Bodily Harm (37 page)

Sloane wasn’t so sure. “We’re asking him for extraordinary relief. Any doubt Reid can introduce isn’t going to help. Besides, without some better evidence that the magnets came from the prototype, we can’t win. We both know that.”

ALTHOUGH SLOANE HAD gone over Rosa-Maria Gallegos’s testimony the day before, she still looked apprehensive as she took the witness stand that afternoon, opening and closing the clip in her hair. They had rehearsed the questions and answers, but it was more difficult to simulate the anxiety a courtroom produced for the average person.

Sloane eased Gallegos into the examination by having her talk about her family and Mateo. When he felt she had settled in and relaxed a bit, he began in earnest.

“Are you a legal resident of the United States, Rosa-Maria?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“Then how is it that your husband works for a company like Kendall Toys?”

“He uses a different Social Security number, from his cousin.”

“His real name is not Manuel Gallegos?”

“Here he is Manny Gallegos.”

“How long has your husband been employed at the Kendall Toy manufacturing plant?”

“Four years.”

“And during that time his employer never questioned him about his residency or Social Security number?”

Reid objected. “The question is irrelevant.”

Rudolph nodded his head. “Sustained. Mr. Sloane, move on.”

Sloane knew that Manny Gallegos’s illegal status and use of a false identity was largely irrelevant to the hearing for an injunction, but getting Reid to object that the information was irrelevant would prevent her from bringing it up on cross-examination to imply that the Gallegoses were dishonest.

“At some point, Mrs. Gallegos, did your son Ricky come into possession of a Metamorphis action figure?”

“Yes. My husband’s boss gives it to him for being a good employee and asked to have Ricky play with it. They paid us fifty dollars.”

“And for how long did your son Ricky play with the toy?”

“It was about one week.”

“And where did he play with it?”

“In our home.”

“How big is your home, Mrs. Gallegos?”

Reid looked about to stand but caught herself.

“It is not very big.”

“How many bedrooms?”

“Ricky and Mateo share a room,” she said, still speaking as if her youngest were alive. “My husband and I sleep in the other room.”

“Your two sons shared a room. Is there another room to keep things like toys?”

She smiled. “No. There is no room.”

“During that period of time when the toy was in your home,
did your son Mateo play with it, or was he with his brother when Ricky played with it?”

Gallegos lowered her head to compose herself, wringing her hands in her lap. Tears rolled down her cheeks. “We try to tell Ricky not to let Mateo play with it because the box warns about choking, but Mateo, he wanted to. He was always, you know, ‘Me, me. I want to play.’”

“And do you know if your son Ricky ever let Mateo play with the toy?”

“We did not think so, but he told us later that he did.”

Reid stood. “Objection, Your Honor, hearsay.”

“I can bring Ricky here and put him on the stand, Your Honor, but I question whether that is really necessary.”

“I’ll allow it,” Rudolph said.

“Did Ricky ever tell you that any pieces of the Metamorphis broke?”

“He said that some did.”

“And did Ricky ever mention seeing any magnets from the toy?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“So he did not tell you that he thought Mateo swallowed any magnets?”

“He did not say that, no.”

“And did you ever find any magnets in your house?”

She shrugged. “I don’t remember seeing them, no.”

Again, Sloane had no choice but to bring up the unfavorable testimony. He would have preferred something else, like Ricky having seen Mateo putting the magnets in his mouth, but that had not been the case. Sloane changed gears.

“Could you talk a bit about when you first realized Mateo was sick?”

Reid again objected. “We’re not contesting that the boy
became ill,” she said. “We’ll stipulate to the medical records, which document his symptoms. To go through it is irrelevant.”

It was a good objection and Rudolph sustained it. Reid did not want Rosa-Maria discussing the emotional trauma of watching her son grow more and more ill. Not wanting to end on a sustained objection, Sloane asked a few additional questions before sitting. To his surprise, Reid pushed back her chair. Cross-examining a mother who had lost a child was risky on a number of levels, but by the time she reached the lectern, Reid seemed to have undergone a transformation. The attack dog was gone.

“Mrs. Gallegos, you testified that you never saw a magnet in your house, did you?”

