“And Lily Warren?”

Steinhardt frowned, and Seeley expected to hear yet again that Warren was a crackpot.

“She was my graduate student at the university.”

“Which university is that?”

“UCSF. The University of California at San Francisco. I had my laboratory there before I brought it here. Surely, you've read my resume.”

“And Warren worked with you at UCSF.”

“ For me. We only did the most basic science there. Nothing patentable. In any event, she was little more than a glorified lab technician.”

Seeley had seen Warren's resume in the black witness binder, as he had Steinhardt's. She did her undergraduate work at Johns Hopkins, took her doctorate at Rockefeller University, and then got a postdoctoral fellowship in Steinhardt's lab at UCSF. She wasn't just his graduate student, as he said; she was a postdoc. And she was not someone who cleaned test tubes.

“You're aware, she's made a claim that she discovered AV/AS.”

“I'm also aware that no one, not even St. Gall, has displayed the poor judgment to take her claim seriously.”

Was it possible, Seeley wondered, for this man to utter one word without condescension? In theory, Pearsall's decision to make Steinhardt Vaxtek's leadoff witness was correct. Corporations may pay for the research and development that it takes to produce a new drug, but jurors want to see the invention's human face, the scientist whose genius and tireless effort produced a miracle out of nothing more than an idea and a few cell cultures. Seeley revised his estimate of Steinhardt's prospects as a witness. In the hands of a capable trial lawyer, which he knew Thorpe was, arrogance like this was going to destroy Steinhardt in the courtroom. If Seeley kept him as the leadoff witness, the damage to Vaxtek's case could be irreparable.