The Last Trial (Kindle County Legal Thriller, #11)

by Scott Turow

And he made sure this time I couldn’t accept it. But I doubt he’s spent a second thinking about the position he put me in. That’s not his nature.” Startled by the depth of Lep’s anger,

too. But tell me the truth. Do you think that’s ever dawned on Kiril? That it’s not just his name on the door?”

Peter chose physical distance and, within a year, took a job as a hospitalist at Kaiser in San Francisco.

‘Peter is gay.’

Three years ago, Peter married Tran, a young doctor who had been a resident in training on Peter’s service. The two had adopted a beautiful little Mexican girl, Rosa, but Stern, the child’s sole living grandfather, had seen and held her only once, when Peter came to town last year virtually unannounced for the med school graduation party for Marta’s daughter.

He had been self-concerned and worked too hard instead of being the kind of involved father Peter wanted? Stern

The law is humanity’s sanctuary, where we retreat from unreason. And humans need the law, because they need to believe there is some justice to their interactions, a justice that God or Fate or the Universe, call it what you like, will never provide on their own.

Unlike Innis, Lep received a formal grant of immunity

him. Like everyone else here, she is captivated by the family drama, as old as Oedipus holding a sword over his father’s head.

For Peter, working with his father would have been like the torture of Prometheus, who according to Greek myths was chained to a post while his guts were eaten each morning by a vulture. But for Marta, it has been liberating. Stern gives

Stern understands that by now she’s had enough—a widespread reaction of lawyers in their late fifties. But he is proud of how well this life has suited her, how good she looks in her closing moments in their shared calling.

But no matter how thorough Cecil’s expertise on pharmaceutical law, that does not make him a maven about everything that happens in the courtroom, which he is not inclined to recognize. Perhaps

They are successful ‘litigators,’ meaning they are skilled in taking depositions and negotiating settlements, but with very limited experience with juries. That makes them a little like adolescent boys in a locker room in Stern’s day, pretending to know a lot about sex.

His childhood in poverty still clings to him like the scent of smoke after a fire,

Chief among them was the first European to arrive here, a trapper and trader named Jean-Baptiste Point DuSable, for whom the central municipality in the Tri-Cities is named, and who, even today, many locals do not realize was black.

Kiril put Olga off for many months, claiming there was too much tumult in his life dealing with the final approval of g-Livia. He promised he would tell

Donatella as soon as the product was on the market.”

maYbe Olga did it

In those days, Hartung’s first name was Gilbert, and in public she lived the role she’d been doomed to by her birth anatomy.

Although the press seldom chooses to report the fact, the Supreme Court of the United States decided long ago that a reporter has no privilege to refuse to testify in a federal criminal case. Despite

return. By now, they have assigned themselves seats in the jury box and file in in that order. Establishing these customs on their own, with no instruction from the judge, generally indicates a group that will deliberate cooperatively and reach a verdict, notwithstanding their differences of opinion.

“I had signed waivers,” Hartung answers. Surprise, like some measurable voltage, passes through the courtroom. Stern can see Moses staring at Hartung. Obviously, he had no idea about this.

“Anthony Neucriss.” That’s one of the sons. No mystery anymore who Hartung’s source was for these stories. That leaves the eternal question of what underhanded deal the Neucrisses made to get the information in the first place, but Stern

That is like asking where a dog got its bark.

Turchynov engaged in a practice called ‘front-running.’ Realizing that a $20 million sale was going to weaken the price of PT stock, Turchynov sent her own order to the trading floor a few minutes before Kiril’s, increasing her profit by at least $20,000. The people who engage in

“So you met with Olga Fernandez on March 24. She’s the little hottie who was bumping Kiril, right?”

Laughter, it turns

out, is the soul of liberty.

the last 10b5-1 plan,

tachycardia. From some crag in his memory, he identifies the number. There were periods in the past when he called for one reason or another.

subsides to pique as she looks at her father. “Honest to God, Dad. Men are idiots. I could see the minute that woman walked into the courtroom that she was going to fuck Kiril over any way she could.”

perspicacity

“Well perhaps, then,” he says, preparing to use a word that seldom crosses his lips, “we can now fuck her over in return.”

It has been years since he has felt this kind of eagerness about a cross. Whatever the irony, Innis has indeed made him feel young again.

now. The identity of the lawyer from Kindle County who asked Innis to marry him more than a quarter of a century ago, the man Stern might even know, is now obvious.

answer the question with what’s in the file in his hands. Thus prompted, Stern opens the folder and looks down at the document, which is a flyer for a rock concert next month by a group apparently known as Fire-Breathing Cattle.

“Now, calling your attention, Dr. McVie, to December 5, 2018, when you testified before the grand jury here in

Kindle County, do you recall telling those grand jurors, ‘I knew nothing about g-Livia causing sudden deaths until after I spoke

to Dr. Pafko on August 7, 2018.’ Did ...

When the jury returns, Sonny says, “Dr. McVie has decided to assert her constitutional right not to answer further questions from either side. So her testimony is concluded and we are done for the day.”

weak

traces back to Innis and her tip to the Neucrisses:

Journal, the lawsuits, the FDA voiding its approval of g-Livia, and worst of all, Kiril’s prosecution.

seems contrary to her own interests

“I think,” says Stern, “that come what may, Kiril will be paying for your tickets to see the Fire-Breathing Cattle.”

That is the value of experience, he supposes, to be able to read the meaning of signs, to know the large impact signaled by small things.

what surer sign of success than forcing a witness to assert her Fifth Amendment right to silence in the midst of her testimony, a first even for him?

It is a good time—past time—for him to leave the courtroom.

“How is it, Kiril, that Olga knew we were looking for the records related to Innis’s severance agreement? Document production is not in her area at the company, is it?”

“For nearly forty years he has acted as if the Nobel Prize citation said,

‘From now on, you may believe whatever suits you.’”

Donatella sways her head with an air of deep sadness, then kisses Stern on each cheek and steps into the waiting elevator with Ardent.

But even imagining the nods, the glances, the snorts of disapproval, is lacerating. Was he really the same kind of selfish buffoon as Kiril? And without a Nobel Prize in compensation.