Marine One (32 page)

"Yes."

"What's the answer?"

"Just as you thought."

"Can you prove it?"

"Yes, I can."

"Any doubt?"

"No. None."

"Bring it."

"I will be there in a few minutes."

I got to court before all the other attorneys, including Hackett and his minions. Court was to reconvene at one thirty, and I arrived just after one. People were beginning to tire of the routine, only coming in at the last minute instead of being there eagerly awaiting the next event. Brightman must really have put them to sleep. Some of the journalists sitting outside writing on notepads and typing on computers were surprised to see me.

I sat at the lead counsel position at the table, and a few minutes later Rachel joined me. I asked Rachel quietly without looking at her, "Did you bring it?"

"Yes."

"You gonna serve it?"

"With pleasure."

"Should be an interesting afternoon."

"To say the least. I can't wait to see what you've got."

"Well, if this ends up somehow with me in jail for contempt of court, just claim that you didn't know anything about any of this."

"It would be true."

"Keep it that way. Enjoy the show."

The door creaked open behind us and Hackett came in. "Speaking of the literal devil," I said to Rachel under my breath.

"You think he sees it coming?"

"Not a chance."

She smiled and reached into her briefcase to pull out a manila envelope. She put it next to her at the counsel table.

Hackett sat down, glanced at me with some surprise on his face, and said nothing. His other associates returned, as did the gallery. The courtroom filled, and just as the clerk was ready to bring the judge in, Debbie walked in with Wayne Bradley. She looked beautiful and triumphant. She had never helped me in any case or at any trial before, and I think was surprised that I had asked her to watch over the most important witness in the case; the most important witness in my life. She was wearing a navy blue business suit that I didn't even remember she owned, with a V-neck, cream-colored blouse. She walked right up to me, opened the gate, and held it open as Bradley walked through. Brightman came in and sat with us at the table.

Others filed in and filled the courtroom in anticipation of the afternoon session. The clerk retrieved the jury from the hallway. The jurors retook their seats and the judge took the bench. She looked at Bradley, then looked at Debbie, sitting in a chair behind me. "Your next witness, Mr. Nolan."

I looked over at Hackett, who looked bored and smug. "Your Honor, the defense calls Mr. Wayne Bradley."

I turned the pages in my notebook to the outline that Braden had prepared for me, turned past it, and looked at the outline I'd spent almost all night preparing.

Bradley made his way to the witness stand, took the oath, and sat with his battered briefcase on his lap. He looked his usual disheveled self, but had at least put on a wrinkled navy blue sport coat out of respect for the court. I walked him through his qualifications, his prior experience as a testifying expert in metallurgy or materials science, the number of aircraft accidents he'd been involved in investigating, and spent a good deal of time on his prior job as a chairman of the NTSB metallurgical lab.

I watched the jury as he went through his qualifications. They had already decided this case, but they were interested in what someone of his qualifications had to say about the accident and certainly wanted to hear what, if anything, WorldCopter had to say about the accident. If we had another story to tell, it had better begin now or we would lose them forever. I led Bradley through the initial part of his testimony as if the last ten days had never happened. He talked about Hackett's experts, how they had jumped to conclusions based on insufficient evidence, how assigning blame to the tip weights was convenient, but unsupportable. It was impossible to know whether the absence of tip weights on the blade that had been found by the wreckage was the cause of the accident or a
result
of the accident. When blades start slamming into the side of a broken helicopter in the air, the blades can come apart, they can shred, and they can certainly knock the end cap off and jettison tip weights. So it was premature to form a conclusion that the tip weights caused the crash without finding the tip weights. And, he noted, the plaintiffs' experts had never found nor seen the tip weights from the blade of Marine One. I glanced down at the yellow notepad in front of Hackett. He was doodling, drawing a bunny or an odd dog. I asked Bradley, "The testimony you've just given to the jury, is that the same testimony that you gave at your deposition that Mr. Hackett here took?"

"Yes, he asked me basically the same questions and I gave him the same answers."

