Bodily Harm (40 page)

“And what was Mr. Kendall’s response?”

“He said he appreciated my concerns and would bring the issue to the attention of Kendall’s design team. He said they would take care of it. He said it wouldn’t be a problem. He said that I had to be flexible, that the toy would cost a lot to manufacture and that they were going to do it in China to keep it affordable. He said, ‘You want children to play with your toy, don’t you? It is the greatest feeling in the world to see a child play with one of your toys. You want that feeling, don’t you?’” Horgan lowered his head, struggling to compose himself. When he looked up tears had moistened his cheeks. “I wanted kids to love my toy. I didn’t mean for it to hurt anyone.”

“What happened next, Kyle?”

“I met with the man at the lab. He wanted to know if I had any ideas on how to fix the problem.”

“Did you?”

“I told him that they would have to go to a stronger base material. It would be more expensive, but it was the only way.”

“And you thought they had followed your advice?”

“I did until I read that article about that boy in Mossylog who died. And then I knew they hadn’t.”

“Did you talk to Mr. Kendall about it?”

Horgan shook his head. “I couldn’t get through to him. I heard he was sick and had left the company. I tried to call Mr. Fitzgerald, but I couldn’t get through to him either. Then I read the article in the paper about the McFarlands’ boy. That’s when I went to talk to you, to give you my file. I had to go away. I felt so bad about those two boys, I couldn’t handle it. I started drinking more and I had to go away.”

Sloane nodded. Horgan had done well. “I have nothing further,” he said.

When Sloane sat, Reid stood, perhaps knowing she was duty bound to cross-examine Horgan, though she seemed to have lost
her edge. She approached with a yellow pad of scribbled notes and a copy of the article reporting the death of Mateo Gallegos.

“Mr. Horgan, your tale is rather fantastic in many ways. Let’s start with your testimony that you read an article in the newspaper about Mateo Gallegos. Did that article mention that the boy had died from the ingestion of magnets?”

Horgan shook his head. “No.”

“Did it mention the toy Metamorphis?”

“No.”

“Did it mention Kendall Toys or Sebastian Kendall or Malcolm Fitzgerald?”

Again Horgan responded no.

One hand cocked on her hip, Reid held up the article and said, “You’re right, it doesn’t.” Then she made her first mistake in two days. She asked a question to which she did not know the answer, but to which Sloane did. He had asked the question of Horgan the night before, and he had strategically led Reid to it.

“How then, Mr. Horgan, could you have possibly deduced from an article about the death of a young boy in Southern Washington that it was somehow related to the toy you now allege to have designed?”

“His brother’s name was on the list.”

Reid paused, wary, but already in the water up to her knees, she could not easily back out now. “What list?”

“The list with the names of the kids who were going to play with the toy.”

Reid turned and looked to Fitzgerald, but he simply shook his head. “You have a copy of the list?”

“No—I asked the man at the warehouse how many of the prototypes had a problem with the plastic cracking so I could evaluate if it was due to the design or maybe just an anomaly in the manufacturing process. The man didn’t know for certain, so he pulled out the list to count the names.”

“And he gave you a copy of the list?”

“No. He couldn’t. He said it was confidential, but he said they would follow through and find out if anyone else on the list had a problem with the plastic cracking.”

“How long did you look at the list?”

“Just a few seconds.”

Reid smiled. She paced a small area, faced Horgan, and asked her next question, her voice incredulous.

“Are you asking this court to believe that months after this man briefly showed you a list of names on a sheet of paper that you remembered one of those names?”

Horgan shook his head. “No.”

Reid paused, her face twisted in confusion. “So you didn’t remember Ricky Gallegos’s name.”

“No. I mean, yes, I remembered his name.”

“Didn’t you just testify that you didn’t remember his name? So what is it, Mr. Horgan? Did you or didn’t you remember the name?”

“You asked, ‘Are you asking this court to believe that months after this man briefly showed you an entire list of names on a sheet of paper that you remembered one of those names?’”

Reid glanced at the court reporter, who was taking down every word spoken in the room verbatim. The woman had arched her eyebrows, an indication that Horgan had parroted back the question exactly.

“And?” Reid asked.

