Critical Reaction (6 page)

Ryan pulled his sport coat tighter against the chill. He
did
owe her. Missed family dinners, recitals: the list would stretch to Tacoma. And when he was home, still mentally elsewhere. Then throwing himself into Carolyn’s care like it was another case he could win—deserting a daughter to carry the weight of what they both were losing alone.

But Emily was chasing a ghost, expecting him to save the day. He’d been putting his career in the rearview mirror for years now.

Ryan looked into those hopeful eyes, then past Emily to the Bremerton ferry approaching on the choppy waters.

“Let me think about it tonight,” he said.

“Great, Dad,” Emily said, smiling broadly for the first time and turning back to her plate of clam strips. “That’s great.”

The small talk immediately improved. Ryan brushed away a flash of guilt. He’d avoided disappointing his girl one more time this afternoon; he’d deal with the cost later. For now, he’d enjoy the smile in her eyes, the water on the Sound, and the best clam strips money could buy.

Ryan reached for another fry and, with a flick of his wrist, sent it into the air amidst the growing flock of expectant gulls.

CHAPTER 3

Four hours later, Ryan strode slowly up the steps to the Queen Anne house that served as office and home. The door was unlocked—Melissa must have still been there. He walked in, threw his coat across the bannister leading to the upstairs apartment, then turned right past the vacant reception desk, past the row of empty offices.

Melissa looked up from her desk beside his corner office with a tired smile. “You’re here late, Mel,” Ryan said. “Already told you, there’s no overtime at Hart and Associates.”

The fortyish secretary shook her head with mock disapproval. “After fifteen years, imagine you paying me what I’m worth. But don’t worry, I’m just cleaning up. I won’t charge you.”

Ryan looked at the stack of boxes behind her desk chair. Closing down was more apt. He recognized the Glenwater and Schraeder files. Velder and Proffler. All settled or tried the past three years.

“How was lunch with Emily?” she asked, concerned.

“Fine.”

“Wasn’t that nice of her to call? I suppose she wanted to get caught up.”

The logic of the misinformed, he thought. He told Melissa about the signaling lawyer at the courthouse. His secretary shook her head again, disappointment on her face. “What those lawyers will do to win a case.”

Ryan turned toward his office.

“If you’re going to your desk to check messages,” she said, raising a hand, “I can save you the extra steps: there aren’t any. Except a threat of an ethics complaint from the Glenwater case just came through.”

That was expected. “All right,” he said, picking up a stack of mail on the front of Melissa’s desk.

She looked at him with concern. “You can’t keep losing your temper at depositions like that, Mr. Hart. You’re getting a reputation. And some lawyers don’t seem to have a sense of humor about that kind of thing.”

Especially silk stocking lawyers from firms like Cochrane, Dickerson and Western, he thought. He looked back at his longtime secretary. “No rules were broken, Mel. Just a little growling.”

She smiled consolingly. “Well, you didn’t used to growl enough to risk an ethics complaint.”

Sure he did. He was just more skilled about it when his heart was still in the game.

Her voice grew more serious. “You think they’ll file a complaint against you?”

It was unlikely. Ryan knew he was still drawing on a reservoir of goodwill. “No,” he responded. Ryan couldn’t continue this conversation. “I’m heading upstairs. You’ll lock up on your way out?”

She gave him a last glance. “Don’t I always?”

He headed for the staircase.

Upstairs, Ryan crossed the small living room of his apartment, dropping his keys onto the kitchen bar. The light wasn’t working under the cupboards, oscillating between light and dark like something out of a horror movie. He’d have to call the contractor to fix it in the morning.

Ryan glanced around at the renovations just completed that week. He’d wanted the apartment different than when he and Carolyn first moved in twenty-five years before when the upstairs
had served as their home until they could afford a separate house elsewhere in the city. He had the contractors repair the old plumbing and drafty windows that hadn’t troubled newlyweds starting a life and career together. But so far, the change hadn’t ended the restless nights that had plagued Ryan in their Magnolia house since Carolyn’s death.

