Blood Brothers (12 page)

Markus had been less sanguine about his performance. When Anne talked to him after the play, he had agonized over getting his lines slightly wrong a few times and having been off in his timing. Anne hadn’t noticed either alleged problem, but Markus was sure the critics in the audience had. While they were talking, Mel Goldsmith, who covered the theater for the
Chicago Reader
, had come up and congratulated Markus on his first appearance in a major role. Goldsmith then made a few polite, studiously noncommittal remarks and left. As soon as he walked away, Markus plunged into despair because he was sure that if Goldsmith had liked the play, he would have said so clearly. Because Goldsmith had been reserved in his comments, Markus reasoned, he must have hated the play—or worse, hated Markus’s performance. Crushed, Markus headed for home a few minutes later, where Anne had no doubt a bottle or two waited to comfort him.

Anne watched for the morning
Tribune
with trepidation. When it came, she immediately pulled out the Tempo section and hunted for the theater reviews. She found the item on
The Gamester
. The
Trib
’s reviewer described the play as “a surprisingly satisfying revival of a three-century-old morality play.” He commented that Markus’s performance “showed his newness to the professional stage in occasional technical missteps, but his portrayal of Stukely was strong and sure overall. Bjornsen’s performance held real power and revealed a thorough understanding of the character. This was his first time in a major role, but it won’t be his last.”

Anne read the review two more times and then called Markus. It was only six thirty in the morning, but she felt no guilt about waking him. He picked up after the first ring. “Hi, Mom!” he said brightly.

“Good morning, Markus. You’re up early.”

“Or late, depending on how you look at it. I couldn’t sleep last night. I finally gave up at four thirty, fired up the espresso maker, and started hunting for reviews on the Internet.”

“Have you seen the one in the
Tribune
?” asked Anne.

“I did. There are also reviews in the
Reader
and on a couple of theater websites. They all liked it, which hopefully will mean strong ticket sales. We should have a good run.”

“Great! What did they say about you? I thought the
Tribune
’s review was right on the money, by the way. You were terrific.”

“Thank you,” said Markus. “The other reviewers were also pretty generous in their comments about my performance. I think they’re going a little easy on me because I’m new, but I’m not complaining.”

“I don’t want to hear any false modesty from you this morning. You were really good, and I don’t want you to deny it. We are very proud of you.”

“Is that the royal ‘we,’ or has Dad really read any of the reviews?” he asked, a note of bitterness creeping into his voice. “I know he didn’t see the play.”

“He hasn’t had the chance to yet, dear. I haven’t given him the paper yet.”

“Did he ask for it?” Markus sighed. “Don’t bother answering. I know what you’ll say.”

“Your father loves you,” she replied softly.

“Sure. Fine.”

“It’s true, Markus,” she insisted. “I’m not saying it because I want it to be true, but because it really is.”

“Mom, he can’t even see me; how can he possibly love me?” The bitterness was now mixed with anger and hurt. He didn’t wait for her to answer. “He doesn’t see anything outside of his little corporate world, and I’m about as far outside that world as you can get. You know how he is; you know better than I do. The only time he notices me is when I force him to by being a problem somehow. If I haven’t embarrassed him in front of a major stockholder or something, he barely acknowledges my existence. All he cares about is that company. I don’t, and he’s never forgiven me for that. No, it’s worse: he’s ignored me for it. He decided I was a failure and moved on to Tom. He couldn’t fire me, of course, but he might as well have.”

“You didn’t take the path in life that he’d hoped you would,” Anne acknowledged, “but he truly does love you.”

Markus sighed again, and his voice sounded weary. “Oh, he may love me in a sense because I’m his son, but that’s not really love, is it? It’s duty. It’s an accident of nature. He has to love me because he’s my father, but he doesn’t love anything
about
me.”

“How about you?” Anne asked. “Do you love anything about him?”

“I—” He paused. “Touché.”

George Kulish hung up the phone and frowned. His Chicago contact had just called to confirm that the Chatterton business was finished, and that the local police did not appear to be handling it as a homicide. The contract had been handled efficiently, quickly, and at a reasonable cost. George made a mental note to use the same man if he ever had a similar business problem in Chicago in the future.