She shook her head, wiping at her tears. “No.”

“Aside from your son telling you that pieces of the plastic cracked, you have no information that the toy was defective or broken in any way, do you?”

“I saw the pieces.”

“And boys being boys, you don’t know if the plastic cracked because your son might have played too roughly with the toy, for instance.”

“No, I do not know.”

“And it is true, is it not, that three weeks before he became ill, Mateo fell while playing outside and landed on a rusted nail.”

“Yes,” she said.

“And you never had your son treated for that wound, did you?”

“No,” she said.

“And your son Mateo had never had a tetanus shot, had he?”

“No. Ricky got one at school, but Mateo is too young.”

“Nothing further, Your Honor.”

Rudolph excused Rosa-Maria Gallegos.

Sloane stood and called Eva McFarland to the stand.

As with Rosa-Maria Gallegos, Eva fidgeted when she sat and her voice cracked when she answered Sloane’s initial questions.
Sloane again took his time, hoping to calm her. When she seemed to relax, he led her through the same series of questions to establish that Mathew McFarland had been part of a Kendall focus group, and had received the Metamorphis toy and played with it in the McFarland home. He also established that Austin had been in contact with the toy and had played with it with his brother and by himself, and that pieces of the plastic had cracked.

“Did you ever find any of the magnets within those pieces?” Sloane asked.

She nodded. “I did. I found one stuck to the small piece of metal at the bottom of a leg of one of the kitchen chairs. The chair was wobbling like it was uneven and when I looked, there it was. It was very strong. I had to pull it off.”

“Did you look for others?”

She nodded. “I did, but I didn’t find any but that one.”

After several additional question, Sloane switched gears. “Eva, I’d like to ask you about the symptoms that Austin suffered when he became ill,” he said, but Reid was on her feet, objecting.

“Kendall will stipulate to the contents of the autopsy report and to the medical records, which document Austin McFarland’s symptoms.” Reid would again take her chances with the autopsy report, particularly since Dr. Desmond could not definitively conclude the magnets were the cause of the septic reaction; she did not want another grieving mother on the stand talking about her dying child.

Sloane argued to the contrary, but nearing the end of the day, Rudolph agreed with Reid.

“While I am certainly sympathetic, I am well aware of the McFarlands’ prior testimony on the subject and I agree with counsel. I don’t think that Mrs. McFarland could add to the evidence already before the court,” he said, an ominous comment that did not bode well for Sloane or his clients.

CHAPTER
FOURTEEN

ONE UNION SQUARE BUILDING

SEATTLE, WASHINGTON

Back in his office, Sloane felt the fatigue of the day. He rubbed his eyes to clear his vision and massaged the stiffness in the muscles of his neck. His limbs begged for exercise but were not going to be appeased anytime soon. He had sent the Gallegoses back to their hotel and sent the McFarlands home. Eva had expressed disappointment that she was not allowed to testify about Austin. After days battling anxiety caused by the anticipation of returning to the witness stand, she felt cheated out of the opportunity to talk about her son’t illness. Sloane tried to pacify her with the knowledge that he had submitted a comprehensive brief detailing Austin’s symptoms, but it was little consolation, and he knew words on a page were a poor substitute for a mother’s testimony. He feared Rudolph’s decision was a further indication he had already made up his mind.

John Kannin knocked on Sloane’s partially opened door. He held a bottle of Corona and a can of Diet Coke. “Thought you might need a beer.”

The bottle felt cold in Sloane’s hand and the beer a welcome
respite for his throat. As Kannin sat across the desk, Sloane thought back to an evening when he and Tina had shared Chinese food and Tsingtao beer in his San Francisco office. For ten years she had been his assistant, but firm protocol had prevented him from pursuing her. Now he saw those years as lost time they might have shared but never would. When he witnessed his mother’s murder, Sloane had been just a child and his mind had eased his loss by burying the memory. Even when it resurfaced as a nightmare thirty years later, Sloane could not mourn her death. The years had tempered his memory and blunted his emotions.

Not so with Tina.

