"Of course you did," Gina said.
Hunt nodded. "We aim to please."
Bill Blair wasn't in at first, and Gina thought that was instructive in itself.
Then Wyatt said to his secretary: "That's a shame, because Ms. Roake had some questions for Mr. Blair on the Kelley Rusnak matter. Kelley was supposed to be Ms. Roake's witness in the Caryn Dryden murder hearing. Anyway, she'd like to keep this private and hoped to give him a chance to answer a few questions. But if he's not around, she'll have to take her questions to Jeff. That's Jeff Elliott of the Chronicle. And see if he can get some answers for her. So if Mr. Blair's not here, I guess he'll just have to read the paper tomorrow and respond to that."
Though she was a woman, the secretary reminded Gina of the William H. Macy character in Fargo. Smiling miserably at both of them, she swallowed a couple of times, then said, "Let me just run and check to see if maybe he's gotten back when I wasn't at my desk."
Gina almost said, "Yah, shure," in that great Frances McDormand Norwegian accent, but stopped herself in the nick of time. "That'd be nice," she said. "Thanks."
Less than two minutes later, they were making their introductions to Mr. Blair, a short heavy man of about forty-five, with small eyes and colorless hair combed into a very short pageboy.
His corner office seemed almost to sulk behind its tinted windows on this gray afternoon. Fluorescent lighting overhead gave the room an impersonal feel that wasn't much mitigated by the view of the enormous parking lot outside, the lack of even mass-produced "art" on the two remaining walls. A massive light oak desk was piled high with neat stacks of papers and documents-a small sign of order perhaps hiding a larger chaos? A couple of self-consciously modern chrome-and-leather chairs sat on industrial carpet facing his work space, and Blair indicated that his guests take them, then went to his own chair behind the desk and sat down.
Gina wasted no more time. "Mr. Blair," she began, "thank you for seeing us without an appointment, but time is short. Kelley Rus-nak was going to be a witness for me in Stuart Gorman's hearing on the murder of his wife, which is going on in San Francisco this week. Kelley met with Stuart down here about two weeks ago. She told him she might be in some kind of danger because of her involvement with the Dryden Socket."
"Nobody murdered Kelley. Apparently she killed herself."
"Apparently," Gina said. "Did you know Kelley well?"
Her reply, and then the following question, both seemed to surprise him. "We're a small company, but no, not really more than anyone else. Less than some. She wasn't management, after all."
"I noticed, though, that you gave the statement about her death. Is that the company policy?"
"Well, fortunately, until lately we haven't had to have a policy on that. In this case, we needed a statement for the paper, so I ginned one up. I'm afraid I don't really see anything particularly sinister about that." With one hand, he moved one of the piles of paper to a new location about a quarter inch from where it had been. "I told all this to Mr. Elliott this morning. You're trying to muddy the waters surrounding your client. Laudable in an attorney, I suppose, but actually fairly tedious for the rest of us."
So, Gina thought, the gloves were coming off early. She gave him a saccharine smile. "Be that as it may, the reason Mr. Elliott was interested in the story had little or nothing to do with my client, but with the cover-up around the Dryden Socket that both Caryn and Kelley were trying to expose."
He shook his head, his lips tight. "There is no cover-up, Ms. Roake. I don't know how these rumors get started, but there is no problem with the Dryden Socket. It's a remarkable device that marks a major improvement in the technology of hip replacement. The FDA will be issuing its formal approval any day now, and we're gearing up for tremendous worldwide demand. If we thought the product was harmful, do you imagine, one, that the FDA would give its approval and two, that we'd be so foolish as to go ahead with increased production, with all the lawsuits that a faulty product would entail?"
"One," Gina didn't miss a beat, "the FDA would give its approval if they never got wind of problems because they occurred after the formal closure of the clinical trials. And two, you would if you needed immediate cash, had huge overseas orders that you could fill first, and were already working on an improved product that you could have in the pipeline before too much damage was done." She leaned back in her chair, looked over at Wyatt, back at Blair. "This issue isn't going to go away. Some folks have suggested the possibility that Caryn Dryden was killed to shut her up."
"Don't be absurd."
"Do you remember what you might have been doing on the night Caryn was killed?"
"I don't even know what night Caryn was killed."
"It was Sunday," Wyatt Hunt offered helpfully. "Three weeks ago."
Blair scrunched his tiny eyes, the muscles in his cheeks working steadily. "This is beyond the pale," he said. "I have no idea what I was doing three weeks ago on a Sunday night. I'm quite certain, though, that whatever it was, it wasn't drowning one of my longtime stars." Suddenly he pushed back his chair and got himself onto his feet. "I'm afraid this meeting is going to have to come to an end," he said.
"The issue isn't going to go away," Gina said as she stood up.
But Blair didn't move. Safe behind his desk, he stood almost at a military attention. "I have nothing further to say to you," he said. "And you are not to return to these premises, or I'll have you removed. Go be ridiculous in the courtroom where people have to put up with you. And while you're at it, you might brush up on the libel laws before you start spreading any more vicious lies."
Thirty-three
Wyatt dropped Gina at her Sutter Street office. The now-constant rain hadn't speeded up the commute any, and they didn't get back until about four forty-five. It had already been a long and exhausting day. Was it only this morning that she'd learned of Kelley Rusnak's death? And gone jogging with Hunt? It seemed impossible.
As she was coming up the stairway to the firm's main offices on the second floor (they'd expanded the first-floor offices to accommodate an influx of new associates and a new word processing department), a wave of exhaustion suddenly washed over her. She actually stopped a few steps short of the top and put her briefcase down, wrestling with the idea of simply turning around, catching a cab for home, and maybe even squeezing in a short uninterrupted nap before the inevitable written or dictated recap of her day at the hearing. And then of course she'd also want to go over all of her discovery again to be sure that nothing escaped her in the continuing crush of events.
Plus, she'd be needing to review Bethany Robley's statement so she'd be ready for her cross-examination tomorrow. Or, at least, she
hoped it would be tomorrow. Clair Robley's courtroom attack on Stuart today might have repercussions beyond those anyone expected, and she had to be ready for them, too.
And then she needed to check on Stuart, to see how seriously he'd been hurt. And make sure she got Wyatt's latest news after he and his crew interviewed the people about McAfee's alibi. And then she had to remember to call Fred Furth, whom she'd subpoenaed along with Kelley to corroborate Stuart's explanation of why he'd "disappeared" down the Peninsula.
And maybe segue somehow from Furth's testimony into some of the PII issues. And then…
Stopping herself, she realized she was already beginning to spin out of control. She had to keep her focus. The minute her mind started to relax-even standing in her stairwell-a half dozen other ideas, chores and responsibilities assaulted her consciousness. Maybe she'd manage a few hours of sleep before dawn, but that was all she could realistically expect, or allow herself.