In the Company of Liars (7 page)

A
llison stares at the ghost in the mirror. She wants the judge to see her as she used to be, before the stress started doing its damage three months ago. She wants him to know her as a person, to know her life and background, to understand what she is capable of and what she is not.

But Judge Wilderburth will not know these things. Will not care to know. The facts of the case are the only things of relevance to him. It is a tainted filter, she realizes now more than ever. He will never know the full story. No jury, no judge ever has.

She looks at her watch, expecting Mat to walk in the door any minute to drive her to court, when the phone rings. It's seven-thirty in the morning and the phone is ringing.

She walks out of the master bathroom and finds her phone by the bed. The caller ID is noncommittal; the call is coming from an office.

“Allison, Paul Riley here.”

Paul Riley is the first lawyer Allison retained on the case. “How are you, Paul?”

“Great, Allison. I've been following the trial. It looks good.”

“Nice of you to say.” Allison is sure the comment is insincere.

“The evidence is circumstantial,” Paul adds, the classic take from a defense attorney. “They still don't have the murder weapon, do they?”

Allison catches her breath. She grips the phone until it hurts. “The, uh—”

“The murder weapon,” Paul repeats. “They don't know for sure what it is, and they surely don't have it, as far as I can tell.”

“No—no,” Allison manages through the burn in her throat. “They don't have it.”

“That will be tough for them, I would think. That's how you really put someone at a crime scene. No murder weapon, it's all speculation.”

“I—I hope so.”

“I think I've upset you here, Allison. Listen to me, talking about murder weapons. All I really wanted to tell you is I'm rooting for you.”

“Thank you, Paul. I should—I should probably—”

“You need to get going. Best of luck, Allison.”

She sets the phone down and puts a hand against the wall to support herself. She feels the heat on her face, the perspiration gather on her forehead.

The murder weapon
.

The front door opens, Mat calls out to her to come down.

She shakes her head hard. Okay. She collects herself and takes the stairs down.

J
ane McCoy sits in the back row, far left corner, a place that has been kept open for her. She's wearing her
glasses—first time in years—and a baseball cap. There's no law that says you have to dress up to watch a trial. She's not in hiding, exactly, but she doesn't feel the need to highlight her presence. No one's going to notice her, anyway. All eyes are forward, as the defense begins its case in the trial of
People versus Allison Quincy Pagone.

McCoy recognizes some of the reporters, who have been given the first two rows on the other side—Andy Karras from the Watch crime beat and Carolyn Pendry from Newscenter Four are sharing notes. You can tell the print media from television by their appearance, clothes and makeup, and by her count most of these people are not going before a camera.

McCoy's left-side seat puts her in the prosecution's half of the courtroom. If this thing lines up like a wedding, this would make her a friend of the prosecutor, Roger Ogren, which amuses McCoy, because she has been anything but.

She sees Allison Pagone leaning in at the defense table as her attorney speaks with her. She looks awfully good for a woman on trial. Her red hair is short now, curling out in the back, and damn, she has nice clothes, a tailored blue suit, white blouse, and colorful scarf. She's probably hoping the seventy-year-old judge will look down on her and think,
How could this cute little gal be a killer?
Maybe this is why the defense waived the right to a jury trial, letting the judge be the sole finder of fact.

Allison's new attorney is Ron McGaffrey. McCoy has never had the pleasure. She has been cross-examined by half the defense attorneys in this town, but not typically the ones on the high end, where McGaffrey apparently falls.

She looked into McGaffrey when Allison made the switch from Paul Riley. Riley, she knew. She liked him. A former federal prosecutor who once ran the county attorney's office as well. Former G-man who could give as well as he got but made it look natural. When Pagone changed
lawyers, McCoy was concerned. McGaffrey never prosecuted, and those are always the guys hardest to deal with. The word about McGaffrey is that he never pleads a case, which is probably not a bad marketing device, because every criminal defendant wants a warhorse.

And that's exactly what Ron McGaffrey looks like, as he stands and moves toward the battered wooden lectern between the defense and prosecution tables—a fighter, a tough guy. He has been through the wringer and looks it, a wide, weathered face, bad skin, deep worry lines across his forehead. He is a large man, not tall but a physical presence, a darkness through the eyes, a halt in his stride. He drops a notepad on the lectern, wags a pencil as he leans his considerable frame forward. He took shrapnel above the knee in Vietnam, survived a heart attack a couple years back and quit smoking, which may explain why he's holding the pencil with such reverence.

“Call Walter Benjamin,” he says to the judge.

McCoy watches the witness enter the courtroom. She wonders if he will make eye contact with her, but his eyes are forward and down, as he moves his long, thin body along the aisle, trying to maintain his dignity. He takes his seat and is sworn in, spells his last name. He is pushing fifty but looks older. Looks ill, actually, like the last time she saw him. He pushes his small glasses up on his long nose and fixes his hair, chestnut with gray borders.

“I am the director of governmental affairs, Midwest region, for Flanagan-Maxx Pharmaceuticals,” he says.

Technically, Walter Benjamin is on paid leave at the moment, but McGaffrey will get to that, no doubt. He doesn't start there. He starts with the company, Flanagan-Maxx, a massive international corporation that “discovers, develops, and markets breakthrough drugs.”

McGaffrey takes him through the countries where they have offices and laboratories, the different areas of medicine, the different departments—pharmaceutical, nutritional,
and hospital products. The company has billions in revenue worldwide. The point seems to be to cast Flanagan-Maxx as the cold, heartless corporate giant.

