Maybe Ryan should have insisted on a face to face with Strong before moving forward—like he had with Dr. Nadine. He’d decided not to make the trip to California based upon his hard-earned experience that the more exalted an expert’s pedigree, the more their capacity to punish pushy lawyers by demonstrating their “intellectual independence.” More than once that had resulted in aloof, scholarly opinions rather than ones that advocated a client’s case. Ryan didn’t want that to happen in Kieran’s case—especially with no time for revisions to the expert’s product.
Still, in their numerous phone conferences, Dr. Strong had made no noise about an inability to support Kieran’s claims. He’d just stayed maddeningly vague.
The knock at the front door startled Ryan from his thoughts. It was likely Dr. Trân, twenty minutes early.
Neither Kieran nor Emily had stirred from their seats on the couch to answer the door. Kieran was staring across the room while Emily looked near to taking his hand.
The young man was understandably nervous today: Trân was coming to share his opinions—including those about Kieran’s radiation exposure. It hadn’t helped that the doctor insisted on explaining them in person. Ryan hadn’t seen Kieran this withdrawn since their first meeting at the Atomic Café nearly two months ago.
Ryan opened the door to face the smiling figure of Dr. Trân. He stepped aside and waved him in.
Dr. Trân looked as though he hadn’t stopped smiling since their last meeting in Spokane. Still dressed casually, his reading glasses remained balanced so close to the edge of his forehead that Ryan felt the urge to nudge them back.
He introduced the doctor, who took a seat in a spare chair. Without any fanfare, the man opened a leather valise and produced multiple copies of two binders—the first titled “Cause of the Explosion at LB5”; the second, “Blood Study Results—Kieran Mullaney.” The instant everyone had received a set, he settled back and began addressing them in the objective tone of a lecturing professor.
“The explosions that injured Kieran Mullaney were not caused solely, or even principally, by detonation of the contents of Vat 17,” he said.
Ryan couldn’t have heard that correctly. He asked the doctor to repeat his statement. He did so—word for word.
“How do you reach that opinion,” Ryan burst out.
The doctor’s smile did not waiver. “Vat 17’s contents lacked the explosive potential to breach the safety doors between the mixing room and the third-floor corridor to LB5. Yet those doors were destroyed after Mr. Mullaney left the room. So while the Vat 17 chemicals were involved, they could not have been the primary fuel for the October sixteenth explosions.”
Ryan had hoped for an expert who would contest Covington’s contention that Kieran caused the explosion by turning the Vat 17 valve, but this was a giant leap beyond even that. How could Vat 17 not have had a significant role in the explosion? His paranoia about the man kicked in once more. Was Trân creating a theory so absurd that no jury could accept it?
Ryan had never told Emily or Kieran about his skepticism regarding Dr. Trân—nor his reasons for it. He hadn’t wanted to undermine their confidence in the man until he was sure he had Dr. Strong’s report. Now he wished he hadn’t kept silent on the topic.
“Explain,” Ryan demanded firmly.
Dr. Trân nodded, then directed them each to a diagram in the center of his cause report. It showed a vat, with a description of its contents and chemical formulae beneath it.
“Vat 17 contained tributyl phosphate, hydrochloric acid, and other chemicals capable of detonating if sufficiently concentrated. The Vat 17 sampling data for the year before the explosion, coupled with Mr. Mullaney’s description of the container that night, supports a conclusion that the active chemicals in the vat were reaching a concentration of reactivity after years of water evaporation. Assuming Mr. Mullaney opened the valve under the vat, that action likely released a stream of fluid out of the steel tube beneath the tank, further concentrating the chemicals and accelerating a likely explosion.”
“Then you agree with the Covington experts,” Emily said.
“Only to this point,” Trân responded. “The Covington experts go on to conclude that the Vat 17 chemicals then exploded immediately, followed by chemicals in containers elsewhere in the room. I don’t agree. The accelerated concentration of the Vat 17 chemicals may have resulted in an explosion minutes or an hour later, but not likely within seconds. And more importantly, Covington’s conclusion fails to account for the fact that the chemicals in Vat 17 lacked sufficient explosive potential to blow through the mixing room blast doors after Mr. Mullaney escaped the room. I’ve evaluated the tolerances for those doors, and the Vat 17 chemicals were insufficient to achieve that end.”
