Marine One

'You know we're getting creamed, don't you?'

'Yeah. I know. We'll just wait for the judgment, and then we'll take it up on appeal and try and settle for some reasonable amount.'

'That's pretty much what I was thinking too,' she said, trying not to be too hopeful.

We returned to the conference room and Kathryn now had color in her face. Rachel looked at us suspiciously and I gave her a dirty look. She continued preparing some notes. Kathryn said to Brightman, 'Mark, I told Mike that he could put on Wayne Bradley next.'

Brightman sat back in his chair, looking offended. 'I thought I was doing all the experts.'

'That was the plan, but what difference does it really make at this point? He's prepared Bradley all morning, and Braden has done the outline.'

She glanced at Braden, who looked up and smiled.

Brightman replied, 'Do I have any say in this? I think consistency of trial counsel at this point would be-'

'I've decided. I want him to put on Wayne Bradley this afternoon.'

'Well, I'm on the record then as opposing this idea. Do you want me to be in the courtroom?'

'Sure, you can sit next to him, between him and Rachel.'

'Well, I disagree with this, but I'll do whatever you say, Kathryn-as long as WorldCopter agrees with this.'

Tripp nodded, although he was confused at Kathryn's motivations. He had given up.

I wolfed down half a turkey sandwich. As I finished, I said to Braden, 'You've been working pretty hard. You should come to court and see Bradley testify.'

'Wouldn't miss it,' he agreed.

'I'm going to go get set up. I'll see you over there.' I headed for court and called Debbie. 'Can you take Bradley to the courtroom now? Walk him all the way in. Don't let anybody come near him.'

'Will do. So that's my new job. Personal escort service.'

'That sounds wrong somehow.'

'Yes, it does. How about personal security detail?'

'There you go, see you there.'

I dialed Marcel's number and he picked up immediately. 'Marcel, you got that info for me on the tip weights?'

'Yes.'

'What's the answer?'

'Just as you thought.'

'Can you prove it?'

'Yes, I can.'

'Any doubt?'

'No. None.'

'Bring it.'

'I will be there in a few minutes.'

I got to court before all the other attorneys, including Hackett and his minions. Court was to reconvene at one thirty, and I arrived just after one. People were beginning to tire of the routine, only coming in at the last minute instead of being there eagerly awaiting the next event. Brightman must really have put them to sleep. Some of the journalists sitting outside writing on notepads and typing on computers were surprised to see me.

I sat at the lead counsel position at the table, and a few minutes later Rachel joined me. I asked Rachel quietly without looking at her, 'Did you bring it?'

'Yes.'

'You gonna serve it?'

'With pleasure.'

'Should be an interesting afternoon.'

'To say the least. I can't wait to see what you've got.'

'Well, if this ends up somehow with me in jail for contempt of court, just claim that you didn't know anything about any of this.'

'It would be true.'

'Keep it that way. Enjoy the show.'

The door creaked open behind us and Hackett came in. 'Speaking of the literal devil,' I said to Rachel under my breath.

'You think he sees it coming?'

'Not a chance.'

She smiled and reached into her briefcase to pull out a manila envelope. She put it next to her at the counsel table.

Hackett sat down, glanced at me with some surprise on his face, and said nothing. His other associates returned, as did the gallery. The courtroom filled, and just as the clerk was ready to bring the judge in, Debbie walked in with Wayne Bradley. She looked beautiful and triumphant. She had never helped me in any case or at any trial before, and I think was surprised that I had asked her to watch over the most important witness in the case; the most important witness in my life. She was wearing a navy blue business suit that I didn't even remember she owned, with a V-neck, cream-colored blouse. She walked right up to me, opened the gate, and held it open as Bradley walked through. Brightman came in and sat with us at the table.

Others filed in and filled the courtroom in anticipation of the afternoon session. The clerk retrieved the jury from the hallway. The jurors retook their seats and the judge took the bench. She looked at Bradley, then looked at Debbie, sitting in a chair behind me. 'Your next witness, Mr. Nolan.'

I looked over at Hackett, who looked bored and smug. 'Your Honor, the defense calls Mr. Wayne Bradley.'

