CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

The crush of reporters filled the lavish conference room overlooking the Bayshore at the offices of Roger Riley and Associates. Tampa wasn’t the home of all that many print and television reporters, but the ones who regularly worked the court beats knew that Roger was good for a newsworthy story. He was theatrical and a media hound. He made sellable press. Every time.

Today was no exception to the rule. Roger watched the clock so that the reporters would have to make the decision as to whether to broadcast his press conference live at five o’clock. Then once on the air at five, he was pretty well assured of a taped repeat at six and eleven. Roger manipulated the news cycle with skill. He was a master at it. The reporters didn’t mind his maneuvering, either. Roger Riley’s agenda was good for all of them.

At precisely one minute past five, Roger walked into the conference room with a big smile on his face. He wore a camera-friendly, fresh shirt in light blue; a sincere navy blue suit; and a red, conservatively patterned tie. This was Roger’s “man of the people” outfit. He kept it in his office closet for just such emergencies.

“Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming on such short notice,” Roger said.

“Always the charmer, Roger Riley,” one reporter snickered to his sidekick.

“Yeah, especially when he wants something,” the sidekick whispered back.

Roger ignored them. “I wanted you to be the first to know that we have filed this complaint”—for the photo op, he held up the paper with the Hillsborough County Circuit Court time stamp on the corner—“against Denton Bio-Medical, Incorporated, today.”

The reporters looked at their copies of the complaints handed to them at the door when they’d come in.

“We’re seeking twenty million dollars in compensatory damages and two hundred million in punitive damages on behalf of our client, Annabelle James.” A collective gasp went up from the crowd of jaded reporters. Such numbers were unusual in Tampa, but they made a juicy story practically soggy.

Tampa courts drew jurors from a conservative county where the median income of most jurors was in the hard-earned twenty-five thousand dollar-a-year range. Sometimes, they’d help a deserving plaintiff win the litigation lotto, but not all that often. Defendants won more times than they lost. Still, a big money claim brought by Roger Riley held a lot of sex appeal.

“The punitive damage award could go higher. Denton Bio-Medical has conspired, out of pure greed, to remove a new product from the market. A potential cure for a silent time bomb that might be killing everyone in this room. Russell Denton wants to keep the cure from us all. Our children—mine and yours—are at risk. Denton is a killer and a thief. We will not rest until Annabelle James is vindicated.” Roger smiled into the glaring lights for the seven-second sound bite. Then he left the conference room, refusing to take the usual questions.

Roger would keep the story alive by allowing the reporters to digest the complaint, do some investigating, and come back to him later with requests for further interviews. All he wanted to do today was to get on the newscast, so that Stuart Barnett would find out in the most public way possible that he’d been screwed.