“Couldn’t Vat 17 plus the chemicals of other vats have been enough?” Kieran asked.
Dr. Trân shook his head, directing them to a bar graph identifying the eighteen vats in room 365 and their contents.
“My examination of the mixing-room matrix document that you recently obtained demonstrates that there were no chemicals elsewhere in 365, even combined with the Vat 17 materials, capable of opening the blast doors.”
This was starting to sound like blather on blather. Ryan held his tongue as Dr. Trân flipped to yet another diagram.
“I’ve examined seismographic data from Spokane, Boise, and Portland which detected the October sixteenth explosions. Covington postulates that the later explosions resulted from chemicals in vats elsewhere in the room, ignited by the Vat 17 explosion. But the seismographic data confirms that the second and third explosions were nearly as powerful as the first. That would only be possible if chemicals elsewhere in the room had the same explosive potential as those of Vat 17. They did not. In fact, they were considerably less explosive.”
“If the Vat 17 chemicals couldn’t have ruptured the doors,” Emily said, “and the other vats in the room weren’t powerful enough to cause the later explosions, what powered the three explosions that night?”
Dr. Trân shrugged. “I can only conclude other explosive substances unaccounted for.”
“What substances?” Kieran asked, agitated. “From where?”
Dr. Trân set the Cause binder down. “Building diagrams show that the steel tube below Vat 17—the one you came into contact with, Mr. Mullaney—was once used to convey its contents to glove boxes and production rooms in the lower levels of LB5. By opening the valve on that pipe, you not only sped the occurrence of an explosion of the Vat 17 chemicals, you also opened a conduit for the pressure and heat developing in that vat to the lower production areas in the building. I believe that heat and pressure caused an explosion of materials in the lower levels.”
“I’d like to hear an answer to Kieran’s question,” Ryan demanded. “What materials are we talking about?”
Dr. Trân leaned back and folded his arms across his chest. “I can’t say. But given the magnitude of the three explosions, substances of high explosive potential. Very powerful materials, based upon the seismic data alone.”
“Hanford was where they made atomic bombs,” Emily said. “There must have been plenty of things in LB5 that could cause a big blast.”
Dr. Trân shook his head vigorously. “No, no, no. Your first statement is mistaken. Hanford manufactured plutonium, the fissile fuel for nuclear weapons, but not the bombs themselves. Plutonium can only cause a nuclear explosion if triggered by a detonation mechanism.” He proceeded to describe what a nuclear trigger was.
“You’re saying plutonium can never detonate by itself,” Ryan said, “but only with one of these triggers.”
“That’s not entirely true,” Dr. Trân responded. “Plutonium, if left in proximity to another radioactive substance, can generate a natural critical reaction without the aid of a detonator. Such critical reactions generate dangerous localized heat and radiation. But a natural critical reaction, by itself, could not have caused explosions of the magnitude experienced at LB5 last October. Those expl
osions were more consistent with the powerful detonating materials that operate as triggers for nuclear weapons.”
“So maybe they left a nuclear trigger in the LB5 basement that caused the explosion,” Emily said.
Dr. Trân shrugged once more. “Those devices aren’t treated like office supplies. They would not have been left in the LB5 lower levels. And explosive triggers were never manufactured or stored at Hanford—for obvious reasons. Hanford’s plutonium was shipped elsewhere for assembly into bombs. Nevertheless, I must agree that, based upon the magnitude and method of the LB5 explosion, such a trigger or its components may have been in the lower levels of LB5 that night, and served as the source of the explosion.”
“They would have detected residue of a nuclear trigger after the explosion if one was involved,” Ryan argued.
“Yes,” Dr. Trân said. “If they chose to look for it.”
