Silent Justice: A Ben Kincaid Novel of Suspense

Chapter 3

THE OTHER PARENTS GATHERED in Ben Kincaid’s office shortly after noon. Their hometown, Blackwood, was in Tulsa County, a thirty-minute drive from downtown Tulsa, and they all agreed to come when Cecily called them.

“There were eleven?” Ben said, as he studied the faces before him. Cecily had told him there were others, but he never dreamed there could be so many. “Eleven.”

It was true. Eleven sets of parents, all of whom had recently lost a child between the ages of eight and fifteen to leukemia. For more than two hours, Ben listened to their stories, all told simply and undramatically, and all of them heart-wrenching just the same.

Cecily told Ben about her son, Billy, how he had been diagnosed with leukemia when he was twelve, how they’d fought it with drugs and radiation and chemotherapy, twice pushing the cancer into remission, only to lose finally at the end of a struggle that took more than two years. She told him about her last frenzied race to the hospital, how Billy had died during the drive, how she had attempted to revive him, crying and pleading, all to no avail.

“I tried everything I knew to bring him back. Everything. I would have gladly changed places with him, given my life for his. But it didn’t help. My baby boy was gone. And there was nothing I could do about it.”

Margaret Swanson told Ben about her son Donald, who was a star soccer player at Will Rogers Elementary. When the bruises first began to appear, Margaret assumed they were sports injuries; after all, soccer was a rough-and-tumble sport. When they didn’t go away, she began to suspect other causes. Their ordeal lasted almost three years. Donald endured more than a hundred blood tests, more than two dozen bone marrow aspirations. He spent the entire last year of his life in the hospital. But the end result was the same.

“Donald begged me to let him go home, to let him play soccer again, but I always said no. I still held out hope, you see. I still pretended to myself that he might recover. So I made him stay in the hospital, where he was miserable. Now I’d give anything to turn the hands of the clock back, to let him go out and kick the ball, even just once. To give him one tiny moment of happiness before he was gone.”

Ralph Foley had a simpler tale to tell. He and his wife hadn’t been put through the protracted series of treatments and therapies, advances and setbacks that the other parents had endured. The first warning sign they received that Jim was in danger came when he developed a persistent cough. Three months later, Jim was dead.

“People kept telling me I was lucky—lucky that the inevitable end had come so mercifully fast. I don’t feel lucky. Even now, I can’t believe Jimmy is gone. It was all too quick, too unreal. One day, you have a healthy ten-year-old boy, and the next, he’s buried in a hole in Meadowland Cemetery. Things don’t really happen like that, do they?” There was a tremble in his voice, the advance guard for the tears that began streaming down his face. “It can’t be over so fast, can it? They can’t take the most precious thing in your life and just … and just …”

He never managed to finish his sentence.

Ben listened to those stories and all the others. Each time he thought he had heard the worst, he found out he was wrong. Rarely in his life had he sat in a room in which the sense of tragedy was so palpable. These were grieving parents, mothers and fathers who had poured their hearts and souls into raising their children, only to lose them due to something entirely outside their control. There could be nothing worse than that, Ben thought. Nothing at all.

When the stories were done, Ben asked a few simple questions. “How did you all come together?”

Cecily answered first. Ben gathered she was their unofficial leader. “I got some names from Billy’s pediatrician, after his first relapse. He wanted us to form a support group, but I never called the others. I was too busy trying to save my boy’s life. After Billy was gone, I met a priest from the local Episcopal church. Father Richard Daniels. I wasn’t Episcopalian, or even particularly religious. In fact, at that point in time I probably felt less religious than at any time in my life. But he was a comfort. He knew what I needed to hear—in part because he had been through this before. He told me about some of the other parents in town who had lost their children. Before long, we started getting together regularly to talk about what had happened—and what we were going to do about it.”

“Cecily’s been the ramrod behind this since day one,” Ralph Foley explained. “She’s the one who refused to just take it. She kept saying all these leukemia deaths in the same area couldn’t be a coincidence. Something had to be causing it.”

