Balance of Power

by Richard North Patterson

  "When you say 'quack science,' " Nolan asked with some asperity, "do you include Dr. Glass's testimony?"

  The witness nodded briskly. "Fred Glass is the gun lobby's equivalent of the scientists the tobacco companies employed to 'disprove' that smoking causes lung cancer. Glass starts with the result he wants, then finds the 'facts' to support it."

  Nolan's scrutiny of Roper became at once clinical, wary, and determined, as though he was resolved to learn the worst that faced him. "What has your research suggested regarding the correlation between public safety and gun ownership?"

  "That gun ownership diminishes the public safety." Roper leaned on his elbows, hands clasped in front of him, intently watching his interrogator. "There are an estimated sixty-five million handguns in America. This is reflected in the high firearms death rate among our citizens, nearly fourteen per one hundred thousand people—as opposed to Canada's roughly four, Australia's three, and England's less than one.

  "Compare Seattle with Vancouver, Canada. They are remarkably similar in about every respect save one: handguns are easy to obtain in Seattle, and tightly restricted in Vancouver. Their rates of crime and violence are also similar; indeed the rates of burglary, robbery, and assault are virtually identical. The only difference is that Seattle's homicide rate is sixty-three percent higher. Why? Because the rate of homicides with handguns is five times higher in Seattle . . ."

  "What pertinence—if any—does the homicide rate in Seattle have to Mary Costello's claim against Lexington Arms?"

  This time, Roper cupped his palms; the frequent movements of his hands, Sarah realized, bespoke a passion repressed. "There are several correlations. Last year, handguns like the Lexington P-2 were used to murder slightly over twelve hundred women. Fifty-six percent of those women were killed by husbands, live-in partners, or current or exboyfriends. And, like Bowden, one-third of those who murdered killed themselves.

  "John Bowden was an adjudicated spousal abuser—that's a matter of public record. According to Ms. Costello's complaint, President Kilcannon asked the president of Lexington Arms, George Callister, to impose background checks at gun shows before its dealers could sell Lexington products. Callister declined. According to Ben Gehringer's deposition, Gehringer then sold the P-2 to John Bowden without a background check—Bowden having been drawn to the gun show by Lexington's ad." Roper's left hand clenched. "It's more than arguable that, without the ad, or with the background check, the seven people Bowden killed—including himself—might still be alive."

  Nolan mustered a look of skepticism. "Is that the entirety of your opinion?"

  "Not quite." Once more, Roper glanced at Harrison Fancher. "The SSA would have you believe that most homicides occur in the commission of a felony. Not true. Most homicides result from arguments between people who know each other, and the number of women shot to death by intimate partners is over four times greater than those killed by strangers." Pausing, Roper spoke more quietly. "As I said, that comes to over twelve hundred murdered women. Compared to twelve women who used guns to kill in self-defense.

  "That's one hundred murdered women for every act of self-defense. But enough of numbers, Mr. Nolan. These are people we're talking about. The sixteen-year-old Japanese exchange student killed while looking for a Halloween party because he rang the wrong doorbell. The fourteen-yearold who her father mistook for an intruder and who died saying 'I love you, Daddy.' The twenty-year-old mother who thought she heard gravel crunching in the driveway, pulled out a gun without a safety lock, and killed her eight-month-old by accident. The countless times when 'selfdefense' turns out to be what happens when you arm drunkenness and anger with a gun.

  "Triggers don't pull themselves, Mr. Nolan. But we're at far greater risk in the presence of a gun. That's why the most well armed country in the world is also the most deadly."

  Listening, Sarah could only hope that Senator Fasano failed, and that Mary Costello's day in court would come. Then she felt a tap on her shoulder. Turning, she saw her assistant hovering with a look which combined urgency with hesitance at interrupting.

  "Pardon us," she said to Nolan. Turning from his annoyed expression to Janet's worried one, she knew immediately what had happened.

  "It's the phone call you were waiting for," Janet whispered.

  * * *

  Though they had not spoken since their meeting, Norman Conn blurted without preface, "I refused to meet with their lawyer—a man named Nolan."

  The reedy tautness in his voice confirmed Conn's stress. Sarah glanced at the closed door of her office. "Who asked you?"

  "Our general counsel. If I don't meet with them, they're going to depose me." His voice rose, quickening. "They say if I stole records or gave away corporate secrets, they can sue me and take the house I've had for twenty years."

  To Sarah, the telephone felt like a copper wire, a conductor of Conn's tension. "I left you a message," she said, "referring you to a lawyer in Hartford who specializes in protecting the rights of whistleblowers . . ."

  "I was going to see him." His voice broke. "Now I don't know."

  Sarah paused, suspended between pity and desperation. Bent on his own redemption, Conn had disdained to fear the loss of something as trivial as a job. But one could fear things as simple, and as profound, as the loss of the familiar. A house.

  "I'm sorry," she said quietly. "But if they notice your deposition, you'll be required to testify under oath."

  "What if you tell them I'm not going to be a witness?"

