Blood Brothers (9 page)

“Thank you, Mr. Corbin,” said the judge. “Mr. Siwell?”

Siwell picked up a copy of Ben’s TRO motion, holding it by the corner as if it were a dead fish that had spent several days in the hot sun. “Your Honor, this is pure, unadulterated bovine feces.” A chuckle ran through the courtroom, and, to Ben’s dismay, the judge smiled. “All of the allegations Mr. Corbin just made are provably false. Karl Bjornsen, the president of Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals, has canceled a full schedule of appointments this morning so that he could be here to respond to my opponent’s fantasies, if Your Honor thinks it necessary. He will testify that they are all categorically false. This is a squeaky-clean company with squeaky-clean books. The defendant knows that, by the way. He was president of Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals until six months ago, which brings up another point—he would have been in charge of the kitchen during any book cooking.

“Plus, putting a team of auditors in charge of the company’s finances would be an enormous and unwarranted financial burden, and it would interfere with the company’s financial decision-making.”

“Anything further, Mr. Corbin?” asked the judge.

“Yes, Your Honor. The auditors would only interfere in the company’s financial decision-making if the company was deciding to defraud shareholders like my client. All the auditors would do is to monitor the company’s finances and stop any wrongdoing. And there would be no financial burden, because—”

“Your Honor, there’s no fraud here—” Siwell interjected.

Ben ignored him and kept talking. “If no fraud is found, my client will bear the cost—”

Siwell also kept going: “And no wrongdoing, except by Mr. Corbin and his client, who—”

The judge held up his hands. “Counsel, Counsel.” Both lawyers fell silent. “I’ve heard enough. I’m going to deny both TRO motions. Okay, moving on to the next items on our agenda. You both want preliminary injunctions. How long will it take to put on your evidence?”

They spent the next fifteen minutes haggling over when the preliminary-injunction hearing would commence, how many days each of them would have to put on evidence, what deadlines would apply to prehearing discovery, and so forth. Judge Reilly denied the sanctions motion without comment.

Karl Bjornsen left as soon as it became clear that he wouldn’t have to testify, but Gunnar waited until the end of the hearing so he could walk back to Ben’s office with him. As they stepped through the glass doors and out onto the wide stone plaza in front of the Daley Center courthouse, Gunnar turned to Ben, a broad smile on his weathered face. “So, you kept the judge from splitting my baby by giving it a conjoined twin. Well done.”

Ben laughed. “That was basically the idea. I would’ve liked to have saved the twin too, but I didn’t really expect to. I’m just glad Judge Reilly made the right compromise.”

“So am I. What happens now that the TROs have been denied?”

“A lot. We need to get ready for the preliminary-injunction trial, which the judge scheduled to start in exactly one month. Between now and then, we’ll have to get all our evidence, line up all our witnesses, take discovery from the company to find out what evidence they plan to put on and what their witnesses will say, and respond to their discovery.”

“You’re going to be busy,” Gunnar observed.

“No kidding. This is when the fun really begins.”

The next morning, Kim stopped by Dr. Chatterton’s office as usual. They would normally chat for a few minutes and then go do the morning cage check together. But this morning, Dr. Chatterton was busy fighting with her computer. Apparently, a virus or spyware or something had made it past the company’s firewall and infected her computer. She wasn’t willing to call IT and confess—at least not until she was sure she couldn’t fix the problem on her own. She asked Kim if she was comfortable doing the cage check alone.

Kim promptly said yes and gathered up the clipboard and treat bag. She knew the procedure by now and was confident she could handle it alone. Besides, it would show good initiative and was something Dr. Chatterton could mention in a reference letter.

As she walked toward the primate-room door, Kim noticed that the monkeys were unusually noisy this morning. Their screams and shrieks echoed down the hallway and were clearly audible throughout the lab area. But Kim had not worked with monkeys long enough to realize that the
tone
of their cries was also unusual—the sounds of animals that were badly upset, even terrified.

Kim opened the door and was nearly deafened by the cacophony. It seemed that each of the animals was simultaneously screaming at the top of its lungs while rattling the bars to its cage. “Calm down, guys!” she called as she walked in. She shoved her hand into her pocket and pulled out the treat bag. “Look! I’ve got marshmallows for you!”

For the first time, none of them showed any interest in the sweets. She stopped several steps into the room, realizing that something wasn’t right. She looked around and noticed that the monkeys seemed to be focused on something at the other end of the room. She didn’t see anything, but the lighting wasn’t great and her view was partially obscured by the long lab table that ran down the center of the room.
Should I go get Dr. Chatterton?
she wondered. And what would she tell Dr. Chatterton? That the monkeys were loud and they scared her?
And how would that look in a reference letter?

She cautiously walked between the rows of frantic animals, her clipboard in one hand and the bag of marshmallows still clutched in the other. The noise and tension in the room were beginning to get to her. She could feel her heart hammering in her chest and the adrenaline level rising in her blood.

