Page 91 of The List

“I don’t know a lot about these other people,” Brent said. “But I do know Brandon Pabon had a workers’ comp claim that was goingto cost the company several hundred thousand dollars to resolve. And his drug overdose ended that.”

“Okay, Pabon was an injured worker, but most of the rest were retirees. Some gone from the mill for years. Only Zimmerman was still on the payroll.”

“Retirees draw a pension,” he said. “They also have lots of medical claims. I did see in our records that Melvin Bennett had terminal cancer. Ottman, heart problems.”

“What about Zimmerman?”

“Not a thing. But his kids had some expensive medical problems.”

“That’s right. I was over there last weekend before the funeral. His wife was hysterical wondering how she was going to pay all the medical bills without the company health insurance.”

“Everybody on this list was costing the company money. Seems like a pretty good reason for a self-insurer, like Southern Republic, to get rid of somebody, wouldn’t you say?”

Hank shook his head. “You’ve been a prosecutor too long. Southern Republic handles hundreds of comp claims every year. They’ve funded that system with millions of reserve dollars. It’s rock-solid and solvent. The health insurance is the same way. The employees pump millions into it every year. There’s no need to kill people. You just litigate the hell out of things until they go away.”

“Ever heard of greed?”

Hank was silent.

“I was reading something a few days ago in a workers’ compensation journal that chronicles cases from around the country,” Brent said. “A logging company in Washington State got sued by the widow of an employee. She claimed the company intentionally withheld comp benefits and stonewalled her husband’s medical treatment, all of which she said led to his premature death. The state’s workers’ compensation statute provided for a onetime $50,000 payment on the death of an employee, but if he’d lived the settlement would have been in the $500,000 range. So the company had an incentive to hasten her husband’s death.”

“Did she win?”

“The jury gave her the $500,000 and stacked another $2.5 million in punitive damages.”

“Is that rule the same in Georgia?”

“Oh, yeah. Far cheaper on an insurer, or an employer like Southern Republic who’s self-insured, if the injured worker dies than just gets hurt. Corpses don’t go to the doctor.”

He knew the drill. Workers’ compensation had nothing to do with fault. Instead, that concept had been replaced with certainty. Every worker injured on the job was compensated. Period. The only issues were how much and for how long.

“Things like pain and suffering, punitive damages, and general damages don’t apply,” he said. “The idea is to get the worker paid, healed, retrained if needed, and back on the job.”

“You think Southern Republic had something to do with Brandon Pabon’s death?”

He shrugged. “That’s impossible to say. I read his file. He was a long-standing druggie. The coroner’s report indicated he was loaded up on heroin. Pabon could have just overdosed. A lucky occurrence for the company. And the others on this list could have just happened to die, too. But think of the money to be realized by the company from those deaths.”

“I think you’re reading far more into this than there is. Killing people isn’t that easy. You always get caught. And retirees die every day.”

“But not before drawing a pension that costs the company money.”

“Our pensions are financed over long periods of time with funds invested and set aside especially for that. We fight over that amount every time we negotiate a new contract.”

“Doesn’t the company make parallel contributions for employees?”

“That’s what we fight over. It seems to get smaller and smaller with each new contract.”

“So if the company can eliminate costs on the back side from what it has to pay out, it’ll have more on the front side to bargain with. Right? Why use company money when you can use theemployees’. Also, while you’re at it, eliminate some costly retirement and medical payments and some especially expensive workers’ comp claims. All that generates cash savings that can be used for other things like raw materials, cost overruns, price increases, things like that.”

Brent had thought about this all afternoon, even asking his boss a few casual questions about the paper business. The costs of timber, water, electricity, coal, oil, chemicals, all the other things needed to make paper were pretty much the same for every mill. The real variable among companies was the big-ticket item. Labor. Which was the number one cost of any manufacturing plant. Each mill had its own local unions that made their own local deals. No two were alike. But it stood to reason that any company that could control its labor costs, even predict them with some certainty, would definitely have an edge.

He motioned at the list. “Again, Hank. If this is something innocent, how did the last four names get on there?”

“I have no idea.”

“We need to find out.”

DAY SIXTEEN