  At once, Sarah was reminded of Martin Bresler. "I could do that. But I won't." Her voice was softer yet. "I'm sorry, Mr. Conn. But I have a duty to my client. I suggest you ask the lawyer I mentioned about how to protect your rights. Because I'll use those documents you gave me to make sure that you don't lie."

  This was an empty threat, Sarah knew—a self-discredited witness was useless at trial. In Conn's silence, she wondered if he knew this.

  "I understand," he answered with a croak which, nonetheless, had a measure of dignity. The line went dead before Sarah could say more.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Riven by doubts, Chad Palmer prepared to commence the debate on gun immunity.

  Senator Palmer had always thought of himself as conservative—a believer in free markets, military preparedness, and individual accountability and initiative. With others of his Senate colleagues—Cassie Rollins among them—he had watched in rising dismay as men like Paul Harshman equated "conservative" with the unfettered gun rights and a militant social agenda fueled by fundamentalism and financed by those for whom, too often, a truly free market meant freedom from the constraints of law.

  The latter forces, Palmer knew, bought influence in either party. But while their Democratic beneficiaries adopted what Palmer thought of as a simpering hypocrisy—claiming to take large donations in self-defense— the Republicans of Harshman's stripe cast their voracity for special interest funding as a constitutional right. Thus, Chad's battle against money in politics had earned him the bitter enmity of those within his party for whom guns and money and religion were a recipe for power.

  This was why he had struck his Faustian bargain with Frank Fasano, trading gun immunity for a clear shot at campaign finance reform which Kerry Kilcannon wanted almost as much as he. But Kilcannon was President. For the senior senator from Ohio, seemingly blocked by Fasano and his supporters, reform might be his only recompense for a career paid for with his daughter's life. And so Chad went to the floor of the Senate, supported by his most ardent enemies, to oppose a friend whose own wounds Palmer felt more keenly than his allies of convenience ever could.

  It was best, Chad knew, to stick with what he truly believed.

  He stood at his lacquered desk, notes in front of him. The Senate was full. At its front were Frank Fasano and Chuck Hampton, separated by the narrow aisle which divided the two parties.

  "This pestilence of lawsuits," he told his colleagues, "is both symptom and disease. For many small and honest bu
sinesses, it is terminal. But for all of us it symptomizes a breakdown in our social fiber where law replaces morals, mischance becomes opportunity, and the courtroom converts neighbors into predators.

  "The Civil Justice Reform Act is an effort to restore the time when lawsuits were not a form of social insurance; when lawyers were advocates instead of opportunists; and legislators—not judges—made our laws."

  * * *

  The Senate was still, attentive. Unlike some of their colleagues, Frank Fasano reflected, Chad Palmer was most effective when he spoke from core belief—he was too free of self-delusion to be facile at dissembling. To Fasano, equally free of delusion but far more inclined to pragmatism, it was what made his Republican rival both admirable and dangerous. To be allied with him, however briefly, was a luxury to be enjoyed, and to have turned Palmer on Kilcannon a genuine work of political art.

  "We are told," Palmer continued, "that class actions are the last redoubt of the small investor against financial fraud. If only that were so. But most investors are lucky to recover a dime on a dollar, and only after their wealthy lawyers have pocketed a multimillion-dollar fee." Palmer permitted himself a smile. "For one such lawyer, the definition of a 'small investor' is the pet client who has purchased one share of stock in every company listed in the Fortune 500. Enabling his legal champion—as of yesterday—to bring twenty-six class actions in his name.

  "Let there be no doubt who ultimately pays this lawyer's fees. We do—in higher prices, lost jobs, and the erosion of the principle that the purpose of a lawsuit is to gain genuine redress for an authentic wrong."

  Palmer paused, gaze sweeping the chamber. "But I have another concern," he said firmly. "That lawsuits have become a tool of our own corruption, funnelling money from litigation into our political system so that trial lawyers can wield unprecedented—and in my mind—unprincipled power."

  Fasano glanced at Senator Hampton, who remained inscrutable. "This debate," Palmer continued, "is about more than the corrosion of our justice system. At its heart, it is about the corrosion of our politics through money, and whether we have the courage to stop it."

  At this, Hampton acknowledged Fasano with an ironic lift of his eyebrows. What about your special interests? Hampton seemed to say. But perhaps he was conveying more—his admiration of the neatness with which Palmer had moved the debate to grounds more congenial to him than to Fasano.

  Smiling with his eyes, Fasano shrugged in answer. The truth, though Hampton might not know it, was that Fasano had expected nothing less. Whatever its momentary discomforts, a Chad Palmer in character enhanced Fasano's chances of capturing Cassie Rollins. Toward the rear of the chamber, the junior senator from Maine watched Palmer with unwavering attention, heedless of the packed gallery of press and public gazing down on all of them.

  * * *

  In the Oval Office, the President watched C-SPAN with Kit Pace and Clayton Slade. Kerry did not speak, nor did the others; among the one hundred senators, only Chad Palmer's opposition was too personal for comment.

