William Bernhardt - Deadly Justice

“Well, Chuck,” Ben said, spreading his arms across the table, “if you must know who cut Crichton’s belay line—I did.”

“What?” Mike almost rose out of his chair. “ You cut his line?”

“That’s what I said.”

“Why the hell would you do that?” Chuck bellowed. “You just started here. What beef could you have against Crichton?”

“I was trying to flush out the killer. Everything was too relaxed, too pat. I wanted to stir the batter up, to throw a wrench into the killer’s complacency and get himself to expose himself.”

“So you tried to kill Mr. Crichton?”

“I wasn’t trying to kill him. I was right behind him all along. The distance from the giant’s ladder to Crichton was only about five feet—an easy jump, especially since I knew what was coming. He was never in any danger.”

Mike and Chuck stared at him, mouths gaping. Ben couldn’t tell who appeared more outraged.

“That is the most lame, bullheaded, irresponsible plan I’ve ever heard,” Mike said, incredulous. “What if you had missed?”

“I didn’t.”

“You sorry sack of shit.” Chuck was on his feet now, swaggering toward Ben. “I want this prick out of here, Mr. Crichton. I want him fired.”

“We’ll talk about this later,” Crichton said, staring intently at Ben. “Does anyone else have any questions for Lieutenant Morelli?”

No one spoke. Chuck planted himself, arms folded across his chest like Mr. Clean, and glared at Ben.

“If there’s nothing else,” Crichton said, “then this staff meeting is adjourned. Mr. Kincaid, I would like to see you in my office.”

“I have to meet a friend who’s waiting for me,” Ben said, checking his watch. “I’ll drop by when it’s convenient.”

The other lawyers stared at him. He’d come see Crichton…when it was convenient ? For him ?

Crichton smoldered without comment. “As you wish, Mr. Kincaid. I’ll be waiting for you.”

53

ABOUT FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER, Ben strolled into Crichton’s office, a manila folder tucked under his arm. Crichton was leaning back in his chair, dictating.

“Glad you could make it,” Crichton said, peering over his reading glasses. “Hope I didn’t interfere with your plans.”

“Don’t worry about it. What did you want to discuss?”

“I’ve spoken to Harry Carter about your work on the new assignment. He’s not pleased with your performance.”

“Well, that’s what he does best, isn’t it?”

“Harry is a very important member of our staff. When he makes a negative recommendation, well…that’s difficult for me to overlook.”

Ben sat down in one of Crichton’s chairs. “Let’s not pussyfoot around, shall we?”

Crichton stiffened slightly.

“I’ve been talking to a friend of mine named Loving. He’s a private investigator. At my request, he undertook a search for Al Austin, the long-lost member of the XKL-1 design team.”

Crichton’s feet dropped to the floor. “You did… what ?”

“Loving had a long conversation with the man. He’s a funny dude. Seems he didn’t like some of the corporate policies being implemented here at Apollo, so he quit. More than just quit, actually. Disappeared. Seemed to think it would be best if no one at Apollo had any idea where he was.”

“Austin was always a borderline crazy. Paranoid. Probably an alcoholic.”

“Uh-huh. That’s what he said you’d say. Anyway, he claims that after the XKL-1 was manufactured and distributed, a design defect was discovered. A defect that made any vehicle using that suspension system unsafe. Especially on rough or bumpy terrain.” He looked directly into Crichton’s eyes. “Such as the dirt field outside a football stadium.”

“Austin was fired because he was accused of sexual impropriety by several female employees. We had no choice.”

“Uh-huh. He said you’d say that, too. He said all four women who filed complaints disappeared before he or his lawyers could even talk to them. Apparently, they were bestowed with rather lucrative retirement plans.”

“We had no choice. If we hadn’t made them happy, they would’ve sued.”

“I think you were creating a smoke screen, Crichton, just as you’re doing now. The point is that the XKL-1 was and is unsafe.”

“That has never been proven.”

Ben reached into his manila folder and began withdrawing documents. “Loving had a heck of a time finding Austin. He was holed up in western Oklahoma—don’t bother asking, I won’t tell you where. Bought a chicken farm, and that’s what he does for a living now. Says he’s much happier. Which I don’t doubt.”

Ben passed the top document to Crichton. “I guess Al thought that since Loving had gone to so much trouble, he deserved to be rewarded. So Al dug up his personal copies of these reports, copies you didn’t know he had.”

Ben pointed to the top page. “I bet you’ve seen this report before, haven’t you? Your initials are on it. After the first field reports came in suggesting there were problems with the XKL-1 design, Apollo ordered a series of tests. The testing was quite extensive. No doubt about it: the XKL-1 was unsafe. And you, and Bernie King, and everyone on the design team knew it.”

“The testing was inconclusive. Improper control group, wild extrapolations from insufficient data—”

“Don’t bother, Crichton. I’ve already read the report.” He passed across the next document in his stack. “Here we have the minutes of a series of meetings held by the Apollo Board of Directors. It seems they learned about the safety problems, too. And they had to decide what to do about it.”

Ben pointed to the bottom of one of the pages. “Evidently some of those meetings were a bit on the dull side—notice all the doodling in the margins. I particularly enjoyed that cartoon with the small child being mangled by the XKL-1 suspension system. You Apollo guys sure have some sense of humor.”

“I see nothing incriminating about this,” Crichton said unevenly. “On the contrary, this seems to me to be the work of a conscientious corporation trying to discover the truth.”

“Trying to discover the truth? Yes. The question is: what did they do with the truth?” Ben tossed the final document in his stack to Crichton. “This document outlines the cost-benefit analysis performed at the behest of the Apollo directors. They determined that the cost of redesigning the system, implementing the new design, altering the manufacturing equipment, recalling the XKL-1 and marketing the new product would be almost two hundred million dollars. Not enough to sink Apollo by a long shot, but a sizable chunk of change nonetheless.

“As you can see, if you’re reading along, Apollo then analyzed the costs attendant to retaining the current design. The only real cost item was the lawsuits that would predictably arise as people were injured by the defective system. They estimated that approximately twenty lawsuits a year would be filed, and that the average plaintiff could be bought off—excuse me, that a settlement could be reached for about a quarter of a million bucks. A quiet settlement, before any publicity got stirred up. In short, even if this went on for forty years, it would still be cheaper to retain the old design.”

Ben looked at Crichton sharply. “Guess what they decided to do?”

Crichton cleared his throat. “The business of a corporation is to make money. If business suffers, everyone suffers.”

“Spare me the trickle-down rationalization. This corporation decided that it would be cheaper to allow people to be mutilated and killed than to spend money implementing a new design. So they just sat back and counted their millions while people like Jason Nelson died.”