Something was odd about one of the control-group cages farthest from the door—Bruce’s and Tweedledum’s cage. There didn’t seem to be any activity in it, and there was something on the cage floor that she couldn’t quite identify. It was dark, lumpy, and liquid—as if something had been put in a blender with motor oil and then dumped out. She tried to focus and think, but that was impossible with a room full of monkeys screaming at her. She edged closer and leaned over the table to get a better view of the cage.

The first thing she noticed was Tweedledum. He was sitting perfectly still at the back of the cage and watching her. Unlike the other monkeys, he wasn’t screaming or making noise. His fur was splotched with something dark, but he wasn’t grooming himself. He just sat there, staring at her with dark, impassive eyes.

The second thing she noticed was that Bruce was missing. She dropped her eyes from Tweedledum’s unnerving gaze and looked more closely at the mess on the floor of the cage. All at once she realized what it was.

Down the hall, Dr. Chatterton’s mind was still focused on her computer—too focused to immediately distinguish the sound of the human screams coming from the direction of the primate room.

C
HAPTER
F
IVE

A P
ROBLEM WITH THE
C
ONTROL
G
ROUP

Dr. Gene Kleinbaum, the head of animal testing, arrived back from a meeting to find Dr. Chatterton waiting outside his office. She saw him coming and walked quickly to meet him. “Gene, I need to talk to you right away.”

He was about to ask her what the problem was, but one look at her face told him that he’d better wait until they were behind closed doors. “Of course. Come into my office.” He guided her in and motioned her toward a chair as he shut the door. “So, what’s up, Kathy?”

“One of the monkeys killed another one. It—”

He stiffened and held up his hand. “Test group or control group?”

“Control group.”

“Both of them?”

“Yes.”

He relaxed. “Okay, go ahead.”

“It was awful. One of the interns discovered it this morning. I found her throwing up in the hallway outside the primate room. I went in to see what had happened and . . .” She paused and took a deep breath. “I’ve never seen anything like it. One of the monkeys had literally torn a larger monkey to pieces.”

He nodded sympathetically. “Being caged can do terrible things to animals, no matter how well we treat them. Sometimes they become psychotic. I’m sorry our intern had to see that. I hope neither of you blames yourselves. It’s not your fault.”

She leaned forward and looked him in the eye. “I don’t think you understand, Gene. The smaller monkey
disassembled
the larger one. The floor of the cage was covered with blood and body parts. That’s beyond psychotic. It’s almost like the monkey was on PCP or something. Also, the victim and the murderer grew up together. The victim was like a big brother to the murderer. I have never, ever heard of anything like that happening. Have you?”

Dr. Kleinbaum swallowed. “We’ll have the monkey put down, of course. And we’ll transfer the intern to our clinical-testing program. We’ll be finishing the animal phase soon, in any event.”

“You’ll do a necropsy, right?”

He forced a small smile. “From what you said, the cause of death was pretty apparent.”

Dr. Chatterton didn’t smile, and her brown eyes flashed angrily. “I meant the other monkey.”

“Why bother? You said they were both part of the control group.”

“But what if he got a dose of the drug somehow? The monkeys get mixed up sometimes, particularly the younger ones, and we haven’t been able to check the tattoos yet. Besides, we’ll need to do a necropsy for the FDA.”

He nodded reassuringly. “Those are good points. I’ll take care of it.”

“You’ll order the necropsy?”

He shrugged. “I’ll do what I can. We’re behind schedule on our necropsies and toxicity tests from the dog and rat testing, but I’ll see what can be done.”

For a moment she looked like she might protest further, but then she smiled and said, “Okay. Thanks, Gene.”

Anne Bjornsen arrived home from lunch and saw the message light on her phone blinking. She punched the “Play” button and heard Markus’s familiar voice.

“Hi, Mom. I just got a call from the director, and it looks like I’m going to be on stage for opening night. Jim Kennison broke his leg last night, so I’m going to be playing Mr. Stukely for at least the next month.”

She sat down on a stool by the phone in the kitchen and pushed the speed dial for his number. He answered on the third ring. “Hi, Mom.”

“Congratulations!” she said. “I just got your message. That’s great news! It’s too bad about Jim, though.”

“Yeah,” agreed Markus. “I always tell him to break a leg before he goes on. Last night’s rehearsal is the first time he actually did it. He seemed to be in pretty good spirits when I called him this morning, though.”

Markus spoke with the careful, precise diction that, his mother had learned, meant he had been drinking and didn’t want to disclose it by slurring his words. She worried that he might get into trouble if he showed up at a rehearsal drunk, but decided not to say anything. Her comments on his drinking rarely did anything except irritate him. Besides, this was not the time to criticize him. “That’s good. This is the first time since college you’ve had a major role on opening night, isn’t it?”

“It is. I’m really pumped. I’ll be in the reviews, for better or worse. This could be a huge break for me.”

“Well, as soon as I get off the phone with you, I’m going to call the theater and order tickets for your first performance. I don’t know what Dad’s schedule is, but I’ll be there.”

