An Invisible Client

by Victor Methos

  I parked and got out. The emergency room was nearly empty as I went down the hall to the adjacent building. The ICU had its own wing, where floor-to-ceiling windows overlooked the city. The lights were beginning to blink on as darkness overtook the city. While I waited for the elevator, I stared out at the buildings. Once, when I was unemployed and sleeping on a cot in a room I shared with three other guys, I’d stared out at the city from a place not unlike this hallway. I’d sworn I would be rich. I smiled, just thinking about it. A kid with nothing—no money, no connections, and no education—had sworn he would be one of the elites. The balls it took to make a promise like that to myself . . .

  When I stepped off the elevator, the floor was empty. The nurse behind the desk said that visiting hours were over, and I said I was Joel’s lawyer.

  “Family only.”

  “He is family,” Rebecca said, coming up behind me. “This is my cousin. And he’s Joel’s lawyer.”

  The nurse looked from Rebecca to me. “Cousins, huh?”

  I signed in, and Rebecca and I walked toward Joel’s room. Rebecca didn’t say anything, but her face seemed to glow. I still didn’t understand why my visit would mean anything to either of them.

  She opened the door for me. Joel was playing on a phone. He put it down and grinned when he saw me. He looked puffier than he had the day before.

  “Hey,” I said. “You got any of that ice cream left?”

  “It melted, but we can go down to the cafeteria and get some.”

  “Joel,” his mother said, “they don’t like you moving around too much.”

  He grunted and forced himself up on the bed. “I’m fine. I wanna get outta the room, too.”

  Rebecca and I helped him up. Joel had one arm around my elbow and the other around his mom’s elbow. We started toward a wheelchair pushed up against the wall, but Joel said, “No, I wanna walk.”

  Rebecca nodded to me, and I got the door as we headed out.

  People stared at Joel, and I wondered if he noticed. The cafeteria wasn’t far, but it was high up—on the top floor of the building. It sat on the crest of the mountain the hospital had been built on and offered a nearly 360-degree view of the valley. Joel and I sat by the windows while his mom went to get ice cream.

  “She’s scared,” Joel said. “She doesn’t have anyone else. Her family isn’t in Utah.”

  “Where are they?”

  “Arkansas. That’s where I was born. We moved out here for my daddy’s job, but then he got sent over there.”

  I didn’t have to ask where “over there” was.

  “You miss him a lot, huh?”

  “All the time. We was best pals.” He swallowed, and I could hear wheezing in his breath. “I remember when those soldiers came to the door. My mama didn’t even have to talk to them. She opened the door and started crying. The soldiers held her, and they cried, too. I knew my daddy was dead then.” He breathed for a few moments, and I could see the struggle, the difficulty of just doing something everyone else took for granted. “Where’s your daddy?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. When I left home, I never called him.”

  “He’s your daddy, though.”

  “Yeah, well, sometimes I wish we could choose our daddies.”

  “What’d he do that made you not like him?”

  I looked away, a sudden flash of memories I hadn’t thought about in a long time filling my mind. I had never discussed my father with anyone but Tia. “He drank a lot. And my mom left us when I was a kid. She fell in love with someone else. I never heard from her again. My dad always said I looked like her. I think he took out his anger at her on me.”

  Joel was listening intently, though I didn’t know if a child of twelve could understand what I’d just told him.

  Rebecca had been standing with a group of other people, a set of parents and some kids about Joel’s age. She came and sat down. “Brandi and Brandon are here, Joel. Would you like to talk to them?”

  He nodded. His mother helped him up and led him over to another table. The two kids sitting there said hi to him. They wore hospital gowns as well. Rebecca came back and pushed a cup of ice cream in front of me as she sat down. I took a spoonful in my mouth and watched Joel. For the first time since I’d met him, he laughed.

  “Brandi and Brandon are both here at the Huntsman Cancer Institute. Imagine that? Both your children getting cancer at the same time? They’ve been here two months, and they come by and visit with Joel. He goes up there sometimes, too.”

  “Kids his age need friends.” I looked at her. “I spoke to his doctor.”

  “And?”

  “And they don’t think he can qualify for the transplant list.”

  “If I had money, I bet he’d qualify. Money to donate to the hospital. The person whose name is on this building wouldn’t be denied an organ.”

  I didn’t say anything. We sat in silence, watching as Joel and the other two kids shared games and photos on their phones. The siblings took one photo of Joel making a ridiculous face, then several more with all three of them together.

  I pushed the ice cream away from me. I didn’t have much of an appetite right now.

  “We should get back,” Rebecca said. “He can’t expend this much energy. It’s not good for him.”

  We went over and helped Joel to his feet. I watched Brandi and Brandon. They were twins, which I hadn’t noticed before for some reason, and both looked as healthy as I thought a preteen could look. I saw no hint of what was tearing them apart on the inside.

  We led Joel back to his room, and he took out his phone to show me the photo of the face he’d pulled. I smiled. He posted it to his Instagram, and as we helped him back into bed, I heard footsteps in the hallway. Two men appeared at the open door. They looked surprised to see me.