He turned to the fridge and grabbed a bottle of iced tea, then rustled through the spare cupboards. Grabbing a box of Wheat Thins, he kicked off his shoes and shuffled through the new carpet smell toward the study, bypassing moving boxes still littering the floor.

He and Carolyn had loved watching the sun as it appeared now through the study window, sinking into the Olympic Mountain range across the Sound, melting into a widening puddle of orange. He opened the window to let in some fresh air.

His eyes were drawn to a box of memorabilia under the sill, topped with his boxer’s speed bag. He considered going down to the basement to hang it up where it used to rattle the house to Carolyn’s complaints. Instead, he picked up his MacBook Pro from the desk and settled back onto the leather love seat, the Wheat Thins at his side.

His most recent email was from Emily, sent since their lunch. An attachment held the Complaint in her friend’s case. “I just got this from Kieran. I really appreciate your taking a look at it,” her message read. Ryan nearly closed it out. Instead he enlarged it to fill his computer screen.

Kieran
Mullaney v. Covington Nuclear Corporation
, the caption read. It was a no-frills pleading with a bare recitation of the facts and a statement of the single claim. The Complaint described Kieran Mullaney being exposed to chemicals and radiation from an explosion on the third floor of a mothballed building on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation called LB5. The claim was that Covington was liable based upon its responsibility for safety, maintenance, and cleanup
at the Hanford nuclear site, working under contract with the Department of Energy.

Covington Nuclear. A quick Internet search confirmed that the company operated nuclear plants around the country, as well as DOE superfund cleanup sites like Hanford. At one time, in the Cold War days, the company also had a role in nuclear weapons production.

It was a clean case. So why had the boy’s attorney withdrawn? And why was he having a problem finding replacement counsel?

Covington was represented by Eric King, of McNary and King in Sherman, Washington. The lawyer for plaintiff Kieran Mullaney was Pauline Strand. Ryan could find no website for the lawyer—almost unheard of in this day and age. He checked her in the bar directory. She was a solo practitioner, with no photo. Based on her bar admission date, Ryan calculated her to be in her late sixties.

Pretty gutsy for a sixty-year-old solo practitioner to take on a Fortune 500 company all by herself, he thought. Gutsy or stupid.

The room had grown dark. So what would he tell Emily?

In the dim light, his gaze fell on the photo of Carolyn on the study desk. What would Carolyn say to all this? He was having difficulty conjuring her voice in the growing darkness.

Ryan studied the photo, tracing the curve of her cheeks and the smile in her eyes, trying to recall the first time he’d heard Carolyn speak—or at least the first time he’d really paid attention to her. In law school, he’d played the monk, spending three years in serious study with no social life, committed to launching a career as a trial lawyer without any personal baggage. Then, his last semester, his mock trial professor had him present closing arguments in the same slot as a slender blond girl with icy blue Scandinavian eyes.

The day they’d presented, he’d
crushed
his argument for the three volunteer judges. They didn’t look away the whole forty-
five minutes he spoke. Ryan didn’t wonder: he
knew
he’d make the other student’s effort pale by comparison.

Then Carolyn had stood up. In a voice both sweet and serious, she had, in less than fifteen minutes and without notes, painted her client with such nobility and tragic grandeur that Ryan expected the judges to rise for a standing ovation.

An hour later, sitting with coffee at the campus Starbucks, he’d heard his name called in that voice again. It was Carolyn. She approached and congratulated him on his presentation. Taunting him, Ryan assured himself. Then she’d sat down as he responded tepidly, “You were great. You were the clear winner today.”

She’d looked at him quizzically. “Who told you this was a competition?”

The question was not unkind. Ryan looked at her a moment before responding. “Probably my father. And his father before him.”

She laughed. Then, through the rising steam of her coffee, she pierced him with the same gaze that had accompanied her argument. “You were better prepared than I was, you know. Your closing had insights that never even
occurred
to me.”

“Just a weak presentation,” Ryan finished.