“What do your doctors say caused it?” Ben asked.

“They all say the same thing,” Jim answered. “That no one knows what causes leukemia.”

“But I wasn’t prepared to accept that,” Cecily said. “It was just too coincidental. Look at this.”

She unfolded a map of the small city of Blackwood. On the map, she had penciled an X where each of the deceased children had lived. They were all congregated at the north end of the city, all within about five square miles of one another.

“Leukemia is a very rare disease,” Cecily continued. “And yet here were eleven cases, all clustered together at the north end of a small town. And you want to tell me that’s just a coincidence? A statistical anomaly? No way.”

“Then what caused it?”

“That’s what I didn’t know. At first, I thought maybe there was some kind of virus going around. I had read that there was a type of leukemia cats got that was transmitted by a virus. But that wasn’t the kind of leukemia Billy had. So then I tried to think of something all the boys and girls who died shared. Most of them went to the same school—but not all. Most of them played sports—but not all. Then I tried to think of things that were universal that everyone shared. Like the air.” She paused significantly. “Or water.”

“Did you share your theories with the rest of the group?”

Margaret Swanson answered that one. “She certainly did. We all thought she was crackers.” She glanced quickly at Cecily. “Nothing personal. But we did. We knew she was struggling to accept her son’s death. We all were. But this seemed a strange way to go about it. She was talking about hiring scientists, suing the city. We didn’t want any part of it.”

Christina leaned forward. “What changed your mind?”

“This.” Cecily reached into her oversized purse and retrieved a folded newspaper. “This is the front page of the Blackwood Gazette from about four months ago. See for yourself.”

Ben took the paper from her. The headline story, in bold black letters, proclaimed: POISON POOL FOUND IN BLACKWOOD AQUIFER.

Ben quickly scanned the article. A reporter named David Daugherty had discovered a half-buried pool, half an acre in size and about four feet deep, of contaminated water. The pool was connected to a ravine, which in turn fed the Blackwood water aquifer. In the water, the reporter found traces of arsenic, chromium, lead, and other heavy metals. The pool was uncovered by a construction crew in the process of laying the foundation for a new apartment complex. Ben also saw a line toward the end of the article that Cecily had underlined in red. Arsenic is believed to be a carcinogen, it said, even in small doses.

“Okay,” Ben said, “that’s frightening. But how does it link up to your stories?”

“Here’s another paper,” Cecily said, “from a week later.” This time she didn’t wait for Ben to read it. “The first article kicked up quite a stink in little Blackwood. The city council ordered the city engineer, one John Schultz, to test the city’s water supply. As the article explains, the city of Blackwood is serviced by four water wells. Three of them tested fine. But one of them was contaminated due to underground seepage from the poison pool. That was Well B. And guess where the water from Well B goes.” She paused, her jaw set. “North Blackwood. Our neighborhood.”

Ben scanned the article now in his hands. Everything Cecily had said seemed to be correct. The city engineer determined that the well’s water was tainted by several undesirable chemicals, including trichloroethylene, also known as TCE, an industrial solvent used principally to dissolve oil and grease. He had ordered the well shut down immediately.

“Wow,” Ben said quietly. He knew it sounded stupid, but it was all he could think to say. “That’s amazing. And … horrifying.”

“I always thought the water tasted funny,” Barry said. “But what can you do about it? Water’s water.”

“I thought it was gross,” Margaret said. “We bought bottled water for drinking. But you can’t use bottled water for everything. We couldn’t afford it.”

“All our children were exposed to this water,” Cecily said. “They drank it, they bathed and showered in it. It was unavoidable.”

“You may have grounds for a suit against the city,” Ben said. “The city engineer may have been negligent in the performance of his duties. But what would it get you? I can guarantee you the city coffers aren’t large enough to pay off any big judgment. A town that size probably doesn’t even have insurance.”