  I recognized one of them—a man named Cole Harding, an attorney with Walcott.

  I stepped between them and Joel. “You gotta be shitting me,” I said.

  “No letter of representation’s been sent. You’re not officially his attorney yet,” Cole said. “We can interview him if we want.”

  “Interview?”

  “Noah, he is not your client yet. Our firm is perfectly within our rights to interview someone who may—”

  “Get the hell outta this room. And if you come back, I’ll file a TRO to make sure you can’t even come into this hospital again. I don’t think any judge is going to be too happy that you tried to take advantage of a child who’s already represented.”

  The two men looked at each other, then went away.

  “What was that about?” Rebecca asked.

  “That was about being careful. Which we’ll have to do from now on. They wanted to try to catch Joel in a position where he might say something that would hurt any future lawsuit.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like something that might indicate he was sick before he took their medication or that he has a genetic predisposition—something like that.”

  “But he doesn’t. He got sick after he took the medicine.”

  “Rebecca, the law has nothing to do with what actually happened. It’s about what a jury hears. That’s all. They want to make you guys look bad.” I glanced toward the door. “They won’t be back, though. I’ll make sure.” I turned to Joel. He looked exhausted just from the effort of going up to the cafeteria for a few minutes. “I’ll keep in touch, Joel. My investigator, a man named Anto, is going to come interview you soon. Don’t talk to anyone else unless you have my say-so, okay?”

  “Okay. Thanks for coming here.”

  “You’re welcome. I’ll see ya soon.”

  I nodded to Rebecca and headed out of the room. When I was out in the hall, I called Jessica’s cell phone. Not many legal secretaries made eighty thousand a year, but I wanted access at all hours in exchange for that money.
Still, I never abused the privilege and had used it only a few times.

  “Hi,” she said. “What’s up?”

  I could hear the pen click in her hand. “Joel Whiting. I’m taking the case. Send a letter to Walcott, informing them I’m Joel’s lawyer, and tell them to keep the hell away from him. Send letters to Pharma-K’s insurance and the Attorney General’s office, too.”

  “AG? What for?”

  “Walcott’s got connections everywhere, and Pharma-K brought hundreds of jobs to this state. The government isn’t gonna like that we’re filing suit. I’ll bet you lunch the AG’s office gets involved and stands next to Walcott during a press conference. Send them a letter now, telling them to keep away from Joel, too.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Get a rep agreement to Rebecca Whiting.” I paused. “And, um, get our videographer ready. We need to record Joel’s statement in case he’s not . . . around for the trial.”

  “Okay. And Noah? You’re doing the right thing for that family.”

  “Yeah, well, not if I get my butt kicked.”

  13

  KGB updated me on the investigation a couple of days after I’d had ice cream at the hospital. He always said a job would take longer than it really would, then surprised us with how quickly he could get it done.

  I read the police reports while he sat in my office, wearing earbuds, listening to some new age music. He closed his eyes as though he were meditating.

  The police reports were sparse. They included interviews with people at the pharmacies and grocery stores where the tainted medicine had been found, as well as interviews with the victims and the victims’ families. None of that actually helped determine what had happened. One report stated that an officer had spilled some of the tainted cough medicine on his fingers and felt ill afterward, though he’d survived after being sick for a few days.

  The reports ended with a sentence stating that the investigation was ongoing. What they meant was they had nothing. The investigators speculated that the poisoner might have been a driver who delivered to the three stores. They didn’t even consider that it could’ve been someone at the plant that had made the medicine to begin with. I was looking at shoddy police work all around. The FBI had been notified and come in to complete their own investigation, but those reports weren’t available yet. I hoped they were more thorough than what I was looking at.

  “Is it good?” KGB said loudly.

  “No. These cops didn’t know what they were doing. They didn’t even connect the three poisonings until Joel’s nurse had his cough medicine tested. They interviewed a couple of people at Pharma-K, but just the delivery drivers. No one on the floor of the plant.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Damn right, ‘hmm.’” I picked up the phone and dialed the Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Office. When I asked for Detective Cynthia Lyne, I was transferred, and she said hello.

  “Hi, Detective. My name is Noah Byron, and I’m an attorney for one of the families in the Pharma Killer case. I was wondering if I could just speak to you for a minute.”

  She hesitated. “Sure.”

  “Great. Well, first, it doesn’t look like there’s any interviews with any of the supervisors or executives at Pharma-K. Did you interview them?”

  “We interviewed one vice president, but he didn’t have anything relevant to add.”

  “And you didn’t include that report in the official case file?”

  “Like I said, it wasn’t relevant. But it should be in a supplemental report somewhere.”

  “What about any of the workers on the floor of the plant? The medicine is actually made there. Did you visit the plant?”

  “Yes, we interviewed—I believe—three people over there.”

  “But no foremen or supervisors?”

  “No. They showed us their operations. We didn’t think the poison could’ve come from their end.”