“Let's talk about the pharmaceutical products division, sir,” McGaffrey suggests.

McCoy moves in her seat. She wants this testimony to be over, and it's just beginning. There is no drama here, this part. F-M makes drugs for virtually anything, from brain disorders to respiratory infections to organ transplants to HIV/AIDS treatment.

“Let's talk about a particular product, sir,” says McGaffrey. He has a commanding voice but not as deep as she expected. He compensates for this with high volume. His every word in this courtroom is a controlled shout. “Let's talk about a product called Divalpro.”

Walter Benjamin nods without enthusiasm, adjusts his glasses again, and begins to explain it to the judge. Divalpro is a drug marketed to seniors for high blood pressure, one of the most successful products in the Flanagan-Maxx line, one of their cash cows. There is only one problem with Divalpro, a problem that is now known to anyone who follows the news, and certainly to anyone in the state capital.

Divalpro's patent is about to expire. Which means problems for Flanagan-Maxx. It means copycats. Worst of all, it means generic substitutes, drugs with the same active ingredient as Divalpro but cheaper, much cheaper, and therefore more attractive to the state Medicaid system than the expensive name-brand drug.

“Explain, if you would, Mr. Benjamin, the prior-approval list.”

This, of course, was the main problem here. The state's department of public aid, always looking to cut costs, installs an immediate preference for cheaper generic alternatives by implementing a “prior approval” system. All generic alternatives receive prior approval from the state
Medicaid system, so a doctor can prescribe them by signing a piece of paper. If the doctor wants to prescribe the more expensive, name-brand drug like Divalpro, he or she is required to go through considerable paperwork for approval. Which one is the doctor going to choose? The patients will ask for Divalpro, given its past monopoly and a considerable advertising campaign through direct mail and television, but the doctor will assure them that the generic alternative is essentially the identical drug. Flanagan-Maxx's profits on this drug will take a nosedive.

This was where Walter Benjamin, director of governmental affairs, came in. It was time to hit up the legislatures in the seven states he covers, including this one, for legislation to get Divalpro placed on the prior-approval list of medications. If Flanagan-Maxx could pull that off, it would be on the same footing as the generics and would maintain a considerable portion of its client base.

“We weren't asking for preference,” Benjamin emphasizes, ever the company man. “We just wanted to be on the same footing as the generics. We just wanted a level playing field.”

Sure, and never mind that the state will be spending millions on a drug that could be spent elsewhere in the Medicaid program, when the generic alternative is every bit as effective.

“And Mr. Benjamin, in your capacity as director of governmental affairs, did you personally, sir, go to our state capital and plead your case?”

“No.”

“Who did?”

“We retained the services of Dillon and Becker.”

“And who at that firm in particular?”

“Sam Dillon.”

“Sam Dillon? The deceased in this case?”

“Yes.”

“Why Sam Dillon?”

McCoy studies the witness's face. Walter Benjamin has probably asked himself that very question countless times since February.
Why Sam Dillon? Why did I have to choose Sam?

“We hired Sam because he knew his way around the capital, so to speak. He was a former state senator. He was a Republican. He was very good.”

“And why a Republican?”

“The state House is Republican. By a slim majority, but a majority nonetheless. And the governor is, too.”

McGaffrey pauses. McCoy holds her breath.

There is no mention of the state Senate.

McCoy smiles.

“Would it be fair to say that Sam Dillon was one of the most influential lobbyists in the game?”

The prosecutor, Roger Ogren, squirms in his seat.

“Absolutely,” Benjamin says.

“Did Sam Dillon lobby on behalf of Flanagan-Maxx in last year's legislative session?”

“Yes. Last year's veto session.”

“Can you explain that to the Court?”

The witness looks at the judge. “For two weeks in November, the legislature reconvenes to consider legislation that was vetoed by the governor. They decide whether to override the veto. But technically, they can consider other legislation as well. We had introduced a bill in the House during the regular legislative session last year, but it was carried over to the veto session. It was during veto session that they voted on it.”

“Are you familiar with House Bill 1551?”

“I am.”

“What is House Bill 1551?”

Anyone with a pulse in this town knows about House Bill 1551, if not by number. Anyone who has read the accounts since the grand jury was convened in February knows the dirty details, which Walter Benjamin will now
reluctantly impart. House Bill 1551 was the bill in the state's House of Representatives that put Divalpro on the prior-approval list. Sam Dillon, for all of his considerable talents as a lobbyist, couldn't get the bill passed during the regular legislative session. By all accounts, he had the House and Governor Trotter but was short in the Senate, by three votes to be exact. The problem was Flanagan-Maxx itself, a large drug company that did not have many friends in the legislature, particularly not in the Democratic-controlled Senate. The lobbies for the elderly and the poor, having fought for years for more dollars for the Medicaid program, argued fiercely against a bill that would prevent the savings of millions once the generics came aboard.

Dillon couldn't get it out of the Senate, long and short, and the Speaker of the House wasn't going to call it for a vote, and have his members take the heat, just to see it die in the Senate. So Sam Dillon asked the Speaker of the House to hold the bill over until veto session, hoping that the summer recess might change some minds.

Miracle of miracles, it did. Three senators switched their votes, and in the space of twenty-four hours, both the House and Senate passed House Bill 1551 and sent it to the governor. Why, precisely, these three senators changed their votes over summer recess is the focus of the federal grand jury investigation.

“So it's law right now,” McGaffrey concludes. “State law recognizes Divalpro as being on the prior-approval list, once its patent expires this summer.”