“We don’t want the city,” Cecily answered. “We want the bastards who poisoned the water in the first place.” Once more her hand dipped into her oversized purse, this time retrieving a report bound in a clear binder. “I started researching this as soon as I read the first article in the paper. I studied to be a biologist, back at OU, so I wasn’t totally in the dark on this. I started reading about TCE and how it’s been linked to tumors in laboratory animals. I also found out I wasn’t the only person concerned about the Blackwood aquifer.”

What Cecily handed Ben was a report by the Environmental Protection Agency. After the preliminary discovery of the poison pool, they had placed the Blackwood aquifer on the National Priorities List—which put it in line for cleanup via Superfund dollars. The EPA ranked all the sites on its list, based upon the chemicals involved, their concentrations, and the proximity to residential areas. The EPA ranked the Blackwood aquifer seventh out of over five hundred sites. Like the city engineer, they found TCE in Well B—280 parts per billion, an extremely significant contamination. They also found lesser amounts of other foreign substances, including tetrachloroethylene, better known as perc, another industrial solvent. The EPA considered both TCE and perc to be “possible carcinogens.”

Ben flipped the pages, passing quickly over dense paragraphs of jargon, which he frankly didn’t understand, long academic sentences, and charts and graphs dealing with groundwater contours and well logs and such. But there was a short paragraph at the end of the report that he definitely understood.

It was in a section labeled Contaminant Origination. It explained that Well B had been polluted by the underwater pool recently discovered in Blackwood. And it explained that the most likely cause of the contamination was dumping by the H. P. Blaylock Industrial Machinery Corporation, which owned the land and operated a manufacturing plant and headquarters not far from the poisoned pool.

Ben closed the report. “You want to go after Blaylock Industrial?”

“Of course,” Cecily responded. “They’re the ones responsible for this. Isn’t it obvious?”

Ben and Christina exchanged a sharp look.

“So,” Cecily said eagerly. “What do you think?”

Ben bit down on his lower lip. “I think we should take a break.”

Ben called for a fifteen-minute recess before the meeting proceeded. He needed to think about what he was going to say, and how he was going to say it. He wanted to be honest with these people, and that meant telling them many things they would not want to hear.

Christina followed him to the kitchen while he poured himself a restorative Coke. “What are you going to do?”

Ben shrugged. “Tell them the truth.”

Christina nodded. “So you’re not going to take the case?”

“It would be suicide, Christina. You know that.”

She did not disagree. “These people have been through an awful lot, Ben. More than you or I can imagine.”

“I understand that. But encouraging them to file a kamikaze lawsuit wouldn’t be doing them any favors.”

Ben returned to his office early. He found all the parents waiting for him. They had never left. They were too anxious to hear what he had to say.

“First of all,” Ben began, “I want you to understand that you have my utmost sympathy. I really mean that. What you’ve been through was a living nightmare, something no one—no parent—should have to endure. But you also have to understand one simple reality. The courts cannot right all wrongs. In fact, I would say they can’t right most wrongs. They can handle locking up crooks, and they’re pretty good at resolving disputes that are simply squabbles over money. But this case is about more than money. A lot more. And frankly, I don’t think the courts can help you.”

He saw Cecily stiffen. “Couldn’t we file a lawsuit for negligence? Or for wrongful death?”

“Yeah,” Ben answered, “you could file it. The question is, could you win it?”

“But the EPA report says that—”

“The EPA report won’t get you anywhere,” Ben said flatly. “It probably isn’t admissible, but even if it is, it won’t help. It’s full of the usual cautious academic language. Possibly this. Most likely that. When you’re in court, you have to be able to prove your case. To prove it. By a preponderance of the evidence.”

“But surely when the jury sees the map—when they see all the leukemia victims clustered together in one neighborhood—”

“I admit, the map is very compelling. Common sense tells us this cancer cluster can’t be just a coincidence. But common sense isn’t evidence. In court, we have to be able to prove that Blaylock poisoned the water, and moreover, that the water caused the cancer. If we can’t do that, we won’t even get to the jury. The judge will shut us down before it ever goes to trial.”

