The Death of Distant Stars, A Legal Thriller Read online

  THE DEATH OF DISTANT STARS

  A Legal Thriller

  BY

  Deborah Hawkins

  The Death of Distant Stars © 2016 by Deborah Hawkins

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever, without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination and have been used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locals is entirely coincidental.

  Published by Deborah Hawkins

  ISBN 978-0-9889347-7-1 (ebook)

  ISBN 978-0-9889347-8-8 (print)

  “A star’s light shines the brightest,

  When it’s starting to collapse.”

  Supernova, Erin Hanson

  * * *

  “Revenge is an act of passion; vengeance of justice.”

  Samuel Johnson

  Table of Contents

  PROLOGUE

  THE FILING OF A LAWSUIT CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  MOTION FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  DISCOVERY, THE FIRST MOTION CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  DISCOVERY, THE SECOND MOTION CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  THE INVESTIGATION, PART ONE CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  THE INVESTIGATION, PART TWO CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  THE DEPOSITION CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  TRIAL CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  EPILOGUE

  TO THE READER

  NOVELS BY DEBORAH HAWKINS

  PROLOGUE

  Wednesday, August 1, 2012, Black’s Beach, San Diego, 7:30 a.m.

  He looked like any other blonde California surfer in his black wetsuit as he made his way down the Glider point trail with his board. His suit was unzipped and hung around his waist, revealing his broad shoulders and perfect six-pack abs. He was healthy and fit and only forty years old that day as he descended to the hard-packed sand at the edge of the water where he had surfed since childhood. He could have been the model for the covers of women’s romance novels instead of a Stanford-educated lawyer with a job he loved.

  At seven-thirty, there were only a handful of fellow surfers in the water. They looked like seals in their wetsuits as they floated far from shore where the waves began to form. They were focused on catching a ride on the perfect wave.

  He stood for a few moments, breathing in the cool ocean breeze and feeling it fan his cheeks, hot from the exertion of climbing down the trail. He listened to the throbbing cry of the seagulls overhead and watched the sleek, gray dolphins arcing joyfully into the air above the sun-streaked ocean before disappearing into its depths.

  He loved this place, and all the creatures who lived here. He’d never been far from this ocean. For that reason, he had refused to accompany Paul and Tom to Harvard in bone-chilling Boston. He slithered into the top of his wet suit and zipped it up. He waded into the water and launched his board into the waves. As he paddled farther and farther from shore, closer and closer to the joyful dolphins, he felt his soul join with the ocean as it always did. He belonged here, and here he always found peace.

  Then he saw it, the first wave of the day. He paddled into it, positioning himself over the swell just as it was about to break. He popped up on the board as he had done thousands of times and began his ride.

  * * *

  Wednesday, August 1, 2012, San Diego Breaking News, 6:30 p.m.

  Lifeguards found the body of forty-year-old Stephen Cooper washed up on Black’s Beach at 4:30 this afternoon. Stephen, a graduate of Stanford Law School, was a staff attorney for the National Resources Defense Council. He was part of a famous trifecta of champion surfers who grew up together in Pacific Beach. Stephen, along with his childhood friends, Paul Curtis and Tom Andrews, had won multiple national and international surfing competitions since the age of twelve. He is survived by his sister, Amanda Cooper.

  THE FILING OF A LAWSUIT

  CHAPTER ONE

  Friday, January 10, 2014, P & J’s Brewery, The Gaslamp District, San Diego

  Paul was always late. Kathryn Andrews wished she had remembered that before she walked into P & J’s Brewery and Tasting Room in the Gaslamp alone at the appointed hour of six p.m. But what did it matter, she asked herself, as she allowed the indifferent waitress with a host of Goth piercings to show her to a table and hand her a list of designer beers. She did everything alone now, and waiting for Paul in a brewery on a Friday night packed with singles looking for dates did not faze her. She could feel the male eyes at the bar checking her out, but she refused to look their way. They weren’t Tom; and so, by definition, she was not interested.

  Forty is too young to give up on love, the grief counselor had intoned over and over again in those black days after Tom’s death not quite two years ago. Dr. Nina Ferguson, sixty, if a day, a tiny bird of a woman who perched on the edge of her chair and peered at Kathryn with beady, black bird-eyes, insisted she had many years of life left. And maybe she did. But they would all be spent alone, holding back the tears the way a dam holds back a river.

  The heavy wooden doors with the frosted glass panels swung open, and Paul appeared. He smiled and waved and began to make his way through the half-sitting, half-standing throng in the tasting room. He and Tom had not been blood brothers, but they had grown up together in Pacific Beach as inseparable as siblings, with the same chiseled, blonde surfer good looks that made heads turn. And the female heads were turning as Paul crossed the room to her. A young litigation partner at Warrick, Thompson, everything about him said money.

