which he had ever lived and it was the first time his intelligence had been recognized.
Daniel's dark jacket was hanging from a hook behind his door, his paycheck sticking out of the inside pocket. Ninety thousand dollars! The size of his salary still amazed him and he felt incredibly lucky to have been chosen by the powers at Reed, Briggs. Every day he half expected to be told that his hiring had been a cruel practical joke.
Daniel had talked with the recruiting partner who visited the law school only to practice his interviewing technique. His invitation to a second interview at the firm had come as a shock, as had the offer of employment. Reed, Briggs's hires were graduates of Andover and Exeter; they attended Yale and Berkeley as undergraduates and went to Harvard and NYU for law school. Daniel was no dummy-his undergraduate degree in biology was with honors and he had made the Law Review -but there were still times when he felt out of his league.
Daniel swiveled his chair toward the window and watched the darkness gather over the Willamette River. When was the last time he had left these offices when it was still light out? Molinari was right. He did have to learn to say no, to relax a little, but he worried that he would earn a reputation as a slacker if he turned down work. Just last night he had awakened, drenched in sweat, from a dream in which he cringed in the dark at the bottom of an elevator shaft as a car descended slowly, but inexorably, toward him. You didn't have to be Sigmund Freud to dope out the meaning of that one.
At 6:45, Daniel finished rereading a draft of his memo. He stretched and rubbed his eyes. When he pulled his hands away he saw Susan Webster smiling at him from the doorway. He couldn't decide what was more shocking- that she was smiling or that she'd deigned to pay him a visit.
'Hi,' he said casually, consciously keeping his eyes off of her runway-model figure.
'Hi yourself,' she answered as she perched gracefully on the arm of one of Daniel's chairs. She glanced at the papers spread across his desk.
'If you're not at happy hour you must be working on a case of monumental importance. Is that a brief for the United States Supreme Court or a letter to the president?'
Susan looked and dressed like a cover girl, but her degree from Harvard was in physics and she'd been in the top ten at Stanford Law. Because of their science backgrounds, Susan and Daniel had been chosen as part of a team that was defending Geller Pharmaceuticals against a claim that one of its products caused birth defects. During the six months that they had worked together she had never asked Daniel's opinion on anything and rarely addressed him, so he was surprised that she was talking to him now.
'This is a memo for Mr. Briggs,' Daniel said finally.
'Oh? Anything interesting?'
'It's another one of Aaron Flynn's cases,' Daniel replied.
'Flynn again, huh? He sure has his fingers in a lot of pies.'
'I'll say.'
'Which of our clients is he suing, this time?' Susan asked.
'Oregon Mutual. They insure Dr. April Fairweather for malpractice.'
'The therapist?'
'Yeah. How did you know?'
'Arthur had me do some work on the case, too. It's really weird. Do you know the facts?' Susan asked.
'No,' Daniel answered. 'I'm just working on an evidence issue.'
'This college student went to Fairweather because she was depressed and having trouble sleeping. She's alleging that Fairweather hypnotized her and caused her to develop false memories that her folks were in a satanic cult that did all sorts of stuff to her when she was a kid.'
'What sorts of stuff?'
'Weird sex, torture.'
'Sounds kinky. Is any of it true?'
'I doubt it.'
'I met Dr. Fairweather once when she was with Mr. Briggs,' Daniel said. 'She seemed normal enough.'
'Do you have a lot more work to do on the memo?'
'No. I just have to proof it once more.'
'So you're almost done?' Susan asked.
'Pretty much.'
Daniel didn't really imagine that Susan was going to suggest a drink or dinner-he pictured Susan's dates as rich, GQ -model types who drove exotic sports cars and owned homes in the West Hills with fabulous views of the mountains-but for just a second he fantasized that she'd been won over by his curly black hair, his blue eyes, and his engaging smile.
Susan leaned forward and spoke in an inviting whisper.
'Since you're finished with your work'-she paused dramatically-'could you do me a huge favor?'
Daniel had no idea where this was going, so he waited for Susan to continue.
'Coincidentally, it involves another one of Flynn's cases, Geller Pharmaceuticals,' Susan said. 'You know he made that request for production weeks ago?'
Daniel nodded.
'As usual, Geller took forever to get the documents to us. They're supposed to be delivered to Flynn by eight in the morning.'
Susan paused.
'Renee has it in for me,' she said. Renee Gilchrist was Arthur Briggs's secretary. 'She knew I had important plans tonight, but she told Brock Newbauer that I could review the documents this evening. She claims that she forgot, but I know she did it on purpose.' Susan leaned closer and spoke conspiratorially. 'She is jealous of any woman Arthur works with. That is a fact. Anyway, since you're done, I was wondering if you could finish the document review?'
Daniel was exhausted and hungry. He'd been looking forward to going home.
'Gee, I don't know. I still have some more work on this memo and I'm pretty beat.'
'I'll make it up to you, I promise. And there's not that much to do. Just a couple of boxes and you'd only have to give the papers a cursory review. You know, check for attorney work product or privileged stuff. It would mean a lot to me.'
Susan looked desperate. He was almost done, and there wasn't anything he was going to do tonight. Maybe finish a book he'd been reading, if he wasn't too tired, or watch some TV. What the hell, it never hurt to do a good deed.
'Okay.' He sighed. 'I'll save you.'
Susan reached across the desk and laid her hand on top of his.
'Thank you, Daniel. I owe you.'
'Big time,' he said, already feeling like a sucker. 'Now go and have fun.'
Susan stood up. 'The boxes are in the small conference room near the copying machine. Make sure they get to Flynn's office by eight in the morning. And thanks again.'
Susan was gone so quickly her disappearance seemed magical. Daniel stood and stretched. He was going to take a break anyway, so he decided to see what he'd let himself in for. He walked down the hall to the conference room and turned on the light. Five banker's boxes covered the table. He opened one. It was packed with paperwork. Daniel did a quick calculation and came up with a ballpark figure of three to five thousand pages per box. This would take all night, if he was lucky. This was impossible. He'd never get home.
Daniel hurried into the hall to see if he could catch Susan, but she was gone.
Chapter Three.
The Insufort case had started with the Moffitts. Lillian Moffitt worked as a dental hygienist and her husband, Alan, was an officer in the loan department of a bank. The day they found out that Lillian was pregnant was one of the happiest days of their lives. But Toby Moffitt was born with severe birth defects and their happiness turned to heartache. Alan and Lillian tried to convince themselves that Toby's bad fortune was part of God's mysterious plan, but they wondered what part of this plan could include heaping such misery on their little boy. All became clear to Lillian on the day she went to her neighborhood grocery store and saw a headline in a supermarket tabloid about Insufort, which called it the 'Son of Thalidomide.'
Thalidomide was one of the great horror stories of the mid-twentieth century. Women who used it during