Ben scanned the circle of sober, unhappy faces surrounding him. He was not telling them what they wanted to hear; he knew that. But it was what needed to be said.

“To even attempt to prove a case like this, we would need expert testimony—by the barrelful. And that is very expensive. We’ll need geologists, toxicologists, engineers, hydrologists, not to mention doctors. They’ll all be billing hundreds of dollars an hour for their time—plus expenses. We’ll have to conduct studies of our own, with our own researchers, so we can get them in as evidence. And we’ll need to somehow prove that Blaylock contaminated the site, something I can guarantee they won’t admit.”

Ralph Foley cleared his throat. “Isn’t it possible Blaylock might agree to settle? You know, to avoid the expense and bad publicity of a trial.”

“Is that what you were hoping for? Well, you can put that pipe dream to rest. Blaylock will never settle. Because if they did, every citizen of north Blackwood would turn around and sue them. They can’t afford to let that happen. They’ll fight this tooth and nail.”

“That’s fine,” Cecily said defiantly. “We’ll fight back. Hard.”

“With what?” Ben asked. “Let me tell you something. I know for a fact that the Blaylock Corporation is represented by Raven, Tucker & Tubb, the largest firm in Tulsa. I know this because I used to work there. I also know the Raven litigators are some of the best in the business. They know all the tricks. They’ll try to delay, to protract this and make it as miserable and expensive for us as possible. They’ll file frivolous motions, ask for hearings, demand pointless discovery, all to run down the clock—and run up the tab. This litigation will cost thousands of dollars—probably hundreds of thousands of dollars. Who’s got that kind of money? I certainly don’t. Do you?”

Again Ben peered out at the sea of faces. No one was nodding. He didn’t need to be a financial whiz to know there were no billionaires in the room. None was rich to begin with—and all had just suffered debilitating medical expenses.

“So basically, what you’re asking me to do is file a high-profile lawsuit that we can’t afford and can’t win. To run up expenses with no hope of recovering them. That’s why you haven’t been able to get anyone to represent you.” He paused, drawing in his breath. “And that’s why I can’t represent you, either.”

The room was blanketed with silence. None of the parents spoke, or even moved. They all looked as if they’d been slapped in the face by a baseball bat.

Christina had a pensive expression on her face. She was biting her knuckle, a sure sign that she was troubled. But she, too, held her tongue.

At last Cecily broke the silence. “May I ask you a question, Mr. Kincaid?”

He shrugged. “Sure.”

“Have you raised any children?”

“No.” He frowned. “Well, I helped raise my nephew for several months, but—”

“Did you love your nephew?”

“Of course I did. Do. But—”

“How do you suppose you’d feel about this if your nephew had been one of the youngsters who died?”

“Ms. Elkins—”

“For that matter, you’re still young. You might have children of your own. How would you feel if your own flesh and blood had died—for no reason? Because some corporation didn’t have the decency to keep their poison out of the water well?”

Ben drew in his breath. “I’m sure I’d feel just as you do. Devastated. But these are all emotional appeals. They won’t get us past a summary judgment motion.”

One last time Cecily’s hand dipped inside her purse. “This is a picture of my boy. Billy. He was such an angel. He never did anything wrong. He never hurt anybody. He liked soccer and Robert Louis Stevenson. When he grew up, he wanted to be a doctor. But not to get rich, he told me, time and again. He wasn’t going to be a "swimming-pool doctor." He wanted to help people who really needed help, maybe go to a third-world country or something. And you know what? He would’ve done it. He would’ve made a difference.…” Her lips began to tremble. “He would’ve done some real good in this world. But all that potential is gone now. It’s all been wiped away by an act of corporate callousness. Is that right? Is that acceptable?”

Before Ben could respond, Ralph opened his wallet and withdrew a photo. “This is my Roger.” He laughed slightly. “He wanted to be an astronaut.”

