Doubt (Caroline Auden #1) - C. E. Tobisman Page 0,10

She needed to stay focused. Organization was one of her strengths. Reducing tasks into their tiny component parts had helped her conquer law school. It also helped her conquer her nerves.

Now she made a plan. Word searches would limit the universe of articles to those containing certain key phrases applicable to the Daubert issues. If she could avoid wading through reams of paper, her review of the science could be fast. It had to be. Evaluating the science in only one day was ambitious, if not “crazy impossible,” as Silvia had called it.

Caroline picked up the phone on the credenza beside the window and dialed.

“Where can I find the links to the articles in the war room?” she asked when her assistant answered.

Caroline got a chuckle in response.

“I have no idea,” Silvia answered. “Louis just uses paper. He’s a dinosaur. A dinosaur with an expensive fountain pen.”

Hanging up the phone, Caroline narrowed her eyes at the boxes.

She’d just have to figure something else out. Fast.

Caroline knew that in all fields, a new hire’s mystique began early or not at all. A shimmer of supernatural speed. A glimmer of supercompetence. Some hint that in hiring you, the company had captured a golden butterfly. Or else you showed yourself to travel down at street level. Land bound and plodding. Just another merely mortal pedestrian.

And Caroline knew that Louis was worse than most bosses in making quick yet indelible judgments about new associates. During her callback interview, junior partners had cautioned her in hushed tones that Louis decided quickly whether someone was worth the effort to train and the expense to pay. He didn’t hesitate to fire people with stellar credentials, great recommendations, and distinguished clerkships.

Caroline had heard the tale of one unfortunate associate who’d misread a case, mistaking dictum for the holding. That had been the end of the poor woman. She’d limped along for another few months before leaving without so much as a good-bye coffee in her honor. Her office had remained empty while Hale Stern searched for the right person to take her place. Louis had insisted on picking the next hire himself.

He’d picked Caroline.

Now she needed to prove he hadn’t made a mistake.

“You read all of them?” Louis asked. Behind him, the late-afternoon sun ignited the particulate matter in the Los Angeles sky a polluted shade of gold. The glow washed across the black-and-white photographs on Louis’s walls, turning them to sepia.

“I only read the abstracts,” Caroline admitted. “But then I circled back and read the complete texts of the most promising articles. I kept notes.” She held up her scribble-covered legal pad to prove it but put it down when she realized it looked like a chicken had stumbled through a puddle of ink before strutting around the paper.

“Did you find anything we can use?” Louis asked, holding her eyes.

“I didn’t find a direct link between SuperSoy and kidney injury,” she said, hating that her initial conclusion echoed Deena’s. “But we might still establish an inferential link.”

Unlike Deena, she hadn’t stopped at the absence of any direct link. In her desperation, she’d gotten . . . creative. She only hoped that Louis would appreciate her conclusions.

“Explain,” he ordered.

Caroline took a breath. Just as in class, Louis would expect a compelling delivery of her pitch. He’d be rating her not only on content but on how clearly and confidently she spoke. That meant pushing past her nerves. Steadying her voice. Staying on point.

“The concept behind genetic engineering is that you insert a new gene into a plant’s DNA to force the plant to do something it doesn’t usually do. For instance, scientists inserted a gene from an anglerfish into the DNA of a potato plant to make potatoes that glow in the dark when they need to be watered. Cool but creepy, right?”

When Louis gave no reaction, Caroline hurried onward. “The problem is that inserting a new gene into a plant can have unintended consequences. One company tried to engineer cotton plants that would resist pesticides, but the new gene made all the cotton bolls fall off the plant. The Hahn article reports on it. Dr. Hahn concludes by expressing concern that a new gene could change a cell’s metabolic processes in ways that would cause an otherwise harmless plant to start producing toxins that hurt people.”

“And that’s what we think happened here.” Louis nodded.

“Yes. That’s the theory. Med-Gen created SuperSoy by inserting a jellyfish gene into soy DNA to increase protein content. But maybe increasing protein isn’t