  Let us turn, Palmer said, to the most vexing and contentious question presented by this bill: whether to protect gun companies from lawsuits based on the violent acts of others.

  That gun violence is a tragedy is beyond debate. And, to me as to the President, it is long past time for us to hold human life more precious than blandishments of a gun lobby whose power outstrips its decency.

  Silent, Kerry shook his head: this was the kind of bluntness, rare in politics, which endeared Chad Palmer more to average citizens than to his colleagues—except, perhaps, to Kerry himself. To see it placed in the service of Frank Fasano—and thus, perversely, the SSA—was difficult to watch.

  But, Palmer continued, as legislators we should discharge our responsibility directly—not delegate it to the courts. Let alone to trial lawyers who seek to shift our own responsibility to where it least belongs: on those who make the trigger, rather than those who pull it . . .

  "Read the depositions," Kerry murmured to himself. But, of course, Palmer could not. No one could.

  In a just society, Palmer said, personal responsibility means just that. When parents fail to lock up loaded guns, they bear responsibility—however painful— when their child kills himself or someone else. Palmer's voice softened. Whether by accident, or by design. For, in the end, every suicide is the act of an individual, and every murder the act of a murderer.

  The quiet statement, with its echoes of his daughter's death, reechoed in Kerry's mind. As much as the President had imagined it, this speech—this moment—was worse than he had feared. He could only wonder how it felt to Palmer.

  * * *

  And so did Cassie Rollins.

  "How," Palmer asked the Senate, "can we allow sales at gun shows without a background check and then punish the gun company for the act of whoever buys it? That is an act of cowardice."

  This, to Cassie, clearly staked out the course Chad was commending to her: to oppose the President on gun immunity, and then support Kilcannon's gun bill. But Chad's motives remained obscure, a matter of conjecture.

  "But there is a more subtle form of moral cowardice," he continued with the same quietness of tone, "and that is to degrade the justice system through our desire—however human—to find a remedy for sorrows which have none." Palmer stood straighter, pausing to meet the gazes of his colleagues. "I ask you to pass the Civil Justice Reform Act as it stands."

  In the hush that followed, Cassie glanced across the aisle toward Vic Coletti, head bent in contemplation. Among their undecided colleagues, only Jack Slezak, two rows behind Coletti, appeared indifferent to the moment.

  * * *

  Sitting, Chad Palmer felt wearier for the knowledge that had opened the way for the senator he most despised.

  "In at least one respect," Paul Harshman told the Senate, "I must part company with my friend and colleague from Ohio, to whom I listened with unstinting admiration. For these lawsuits are more than just misguided, nor are they merely the work of lawyers. They are the invention of instinctive totalitarians—the most deadly weapon in the arsenal arrayed by the most powerful enemies of the Second Amendment rights established by our Founding Fathers."

  Chad closed his eyes. Washington, Jefferson—Harshman. To Paul, it must have a certain ring. But then only a fool could be so pompous; only a moral midget could envision Thomas Jefferson as the father of the Lexington P-2. "Their aim," Harshman continued, "is the destruction of a legal industry, and, with it, the most basic right of all—the right to defend ourselves, our families, and our freedoms.

  "We should not mince words. In the hands of a woman living alone, a semiautomatic handgun—and yes, an Eagle's Claw bullet—can deliver her from death or degradation. To paraphrase Senator Palmer, it is not the job of lawyers to calibrate her means of self-protection, approving only those guns, or those projectiles, least likely to ensure her safety."

  He had made a deal, Chad told himself. But it did not involve listening to this. As soon as he decently could, Paul Harshman's "friend and colleague" left the Senate chamber.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Jet-lagged from taking the red-eye from San Francisco to New York, but even more tense than tired, Sarah watched Nolan interrogate Norman Conn.

  They were crammed in the small conference room of a two-person firm in Hartford, of which Conn's lawyer, Joseph Schwab, was the principal partner. Schwab was a large man, firm but gentle in manner, and his presence seemed to have a soothing effect on Conn. But this did not extend to Sarah. Schwab had deflected all of her inquiries, asserting that his client's only interest was the truth—which all the parties could hear at once. Sarah's version of the truth, though suggested by Conn's documents, was near-worthless without his help. And now the man would barely look at her.

  His own tension, though subdued, expressed itself in a certain twitchiness, a darting glance which probed his surroundings without coming to rest. For his part, Nolan seemed tentative, as though handling a bottle of nitro
glycerin. His tone was quiet, his demeanor cautious, his questions phrased with care.

  "Prior to this morning," Nolan asked, "have you spoken with, or met with, any of the lawyers in this room?"

  Conn touched his temples, fingers grazing his thin red hair. "Both," he answered.

  Nolan looked puzzled. "Both?"

  A glint of malicious amusement passed through Conn's eyes. "Met with. And spoken with."

  Quickly, Nolan repressed his annoyance. "With whom?"

  "Sarah Dash."

  Though speaking her name, Conn refused to make eye contact. It was as though Sarah was not there.

  "And where did that meeting take place?"

  This induced the briefest of smiles. "A motel room."