“But I didn’t just remember a single name,” Horgan said. “I remember them all.”

Reid froze, looking horrified at what was certain to come next. Horgan, the young man Dee Stroud described to Sloane as “brilliant,” began to systematically rattle off names, one after the next. His eyes shifted, as if reading the names from a document only he could see, doing so with such authority that no one in the
room questioned whether not only each name was on the list, but also whether Horgan was reciting them in order.

The day before, Eva McFarland had been denied the opportunity to address the court, but that morning her stifled sobs, the only noise in an otherwise silent courtroom, spoke louder than words ever could.

“WHAT HAVE YOU done?” Fitzgerald asked Sebastian Kendall again.

Kendall responded with an uninterested stare. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Kyle Horgan is alive, Sebastian.”

“I don’t know anyone by that name.”

“Really? Well, a young man just walked into a courtroom in Seattle and testified that he knows you very well.” Fitzgerald shook his head. “You said we designed Metamorphis; you said Kendall designed it.”

“We did design it.” Kendall’s voice grew more adamant. “The man is lying.”

Fitzgerald turned to Sloane. “He provided me the design when he chose me as his successor. He said Metamorphis would be his lasting gift to the company, that it would ease my transition into power. He said he had kept everything confidential, even having the prototypes manufactured off-site, because he wanted to take no chances that someone might leak the design, that another company might beat us to the market.” Fitzgerald took a step closer to Kendall. “But that wasn’t the reason at all. You didn’t want anyone to know about your meetings with Kyle Horgan.”

Kendall did not respond.

Fitzgerald looked to Sloane. “Once in production, I saw another benefit to keeping everything confidential. I knew Santoro
was feeding information to Galaxy, and the more we kept everything cloaked in secrecy, the more Galaxy would speculate that the toy must be something special. The buzz Galaxy created by trying to acquire us was immeasurable. The stock soared, and every indication was that it would continue to do so when Metamorphis flew off the store shelves. It would have put Kendall in a position it had not been in since the release of Sergeant Smash.” Fitzgerald again looked to Kendall. “But it was all smoke and mirrors, wasn’t it, Sebastian? The toy couldn’t be safely manufactured at that price; that’s why you recommended we settle that case in Mossylog. It wasn’t an aberration. The toy was dangerous.”

Fitzgerald shook his head. “I could have sold out to Bolelli. I could have taken the money and betrayed you. Why do this?”

“I did it . . .” Kendall’s voice cracked, not from emotion, but from the disease that had ravaged his vocal cords and made each word sound as if it were passing over sandpaper. He cleared his throat. “Because I knew you would not.”

“I don’t understand,” Fitzgerald said.

“Did you think I was about to leave sixty years of my life, my legacy, to chance? My grandfather and father built this company from nothing, and I built it beyond anything they could have ever imagined. I sacrificed everything for it. You don’t think I could have married, that I could have had children?” He thumped his chest, fist clenched. “Kendall Toys was my child. I gave it my blood, my sweat, my tears. I stayed up nights worrying when it was sick, and I nursed it back to health. It was the only thing in my life that ever mattered, the only thing I ever loved. It is my lasting legacy.”

“You had people killed,” Fitzgerald said.

“You must have the will to survive,” Kendall said, “to do anything, anything to defeat your opponents.”

“My wife was not your opponent,” Sloane said.

Kendall’s eyes burned up at him. “But you were. You would have ruined everything. You, the lawyer who doesn’t ‘lose.’ You should have let it go.”

“Joe Wallace has been arrested,” Fitzgerald said, “and he’s already looking to cut a deal. You owned his father when he was a senator, and that gave you the power to own the son as well, didn’t it?”

The old man’s shrug was nearly imperceptible but ever defiant. “Have them take me to jail; I’ll be dead within weeks.”

Fitzgerald straightened his jacket and fixed the cuffs of his sleeves. “No, Sebastian. You’re not going to jail. But I’ve called another meeting of the board of directors and I’m going to recommend that we accept an offer from Ian Hansen to merge with Titan Toys. It’s pennies on the dollar, but then the company isn’t worth anything anyway. All that we had was the Kendall name, but you ruined that as well. Ian will simply absorb us and eliminate the name Kendall altogether.”

