The Good Daughter (The Good Daughter #1) - Karin Slaughter Page 0,85

a division of Nippon Development Resources, Inc.

After six years of back and forth, two failed mediations and a screaming match that took place mostly in Japanese, the case was going to trial.

At issue was the design of a hinge that controlled the movement of the self-closing lid on a partition-mounted public restroom sanitary napkin and tampon disposal bin. The LadyMate Corporation produced several iterations of the ubiquitous container, from the FemyGeni to the original LadyMate to the strangely named Tough Guy.

Sam was the only person involved in the entire case who had actually used one of these bins. If she had been consulted during their design, she would’ve gone for truth in advertising and called them all the Motherfucker, because that was usually the first thing that came into a woman’s mind when she had to use one.

Sam also would have designed the spring-loaded piano hinge as two components for the extra .03 cent manufacturing cost rather than risk a single, integrated hinge that invited a patent infringement lawsuit that would result in millions of dollars in legal fees, not to mention the damages if Nippon lost the case.

If the brief on her computer had anything to do with it, UXH would not be seeing those damages. Patent law wasn’t the most baroque area of litigation, but the second-year associate who had drafted the brief wrote with the adroitness of a piece of sandpaper.

This was why Sam had taken a three-year detour into the Portland district attorney’s office. She had wanted to be able to speak the language of a courtroom.

Sam scrolled through the document, making notes, rewriting a long passage in an approximation of simple English, adding a modicum of flourish to the end because she knew that it would perturb her opposing counsel, a man who had, upon his first meeting with Sam, told her to fetch him a coffee, two sugars, and tell her boss that he did not like to wait.

Gamma had been right about so many things. Sam Quinn was given far more respect than Samantha Quinn could have ever hoped for.

At exactly ten thirty-four, Sam was the last person to enter the conference room. The tardiness was by design. She did not relish chastising stragglers.

She took her seat at the head of the table. She looked out at the sea of young, white men whose degrees from Michigan and Harvard and MIT gave them a bloated sense of their own self-importance. Or perhaps the bloat was warranted. They were sitting in the gleaming, glass-lined offices of one of the most important patent firms in the world. If they thought that they were captains of industry, it was likely because they soon would be.

But for now, they had to prove themselves to Sam. She listened to their updates, commented on their proposed strategies, and generally let them toss ideas back and forth until she felt that they were biting their own tails. Sam was notorious for running lean meetings. She asked for case law to be researched, a rewriting of briefs to be completed by tomorrow, the incorporation of a certain patent application from the 1960s to be integrated more deeply into their work product.

She stood from her chair, so everyone else did. She made an anodyne comment about looking forward to their results as she left the conference room.

They followed her, keeping their distance, because they all worked on the same side of the building. Sam often felt like the long walk back to her office was akin to being stalked by a pack of geese. Invariably, one would push ahead, hoping to make his name known, or to prove to the others that he wasn’t afraid of her. A few peeled off for other meetings, wishing her happy birthday. Someone asked if she had enjoyed her recent trip to Europe. Another young man, a bit over-eager since word had spread that Sam would soon become a named partner, followed her all the way to her office door, relaying a long story that ended with the detail that his grandmother had been born in Denmark.

Sam’s husband had been born in Denmark.

Anton Mikkelsen was twenty-one years Sam’s senior, a professor at Stanford from whom she had taken a Technology in Society course entitled Engineering the Roman Empire Design. Anton’s passion for the subject had captivated Sam. She had always been drawn to people who were delighted by the world, who looked out rather than in.

For his part, Anton had been completely hands-off while Sam was