The Death of Distant Stars, A Legal Thriller

by Deborah Hawkins

  “What kind of talk?”

  “That Suchet was right to stop working on it. That Wycliffe has hidden the truth about the number of deaths it has caused.”

  Hugh sipped his coffee and frowned. He opened the top drawer of his desk, pulled out a flask, and poured a healthy helping of scotch into his cup. He held the flask toward Rick, who shook his head.

  “You need to lay off of that stuff.”

  “So my cardiologist says.” Hugh recapped the flask and put it back in the drawer. “Look, I’m not saying Wycliffe’s hands aren’t dirty. I just don’t think this case is for us. For one thing, this is just one plaintiff.”

  “But I’m sure it will turn out to be a lot more. There are probably hundreds, if not thousands, of people out there who’ve been injured by this drug. Lots of liver transplants.”

  “And how do you prove that?”

  “The usual way. Discovery. Talking to other experts.”

  “And I gather you want to be the expert who testifies at trial?” Hugh frowned slightly.

  “According to our usual arrangement, yes. I sent this one to you, after all.”

  Hugh sipped his drink and stared out at the magnificence of San Diego at his feet in the soft, late afternoon sun. A lawyer reaches the pinnacle of his career when he can walk away from litigation worth millions. “We are taking a risk if we follow the usual procedure. You know that. The U.S. Attorney has been sniffing around us for two years. The statute of limitations has run on all of our past arrangements. As of now, we are in the clear.”

  Rick squirmed in his chair and crossed and uncrossed his legs. “I know, and I wouldn’t ask for one more if things weren’t–well–desperate.”

  “I told you the last time not to get into financial trouble again.”

  “All I need is five million.”

  “All? You’re kidding.”

  “Look, Hugh, for you five million is nothing. You’re worth five hundred million at least. We’ve been friends a long time. We’ve never turned our backs on each other.”

  “But this kind of thing is getting too risky.”

  “Last time. I promise. Besides, Kathryn is a perfectly legitimate plaintiff, and you know you want to take down Wycliffe. I’ll lose everything if you don’t.”

  * * *

  After Hugh walked Rick to the elevator, he wandered back down the halls of his empire to Mark Kelly’s junior-partner, glass-box corner office. It was spacious, but not as spacious as Hugh’s; and the view of San Diego through its glass walls was slightly less spectacular. Mark was on the phone when Hugh entered, but he gave him the sign to wait, so Hugh sat down in one of the chairs in front of the desk.

  “I’m glad you came by,” Mark said as soon as he hung up. “I was going to come see you this afternoon about splitting the attorneys’ fees for the Besser case.”

  Hugh leaned back and studied his protégé. “What were you thinking about the split?”

  “Five million for Hays, Price. Two for Lane, Turner. We keep the rest.”

  Hugh frowned. “No way I’m approving five for Hays.”

  “But they took three years worth of depositions for us. They actually asked for eight million.”

  “I don’t care how much work they did or what they asked for. Bill Hays tried to settle behind my back, if you recall.”

  Mark pressed his lips together, considering what to say next. “I don’t agree with that assessment of Bill’s thinking. He only talked to Besser’s general counsel about what it would take to settle the whole thing without a trial. He didn’t actually make an offer to settle.”

  “Don’t care. I didn’t authorize him to do that, and we were the lead firm and I was the lead attorney.”

  “He was trying to do a good thing, Hugh.”

  “Give Hays, Price the same as Lane, Turner.”

  Mark opened his mouth to protest but closed it again. “I don’t think you came to talk about the Besser fee split.”

  “No, I didn’t. I came to talk to you about the Tom Andrews’ wrongful death case.”

  “I thought you’d already decided not to take that one.”

  “Rick asked me to. He’s in financial trouble–again. He needs this one last case.”

  “It sounds like a good one based on what we know so far.”

  “Which isn’t much.”

  “True. But if Rick wants it so badly, he must have a good reason.”

  “He says there’s been talk about Myrabin for years. He insists we can convert all that hearsay into solid expert opinion.”

  “Well, an expert can rely on hearsay in giving an opinion.”