"When you filed your expert report and gave your deposition at Mr. Hackett's request, were your opinions final at that time?"

"Yes."

I turned the page. "Has anything occurred since you gave your deposition to cause you to reconsider your opinions?"

"Yes."

Hackett's head snapped up and his pen dropped to the pad.

I asked Bradley, "What has happened?"

"I just couldn't accept that the federal government couldn't find the tip weights. I worked for the NTSB for many years. Head of their metallurgy lab. You would think they'd find everything. Every single blade of grass that matters. Well, in my experience, since we're human, that isn't possible. They miss things. Sometimes important things. So I asked if we could go back out there again in the hope of finding something. We all-all the experts working with you on this-were in agreement we should never stop looking."

"Hadn't the NTSB already exhausted the hunt for tip weights?"

"Well, they had put a lot of manpower and time into it, but we had no knowledge of whether they have found any of them because they've closed their investigation to outsiders, even to the members of the investigation, like WorldCopter."

"Did you find anything?"

"Yes. We did."

Hackett shot to his feet. He had a choice. He now knew that I had something he didn't know about. He had to make a choice, to rush up to the court for a sidebar conference so that the jury would not hear any of the discussion, or to go for the fatal blow, and shut the witness down right in front of the jury. Hackett said, "Your Honor, this witness is about to testify about information that was not in his report or part of his deposition. He may not do so. He's only allowed to testify about his final opinions as they were prepared and exchanged with the other side. Anything else he 'found' is irrelevant."

I replied, "Your Honor, what he found is not only relevant, it is critical to know what happened to Marine One. Mr. Hackett has based his entire case on the idea that the tip weights came off the helicopter. I don't know why he would be concerned about what, if anything, has been recently found at the accident site."

The judge responded, "I don't see any harm in learning what he has found. You may continue."

"Dr. Bradley, what have you found?"

"While at the scene recently, Karl Will and you went up in a cherry picker-one of those trucks tree trimmers use-to get a close look at a broken branch high up in one of the trees. Well, he found a tip weight embedded in the broken branch and an indentation in the trunk where another tip weight had been but was no longer. I have examined it and I believe it is one of the tip weights from Marine One."

The courtroom sucked in its breath. Hackett started turning an odd reddish color. He jumped up again, "Your Honor, this is out of order. He is not allowed to do any further testing or prepare any testimony after his deposition. I'm being blindsided here, Your Honor."

The judge now wanted to hear what the evidence was. "Your objection is noted. Continue, Mr. Nolan."

"Dr. Bradley, how do you know it was the tip weight from Marine One?"

"Well, first, because it was found in a tree at the accident site of Marine One. It is unlikely to find a helicopter tip weight in any given tree, I think. But most significantly, because two-thirds of the serial number are on the piece that I found. It matches one of the numbers in the gap of weights that can't be accounted for. In other words, all the other tip weights are accounted for within the company, but these that would have been on Marine One are not accounted for by documents, and this matches one of those missing numbers."

"What kind of shape was the tip weight in?"

Bradley leaned back and extended his legs as he slipped his hand into his pocket. "I have it right here."

Almost as one, the jury leaned forward in their box to see what he was going to pull out. Bradley had the leather pouch, opened the drawstring, and dumped the tip weight out in his hand. "Here is the tip weight from Marine One. It's about an inch and a half across, at least in its full size, but we have only about three-quarters of an inch of it. About half of the tip weight."

Hackett wasn't sure whether to challenge him or to rejoice. A broken tip weight, a fractured tip weight, could prove his entire case.

I continued, "Dr. Bradley, what did you conclude from this fractured tip weight?"

"After I examined it preliminarily, I concluded that this tip weight fractured in flight, came off of the blade from Marine One, and caused the blade to go out of balance. And while I'm not an accident reconstructionist, it is virtually certain that out-of-balance condition on that blade caused the helicopter to go into massive vibrations, which resulted in its throwing the blade off of the helicopter and the helicopter ultimately rolling over and crashing."