Now the whole thing was a conspiracy, Ryan thought dismissively. “So that’s really your theory,” Ryan said impatiently. “That something that had no place in Hanford was somehow in LB5 that night, and Vat 17 just happened to make it explode.”
Dr. Trân didn’t meet Ryan’s gaze when he answered. “Yes. And for that reason, Kieran was not responsible for his own injuries that night.”
This guy expects Emily to take that theory into the courtroom with no other proof than Trân’s calculations of the limited explosive potential of the mixing-room contents, Ryan fumed. When was Emily going to jump down the doctor’s throat on this thin excuse for a theory?
Without waiting for more objections, Dr. Trân turned to the other report binder. “I believe this conclusion is also supported by the radiation data. According to the pre-explosion sampling records you obtained, room 365 was ‘clean’—showing little radionuclide residue through the years. Yet Mr. Mullaney saw the hallway monitors signaling radiation moving down the corridor, past him, as he was fleeing room 365.”
Dr. Trân directed them to the final section of the Cause report, to a diagram of the corridor with a series of calculations below it.
“If room 365 was clear of radionuclides, the radiation tripping the corridor monitors must have come from another location. And since it took five to ten seconds for the hall monitors to be triggered—the time between the first blast until Mr. Mullaney saw the monitors register radiation—I conclude the first explosion created a clear pathway between room 365 and the lower levels, while the second and third spread radiation from those levels back into 365 and beyond into the corridor. Which means there was radioactive material in significant quantities in the lower levels.”
“So you’re saying the source of the explosion in the lower levels of LB5 was also the source of the radiation,” Emily said.
“In all likelihood.”
“Well, if that were true,” Ryan said, skepticism flooding his tone, “then Kieran would definitely have been exposed to radiation.”
It was out before Ryan realized what he’d just said. Instantly, the room grew quiet.
“Well, yes,” Dr. Trân said gently. “And I’ve confirmed that in the blood tests.”
He turned to Kieran, and for the first time his smile was gone. “I am sorry to report, Mr. Mullaney, that our blood tests show damage to your chromosomes resulting from exposure to moderate-level radiation—radiation beyond what your prior dosimetry history can account for.”
Kieran’s expression of interest was gone. Emily took his hand.
“How bad?” the young man asked.
The scientist shook his head. “If we knew the quantity of radioactive material involved, we could make a better dispersion analysis. Based solely on the blood tests, we can only confirm the obvious: that the levels were not sufficiently acute to be life-threatening. Because radionuclides can affect your immune system, they may have contributed to the slow pace of your bronchial recovery. Combined with your occupational exposure, there is a greater likelihood of cancers later in life. In the best case, the levels may have been low enough to cause no major impact during a normal life span.”
Kieran began to fade, sliding into an expression of disorientation. Ryan recognized the look. He’d seen it on Carolyn’s face the day they’d received the news from her physician about her cancer. And Emily looked as stricken as Kieran—like Ryan probably did that day years ago.
Ryan felt the boy’s concern, but he was also suddenly swept with another reaction: a suddenly shocking conclusion. It swept over him that this Trân could be right. Everything up until now had seemed mere speculation than science. But blood tests confirming radiation injury changed everything.
“What about the whole-body counts at the hospital that said Kieran wasn’t exposed?” Ryan asked.
Dr. Trân shook his head. “Whole-body counters measure radiation released from the body. Those counts are only useful if the machinery has been properly calibrated. Covington has produced no evidence of its calibration for Mr. Mullaney that night.”
And Pauline Strand, who hadn’t gone far down the road of proving exposure before she withdrew, almost certainly didn’t ask for that data when discovery was still allowed, Ryan thought.
Emily looked up from Kieran. “And Covington’s claim about the hall monitor and dosimetry badge data?”
“I have no explanation for that,” Dr. Trân explained. “But Covington’s people also collected all that data.”
Dr. Trân turned to Ryan now. “Mr. Hart, I informed you in Spokane that I would like to tour room 365. Now I believe my time is better spent visiting the lower levels of LB5—examining blast patterns evident in damaged rooms and hallways, perhaps finding samples of chemical and radioactive residues.”