  “Sorry, I’m late. A phone call I had to take.”

  “I knew you would be.” She stood up to accept his kiss on each cheek.

  The no-longer indifferent waitress’ eyes never left Paul’s face as he folded his six feet into the chair opposite Kathryn’s and accepted the beer list from her with his usual casual grace. He gave the hovering Goth his charming smile. “And would you bring us the food menu, too?” She sc
ampered off, happy do his bidding.

  Paul took off his obviously expensive navy suit coat and loosened his maroon power tie and studied the beer list. “Have you ordered?”

  “No, I was waiting for you to make sense of it. I’m a wine girl.”

  “Two pale ales,” he told the waitress when she reappeared. “Some fried calamari to start and two burgers, medium. Does that work for you, Kath?”

  “Perfect.” Tom was the only other person who had known her well enough to order for her. But then the three of them had been inseparable since their first month of law school at Harvard, twenty years ago.

  “So you knew I’d be late.” He settled back in his chair and smiled at her.

  “You always are. A Warrick, Thompson partner never sleeps.” She smiled and sipped the ale, finding it surprisingly smooth and mellow.

  “It feels like that.” He suddenly looked sad.

  “What’s wrong? You wanted Warrick out of law school. You got the offer. You’ve made partner and more money than you’ll ever spend. You knew the life you’d have to live to do that.”

  “Guilty on all counts. But I guess I didn’t think my marriage and losing Jodie were the price I’d have to pay.”

  The waitress returned with their appetizer.

  Kathryn looked around at the hopeful throng, sipping beer and taking flirting to a new level. “There are plenty of women in here who’d be interested.”

  But Paul shook his head as he finished a calamari and wiped his fingers on a napkin. “I can’t say I’m in a hurry to get married again. As much as I hate to admit it, Carolyn had a point: I wasn’t around enough to be good husband material.”

  “Wasn’t she a bit of a hypocrite, though? She very obviously married you for the money and the lifestyle.”

  Paul frowned. “Is that what you thought?”

  “It’s what Tom and I both thought from the beginning. To put it bluntly, she didn’t love you.”

  He sighed. “Couldn’t you have tried to tell me?”

  “Would you have listened?”

  He gave her a little grimace. “Ouch. No. Okay. How many ways do you want to say I-told-you-so?”

  “None. You had to do what you had to do to learn what you had to learn.”

  “She’s getting married again, by the way.”

  “Barely a year. She hasn’t wasted any time.”

  “I think this one was waiting in the wings.”

  “Another lawyer?”

  “No. Real estate investor. Net worth thirty million. He’ll be around a lot more.”

  Kathryn smiled. “He’ll probably get under her feet, and she’ll wish for the old days when she could spend your money behind your back.”

  Their burgers arrived, and Paul ordered more beer for them both. “I don’t really care what she thinks or feels. It’s Jodie I miss.”

  “But you get to see her, don’t you?”

  “In theory. But every other weekend with a five-year-old is a pipe dream for someone with my caseload and work hours. For the past six months I’ve been mostly living out of a suitcase in Chicago, taking depositions in a case that may go to trial next month. When I do get to come back, Jodie has some vague idea that I’m her ‘real’ daddy, but she calls Carolyn’s new guy ‘daddy,’ too. It hurts.”

  Kathryn reached across the table and squeezed his hand. His deep blue eyes, so like Tom’s, looked up at her full of anguish. “I know it must. Have you thought about leaving the firm?”

  “Thought about it, yes. Would I leave, no. There’s no point. Carolyn has set in motion what she wants for Jodie’s life. My leaving the firm and hanging out a solo shingle wouldn’t change that.”

  He put his burger down and waved his hand toward the tasting room where the frantic flirting seemed to be reaching a fever pitch. “I’ve come in here a few times, and tried that.” He nodded toward the bar. “Waste of time. What about you? Getting out at all since–”

  “Since Tom died. You can say it.”

  “It’s been a year and a half, so I thought maybe–”

  “Maybe I’d decided it’s time to move on? You don’t move on from someone like Tom. You know that, Paul.”

  He emptied his beer and called for another.

  “Be careful if you’re driving home.”

  “Oh, I’m not driving for a long, long time. I’m going back to the office to read deposition transcripts until midnight. I’ve never told you this, but I’ve always wished you’d picked me instead of Tom.”

  “What?”

  “Oh, come on. Don’t tell me you didn’t know I was waiting for the two of you to break up throughout law school. But once you met Tom, I never had a chance. I should never have introduced the two of you. Should have kept you for myself.”

