“Exactly.” Carina nodded emphatically. “We already had a panel of experts for the Ladera, and yet the firm kept paying the doctors on the list, too. Prince told me the doctors were additional experts. I kept asking him about it, because it seemed weird. Each doctor was someone that Jackson had consulted with before the lawsuit went into class action status, but there was no reason to keep them on after that.”

“Is it possible he was just keeping them on the payroll in case they needed additional guidance with the case?”

“That’s what I thought at first. But usually if a doctor acts as an expert-maybe they review records or summarize research-then they submit bills to us. They tell us how many hours they spent. So the bills are always for different amounts. But with these doctors, even before the cases got class action status, Jackson would create an invoice for them, rather than the other way around, and the invoices were always the exact same amount.”

“You said you kept asking him about the payments,” Mayburn prodded.

“I did. He told me the doctors were experts. And he told me to remember what my job was at the firm. And then he told me to pay them.” Her face went stiff. “And I don’t know if you know Mr. Prince, but you really don’t say no to him.”

“Because he’s charming?” I asked.

She laughed, but it had a sour edge. “He’s not that charming when there’s no jury or a camera. He’s a screamer.”

I grimaced. In the legal profession, certain lawyers, despite their perfect suits and their gentleman’s attitude in court, had the reputation of being a “screamer” in the comfort of their law-firm walls.

“He yells at the staff all the time,” Carina said. “That’s one thing I don’t miss about that job.” She pulled nervously at a strand of hair, then seemed to notice and clasped her hands tight in her lap. “It was bugging me, though, those payments, and I felt like it was part of my job to speak up, you know? When I kept asking about them, he wasn’t happy. Then when he started flying those same doctors around on his private plane, and I asked him about that, too, he fired me a few days afterward.”

“Where were the doctors going on the plane?” Mayburn asked.

“They used it individually to go to different places. From what I could tell from the passenger lists we had to provide to the pilots, it was the doctors and their friends or the doctors and their families. And they almost always stayed at one of Prince’s vacation houses.”

“Did Prince always treat his experts this well?” Mayburn asked.

She laughed with that brittle edge again. “Are you kidding? He treats them like they’re paralegals.”

“So why the special treatment here?” I asked. “Why those doctors?”

Carina shrugged. “He would never tell me. Then he fired me.”

“And is that when you called Jane?”

She nodded. “I’ve watched her every night for years, and I know she likes legal stories.” Her mouth pursed. “I guess I should say she liked legal stories. Anyway, there was an ad on her old station. It was Jane asking people to call the station with any legal news. I didn’t know if there was much of a story with Jackson Prince, but I thought I’d try. I was so mad about being fired. I left a message on the tip line. It took a while, but then she called me back.” The tightness to her mouth left, and she smiled. “Jane called me herself, can you believe that?”

I smiled, too. “That sounds like Jane. What did she say?”

“She just asked me some questions. I told her about the lump payments to the doctors, the plane trips, how they were all supposedly on the Ladera case.”

“What did Jane do then?”

“She asked me for the phone numbers of the doctors. I didn’t have them anymore, but I told her where each doctor lived-they’re in different places around the country. She must have found their information because she phoned me back and said she’d called them. Most wouldn’t talk to her, but then she found someone she’d met before, Dr. Hamilton-Wood. And Jane had spoken to her one-on-one.”

“Do you know what the doctor told her?”

“I’m not sure. Jane told me that she was moving to Trial TV, but she was still looking into the story. She said that she was close to putting something together. She asked if I would be interviewed on the air when she was ready, and I told her, yes. Prince didn’t even give me severance pay, and he told the unemployment office that I was fired for cause, so I couldn’t get unemployment. I called a couple of lawyers, but no one seems to think it’s a great employment case. Or maybe they just don’t want to sue Jackson Prince.”

She looked at her watch. “I don’t know anything else. I hadn’t talked to Jane in a while.” She shuddered. “And then she was dead.”

56

R ush hour in Chicago is never fun. Years ago, afternoon traffic used to head northbound, cars full of refugees fleeing the Loop. But now, people worked in every neighborhood in Chicago, and rush hour no longer discriminated against North, South, East or West. It was everywhere.

So there I was, heading home in a cab at rush hour with lots of time to turn over and over in my mind what Carina Fariello had told me. What was going on with Jackson Prince and the doctors he was paying? Did it have anything to do with what happened to Jane? I had to find out. Because not only was Jane dead, and not only was I out of a job, but I could be out of a life if I didn’t stop this person of interest craziness from spinning out of control.

The best place to start, it seemed, was with Dr. Hamilton-Wood, the one doctor Jane apparently had some success with.

The cabbie grunted as he got into another lane and got stopped by a long line of barely crawling cars. Normally the traffic would have made me grit my teeth, but today, I didn’t mind so much. I needed to simply sit and decompress and get my mind around the fact that in the span of a week I’d gone from unemployed to news reporter to anchor and back to unemployed again. I’d gone from upstanding citizen to person of interest. So, in a way, it was good to be alone in a sticky, grungy cab littered with Red Eye newspapers, all of which were at least a week old, none of which had articles about Jane. Or me.

My cell phone rang. Sam.

“Are you all right?” he said. “I’m at O’Hare, about to get on my plane to Cinci.”

“I forgot you were going.” Sam had a meeting with a big client in Cincinnati the next morning.

“Well, I’m not now. I’ve been working all day, but I just saw the news. And heard your name. Iz, this is insane.”

“I know.”

“Where are you?”

“In a cab going home.”

“Good. I’m leaving the airport. I’m walking back down the terminal right now.”

“No, don’t change your trip.”

“Are you kidding? I’m coming to your place. Are you all right?”

“Yeah. Except that I got fired.”

“Trial TV fired you?”

“They did.”

“That’s bullshit!”

“That’s what I told them.” The cab changed lanes again, but the traffic slowed even more. And yet it felt nice to be barely inching along. “Look, Sam, don’t cancel your trip. You’re already at the airport, and you’re only going for a night and there’s nothing you can do. And the truth is I could use a little time to myself. Last night was…” I didn’t know how to put it-awkward, lacking, not “us”?

“Yeah. I know what you’re saying.”

At least we still had the ability to communicate without words. At least we both agreed that last night had not been so wonderful, even if we couldn’t agree on, or even figure out, why.

“When does your flight board?” I asked.

“Five minutes.”

“Just go. Nothing is going to happen. I’m going to hole up at home.”

“I don’t know, Red Hot. I think you need someone with you right now. Even if you don’t want it to be me.”

“I’m fine by myself.”