  “Why not?”

  “They’ve got strict protocols in place. They don’t allow interaction between employees and the medicine until the inspection just before the lid is put on, and only one man at a time does the inspection.”

  I thought for a second. “Who gave you the tour?”

  “One of the vice presidents and their lawyer.”

  Their lawyer. Walcott had been involved from early on. Again, that could just mean they were frightened about the potential for a lawsuit, or it could mean something else.

  “Did anybody at the plant have criminal records? Anyone you looked into?”

  “A few people, but nothing serious. Some DUIs and things like that.” She paused. “This is an ongoing investigation, Counselor. I’m strictly speaking to you out of courtesy for those families. I won’t reveal anything that I wouldn’t consider making public.”

  “I understand. Did you ask Pharma-K if this had ever happened before?”

  “Yes, and it never has. They’re a pretty new company. Haven’t really had time yet to screw up.”

  “The medicine my client took came from Greens Groceries. There’s cameras there, and the shelf is right next to the cashiers. Did you review the video?”

  She hesitated, and I knew she hadn’t obtained the video. “I think I’ve said all I’m going to say for now.”

  “Okay, well, I appreciate your time, Detective.” I hung up. “Lazy all around, Anto.”

  KGB looked at me and smiled.

  “They didn’t even review the video at the grocery store.”

  He shrugged. “Maybe they have it and are getting to it?”

  “Yeah, maybe. So, did you find Debbie Ochoa?”

  “No. She was fired from the company after the poisoning. She doesn’t live in the state anymore.”

  “She doesn’t live in the state? This happened like three weeks ago.”

  He nodded. “She moved. Tried calling. Phone is disconnected.”

  “Find her, Anto. I don’t care how long it takes.”

  “Will do.”

  “Did you interview anyone at Pharma-K?”

  He shook his head. “They would not talk. They seem scared. One man say they would be fired.”

  “It’s probably more than that. I bet Walcott held a meeting with all the employees and made them sign gag orders so they couldn’t speak to anyone without a court order. We’ll have to do it in the depositions, if it gets that far.”

  “You do not think it will?”

  I wasn’t sure. Almost nothing about this case so far had gone the way I expected. Still, I went with what my experience said.

  “I think they’ll throw enough money at us to make us go away. Olivia said this case was on TV. Did either of the other families have lawyers?”

  “One, but he drop the case.”

  “Why?”

  “I talk to him. He say too much money to fight.”

  I swallowed and leaned back in my seat. A ball of anxiety grew in the pit of my stomach. The lawyer was probably right: liability wasn’t at all clear, and this case was going to take a lot of money to investigate.

  “You want I stop?” Anto said.

  I watched him a second: the round, pale face and the crystal-blue eyes that took me in without judgment. “No. Keep digging. There’s something there they don’t want us to find.”

  14

  KGB continued the investigation, and within a few weeks, we had more than the police had in their file. We had company histories that even Pharma-K’s stockholders didn’t have. And we had background checks on every employee at the plant.

  Olivia sat across from me in my office. We’d ordered in Chinese for lunch, and empty cartons littered my desk as the two of us pored over the documents KGB had collected. Olivia had a look of concentration on her face like a laser beam. It seemed like she wasn’t even blinking as she read. I was the opposite: details bored me, and I liked to focus on the
big picture. I was suddenly glad she was here, and not working some bankruptcy for Raimi.

  “Anything?” I finally said, leaning back in the seat and rubbing my eyes.

  “Take a look at this,” she said, pulling out a page from a thick stack of papers. “It’s a statement from one of the floor workers at the plant. He quit, got another job, and so I don’t think he was scared to write this.”

  I looked at the statement. It said that he and his coworkers had been ordered by higher-ups at Pharma-K not to discuss this case with anyone, and if they knew any details about it, to immediately see their supervisor to determine what to do.

  “Not exactly the actions of a company with nothing to hide, is it?” she said.

  I tossed the statement on the desk. “No, it’s not.”

  “How many cases like this have you done before?”

  “Depends what you mean. I’ve sued a lot of companies, but never one that made such a concerted effort to hide everything.”

  She took a sip from a bottle of water and stared at the sunlight shining through it when she placed it back on the desk. “My mom, back when I was young, needed to be hospitalized in a mental health care center. She was in there for, like, thirty days or something. The insurance company was supposed to cover it. We got a letter saying they weren’t because the hospitalization wasn’t medically necessary. I called them every day, I emailed them, I called the police and the FBI—I was like fifteen then, so I didn’t know any better. I did everything I could, but they would only send us letters that they weren’t going to pay. No explanation, no one to talk to. They knew we were too weak to fight them on it and they took advantage of that.”

  “What’d you do?”

  “I couldn’t do anything. So I started learning how to knit and make jewelry at home that I could sell. The only asset my mom had was that house and I didn’t want the hospital to take it. It took me four years of monthly payments to pay them off. That’s what this is. I know it. It just feels the same, the way the company’s responding.”