Balance of Power

against the company who made the bullets that tore them apart. And you want to control that, too.'

    Despairing, Lara clutched her arm. 'I don't want anything from this.'

    'As long as I let your lawyer run the case.' Turning on her, Mary demanded, 'Are you still my sister, Lara? Or are you just his wife?'

    Lara's mouth felt dry. 'I'm your sister. That makes us both Inez's daughters, Joanie's sisters, Marie's aunts. We both hurt. Why fight over them when they're dead?'

    'Because they were my family,' Mary retorted. 'Not a prop at a wedding, or an unpaid political advertisement, or people whose problems I can talk about on television . . .'

    'The Chronicle was about to print the story.' Wounded, Lara stopped herself, feeling the depth of her own guilt. 'I couldn't help what happened, Mary.'

    'You can help what you do,' Mary said with muted anger. 'Or expect me to do.'

    They had to stop this, Lara knew. She tried to step outside herself, to see two grieving sisters. 'Tell me, Mary, what this lawsuit means to you.'

    'More than money,' Mary answered with fierce possessiveness. 'It's my way of remembering them, and honoring my mother.'

    'My mother,' echoed in Lara's brain. 'Then when you're alone,' she implored her sister, 'ask yourself how she would want us to be.'

    Silent, Mary gave her a wary, guarded look.

    'Alone,' she said at last. 'Right now that's all I want.'

    Five hours later, Mary called Lara at her hotel, and said that she would meet with Sarah Dash. Only then did Lara cry.

SIX

To Sarah's surprise, when Mary Costello appeared at the Kilcannon Center, Robert Lenihan was with her. As soon as Sarah had led them to her office, he said in a proprietary tone, 'I gather that Mrs. Kilcannon wanted you to meet my client.'

    Casting a disdainful glance at Sarah's spartan office, he sat back, hands folded comfortably across his belly. His own office in Beverly Hills was as legendary as his ego: a former colleague of Sarah's had described its decor as 'late Byzantine, accented by photographs of the Emperor Bob receiving tribute from Presidents and other lesser men.' In contrast to Lenihan's arrogance, Mary's blue-green eyes conveyed the aftershock of a trauma so severe that it seemed to have overwhelmed her.

    At once, Sarah decided to focus on Mary. 'What I understand,' she said gently, 'is that you wanted to discuss a potential action for wrongful death.'

    Silent, Mary nodded. 'What's your take?' Lenihan inquired of Sarah. 'My message to the jury will be simple—that Lexington designed and marketed the P-2 as a weapon uniquely suited to killing human beings.'

    'That's fine,' Sarah rejoined. 'But you have to put the P-2 in its context.' Pausing, she spoke to Mary. 'Financially, the gun industry's in trouble. Guns don't wear out, and their traditional owners are slowly dying off.

    'So the industry faced a choice. They could expand their customer base by making guns safer, or by persuading urban and suburbanites that they needed superguns capable of firing more rounds more quickly, and of inflicting deadly wounds.' Her voice softened. 'You saw the choice they made. Morally, it's analogous to big tobacco deciding to put more nicotine in cigarettes . . .'

    'The difference,' Lenihan objected, 'is that people don't smoke in self-defense. As Lexington will drive home to a jury.'

    Lenihan, Sarah thought with irritation, was positioning himself as the voice of experience, uniquely capable of persuading twelve ordinary citizens to decide for Mary Costello. 'Self-defense,' she said to Mary, 'doesn't begin to explain the record rate of gun violence in America.

    'In nineteen sixty-three, there were a little over half a million handguns in America. Today, there are over three million. In 1963, only fourteen percent of handguns had a magazine capacity of ten rounds or more. The next year, the percentage of those guns tripled. And the P-2 is among the worst. It's not designed for self-defense. It's simply not accurate enough. All it's good for is spraying the most bullets in the least amount of time.' Turning to Lenihan, she finished, 'That's your case. Because that's why Bowden bought it.'

    Mary's gaze darted back to Sarah. 'But why do ordinary people want one?'

    'Fear,' Sarah answered. 'Fear of minorities, or civil disorder, or the government, or violent crime. Fear sells guns to homeowners, and single women.' Before Lenihan could interrupt, Sarah continued. 'Fear even sells guns to cops. The gun industry sold the first superguns to police, then told them they were threatened by the even more lethal guns they'd begun selling to civilians, then offered the cops the newest superguns in exchange for their old ones, and then resold those guns on the open market, double-dipping while increasing the number of lethal weapons on the streets. Which increased the risks to cops . . .'

    'It's an arms race,' Lenihan interposed, 'as the President suggested. The message is that the world is a scary place, populated by people who are armed and dangerous, so you'd better be better armed than they are.'

    Sarah nodded. 'That's how the SSA pushes these state laws creating an automatic right to carry a concealed handgun. The idea is that you need a hidden gun to defend yourself against someone else's hidden gun.' Abruptly, she turned to Mary. 'I'm sorry,' she apologized. 'Give two trial lawyers an audience, and we'll talk for hours. It occurs to me that you may actually have some questions.'

    Plainly nettled at being cut off, Lenihan, too, faced Mary. 'There's one more aspect, Mary, that I think we should cover. I call it 'entertainment marketing.'

    'Lexington creates video games where kids can fire a 'virtual' P-2. They also place their guns in movies and TV shows, often as the criminals' gun of choice. The idea is to create a whole new wave of technofreaks—from kids to criminals to survivalists—who've just got to have the newest, lightest, fastest killing machine.

    'That's what Bowden responded to. I'm confident that I can prove that the P-2 has no legitimate sporting use; that its sole function is to kill a lot of people quickly; that it contains features that are especially attractive to mass murderers and other criminals; that it's one of the weapons most frequently used in crimes; and that the Eagle's Claw is designed not to stop a would-be burglar or rapist, but to make death a near certainty.' Now his own voice softened. 'The deaths of your mother, sister and niece, for which Lexington should pay and pay and pay.'

    Mary glanced at Sarah, as though caught between competing forces. 'How can we sue them,' she asked, 'if selling these guns is legal?'

    'That's the crux of their argument,' Sarah agreed. 'But another argument is that the P-2 worked exactly the way it's supposed to. If it's not defective—unlike a faulty tire or an SUV that flips—how can they be sued?

    'You can't sue them, Lexington will say, for murders that some demented stranger committed with a nondefective legal product. Even if Lexington knew to a certainty that someone like Bowden would choose a P-2 to commit murder.' Sarah's tone became etched with disgust. 'Which Lexington did, by the way. Remember the white supremacist who killed three kids at a Jewish day- care center in Los Angeles? He used a Lexington P-2.'

    'So what's your theory?' Lenihan asked sharply. 'That Lexington could have imagined the illegal use of a legal product doesn't get Mary her verdict. Or else Ford would be liable if Bowden had killed them with your hypothetical SUV.'