  “Sure. But right now, we don’t know if the hearsay Rick thinks is out there actually exists.”

  Mark smiled. “I’m betting Rick is right. Let’s take it.”

  Hugh grinned back. “Can’t resist a good fight, can you, just like me? Okay, I’ll have Patty call Kathryn Andrews and set up a meeting with all of us to sign a retainer agreement. Something in the late afternoon, so you can take her to dinner afterward. Only make it seem spontaneous.”

  “Why, may I ask?”

  “Obviously we’re going to have to know the state of her marriage. She’s not going to be willing to talk about something that personal in a cold conference room in front of me, you, Patty, and Logan.”

  “So that’s the team for this case?”

  “As of now, yes.”

  “Okay, I’ll take her to dinner and see what I can find out.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Thursday, February 27, 2014, Conference Room, Emerald Shapery Center, San Diego

  The main conference room at Goldstein, Miller, Mahoney & Fitzgerald looked very different from the last time Kathryn had seen it. There was no party this afternoon at four o’clock. Flanked by his minions, Hugh Mahoney sat at the head of the table, serious in his navy suit and gold-striped navy tie. Mark Kelly, junior partner, was on his right; Patricia E. Fox, slightly more junior partner, was on his left; Logan Avery, second-year associate, occupied the chair next to Patricia. All eight-hundred-dollar suit coats were on; all hair was wound and pinned into chignons; all Rolex watches were visible above starched pima cotton or silk cuffs; fabulously expensive pearls were in ears; wedding rings were displayed only on Hugh and Patricia’s fourth finger. The tailoring, alone, probably cost around sixteen thousand dollars, Kathryn thought. Tom must be hovering above them in his Men’s Wearhouse two-hundred-dollar suit, wondering if she had lost her mind.

  Kathryn sat a few chairs down from Logan as if space were needed to delineate the status of being a client from being a member of the Goldstein, Miller litigation team. Although she wasn’t even close to the sartorial splendor around her, at least she had remembered to wear her black, off-price Calvin Klein today, with her on-sale Anne Taylor silk blouse and Halston pumps, culled from Nordstrom’s semi-annual sale last August. She tried not to think about every other female foot in the room, shod in Manolo Blahniks.

  Since her January meeting with Hugh, Kathryn had become resigned to finding someone else to go after Wycliffe. Paul had agreed that the thunderous silence from the Plaintiff’s God-On-High meant Tom’s case had been turned down. He’d given her a list of five alternate plaintiff’s attorneys who ate raw meat and corporate giants for breakfast, acknowledging none of them could gut Corporate America with Hugh’s style and grace. Or success rate.

  And then on Monday, when Kathryn had come back to her office at four-thirty, too exhausted to think because she had spent the day splitting legal hairs for a client on trial for murder, she’d found the message in a half-inch stack of pink phone tickets the receptionist had left on her overflowing desk. Please call Patricia E. Fox at Goldstein, Miller. And ten minutes later, in the crisp vowels of Brahmin Boston that Kathryn recognized from her own time at Harvard, and which explained why she was not plain Patricia Fox, Mrs. E. Fox had informed her that Hugh Mahoney would, indeed, accept her as a client in the wrongful death of her husband. She was to appear in the firm’s
main conference room at four o’clock on Thursday afternoon to sign the retainer agreement.

  And now it was signed. Hugh stood up, indicating the meeting was over, and told her Mrs. E. Fox would set up another meeting early next week to go over the details of her husband’s death so that Logan could begin to draft the complaint and interrogatories to send to Wycliffe. Kathryn shook Hugh’s hand, smiled at everyone in the room, and allowed Mrs. E. Fox to escort her to the elevators, thanking the Universe all the while that she had allowed Tom to drag her into the public defender’s office so that she hadn’t spent the first three years of her career drafting dry and boring documents for men like Hugh.

  She stepped into the lobby a few minutes later only to find Mark Kelly waiting for her. Gone was the serious face he had worn for the last forty-five minutes in the conference room. He was grinning mischievously.

  “Beat you.”