I turned the pages in my notebook to the outline that Braden had prepared for me, turned past it, and looked at the outline I'd spent almost all night preparing.

Bradley made his way to the witness stand, took the oath, and sat with his battered briefcase on his lap. He looked his usual disheveled self, but had at least put on a wrinkled navy blue sport coat out of respect for the court. I walked him through his qualifications, his prior experience as a testifying expert in metallurgy or materials science, the number of aircraft accidents he'd been involved in investigating, and spent a good deal of time on his prior job as a chairman of the NTSB metallurgical lab.

I watched the jury as he went through his qualifications. They had already decided this case, but they were interested in what someone of his qualifications had to say about the accident and certainly wanted to hear what, if anything, WorldCopter had to say about the accident. If we had another story to tell, it had better begin now or we would lose them forever. I led Bradley through the initial part of his testimony as if the last ten days had never happened. He talked about Hackett's experts, how they had jumped to conclusions based on insufficient evidence, how assigning blame to the tip weights was convenient, but unsupportable. It was impossible to know whether the absence of tip weights on the blade that had been found by the wreckage was the cause of the accident or a result of the accident. When blades start slamming into the side of a broken helicopter in the air, the blades can come apart, they can shred, and they can certainly knock the end cap off and jettison tip weights. So it was premature to form a conclusion that the tip weights caused the crash without finding the tip weights. And, he noted, the plaintiffs' experts had never found nor seen the tip weights from the blade of Marine One. I glanced down at the yellow notepad in front of Hackett. He was doodling, drawing a bunny or an odd dog. I asked Bradley, 'The testimony you've just given to the jury, is that the same testimony that you gave at your deposition that Mr. Hackett here took?'

'Yes, he asked me basically the same questions and I gave him the same answers.'

'When you filed your expert report and gave your deposition at Mr. Hackett's request, were your opinions final at that time?'

'Yes.'

I turned the page. 'Has anything occurred since you gave your deposition to cause you to reconsider your opinions?'

'Yes.'

Hackett's head snapped up and his pen dropped to the pad.

I asked Bradley, 'What has happened?'

'I just couldn't accept that the federal government couldn't find the tip weights. I worked for the NTSB for many years. Head of their metallurgy lab. You would think they'd find everything. Every single blade of grass that matters. Well, in my experience, since we're human, that isn't possible. They miss things. Sometimes important things. So I asked if we could go back out there again in the hope of finding something. We all-all the experts working with you on this-were in agreement we should never stop looking.'

'Hadn't the NTSB already exhausted the hunt for tip weights?'

'Well, they had put a lot of manpower and time into it, but we had no knowledge of whether they have found any of them because they've closed their investigation to outsiders, even to the members of the investigation, like WorldCopter.'

'Did you find anything?'

'Yes. We did.'

Hackett shot to his feet. He had a choice. He now knew that I had something he didn't know about. He had to make a choice, to rush up to the court for a sidebar conference so that the jury would not hear any of the discussion, or to go for the fatal blow, and shut the witness down right in front of the jury. Hackett said, 'Your Honor, this witness is about to testify about information that was not in his report or part of his deposition. He may not do so. He's only allowed to testify about his final opinions as they were prepared and exchanged with the other side. Anything else he 'found' is irrelevant.'

I replied, 'Your Honor, what he found is not only relevant, it is critical to know what happened to Marine One. Mr. Hackett has based his entire case on the idea that the tip weights came off the helicopter. I don't know why he would be concerned about what, if anything, has been recently found at the accident site.'

The judge responded, 'I don't see any harm in learning what he has found. You may continue.'

'Dr. Bradley, what have you found?'

'While at the scene recently, Karl Will and you went up in a cherry picker-one of those trucks tree trimmers use-to get a close look at a broken branch high up in one of the trees. Well, he found a tip weight embedded in the broken branch and an indentation in the trunk where another tip weight had been but was no longer. I have examined it and I believe it is one of the tip weights from Marine One.'

The courtroom sucked in its breath. Hackett started turning an odd reddish color. He jumped up again, 'Your Honor, this is out of order. He is not allowed to do any