Still, a frown wrinkled his smooth, pale face, and he drummed his fingers on the mahogany table of his dacha’s sunroom. He poured himself a tumbler of twenty-year-old single-malt scotch that was only a few years younger than he was. He gulped it down quickly, grimaced, and poured himself another one. He brooded as he waited to feel the relaxing warmth of the alcohol reaching his blood. It was not the killing that bothered him; it was the personal failure that had led to the killing. The Chatterton contract shouldn’t have been necessary in the first place. He’d had little choice once the woman found the data-capture program on her computer, but it was his own sloppiness that had allowed that to happen.

Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals’ security software was a few years old, but well designed. George had needed to hack his way past it in order to find useful dirt for leverage in case Karl Bjornsen got out of line, and he had quickly decided that the easiest way to do that was with the username and password of someone with full access to the system. A techie from the IT department would have been ideal, of course, but stealing the cyber-identities of those types of people was difficult—and they were much more likely to discover the theft. So George had sent a run-of-the-mill data-capture program to various members of the research and financial staffs, attaching them to e-mails purporting to be messages from the recipients’ colleges regarding an upcoming reunion. Dr. Kathy Chatterton had taken the bait.

Although Dr. Chatterton was not technically savvy enough to prevent her computer from being infected, she was unfortunately savvy enough to run a good spyware detector, which had spotted George’s program. Once it did, she not only removed the program from her machine, she started trying to find out where the stolen data was going. Through foolish overconfidence, George had placed only rudimentary protections on the outgoing data stream, so there had been a significant risk that she would have succeeded in following it back to him.

Now she was dead and the threat was gone, but he was still no closer to cracking Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals’ security wall and finding the Bad Thing he needed. In retrospect, his efforts had been amateurish—hardly better than a phishing expedition. He expected more of himself.

And to make his mistake even more painful, the last phone intercepts he had picked up had been very tantalizing.
Something
bad was brewing at Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals, but what? If only Dr. Chatterton had called or e-mailed a friend to gossip, George might have picked up the Bad Thing he needed. Instead, she had decided to run straight to Karl Bjornsen’s archenemy, leaving George with no choice. He needed Karl vulnerable, but undamaged—and Dr. Chatterton had been on her way to damage him. Her life would have been short in any event, but that action had shortened it further.

He sipped his scotch and began to unwind as he watched the Arctic breakers crashing on the rocky beach below the sunroom window. He promised himself that his next effort would be a lot better planned and executed.

C
HAPTER
S
EVEN

S
ANDBAGS

The preliminary-injunction hearing began on a bright, clear afternoon in early June—though it was impossible to tell that from the blank-walled, fluorescent-lit courtroom where Ben stood. He gripped the podium in front of him and faced Judge Reilly across the courtroom’s well—the empty space faced by the bench, counsel tables, and jury box. The box was empty because, due to a quirk in the history of the law, juries are never used in civil cases that don’t involve a request for money. Since both Ben and Siwell were only asking for injunctions at this point, neither was entitled to a jury.

Noelle and Gunnar sat at the counsel table to Ben’s left, and Siwell and Karl were at the table to his right. The benches behind Gunnar and Noelle were empty, except for a few boxes containing potential exhibits. The benches on the other side of the courtroom, however, were packed with a small army of paralegals and associates from Siwell’s firm, several computers, a projector, a projection screen, and dozens of boxes. Two men in rumpled suits sat in the back row of benches. Ben was tempted to ask Gunnar if he knew who they were, but talking, even in a whisper, while the judge is on the bench is frowned on, and Ben didn’t want to start the hearing by being rude to the judge.

Judge Reilly nodded to Ben. “You may present your opening statement, Mr. Corbin.”

Ben straightened his notes for the third time and cleared his throat. He stood very straight, taking advantage of every inch of his five-foot-ten frame. “Thank you, Your Honor. The Court will have to decide two questions at the end of this hearing. The first is whether a proven embezzler should be allowed to continue to run a three-hundred-million-dollar company.”

“Objection,” said Siwell. “That’s argument, in addition to being dead wrong.”

Judge Reilly looked indecisively from Siwell to Ben. “Your Honor,” replied Ben, “I’m only saying what the facts will show at the end of the hearing. I’m entitled to do that in my opening statement.” He pointed to the empty jury box. “Besides, we don’t have a jury that might be misled by argument. Even if I were arguing, Your Honor could simply disregard it.”

The judge nodded. “Objection overruled.”