  Kathryn considered whether to respond in lawyer-mode or person-mode. Lawyer- mode would have sent the signal to bug off. But his shining gray eyes and round boyish face, full of himself because of the prank he’d pulled, melted her professionally very hard heart. Tom liked to surprise her, and no one had done that since he had died.

  So she chose person-mode. “You ran down twenty-nine flights of stairs?”

  “Not exactly. I cheated and took the freight elevator. Goes much faster.”

  “I’ll have to remember that next time. Thanks for the tip.”

  “I wanted to offer you a lift. My car’s downstairs. And it’s pouring outside.”

  She saw he was holding his Burberry. She had shrugged into her own bargain London Fog in the elevator on the way down. The sky, indeed, was falling.

  “No thanks. It’s only a few blocks to my office where I left my car.”

  “A few wet blocks. Let me drive you. Better yet, let’s go for a drink.”

  “Not P & J’s.”

  Mark laughed. “Of course not. You can’t be heard in there during Happy Hour. There’s a much quieter place in the Gaslamp, Bice Ristorante. I like Italian food on a rainy night. Come on, let’s start the tab rolling for Wycliffe. We want to make sure this suit is as expensive as possible for them. And you look like you could use a glass of good Chianti.”

  So Kathryn followed him to his black BMW with the heated leather seats, which they quickly abandoned to valet parking a few blocks later at Bice. As if she had melted into some sort of fairy tale, she let him lead her to one of the more out-of-the-way white-linen topped tables in the simple, but elegant, dining room.

  He ordered a bottle of Chianti which probably cost as much as a month of her salary and waved his hand over the appetizer menu and ordered all of them.

  “We’ll share,” he smiled.

  “I probably won’t be hungry for anything else after all that.”

  “Then Wycliffe will have gotten off much too lightly. But the night is young. When you see the minuscule portions they bring, you’ll understand why you won’t be able to leave without having one of the entrees.”

  The waiter appeared with the wine and conducted the de rigeur tasting ritual. Mark raised his glass as soon as both were filled, “To victory!”

  Kathryn joined his toast but frowned slightly.

  “You seem hesitant,” Mark said.

  “I just don’t think it’s going to be as easy to vindicate Tom as snapping our fingers.”

  “No, it isn’t. It’s going to be months and months of depositions and slogging through the records Wycliffe has to turn over in discovery, but we will win this case.”

  “Because Wycliffe killed Tom or because Hugh is unbeatable?”

  Mark’s eyes never stopped laughing, she noticed, once he was out of professional mode. “Actually, I’m unbeatable.”

  Kathryn sipped her wine and thought about the implications of that statement.

  “You?”

  “You’re surprised.”

  “Paul sent me to Goldstein, Miller because of Hugh. He didn’t mention you.”

  “Paul who?”

  “Paul Curtis.”

  “Say no more. The defendant’s wonder-attorney at Warrick, Thompson. I’ve been up against Paul. Talented guy. So far I’ve beaten him, though.”

  “How many times?”

  “Once.”

  “Then he’ll get you next time.”

  “It could happen. So you went to Harvard with Paul?”

  “And Tom. Paul introduced me to Tom.”

  “And lived to regret it, I bet.”

  Kathryn wondered if her cheeks turned pink. Could a woman of forty-two blush? She would simply say it was the wine if he noticed.

  But he didn’t. The appetizers had arrived, and Mark began to portion aged prosciutto, thin slices of ahi tuna, and fennel and pear salad onto her plate.

  “The prosciutto is the best,” he said as he handed her the cocktail plate.

  And he was right. For a few minutes she was absorbed in the smoky flavor of the ham, the lightness of the tuna, and the contrast of the sweet pear in the salad.

  “Good?”

  “Fantastic.”

  “Then Wycliffe is off to a good start making amends, whether it knows it or not. Tell me more about Tom.”

  “I will, but before I do, tell me about you. I don’t like to talk about something this personal with a stranger.”

  Mark’s gray eyes became serious for a moment. “Good point. I apologize. We’ll be together for months and months in this litigation. We should introduce ourselves properly. Mark Hayden Kelly. Hayden was my mother’s maiden name, and being the good daughter of the South that she was, she made sure it attached to her oldest son.

