I take the case. I will have to discredit their witnesses, demonize her father and paint Leah into the good person that she is not. I’m not doing this for my career—despite what Caleb thinks. I’m doing this for the time he pulled over and refused to keep driving until I sang along with “Achey, Breaky, Heart,” and for the time he kissed me on his bedroom floor while holding my hands above my head. I am doing this because he still calls me Duchess.
It’s the same guilty game I’ve been playing all along, to be near Caleb regardless of the circumstance or cost.
Caleb, Caleb, Caleb.
We end our meeting with plans for the next and we all make a big to-do about shaking hands. Bernie is big on shaking hands. Afterwards, I rush to the bathroom and stick my hands underneath the scalding water until they turn bright red. I hate it that I had to touch her. Bernie is waiting for me at my office.
“What was that about?” she snaps, which is very uncharacteristic of her.
“None of your business. I have the case and I’m going to win it, so back off.”
“That‘s my girl,” Bernie croons, and then she walks off without anything else from me.
Chapter Sixteen
After nine months of preparation, the case goes to trial. One of the prosecution’s witnesses is male. When I cross examine him he gets angry at my accusation that he was jealous of Leah’s promotion, and calls her a spoiled bitch from the stand. The second of the witnesses was laid off by Leah’s father a few months into the clinical trials of Prenavene. I show the jury five separate letters the witness wrote to Leah’s father, first begging for her job back, and then threatening to destroy him in any way she could. The third witness was not at work the day she claims she saw Leah changing the trial results in the computer. I have a speeding ticket and a video of her auditioning for American Idol to prove it.
I am master of the façade; when Olivia the lawyer walks into the courtroom, she is poker faced and collected, a poster child for female equality and young strength. I am so good at pretending, that sometimes I lose track of who I really am. In the evenings after court, I unravel my bun, run my fingers though my hair and walk down to the ocean to cry (Yes, I am still melodramatic). I wish that my mom was still alive. I wish that—
Caleb is in the courtroom every single day. I am forced to see him, smell him, interact with him…
He still spins his thumb ring. I notice that he does it most when I am talking. He’s waiting for me to do something crazy and irrational, I know. But, I am in control, I have a job to do and no, it’s not about winning the case for me anymore. It’s about him and my atonement.
My witnesses take the stand one by one, and my case builds muscle. I handpicked the desperate—the people who have the most to lose if Leah loses, the retiree’s that will not see their pension, the young chemists who are just beginning to propel their careers.
Leah watches me through narrowed snake eyes as I carefully clip the strings of incrimination from around her. Sometimes I swear I see admiration there, too.
On my birthday, I am early to the courtroom because there are some things I want to go over before the trial starts. Caleb is sitting in his usual spot without Leah.
“Happy Birthday,” he says as I snap open my briefcase.
“I’m surprised you remembered,” I say, not looking at him.
“Why is that?”
“Oh, you’ve just been forgetting an awful lot of things over the last couple of years.”
“I never forgot you,” he says, and it looks as if he’s about to say something else, but then the prosecutor walks in and he clamps his mouth shut.
By week nine of the trial, I have called seven witnesses to the stand. Out of the thirty employees who worked under my client to formulate Prenavene, only seven are willing to come forward and testify on her behalf. Of those seven, are three whose loyalties to her are unwavering and four I manipulated onto the stand.
I take what I can get and spin their testimonies to my advantage. When the prosecutor places his witnesses on the stand, I discredit them. A woman has lost her husband to a heart attack, brought on by the premature launching of Prenavene. I showcase her husband’s pre-existing heart condition and his unhealthy diet. A Veteran has hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical bills due to his treatment, after the drug ate through his liver and he needed a transplant. I bring to light his alcohol addiction which destroyed his liver long before Prenavene had a go at it.
We paste the weight of the blame onto her father, who cannot suffer the consequences from his grave. It grieves her to do this, to tarnish his name, but I remind her that if he were alive, he would be sitting where she is and would have gladly taken the fall for his little girl.
Leah takes the stand last. We contemplate not putting her up there at all, but decide it necessary for the jury to hear her sweet voice and look into her terrified eyes. She plays vulnerable well.
“Were you aware, when you signed the release forms, Mrs. Smith, that it was not Prenavene that was handed over to the FDA, but in fact it’s non-generic version-Paxcilvan?” I stand slightly to her left, my eyes reminding her to remember how to answer the questions, which we had rehearsed a dozen times.
“No, I was not.” She raises a pink tissue to her inflamed nostrils and blows gently. I look at the jury out of the corner of my eye. They are watching her carefully, probably wondering if she was capable of such deceit—this delicate girl in her lavender dress. I remember the time in my apartment when she was blowing smoke from her crimson lips, her eyes lined in black kohl. She is capable, I tell them in my mind, of that and so much more.
“What did your father, the late Mr. Smith,” I say looking at the jury, “tell you that you were signing?”
“Releases,” she admits weakly.
“And did you read these releases before adding your signature to the page? Did you observe the results yourself in the lab?”
“No,” she looks at her lap and sniffles, “I trusted my father. If he needed my signature, I gave it to him without question.”
“Do you believe that your father was aware of the inaccurate results of the testing of the drug Prenavene that was in those documents?” This was it—the hard part. I see Leah struggling with herself, trying to coerce the words from her lips. It made it all the more believable to the jury, her hesitancy to badmouth her daddy.
“Yes, I think he was aware,” she says looking directly at me. Tears are pooling in her eyes. Cry them out, I will her with my mind, let them see how destroyed you are over this. Her tears gush down her cheeks and I see her again standing on my doorstep the night Caleb was at my apartment for dinner. Manipulation tears.