“Thank you, Your Honor. As I was saying, the evidence will establish that Karl Bjornsen has been siphoning millions of dollars out of Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals for his own use, and then falsifying the company’s accounting records to cover it up. We can document at least eight separate incidents over the past two years in which he stole more than six million dollars from the company. Six million dollars. And that’s just what we know about. We’re in the middle of discovery right now and more wrongdoing may come to light.

“From the founding of Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals until last year, Karl Bjornsen was the chairman of the board. His brother, Gunnar”—Ben turned and gestured to Gunnar—“was president and CEO. But then Karl decided he wanted complete control of the company and forced his own brother out. When
Crain’s Chicago Business
asked him why he did it, he said that one of the reasons was that he was ‘tired of always having someone telling me no.’ Someone needs to tell him no, and we ask the Court to do it, either by installing a team of auditors to monitor his dealings, or—preferably—by removing him from office and appointing a suitable replacement until the board of directors can choose his successor.” Ben snuck a look at Karl and Siwell, but neither one reacted visibly to his words.

“The second question the Court has to answer is whether there is any harm in waiting until the permanent-injunction hearing to decide whether to force Gunnar to give the formula for a multibillion-dollar product to the company while it’s still controlled by Karl. As Your Honor knows, Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals isn’t entitled to a preliminary injunction unless it can prove, among other things, that it will be irreparably harmed if the injunction doesn’t issue. The facts will show that there is no harm—let alone irreparable harm—in simply waiting until the permanent-injunction hearing. Before Gunnar was pushed out, he helped the company manufacture enough of the drug to do all the testing they have scheduled over the next six months. They haven’t even been given permission to start human trials yet, and they’re years from being able to bring the drug to market. They have all of the drug they’ll need between now and the permanent-injunction hearing.

“There’s no harm in waiting. Quite the contrary; the real risk is that the company will get control of the drug formula while Karl Bjornsen is still in charge and has no one to tell him no. If he can’t be trusted with a few million dollars, should Your Honor trust him with a drug worth billions?”

Ben glanced at his notes to allow time for his last point to settle. Then he nodded to his right and continued.

“I see Mr. Siwell muttering over there, and I expect that in a couple of minutes he’ll get up here and tell you that everything I’ve said is ‘scurrilous sewage’ or something like that. But it doesn’t matter what I say, and it doesn’t matter what he says. What matters is what the witnesses say and what the documents show. Facts are hard things to argue away, even when you argue as well as Mr. Siwell, and the facts will show that the only irreparable harm that is likely to occur between now and the permanent-injunction hearing will come from Karl Bjornsen’s continued use of the company’s bank account as his personal slush fund. Thank you, Your Honor.”

Sergei would have been in the courtroom to watch opening statements, but he had other business that morning. He pulled up outside the Illinois State Police District Two headquarters, a long, low building that looked more like an elementary school than a police station. He parked the Black Russian, went inside, and greeted the receptionist. “Good morning. Could you tell Detective Munoz that Sergei Spassky is here for him?”

A few minutes later, a burly Hispanic man in his early forties appeared in the waiting room. “Sergei, it’s good to see you again. Did you want to talk here or go out someplace?”

“Good to see you too, Dan. How about the Dunkin’ Donuts I saw a couple of blocks up the road? I could use a cup of coffee, and I’d be happy to buy you a donut.”

“I’ve sworn off donuts since I took a desk job,” replied Munoz, “but coffee sounds good.”

They made small talk as they walked to the Dunkin’ Donuts, asking about each other’s lives and careers. They had worked together on a couple of cases when Sergei was an FBI agent, and they had gotten to know each other well enough to be friendly, but not well enough to be truly friends.

They arrived at the donut shop, Sergei bought their coffee, and they found an isolated table where they could talk. “So what’s on your mind?” Munoz asked after they sat down.

“Kathy Chatterton. The doctor I mentioned in my voice mail. What’s the ISP’s take on her death?”

“I took a look at the file before I came over. It looks pretty straightforward—single-vehicle accident on the Eisenhower. Based on the crash scene, there’s no reason to believe it was a homicide. No evidence of tampering with her vehicle, no foreign paint on the wreck to indicate that she was pushed off the road, nothing like that. We’ve interviewed your Mr. Bjornsen, but we haven’t found any independent evidence of foul play.”