Ryan hadn’t taken Dr. Trân’s prior request very seriously. He simply nodded now, still watching Emily and Kieran.
“You’re really ready to testify to each of these conclusions at trial,” Ryan said.
Dr. Trân nodded with a return of his smile. “Of course.”
Ryan nodded, stood, and showed Dr. Trân to the door. Then he turned again to the couple on the couch. Emily had an arm around Kieran, who was quietly holding himself together.
Ryan was torn between offering encouragement and absorbing everything Trân had related. Coming from him, encouragement would likely sound trite, he concluded.
“I’m going for a walk” was all Ryan said. Emily nodded.
He went out the back today, cutting across a small patch of yard and onto the next street. He walked, lost in thought, for what must have been miles, seeing sprinklers ladling water onto summer-parched lawns, smoke from barbecues rising into the blue sky from a few backyards.
It was a typical Saturday in America. Except in this town, as recently as twenty-five years ago, they’d celebrated weekends downwind from the world’s largest plutonium factory. Those days weren’t completely in the past: they still celebrated in the shadow of contamination that would terrify most Americans.
How had they done it? How did they still do it? Take their kids to the park, sit through football games outside in the fall, share beers around those barbecues in the open air. All with such danger so close.
The same way then as now, he supposed. With trust and faith—including an abiding trust in the people they worked for. Which meant, in the present day, the managers at Covington Nuclear.
He couldn’t have done it, Ryan concluded. He couldn’t even bring himself to fully trust Dr. Trân, whose opinions, while helpful to their case and logical, rested upon so many unprovable assumptions and too little proof. Chief among them was explosives in LB5 they had no evidence existed—other than by deductive elimination of other causes for the explosion. Then there were the blood test results, which seemed to confirm everything Dr. Trân was saying. What if, Ryan asked himself, Dr. Trân was a plant? What if he was setting them up with a plan to either recant on the stand or draw them into relying on opinions that could be riddled with holes?
Of course, a voice in his head responded, the pitfalls in Trân’s report were only
relevant if Emily was forced to use him. If Dr. Strong came through, Dr. Trân would become an expensive footnote to the case.
But what kind of a case was it when they didn’t even know if they could trust their own expert? The same one, he thought with disgust, where their opponent already held a serious advantage with the judge and potentially the jury, and where his daughter was going up against King, a man who had years of civil trial experience representing Covington Nuclear in court.
Ryan halted at a street corner, coming out of his reverie long enough to realize that he’d paid no attention to where the walk had now led him. He looked around until he recognized the street he was on. Then he pivoted and began walking in the direction leading back to the Annex.
So what did he do now? Here he was, bankrolling a potentially two-million-dollar case—a fact that had hardly registered with him these past weeks, because he hadn’t really believed in its likely success. He’d written the checks and put in the hours, based not on an expectation of a payday, but to avoid a final parting with Emily. Ryan could never recall a case he’d handled where he didn’t have a strong belief in the client and the cause—and the potential to win.
But then, his faith in his cases until now was Carolyn’s doing, wasn’t it. His thoughts drifted to breakfast the morning after a night of celebrating graduation from law school, seated with Carolyn in the grandeur of the old Olympic Hotel. It was there that she’d made a toast over orange juice. “We’ll never represent an insurance company,” she’d said. “And we’ll never sue a teacher. Or a farmer. And we’ll only take on the fights truly worth fighting.”
He’d accepted the toast without comment, just a clinking of glass. But he’d looked into those gorgeous eyes that were his to enjoy forever and thought, And we’ll never lose. Because I’ll knock down our opponents while you capture jurors’ hearts. Like you captured the hearts of those judges at the mock trial. Like you captured mine.
He’d marveled over the years at how she’d made the bone-bruising reality of litigation tolerable. Harsh tactics and sharp practices never seemed to reach her, and her optimism, in turn, curbed the cynicism that might otherwise have overtaken Ryan. That had now overtaken him.
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