Hackett smiled and shook his head. I had proved his case.

"Since your preliminary conclusions after finding this tip weight, have you had an opportunity to conduct further examination?"

Hackett didn't like where this was going. He stood. "Your Honor, I was under the impression that Dr. Bradley had just found this tip weight. We're now led to understand that he's had time to conduct additional investigation and examination? Mr. Nolan informed me of none of this. This is critical evidence to the case which he has kept in his possession, examined and tested with his expert, and told me nothing about it. This is unethical. I request the opportunity to take this witness on voir dire to determine exactly how long he's had this tip weight, what kind of tests he's done, and what his new opinions are before they're disclosed to the jury." Hackett raised his voice, "This is an ambush, Your Honor."

The jury was attentive. Some thought this was great sport, others seemed confused that although the evidence I had presented seemed to confirm Hackett's theory, he was outraged.

The judge looked at me over her reading glasses. "Why have you not informed Mr. Hackett of these developments prior to your calling of this witness, Mr. Nolan? You're aware of the ongoing obligations under the federal rules."

I looked over at Rachel, who opened the manila envelope lying in front of her and pulled out a document and kept it facedown on the table. "I am very aware of my obligations, Your Honor. But I couldn't possibly notify even those in my own firm of this development."

The judge frowned. "I'd like to know the answer to this question, but perhaps it would be more prudent to dismiss the jury for this-"

Hackett was hot. "No, Your Honor, let's hear it now. I want to hear Mr. Nolan explain how he's collecting evidence after the closing of discovery to bring it in here and try and hijack this trial. He's obviously violated his ethical and legal obligations, so let's hear why." He looked at me smugly.

I looked at the judge, waiting to see if she wanted to do this outside the presence of the jury, but she seemed to want to get it over with. I said, "Your Honor, every significant step I've taken for the last few months I've had to take in secrecy. Mr. Hackett planted a spy in my office and that person forwarded every e-mail and document of significance directly to him."

The judge deeply regretted not dismissing the jury when she thought it was prudent to do so, but it was too late now. "Mr. Nolan. Surely you are speaking hyperbolically."

The jury stared at me, stunned.

I shook my head. "I am not, Your Honor. Mine is a small law firm. But we were hired to do this case. I needed some additional help and hired several contract attorneys, one of whom turns out to be a plant from Mr. Hackett." I nodded at Rachel, who pushed her seat back quickly, grabbed the piece of paper in front of her, turned around, walked back to the barrier between the counsel table and the gallery, and slapped Braden in the chest with the subpoena that had his name on it. I turned and pointed at him. "Braden Randall, or Jonathan Dercks, which is his real name, is a former employee of Mr. Hackett, who he encouraged to come work for me. He is responsible for hacking into my computer system, sending all my e-mails to Hackett, sending research memos and litigation plans, and setting me up for all these supposed ethical allegations Mr. Hackett keeps stumbling on.

"The document that Ms. Long just gave to Braden is a subpoena to testify at this trial. Your Honor, I request at this point that we excuse Dr. Bradley for a moment and call to the stand Braden Randall to confirm to the court everything that I've just said, and to show the court, and Mr. Hackett, why I didn't inform him of Dr. Bradley's discovery in a more timely manner, and that I was completely justified in handling it exactly as I have."

The journalists were scribbling furiously on their pads, and the artists turned their sketch sheets toward Braden, who sat frozen in the first row between Kathryn and Tripp.

The judge had seen enough. "We're going to recess this trial right now. The jury is dismissed. Everybody else stay where you are." The clerk stood and pointed to the jurors, who knew it was time for them to file out of the courtroom, which they did with regret. They wanted to stay and see the fireworks.

When the clerk closed the door and nodded to the judge, she said, "The Court is in recess. Everyone is free to go, but I need to talk to counsel during this break." No one moved. Braden looked at the subpoena that had dropped to the floor after Rachel had slammed it into his chest. He was beet red and sweating. He hadn't said a word, nor had he looked at anyone.