“Have you interviewed anyone from Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals? I wonder if they’ve got alibis that hold water.”

Munoz shook his head. “We haven’t, and we’re not likely to unless we open a homicide investigation, which I’m not inclined to do. There’s just not enough here—no threats, no physical evidence, no witnesses to the death.”

“She died on the Eisenhower and
no one
saw it?” said Sergei. “I know it was late at night, but doesn’t that seem a little odd to you?”

Munoz shrugged. “Not really. I’m sure people saw it, but they didn’t call the police. That happens a lot. It doesn’t change the bottom line—we have no witnesses. All we have is a guy who says the woman
must
have been killed because she was on her way to give him something important. It’s a close call, but without more we’re not going to open an investigation. If my budget hadn’t been cut, I might look into it further, but we just don’t have the resources.”

“I hear you,” said Sergei, who had been half expecting that response. “By the way, did you find anything in the car that looked like lab reports or a tissue sample? And were you able to pull images from her cell-phone camera?”

“No, but that doesn’t mean much. The car was heavily damaged by fire. The interior was completely burned out and the phone was fried.”

“That could destroy evidence of some types of vehicle tampering, couldn’t it?” asked Sergei. “And if the exterior was scorched badly enough, paint from another vehicle could be charred off, couldn’t it?”

“Maybe,” conceded Munoz. He put down his coffee and looked Sergei in the eye. “Why are you pushing this? Is it just because your client is paying you to, or is there something you haven’t told me yet?”

Sergei looked back at Munoz silently for a moment, debating how much to tell him. “Dan, do you know Alex Geist?”

“Not personally, but I’ve heard the name. High-priced PI-slash-security-consultant, right?”

Sergei nodded. “He’s working for Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals. I’m pretty sure he’s on the other side of the same lawsuit I’m working on.”

“You think he killed her?”

“I doubt it, but when I first got involved in the case, I got a strange call from him. He told me to watch myself, and I asked if he was threatening me. He said he wasn’t, but that I might run into people who don’t bother to threaten. I wonder if Kathy Chatterton ran into them first.”

Munoz finished his coffee and stared thoughtfully into the empty cup for a few seconds. “Maybe I can free up some time to dig into this a little further.”

Bert Siwell stepped up to the podium. He wore a carefully tailored navy-blue suit that hid his ample stomach and emphasized his wide shoulders. He gave the judge a confident, relaxed smile. “Good morning, Your Honor. ‘Desperate drivel’ is probably a more accurate description of Mr. Corbin’s opening, but I can live with ‘scurrilous sewage.’ By the end of this hearing, it will be patently clear to everyone in the courtroom that Karl Bjornsen has engaged in no financial wrongdoing. Mr. Corbin’s client has not been involved in Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals’ finances for years, and frankly never understood them. In fact, he nearly drove the company into bankruptcy before Karl intervened and appointed a CFO.

“Gunnar Bjornsen is a scientist, not an accountant, but as a courtesy, the new CFO continued to allow Gunnar full access to the company’s financial records. Based on the discovery we’ve received so far, it looks like Gunnar has spent the last several years saving copies of documents from every transaction he didn’t understand and taping them together into a paranoid tapestry of alleged fraud. The company’s CFO will be here tomorrow to explain each transaction in as much or as little detail as Your Honor desires, but for now, suffice it to say that no competent accountant looking at all the facts could possibly conclude that there was any fraud here.

“Turning to the injunction my client is requesting, it was interesting to hear what Mr. Corbin
didn’t
say. He didn’t say that the Neurostim formula isn’t a trade secret. He didn’t say it isn’t Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals’ property. He didn’t even say that my client won’t be entitled to have its property returned at the end of this case. All he said was that there’s no harm in depriving Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals of its property until then.

“No harm? Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals’ stock price is down ten percent since the markets discovered that Gunnar Bjornsen is withholding information on how to manufacture Neurostim. That’s harm. Every time the financial press covers the company, they bring up this litigation. That’s harm.”

He pulled a news clipping out of his notebook. “Just last week, the company announced that its second-quarter numbers were better than expected and that it was raising its earnings forecast for the remainder of the year. Here’s what Bloomberg said: ‘Despite legal clouds over the ownership of its new flagship product, Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals reported strong earnings for the second quarter. It also raised its forecast for the rest of the year by two cents per share.’”