“My Donald,” Margaret said, laying her photo atop the stack. “He talked about being an architect.”

One after another, the tattered photographs fell into place. Jay Kinyon. Brian Bailey. Tracy Hamilton. Kevin Blum. Colin Koelshe. Finally, Ben saw eleven sets of eyes looking up at him, eleven youthful faces that passed from the world well before their time.

And above those, all around him, Ben saw many more eyes staring at him. Waiting to hear what he would say next.

He found Harvey hidden in the clothes closet behind some fishing gear and a lifetime supply of shoes, just where his wife had said he would be. It was a walk-in closet, very spacious, with more clothes than a man could wear in a year. Harvey always had been obsessed with his appearance. He pushed the clothes to either side and found a hidden inner closet door. When he opened that, he found a private hidey-hole, just big enough for one. Harvey was cowering inside.

Harvey, a fiftyish balding man with a speckled turnip of a nose, was crouched in a near-fetal position, his hands covering his face. “Don’t hurt me. Please don’t hurt me.”

He stared at Harvey with undisguised contempt. “Jesus Christ, Harvey. You ran off and left your wife to face the executioner?”

“She’s crippled,” he said, his voice quivering. “She had an accident last year. She couldn’t move fast enough to get away.”

He shook his head with disgust. “Pathetic.” He grabbed Harvey by the scruff of his neck.

“Please don’t hurt me!” Harvey screamed again. “I can’t help you. I don’t have what you want!”

“I wish I could believe you, Harvey. But of course, there’s only one way to know for certain.” He dragged Harvey forcibly back into the bedroom.

Upon arrival, Harvey saw his wife lying motionless in their bed. There was a red circle in the center of her forehead, and a pool of blood around her right leg. Her arms and legs were grotesquely splayed. “Oh, my God!” he screamed. “You didn’t—you didn’t—”

“Heck, no, Harvey. I didn’t do anything bad. I just killed her.” He threw Harvey onto the bed beside his wife’s corpse. “What did you think, that I’d become some sort of rapist? Geez, Harvey. I haven’t changed that much.” He reached into his coat and pulled out a roll of duct tape. “Not that there was any need, anyway. Didn’t you know, Harvey? I had your wife years ago.”

Harvey’s eyes widened, but just before he could shout, the man plastered a strip of duct tape right over his mouth.

“Oh, yeah, Harvey, it’s true. It’s been … what? Ten, eleven years now. We did it several times. Tried many different positions. Some pretty kinky stuff. One time you were in the house, sleeping. We did it right under your nose.” He grabbed Harvey’s arms and held them together, then wrapped tape around them and tied them to the bedpost above his head. “Not that it was any great thrill for me, if you want to know the truth. She was a bit pedestrian in the sack, wasn’t she, Harvey? Too conservative for my taste.” He smiled. “Although I did like that thing she did with her tongue. You know, during foreplay? Ooh-la-la.”

He wrapped tape around Harvey’s ankles, binding his legs together. Once Harvey was motionless, he clapped his hands together, as if celebrating a job well done.

“One last chance, Harvey.” He ripped the duct tape off the man’s face, taking bits of skin with it. “Where’s the merchandise?”

“I don’t know,” Harvey said. Sweat poured down the sides of his face. “I don’t have it. I never did.”

“Wrong answer.” Bending over, he grabbed a pair of dirty underwear lying on the floor and stuffed it into Harvey’s mouth. Then he began systematically undressing himself.

“You’re probably wondering what I’m doing, aren’t you, Harvey? Wondering if maybe I really have changed, if maybe I have something perverse in mind. Well, you can relax.” He removed the last bit of his clothing, folded them in a neat stack, and carried them to the edge of the room. “I’m not going to molest you or your wife’s corpse. I just don’t want to get any blood on my clothes.”

He reached one more time into his coat, now folded in the pile, and withdrew a large hammer. A ball-peen hammer.