Markus chuckled drily. “You need to check his schedule to know whether he’ll show up for a theater performance? Really?”

At 4:59 p.m. on the second day after the emergency-motion hearing—one minute before they would have violated Judge Reilly’s scheduling order—Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals produced its financial documents. They produced not only the two boxes of useful documents that Ben had requested, but also three dozen boxes of irrelevant material that needed to be weeded through. “Docudumps” were a fairly common hardball tactic among big-firm lawyers litigating against small firms or solo practitioners. As one of Ben’s former colleagues at Beale & Ripley once noted, “If you have to give the other side a needle to stick you with, wrap it in a haystack whenever possible.”

Ben promptly gave the documents to Noelle. Throughout the next day, she sat at her desk poring over stacks of financial statements and backup documents. Sergei was thirty feet away, in the conference room, doing the same thing. Noelle and Sergei had each taken half the boxes and promised Ben they would be ready to give him the highlights by the end of the day, when he got back from interviewing potential expert witnesses. He was taking the deposition of Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals’ CFO tomorrow, and he needed to know enough about the company’s finances to ask the right questions and spot any holes in the answers.

When Noelle was halfway through the first box, Susan called on the intercom.

“Emily Marshall is on the phone for you.”

“Okay, put her through.” Emily was the chair of the special-exhibits support committee at the Field Museum, and a member of Chicago’s old-money aristocracy. She was a fixture in the society pages and seemed to be on a first-name basis with everyone of significance in the city. Noelle had worked closely with her on the Viking exhibit, and the two had become close acquaintances, if not quite friends. Though Noelle would never have said so (particularly within Ben’s hearing), getting to know Emily had been one of the chief rewards of the hundreds of hours she had put into that project.

“Hello, Emily. What can I do for you?”

Emily laughed warmly. “What can you do? I’m not sure there’s anything left! You’ve already done more than we expected when we invited you to join. That Viking exhibit and reception were just terrific. I’m still getting compliments about them.”

“That’s great. It was a lot of work, but also a lot of fun.”

“I know it was. I got way too many e-mails from you after ten at night. I think it would be a good idea if you took a break from the committee. You need your rest with the baby coming, and I know you have lots of demands on your time.”

“That’s sweet of you, but I’m fine,” replied Noelle. “I really don’t have much on my plate for the Field right now. Plus I love working with everyone; it’s no burden at all.”

“But it will be a burden. There are some big projects in the works right now, and I just wouldn’t feel right asking you to work on them,” countered Emily. “I’m going to have to put my foot down, Noelle. You know you need some time off, and we know it too. We’d like you to step down and let someone with a less-hectic schedule fill in for you.”

Noelle realized what was happening and felt sick to her stomach. “Emily, be honest with me. Does the lawsuit against Karl Bjornsen have anything to do with this?”

“Well, I know that must be taking a big bite out of your schedule,” Emily acknowledged, “and it must be stressful to see Gwen Bjornsen at meetings.”

And having me on the committee makes it less likely that Karl will make any more big donations.
“I understand. I . . . I think it would be best if I resigned, effective immediately.” She hung up the phone and started to cry.

Tweedledee still gazed out from the back of Tweedledum’s cage, ignoring his gruesome handiwork. A padded restraint slipped quickly over Tweedledee’s head and pulled him to the side of the cage, where it held him fast. He didn’t resist. A heavily gloved hand holding a syringe expertly injected him with enough morphine to kill an adult man. Tweedledee flinched as the needle went in, but he made no noise and didn’t struggle. He was used to injections.

The hand withdrew and the restraint slipped off the monkey’s neck. He sat quietly for several minutes. Then he closed his eyes and lay down. A few minutes later, his breathing became uneven. A few minutes after that, it stopped completely.

The hands, now wearing only latex gloves, returned and checked for a pulse and other signs of life. Finding none, they picked up Tweedledee’s body and carried it to a garbage can bearing the words “CAUTION: BIOLOGICAL WASTE.” The can was already nearly full of the bodies of dead rats and beagles, which had been sacrificed and necropsied as part of other drug tests. The hands dropped Tweedledee’s remains on top of the other dead animals and wheeled the can to a loading dock, where a row of similarly marked trash containers awaited proper disposal.

Ordinarily, dead animals would wait undisturbed until the next morning, when a truck would pick them up and take them to a nearby disposal facility to be incinerated. But one last indignity awaited Tweedledee’s corpse.

During the night, another set of gloved hands opened the can containing his body and shone a flashlight inside. Once his body was identified, the hands checked the number tattooed on his corpse. Then his corpse was photographed several times. Finally, a scalpel appeared and expertly sliced open his belly. Plastic-coated fingers quickly found his liver, excised part of it with the knife, and dropped it into a plastic bag. Then the light winked out, the lid went back on the can, and Tweedledee’s remains were left in peace to await their cremation.

“How did the first day of the deposition go?” asked Noelle as she and Ben drove home from the office the next day.