The Last Trial
Scott Turow
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2020 by S.C.R.I.B.E., Inc.
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In a few places, lines from The Burden of Proof (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1990) are quoted or closely paraphrased and are gratefully used with permission of the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Turow, Scott, author.
Title: The last trial / Scott Turow.
Description: First Edition. | New York : Grand Central Publishing, 2020.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019049243 | ISBN 9781538748138 (hardcover) | ISBN
9781538748121 | ISBN 9781538748084 (ebook)
Subjects: GSAFD: Legal stories.
Classification: LCC PS3570.U754 L37 2020 | DDC 813/.54—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019049243
ISBN: 978-1-5387-4813-8 (hardcover), 978-1-5387-4812-1 (large print), 978-1-5387-4810-7 (signed edition), 978-1-5387-0300-7 (special signed edition), 978-1-5387-4808-4 (ebook)
E3-20200316-DA-NF-ORI
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
I. OPENING: November 5, 2019 1. The End
2. The Witnesses
3. Friends
4. g-Livia
5. Innocent
6. Marta
II. MURDER 7. Day Two: The Victims
8. Paint
9. Day Three: Experts
10. Kiril
11. Innis
III. FRAUD: Week Two 12. Venture Capital
13. Her Plan
14. FDA
15. His Mother’s Son
16. Olga
17. The Night
18. Wendy Hoh
19. Taking the Prize
20. His Father’s Son
21. Innis Returns
IV. INSIDER TRADING 22. The Reporter
23. A Woman Unknown
24. Dr. McVie Takes the Stand
25. Brilliant Pinky
26. Stern’s Notes
V. CLOSING 27. The Prosecution Rests
28. Oscar
29. The Judge Rules
30. Mistrial
31. Final Motions
32. Closing
VI. JUDGMENT 33. The Verdict
34. Donatella’s News
35. Another Interview with Ms. Fernandez
36. Don Juan in Hell
37. A Dinner
38. The Other Dr. Pafko
39. Returning
Discover More
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Scott Turow
For all my grandchildren—those here, those to come
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Prologue
A woman screams. Shrill and desolate, the brief sound rips through the solemn hush in the corridors of the old federal courthouse.
Within the huge courtroom of the chief judge, the spectators are on their feet. The case on trial here, the criminal prosecution of a world-renowned physician, has been national news, and the gallery has been shoulder-to-shoulder every day. Now most of the onlookers are straining to see what has just happened beyond the walnut rail that bounds the area reserved for the trial participants.
The defendant’s lead counsel, a very old man but still quite celebrated, has sagged from sight at the defense table. His client, the accused doctor, who is almost as aged as his attorney, kneels, holding the fallen man’s limp hand by the wrist.
“No pulse,” the doctor shouts. “Help, please!”
With that, the young woman beside him, who first cried out, takes flight. She is the paralegal on the case and also the old lawyer’s granddaughter, and she bulls down the center aisle of the gallery, headed toward the door. Beside the doctor, the attorney’s daughter, his law partner for decades, has been largely paralyzed by distress. All along, she has approached this trial, their last case together, with foreboding. Now she is weeping spontaneously, making no sound despite the tears racing down behind her glasses. The two prosecutors, the United States Attorney and his younger assistant, have sped from their seats across the courtroom. Working together, the pair take hold of the figure heaped on the floor.
In her robe, the chief judge has rushed down from the bench, intent on taking control of the scene, but she stops, suddenly mindful that the jury remains here. Like the other onlookers, the jurors are on their feet in the box in various stricken poses. The judge points to the deputy marshal positioned near them and shouts, “Remove the jury, please,” then continues forward.
The court security officer, in his blazer and flesh-colored earpiece, has run across the courtroom to help, and with his aid, the prosecutors slowly hoist the old lawyer’s body, placing him on his back on the walnut table, as his daughter shoves aside papers and equipment to make room. The old doctor quickly spreads the attorney’s suit jacket and rips open his white shirt to expose his chest. The lawyer and the doctor have been friends for decades, and there is a trace of tenderness as the physician briefly presses his ear over the other man’s heart, then sets the heel of his palm on the sternum of the inert figure, pumping with both hands at regular intervals.
“Someone breathe for him!” the doctor urges. The judge, who has known the lawyers on both sides for years, reacts first, pinching open the attorney’s pale lips and setting her mouth on his as she exhales deeply. The sight seems to bring the daughter back to herself, and after the first dozen or so breaths, she takes over.