  “Paul,” Kathryn put her hand over his again, “this is just the alcohol talking. We’ve never been anything but very close friends. And I think now we’re closer because we’re both missing Tom so much.”

  “Is it getting any easier for you?” His blue eyes, full of sympathy, held hers.

  “I tell myself it is, but it isn’t. I keep expecting to turn the corner at work and see him in his office. There’s someone else in there now, and it breaks my heart every time I look in and Tom’s not there. I keep trying to remember the sound of his voice. I’m so afraid a week from now or a month from now or a year from now, I won’t be able to remember.”

  “Maybe you should sell the house. Start fresh in a new place.”

  “Maybe, but I can’t afford to. You know what public defenders earn. It’s hard without Tom’s income.”

  “Didn’t he have some life insurance?”

  “A little. I put that bit away toward retirement. If I ever get to retire.”

  “You need a new job. Why not talk to Alan Warrick? You’ve got the same background I do. And you graduated higher in our class than I did.”

  Kathryn smiled. “And what would I do at Warrick, Thompson? Defend drug companies who murder people like Tom?”

  “Ouch. You make me ashamed of myself.”

  “But don’t you ever think about him when you’re defending those corporate monsters in depositions where plaintiffs’ attorneys are asking those fat-cat executives why they released a drug they knew would kill people?”

  “All the time. It’s been a lot harder to do this job since Tom died.”

  “Well, I certainly couldn’t do it.”

  “But you could be a star in white-collar crime. Look, there’s not much difference between negotiating plea bargains for people who can’t afford a lawyer and for those who can. You’d be able to put a lot of money away for retirement or anything else you wanted to do.”

  She sighed. “You’ve got a point.”

  “And the surroundings wouldn’t remind you of Tom.”

  “True.”

  “Want me to talk to Alan about setting up an interview for you?”

  Kathryn sighed and studied the tasting room where couples were beginning to form at the bar. “Not yet. There’s something else I have to do first.”

  “What?”

  “Sue Wycliffe Pharmaceutical.”

  “You mean a wrongful death claim for Tom?”

  She nodded.

  “But that’s crazy. You’re a fantastic criminal defense attorney, but you don’t know the first thing about a wrongful death suit.”

  “Actually, I do know the first thing. I know how to draft a complaint, and I know where the courthouse is. But, you’re right, I couldn’t take it to trial. Guys like you would chew me up and spit me out in under ten seconds. But the truth is, I’ve been trying to find someone to sue them for me. No luck so far. The attorneys I’ve talked to who want the case are incompetent ambulance-chasers who think they’d get some attorneys’ fees by filing suit and then settling without going to trial. The attorneys who have the expertise to try the case won’t talk to me.”

  The check had arrived, and Paul studied it for several seconds as if reading tea leaves. Then he pulled o
ut his American Express card and plunked it down on top of the bill. He studied Kathryn’s face for a few seconds. “I hesitate to say what I am about to say.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if you don’t already know, wrongful death litigation can get very nasty. The drug companies always try to put the dead person on trial for every possible sin he or she ever could have committed. I know. I’m ashamed to say I’ve done it.”

  “Are you saying don’t do it?”

  “I’m saying it won’t bring Tom back, and you’ll relive his death countless times if you do. Not to mention every quarrel, every spat the two of you ever had.”

  Kathryn stared at her empty glass. “Tom suffered horribly before he died. I want to throw that in Wycliffe’s face in front of a jury.”

  “So you’re determined to bring a wrongful death suit?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, then, the attorney you need to talk to is Hugh Mahoney. Biggest plaintiff’s attorney on the West Coast. Probably in the whole U.S. He does big drug and securities cases. And he is superb at both. To be honest, when we in the defense bar see his name on the pleadings, we immediately advise our clients to settle for the best deal Mahoney is willing to offer.”

  “I’ve tried to make an appointment with him, but his secretary always says his calendar is full.”

  “That’s because you told her you want to bring a wrongful death suit based only on Tom’s death. Hugh prefers to take class action plaintiffs because the actual plaintiffs receive virtually nothing in damages, but the attorneys make countless millions in attorneys’ fees. Hugh has built his law firm and his personal fortune on class action litigation.”

  “So since Hugh won’t see me, who else should I go to?”

  Paul shook his head. “Hugh and Hugh and Hugh. He’s the only attorney I know who has the guts and resources to take on a giant like Wycliffe Pharmaceutical. If you can get in to see him, Hugh will realize that if Wycliffe’s drug ate up Tom’s liver–and we know it did–then there are likely thousands of other victims out there. He’ll be happy to represent you.”