Her death remained as painful as the bullets that had pierced and torn his flesh, and Stenopolis’s death had not eased that pain, as Sloane had known it would not. Revenge was a poor substitute for love.

Sloane took a slug of beer as Kannin placed his size thirteen black wing tips on the corner of the desk, crossing his feet.

“Am I missing anything, John?”

Kannin shook his head. “If you are, I’m missing it too. It is what it is, David. You can’t conjure up facts that don’t exist. We knew that going in.”

“The thought of Fitzgerald getting away with this makes me sick.”

“Nobody gets away with anything; we all have to own up to our mistakes eventually.”

“I’d like to see it in a courtroom.”

“Don’t underestimate Rudolph. He has an amazing power to grasp the truth, even when it’s obscured.”

“He’ll follow the law, and he’ll be right in doing so.”

Sloane used his thumb to wipe at the condensation on the outside of the bottle, and it brought another memory, of a game Jake had liked to play. He’d ask Sloane and Tina what they would
wish for if they had three wishes. “Have you ever thought about what you’d wish for if you could?”

“You mean like the genie in the lamp?” Kannin smiled. “Not for a long time. But I remember I would always save the last wish for three more wishes.”

“You can’t do that.”

“Who are you, the genie police?”

“Jake’s rule, not mine.”

“Yeah, but back when I was a kid I made the rules. Doesn’t matter, I blew the last wish anyway.”

“On what?”

“I was fifteen, sitting in the bleachers at Wrigley Field watching the Cubs with my old man, and I got caught up in the moment and wished that the Cubs would win a World Series. And just like that”—Kannin snapped his fingers—“I realized I had used my last wish. I had kept it for years, and I remember initially thinking, man, I’ve blown it. But then I thought, what the hell; it would sure make me and my old man happy to see them win one. Hasn’t quite worked out that way yet, but when you’re a Cubs fan hope is eternal.” He sipped his Diet Coke. “How about you, what did you wish for?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re boring.”

“All I ever wanted as a kid was a family. I got that with Jake and Tina. I’d use all three wishes to have her back.”

It was the finality of her death that haunted him. In law, Sloane had found no absolutes. Nothing was black and white, and he was adept at finding the gray area and exploiting it. Not so with Tina’s death. She was gone, and no lawyer’s trick or anything else would ever bring her back.

Kannin flexed the can in his thick hand, making the aluminum crinkle and pop. “She’d want you to be happy.”

“I think the thing I fear most isn’t losing this case, it’s having it end. What do I do when it’s over? How do I go on without her?”

Kannin shook his head. “I’d give my last wish, if I still had it, for the answer to that question for you.”

“I just wish I knew she was okay,” he said, but what he truly meant was that he wished he knew that she had forgiven him.

Kannin finished the remnants, crushed the can, and held it up over his head, as if to shoot a basketball, aiming at the garbage can across the room. “How much?” he asked.

In the two years Sloane had known him, Kannin had tried innumerable times to shoot an empty can or wad of paper into Sloane’s wastebasket. He’d never made one.

“A buck,” Sloane said, offering their usual bet. He removed a dollar from his pocket and slapped it on the desk.

Kannin stood, pretended to dribble a moment, then turned and arched the can across the room. Sloane judged the shot to be long, but the can hit the back wall with a clang and banked directly into the basket.

“Hey!” Kannin raised his arms in triumph and danced around the office. Then he leaned forward and took the dollar bill off the desk, snapping it twice. “I think I’m going to tack this on my wall and call it my lucky buck.”

“Luck is right,” Sloane said. “A bank shot? Please.”

“I’ll take it.” Kannin put the dollar in his pocket. “You need anything before I head out?”

“No. Go home to your family.”

Kannin started for the door, stopped, and turned back, grinning as if struck by a thought.

“What?” Sloane asked.

He glanced over at the garbage can. “I just had one of those déjà vu moments.”

“About what?”

“That day in the bleachers with my dad. You want to know the best part of the story? The best part was when I told him, he didn’t just laugh or dismiss it like he could have. He put an arm around my shoulders and said, ‘Anything’s possible if you have hope.’ I don’t think I ever really considered how prophetic that was until just now.”