“I won’t allow it,” Kendall said, for the first time looking grief- stricken.

Fitzgerald smiled. “As you said, drastic times require drastic measures. You made me chairman of the board and CEO, remember? Without my loyalty, you don’t have enough ownership interest to stop me. Ironic, isn’t it, Sebastian? You sought to preserve your legacy, but you’ll go to your grave knowing that it was you who destroyed it.”

CAMANO ISLAND
WASHINGTON

SLOANE SAT IN his car finishing a phone conversation. The light from a fading sun trickled through the limbs of the trees,
causing mottled shadows inside the car and streaking the field of tall grass orange and yellow. Overhead, a rainbow arched across the sky, seeming to stop just above a grain silo on the adjacent dairy farm. Carolyn had called to tell him they had received Judge Rudolph’s signed order and he had parked to allow her to read it to him.

“He provided a case management schedule for the trial on the issues of liability and damages.” The case management schedule was the court’s calendar of deadlines leading up to trial.

Sloane knew he could prove Kendall strictly liable for putting a defective toy on the market. He knew he could obtain a jury award of several million dollars in damages for both the McFarlands and the Gallegoses, and perhaps ten times that amount in punitive damages when he proved Sebastian Kendall knew of the defect and tried to conceal it. But a trial would not be necessary. Fitzgerald had authorized a settlement and it would be a debt Titan and Kendall’s insurers would pay. Kendall’s other significant creditors would be reimbursed from the sale of everything Sebastian Kendall owned, the proceeds of which he had specified in his will were to be used for the benefit of the company. The company, and the man, would soon cease to exist.

“Have John call the McFarlands and Gallegoses. He did the work. He deserves to make that call.”

“When will you be back?”

“I have the preliminary hearing in Jake’s custody case in San Francisco day after tomorrow,” he said, referring to the initial hearing in which the judge would try to resolve the matter short of a trial. “I’m not thinking much beyond that.”

“I made your plane reservation. Is there anything else I can do?”

“You do enough,” he said. “I couldn’t have got through these past six weeks without you.”

The usual retort stalled. “Why is it you say things like that before I can turn on the tape recorder and use it at my performance review?”

“Are we having performance reviews?”

“I’m told it’s wise when you have more than a certain number of employees.”

Sloane smiled. “All right, here’s your performance review: you’re doing great and can expect a substantial bonus this Christmas.”

“A bonus would be nice,” she said. Then she surprised him. “But I like my job better. Just promise me you’ll be back.”

“I’ll call in a few days.”

He hung up and took another moment before driving down the gravel road leading to Alex and Charlie’s home. Sam, the golden retriever, and Razz, the pit bull terrier Jenkins had picked up two years earlier, ran alongside the car, tails wagging and barking to announce his arrival.

Sloane stepped from the car, trying to appease both dogs. “Shh! Quiet now. You’ll wake the baby and then I’ll be in trouble.”

Alex greeted Sloane at the front door. He handed her a wrapped package. “For the baby,” he said.

She rolled her eyes. “Which one?”

He laughed. “The one still in diapers.”

She kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you. It’s sweet of you, but Tina . . .” Her voice trailed.

“I know Tina already got him one. This is from me.” Inside the house she took his jacket. “I take it the patient is being difficult.”

“He’ll be happy to see you,” she said. “I was just about to bring him dinner. Enchiladas. Are you hungry?”

For the first time since Tina’s death, Sloane felt hungry. “Sounds great.”

He heard the television from halfway up the stairs. When he stepped into the room, carrying the tray of food, Jenkins hit the mute button and turned in the bed. Charles Junior lay beside him, drinking a bottle.

“Let me tell you how this friendship thing works,” Jenkins said. “I take a bullet for you, and you call me and ask how I’m doing.”

Sloane put the tray down on the bed and removed one of the two plates. “I’ve called three times. You’ve been asleep.”

He helped Jenkins into a sitting position, putting pillows behind him, and put the food tray in his lap.

“I saw the news about Kendall.”

Sloane nodded.

“How do you feel?”

“Numb.”

“You did a good thing, David. You should feel good about what you did.”