judge Johnston’s calendar is mostly free, so they have no intention of pushing back trial. That means we’ll still start in a couple of hours. With no time to prepare, it’ll be all Judge Johnston can do to get up to speed. I’d be amazed if she revisited any of Judge Renway’s decisions in the case. Given the evidence, we’ve still got this locked up.”

King always had as much optimism as money could buy. Adam didn’t believe in uncertainties, and this was the second source of uncertainty in two weeks. Despite King’s failed attempt to mollify him, these setbacks were adding up.

“Keep me alerted,” he snapped.

As he dropped the phone onto the passenger seat, Adam considered calling Foote to apprise him. But that wasn’t such a good idea. If he called Foote about this turn of events, it would sound like a major setback. If he told Foote in the course of their next conversation about the successful Wolffia test, he could paint Renway’s departure as no serious problem.

He pulled back onto the road. Adam wished he could sit in
on trial. But he couldn’t, and he had to let the idea go. Besides, he had lots yet to do. The successful Project test ended the first phase of seven long years of research, but there were more tests to run—then the necessity to begin production planning and reach out to the DOE and defense departments about the new technology. And while Foote would be leading that effort, Adam knew he was expected to be very close by.

The next few months were going to be busy enough without sitting in a courtroom. Despite his dwindling confidence in King, he had to rely on the lawyer to see this through.

Still, Adam told himself, he’d have to keep more careful tabs on the events at the courthouse than he’d ever planned or hoped for.

CHAPTER 32

Judge Johnston was presiding over her courtroom gingerly on this first afternoon of the trial. Not unexpected, Ryan thought, with only hours to step in. Now Ryan and Emily sat waiting in the moments after jury selection while the judge finished conferring with her clerk.

Just before noon, Ryan had reached Judge Freyling in Seattle by phone for his impressions of their new judge, based on their time together on the King County bench. Freyling had not hesitated to respond. “Decisive,” he’d said. “Prepares well. Don’t push her, though. She’s got a slow fuse, but you don’t want to be the one at the podium when she goes off.”

They might have to ignore that last advice, Ryan thought—if they had to take this chance to alter Renway’s rulings to date.

Emily passed him a note: “
What do you think of the jury?
”

They hadn’t had a chance to talk since the last juror was selected. He glanced at the final panel of three men and five women in the box—six regulars and two alternates. They were the product of nearly three hours of dueling questions, or “voir dire,” of the candidates, with King pitted against Emily and Ryan, taking turns. Two of the jurors now looked resentful, probably convinced the government had just unfairly stolen two weeks of their lives. In contrast, several wore expressions of excitement.

Ryan scribbled back a quick note:
Fine. Good to have more women, who’ll be
more sympathetic. Wish there was less “Hanford” in the box.

It was an accurate summary of his feelings. As Pauline had warned, avoiding Hanford’s influence in the jury box had been impossible. Ryan and Emily had taken turns asking everything from family histories to favorite magazines to travel preferences in an effort to tease out the jury candidates’ perspectives on Hanford. These eight jurors—ages twenty-two to sixty-four—included a high school teacher, a doctor, a saleswoman, two office workers, two homemakers, and a mechanic. They had been the ones who displayed the least slavish affinity to Hanford, in Emily’s and Ryan’s estimation. Still, only the teacher and the pharmaceuticals saleswoman lacked any apparent Hanford ties whatsoever.

But then, each side had only three “preemptory” challenges, the strongest card a lawyer had to play in voir dire—the ability to eliminate prospective jurors without proving prejudice. Ryan had insisted they use two of theirs to take out hard-edged male candidates who would have eviscerated Kieran’s case. The third was a more subtle choice, but Emily had prevailed, convincing Ryan that a woman chiropractor was casting bad vibrations about the case. Ryan would have paid a large amount of money for two more preemptories, but absent that choice, this was probably as good as they could hope for.

He glanced at defense counsel’s table. Eric King had a young female associate with him today—along with an unknown company rep from Covington HQ to serve as the company’s symbol at trial. Ryan thought his principal qualifications for being there appeared to be his youth, a cleft chin, and a suit that fit well.

King wore multicolored suspenders peeking from a navy blue suit and sported a fine shine on his shoes. His associate was equally well dressed—overdressed, actually, for somebody who’d likely spend her days shepherding papers for King. She’d best
not expect to take any witnesses of her own, Ryan thought. King wasn’t the kind to yield the spotlight to a subordinate. Ryan had him pegged as incapable of imagining anyone else taking a turn at the podium for the defense.