  “Grew up in Charleston, South Carolina. Father was a small-time corporate lawyer. One sibling, a sister, MaryBeth, now a mom of three, married to a doctor, living in Savannah. Graduated from the University of South Carolina and finagled my way into the University of Virginia for law school. Clerked for Hugh one summer, fell in love with the idea of plaintiff’s litigation against major corporations, and have never looked back. What did you do before Harvard?”

  Kathryn smiled. “I grew up in Atlanta, no siblings, a father who vanished when I was two. A fantastic mother who taught the third grade for thirty years until she retired, now happily living in Miami with the love of her life, whom she met three years ago. I loved gymnastics until I blew out my left knee in competition in high school. Graduated from William and Mary as an English major without any idea of what I wanted to do. So I tried law school, got into Harvard, and met Paul on my first day in Contracts. One week later, I met Tom, who was with Paul at O’Leary’s Pub and Wine Bar. What happened to your accent?”

  “Same thing that happened to yours. Too much time out here without enough practice.”

  Kathryn smiled. “Hugh says he can hear mine.”

  “Hugh is full of it sometimes.” Mark signaled to the waiter who appeared with menus as if he had read his mind.

  “For an entree I would recommend the halibut.”

  Kathryn looked down at the menu and read the description of the most expensive item Bice offered: Pan Seared Halibut with Clam, Mussel, Wild Salmon, Shrimp and Jumbo Lump Crab in a Lobster and Saffron Broth. Oh, well, why not. She could step out of the gray metal, stale sandwich world of the public defender’s office for one night.

  “Sounds good.”

  Their order for their second course now dispatched to the kitchen, Mark got back to the serious business of getting acquainted. “So Tom stole you from Paul right away?”

  Kathryn smiled. “It wasn’t quite that sinister. Tom and I just knew from the beginning we belonged together. And Paul did, too. He and Tom and Steve seemed to know how to read each other’s minds.”

  “Who is Steve?”

  She closed her eyes to summon her courage to answer his question. When she opened them, she met his kind gray ones in the low light.

  “Don’t talk about it if you don’t want to,” he said.

  “No, it’s hard, but I
want all of you to know everything about Tom. He was the most wonderful person you could ever imagine. There was no one like him.”

  His eyes radiated warmth and sympathy which she tried not to let her tired, empty heart respond to. She went on. “Tom and Paul and Steve Cooper grew up together in Pacific Beach. From the time they were in middle school, they were winning surfing championships all over California. By high school and college, they were international champions. I have a case at home full of Tom’s medals.”

  “Impressive.”

  “Very. The three of them went to Stanford as undergraduates, and then decided to go to law school. Paul and Tom went east to Boston, but Steve didn’t want to be away from surfing, so he went back to Stanford.”

  The entrees had arrived, and for a few minutes Kathryn was absorbed in the exquisite seafood. But Mark wanted to hear more.

  “Does Steve work for Alan Warrick, too?”

  Kathryn sighed. “No, Steve was passionate about environmental issues. He went to work out of law school for the National Resources Defense Council here in San Diego. He loved that job.”

  “So I gather you don’t see him anymore?”

  “No, I do. In my imagination, when I walk down to the beach where he and Tom used to surf. I look out at the dots in their black wetsuits against the horizon just where the waves start to form, and I pretend that two of them are Tom and Steve. And I convince myself that before long, they’ll come riding their bikes back to the house, sandy and laughing, and ready to sit at the kitchen table and drink beer. Only in reality, none of the spots on the horizon are Tom or Steve because Tom died in June 2012, before Steve died in August.”

  Mark looked at her in shock and without thinking reached out and took her hand. It was only a friendly gesture, but for a full ten seconds Kathryn wanted it to be more until he realized touching a client was inappropriate and let go. “I’m sorry. What happened?”

  Kathryn took a sip of wine and then said, “He drowned, and no one knows how or why it happened. The waves were not even very big that day. And of course, like Tom and Paul, Steve was an expert swimmer.”

  “So no one saw it happen?”