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county. It sometimes blew over the rest of the valley and made the air nearly unbreathable. I had once walked around wearing a surgical mask, and when I took it off at the end of the day, the mask was brown.
    “Right here,” I said.
    “Pharma-K? Is this about the Pharma Killer case?”
    “It is.”
    “Whoa.”
    “And by the way, as an employee of Byron, Val & Keller, anything you see and hear is confidential. Don’t tell anyone about anything you see on the job that could be confidential, okay?”
    “I won’t.”
    We parked in front of a modern-looking business park, all steel and glass, with a courtyard in between three identical buildings. The grass was well kept. I always looked at the grass in front of buildings. When a property was struggling, they cut the landscaping budget first.
    Pharma-K took up the top half of the first office building, floors three through six. Their manufacturing plant occupied a separate building. Inside the polished chrome elevator, I watched Olivia take a hit from an inhaler. We got off on the sixth floor and walked into the vestibule ahead of us.
    A woman who looked like a model sat behind the large desk, smiling widely. “Hi, guys, how can I help you?”
    “I have a meeting with Darren Rucker.”
    “Okay, hang tight one sec. Okay?”
    She remained quiet, the smile still on her face, and I realized she actually wanted a response. “Sure, we’ll wait.”
    We sat down on the orange leather chairs. This didn’t look like any drug company I’d ever seen. Electronic music played over the speakers, and quotes from people like Nikola Tesla decorated the walls.
    A man came out of an office down the hall. He wore jeans and a sports coat and sunglasses pushed up into his hair. He smiled and shook my hand. “Darren, COO of Pharma-K. You must be Noah.”
    “I am. This is my associate, Olivia.”
    “Oh, very nice to meet you.” He kissed the back of her hand. She blushed.
    He looked back at me. “Everyone’s in the conference room.”
    “Everyone? I thought this was just a chat between us.”
    “Just a few people. Nothing big.”
    We followed him down the hall. The office walls were primarily glass, and one large space was crammed with cubicles. We passed a break room that held a Ping-Pong table and an arcade video game I didn’t recognize. Off to the side was a massive conference room.
    An oblong crimson table, with at least thirty yellow high-backed chairs around it, took up the room. About ten of those chairs were filled.
    Darren said, “These are our lawyers. I think you know Bob there.”
    I knew Bob. He was senior partner at Walcott, Smoot, Bagley & Hockett, one of the biggest law firms in Utah and Nevada. They catered exclusively to corporations with gross revenues higher than fifty million, and billed at an hourly rate of five hundred dollars, an obscene amount for the Mountain West.
    Bob was in his sixties and had once been the Utah State Bar president. An eye patch disguised his allegedly blind left eye. The gossip, which no one had been able to verify, was that he didn’t need the eye patch and had himself started the rumor about being blind. Supposedly, he just thought the eye patch made him more intimidating.
    His deposition tactics had put him on the radar of every plaintiffs’ personal injury firm. During depositions, he would excuse himself to the bathroom, leaving the plaintiff’s attorney alone with his or her client. Upon returning, Bob would demand to know everything said between the attorney and the client while he was in the bathroom. Opposing counsel would protest that their conversation was covered by attorney-client privilege. Bob, a smirk on his face, would then point to the stenographer in the corner. The presence of a third party negated attorney-client privilege, and everyone always forgot the stenographer was there.
    I’d encountered Bob on my first big personal injury case and fell for his trick.
    “I heard you got a nice settlement from Bethany