The prosecutors and the security officer have stepped back. Perhaps they mean to give the doctor room, or perhaps, like everyone else here, they find the sight of the old lawyer motionless on the table, like a Spartan on his shield, stark and horrifying. A small man, he has nonetheless always been a dominating presence in the courtroom. Now he lies here sadly exposed. Sparse white hairs curl across his breast, and his flesh has the grayish undertone of skim milk. The left side of his chest appears somewhat sunken where the livid mark of a surgical scar follows from just below his nipple all the way to his back. Incongruously, his red, white, and blue necktie, still knotted in his collar, hangs down his naked side.
The young woman who screamed and then fled has re
turned. She is an odd person. You can see that, not just because of the inch-long nail driven through her nose as decoration, but also from the slightly angry and indifferent way she deals with people. “Move, move,” she shouts, dodging up the aisle. She carries a red plastic case in her right hand, where blood is welling from her knuckles. The latch on the box in the corridor that houses the defibrillator was jammed, and after several desperate tries, the lawyer’s granddaughter simply punched in the thin glass.
As she passes the front spectators’ row, one of the long line of journalists standing there remarks to a colleague beside him, “Talk about going out with your boots on.”
Immediately after delivering the equipment to the doctor, the young woman wheels, pointing her bloody hand at the reporter.
“That’s shit, Stew,” she says. “No way he’s dying.”
I. OPENING
November 5, 2019
1. The End
Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury,” says Mr. Alejandro Stern. For nearly sixty years, he has offered this greeting to start his defense of the accused, and with the words today, a vapor of melancholy scuttles across his heart. But he is here. We live in the everlasting present. And he knows this much with iron certainty: He has had his turn.
“This is the end,” he says. “For me.” Without lowering his eyes from the jury, he blindly probes his midsection to fasten the center button on his suit coat, as he always has done after his first few words. “No doubt, you have been thinking, ‘The defense lawyer is so very old.’ And you are correct, of course. Standing up to the government when the freedom of a good person, like Dr. Kiril Pafko, hangs in the balance is not a task for someone of my age. This will be my final time.”
Behind him on the bench, Chief Judge Sonya Klonsky utters an unformed sound, as if clearing her throat. Yet having known Sonny well for thirty years, he understands as clearly as if she had spoken. Were he to say more about his personal situation, the judge will politely cut him off.
“Yet I could not refuse this case,” he adds.
“Mr. Stern,” Judge Klonsky says, “perhaps you should turn to the proof.”
Looking up to her on the carved walnut bench, Stern lets his head droop in a small bow. It is a gesture retained from his boyhood in Argentina, which also left the whisper of an accent that embarrasses him, even now, whenever he hears recordings of his voice.
“Just so, Your Honor,” he answers, then turns again to the jury. “Marta and I are proud to stand beside Dr. Pafko at this crucial moment in what has been a long and honored life. Marta, if you would.”
Marta Stern rises slowly at the defense table, greeting the jurors with a pleasant smile. As her father sees her, Marta is that unusual person who looks far better in her middle years than she did as a young woman—fit, well coiffed, and at ease. Stern, by contrast, has been withered by age and disease. But even now, he does not need to say she is his daughter. Both are short and thickly built, both show the same awkward combination of wide features. Nodding, Marta resumes her seat at the defense table beside their paralegal, Pinky, Stern’s granddaughter.
Stern lifts his hand next to his client.
“Kiril, please.” Dr. Pafko, too, comes to his feet, stiffened by age but still tall and attentive to his appearance. A white silk pocket square bubbles above one line of the golden buttons on his double-breasted blazer. His silver hair, streaked by yellow and almost entirely thinned away on top, is swept back debonairly, while his teeth are uneven and small as he attempts a charming smile. “How old a man are you, Kiril?”
“Seventy-eight,” Pafko answers at once. Stern’s question to his client at a time when only the lawyers are supposed to speak is clearly improper, but Stern knows from long experience that the government’s lead counsel, the United States Attorney, Moses Appleton, will bypass minor objections rather than have the jury think he is eager to hide things. Stern wants Kiril’s voice to be among the jurors’ first impressions, so they will be less disappointed if, as Stern hopes, Kiril never takes the stand in his own defense.
“Seventy-eight,” Stern repeats, and tosses his head in mock amazement. “A young man,” he adds, and the fourteen jurors, including the two alternates, all smile. “Let me tell you a bit about what the evidence will show concerning Kiril Pafko. He came to the US from Argentina to complete his medical education roughly half a century ago, accompanied by his wife, Donatella, who is there behind him in the first row.” Donatella Pafko, a year or two older than Stern, eighty-six or eighty-seven now, sits with a regal air, utterly composed, her white hair gathered into a smooth bun, her face heavily made up and lifted bravely. “He has two children. His daughter, Dara, is seated beside her mother. You will meet his son, Dr. Leopoldo Pafko, called Lep, later as a witness in the case. Lep and Dara have given Donatella and Kiril five grandchildren. Surprisingly, Kiril’s grandchildren, too, will figure in the evidence you are going to hear.