Harvey lurched forward, as much as he was able. His eyes bulged out of their sockets. He squirmed and twisted and made muffled cries for help.

“Oh sure, now you want to talk. But it’s too late now, Harvey. Now you have to pay the consequences.”

Harvey’s muffled screams grew louder, but there was nothing he could do to help himself. The man drew back the hammer and smashed it into Harvey’s left leg, shattering his kneecap.

“Wonderful. Now you and your wife are a matched set.” He crouched down beside Harvey’s spasming body, leaning forward against the side of the bed. “All right now, Harvey. Can we talk?”

Ben remained in his office after the parents departed. He had a lot to think about. He didn’t emerge from his office until sometime after five. Jones was sitting at his desk, waiting for him. “Well?”

A crease formed in the center of Ben’s forehead. “Well, what?

Jones fell back in his chair. “Damn everything! You took the case! I can see it in your eyes.”

Ben cleared his throat. “I … uh … did agree to represent them, yes.”

“Damn! I should’ve known. What am I saying? I did know! I just couldn’t stop it!”

“Now, Jones, calm down.…”

“Do you have any idea what this kind of litigation costs?”

“I certainly do.”

“Do you know what the odds are against you recovering anything?”

“Well … I think it’s too early to say with certainty.…”

“Don’t play coy with me. This is a trillion-to-one shot and you know it. We’ll run up thousands in expenses and have no hope of recovering it.”

“We’ve been through tough patches before.”

“Do you know what our current financial situation is? I do. We’re already on the edge. And this is just what we need to push us over!”

Ben nodded. “And since you’ve raised that issue, I’d like you to run downtown tomorrow and have a talk with The Brain.”

“Aw, no, Boss. Not me!”

“You’re the office manager. It’s your job.” The Brain was the nickname they gave Conrad Eversole, the financial whiz at Nations Bank who handled the firm’s accounts. He had loaned them money in the past. And he would have to loan them money again, if they were going to manage this case.

“What am I going to use as collateral?”

“Tell him about the lawsuit.”

“Oh, right. Like he’ll go for that pig in a poke.”

“Well, use whatever you can. Take the title to my van.” Jones shook his head. “Ben … listen to me. This is a mistake. A big mistake.”

“You’re probably right. But it’s already done. I’ve taken the case.” He turned and started toward the door, then stopped. “Jones, I want you to know—” He paused. “I think we’re doing the right thing here. Not the smart thing. Certainly not the safe thing. But the right thing. I think.”

He continued to pummel Harvey’s body with the hammer. After sixty or seventy strokes, Harvey at last expired, which must have been a great relief to Harvey, under the circumstances.

The man wiped the hammer clean in the sink, dried it, then returned it to its pocket in the inside lining of his coat. He put away his gun, then walked around the room, wiping his prints off everything he had touched. Finally, he washed off in the sink and put his clothes back on.

He had not learned what he wanted to know. Harvey had told him nothing. But he was now convinced that Harvey knew nothing. At first he thought it possible Harvey might be lying, but after the fifth or sixth swing of the hammer, to his other leg, his groin, his jaw, it just wasn’t possible anymore. If he had known anything, he would have talked.

Harvey didn’t know where the merchandise was. Which, sadly enough, was what Harvey had tried to tell him from the outset.

Well, if at first you don’t succeed …

He walked downstairs, wondering which of the remaining three he would tackle first. It was tough, having to go about this business in such a random, hit-and-miss manner. But there was nothing for it. He would simply have to work his way down the list until he found what he wanted. Who he wanted.

He stepped outside, closing the door behind him. It was a glorious night. The moon was holding water, the stars were twinkling, and all was right in the universe.

All except for one thing, that was. One niggling detail.

He pushed his hands into his coat pockets and started across the street. He thought about the others, the three people who would be receiving visits from him in the near future. He smiled slightly as their faces came up in his mind’s eye, one after the other.

Bang-bang, he thought. You’re dead.