“No,” she said softly, brushing charitably past the self-pity that he instantly regretted. “No. But maybe you tried a little too hard to beat the judges into submission. Too much punching; too little wooing. I’m starting to think that this . . . this is seduction. Drawing people into the intimacy of your client’s loss. This case we argued, for example, was about a tragic accident that took a young life. The judge or jurors have to
feel
that reality. Knocking them around may get their attention, but you want them to want to
help
your client, to side with your client. That takes an embrace.”

He’d never pursued a client or a cause harder than his pursuit of Carolyn those next two months until graduation. That summer, they’d married.

Ryan stirred and looked around him. It had grown late. The unpacked boxes were now darker shadows in the already shadowy room. He shook his head. Those memories weren’t helping make a decision.

He had to decide what to tell Emily about her friend Kieran Mullaney. He ought to just get it over with: tell her no, as he should have at lunch. Maybe tell her he was shying away from the body blows and the bloody noses of trial practice—the ache of the responsibility, the back-breaking hours preparing for trial, the injustice of certain attorneys, like that young one he saw in the courthouse today, succeeding.

All the things that hadn’t seemed to trouble him before Carolyn’s cancer.

But he couldn’t just say no to Emily now—not when she was reaching out for his help. It was better for their already distant relationship if he gave the appearance of considering the case. After all, he was still an advocate; he could manage this charade.

Ryan pulled his cell out of his pocket and pressed her number. Voicemail answered. “Emily,” he said after the beep. “Give your friend Kieran a call. Set up a meeting. Tell him that I’m willing to come his direction—make it dinner so I can drive. But set it up on a day you can come along. I think it would be a good idea for you to be there.”

CHAPTER 4

S
HERMAN
, W
ASHINGTON

The stethoscope was icy between Poppy’s shoulder blades. “Breathe,” Dr. Morgan said from behind him. He complied.

The scope lifted mercifully from his back, and the doctor came around the table. “I can hear the thickness, Mr. Martin.” He stepped to a small corner desk and his laptop. “I’d say it’s a stubborn irritation from the chemicals you were exposed to last fall. Give it another month or so. In the meantime, I’ll send your pharmacy a prescription for something stronger to break it up. And something else for the cough.”

Poppy bristled at hearing the same song, third verse. “You know,” he said, buttoning his shirt, “it’s been eight months. I’ve been back here five times already to see your partners since the explosion. If these meds don’t work, what’s the next step?”

The doctor kept tapping on the keys. “Well, we’ll cross that bridge if we come to it.”

“Do you think,” Poppy pushed, “that you might want to run some more tests? For radiation or other chemicals?”

The doctor hit Enter with a flourish and turned to Poppy.

“Mr. Martin, from the chart notes, it looks like you’ve discussed this every time you’ve been here. As my partners told you, the most accurate testing would have been soon after the explosion.” The doctor clicked again at the laptop, slipping on
reading glasses and leaning in as he moved through the digital chart.

“Here it is. I see that blood and urine tests that night were negative for any known significant chemical exposure. Then they did a whole body count for radiation exposure that came up negative.”

The doctor looked up. “I’d be satisfied with the testing they did that night, Mr. Martin. Obviously, you got no serious dose of radiation, because you survived. Besides, I’m no specialist in the field, but I doubt there’s even a test out there to detect radiation exposure this long after the event.”

“Um-hmm.” Poppy nodded impatiently. Yeah, he was sitting here, so it was obvious he didn’t get a terminal dose. But low doses could kill, too—over time.

“You suppose at least you could just take some blood and urine, store it in case they decide it’s worth testing down the road?”

The doctor looked over his glasses at Poppy. “Look, Mr. Martin, I really can’t do that. Your employer is Darter Security, a subcontractor to Covington Nuclear out at Hanford, right? And they placed you under Covington Nuclear’s self-insured health plan. I’m familiar with that plan. It’s a specialized one, with nuclear facilities employees in mind. It permits testing for radiation and chemical exposure—but only if there’s evidence you’ve been exposed to something to test.”

The doctor offered a last perfunctory smile and a soft handshake before hurrying from the examination room. Poppy resisted crushing the smooth-skinned fingers—or tossing the desk chair after the man’s retreating white coat.