“Of course, most of the proof will concern Kiril’s professional life. You will learn that Kiril Pafko is both a medical doctor, an MD, and a PhD in biochemistry. For four decades plus, he has been an esteemed professor at Easton University’s medical college, here in Kindle County, where he has directed one the world’s foremost cancer research labs. Along the way, he also founded a company, Pafko Therapeutics, which puts his research into practice, producing lifesaving cancer medications.
“I apologize now, because in this case you will hear a good deal about cancer. As we learned during voir dire,” Stern says, using the term for the judge’s questioning of prospective jurors, “many of us have our own sad experience with cancer, through the suffering of a loved one, or even”—Stern meaningfully touches the lapel on his suit jacket—“ourselves. If the fight against cancer may be likened to a worldwide war, then Kiril Pafko has been one of the human race’s leading generals and, as the evidence will show you, one of that war’s most decorated heroes.”
Using his ivory-knobbed walking stick, Stern steps closer to the jurors.
“Despite a light remark or two from me,” Stern says, “I am sure you understand that for Dr. Pafko, this case is not a laughing matter. You have heard an excellent opening statement from my friend, Moses Appleton.” Stern gestures to the crowded prosecution table beside him, where Moses, a square man in a store-bought suit, screws up his lips and his narrow, faint moustache in suspicion. He clearly regards Stern’s compliment as tactical, as it is—but also sincere. After trying half a dozen cases against Moses over the years, Stern knows that the US Attorney’s stolid, plainspoken way strikes all but the most blatantly racist jurors as reliable.
“Mr. Appleton has summarized the evidence, as the government would have you see it. For nearly a decade, he says, Pafko Therapeutics, sometimes called PT, worked on a cancer wonder drug called g-Livia. That much is true. What is untrue is Mr. Appleton’s claim that the medication received rapid approval from the Food and Drug Administration, the FDA, only because Dr. Pafko falsified the clinical trial data for g-Livia to conceal a series of unexpected deaths. You will learn that Kiril Pafko did nothing like that. But Mr. Appleton maintains that this imagined ‘fraud’ caused Dr. Pafko’s stock in PT to gain several hundred million dollars in value, even while seven cancer patients named in the indictment had their lives cut short.
“In consequence, the prosecutors have charged this seventy-eight-year-old scientist, revered around the globe, as if he were a Mafia don. In Count 1 of the indictment, the government has alleged a strange crime called ‘racketeering’ that combines a grab bag of state and federal offenses. Kiril Pafko is now accused of fraud, by several different names, of insider stock trading, and if all that were not enough, of murder. Murder,” Stern repeats and goes completely still for a second. “Not a laughing matter at all.”
Pausing for effect, Stern glances to Marta to gauge how he is doing. If the Sterns had followed their long custom, Marta would be addressing the jury in opening. But she has gallantly given way to her father, saying he is entitled to
maximum time at center stage for his final bow. The truth, Stern suspects, is that she does not care much for their client, and regards the case as her father’s last folly, a misjudgment of age or vanity or both, and, besides all that, a test Stern may no longer be up to.
Marta would say this case has nearly killed Stern once already. Eight months ago, in March, he was sideswiped at high speed on the interstate, as he was driving back from witness interviews at PT. Stern’s Cadillac was slammed into a ditch, while Stern himself was unconscious when the ambulance arrived at the hospital, where a subdural hematoma—blood on the brain—required immediate neurosurgery. He was confused for days, but by now the neurologist says his scans are normal—“for a person of eighty-five.” The qualification troubles Marta, but Kiril, who after all has a medical education, continues to insist his old friend represent him. In the courtroom, Stern has always been his best self. Yet he also knows that here, the truth emerges through a fierce struggle between the sides that will push him to his very limits.
But for fifty-nine years, Stern has approached every case almost as if he, as much as his client, were on trial. Each day consumes his entire spirit; he will sleep fitfully, as the witnesses take over his dreams. The worst moment, as always, came this morning, the first day of the actual trial, always like a play’s opening night. Anxiety was a rodent gnawing on his heart, and the office was in bedlam. Pinky, his granddaughter, was ranting about misfires with the computer slides for Stern’s opening. Marta was dashing to and from the conference room issuing last-minute directions for legal research to four young lawyers on loan to Stern & Stern. Vondra, Stern’s assistant, kept invading his office to check his trial bag, while in the hallways it looked as if the entire support staff was building the pyramids, loading a long handcart with the huge transfer cases of documents and office equipment that would be needed in the courtroom. In his few instants alone, Stern focused on his opening, trying to etch it into memory, an effort cut short when Kiril and Donatella arrived for a final briefing, during which Stern was required to project an air of utter calm.
