# THOMPSON-HAYES: BLOOD MONEY
## Chapter Twenty — Gerald Reed Makes a Mistake
Tuesday's hearing lasted three hours and forty minutes.
Dorothy Mills testified for forty-seven minutes and every minute of it was clean. She had driven from Fredericksburg the night before and stayed at a hotel Patricia had arranged, and when she walked into the courtroom she had the composed, slightly formal quality of a woman who had been making difficult decisions in difficult rooms her entire professional life and found this one no more intimidating than the rest.
She described the postponement call. The email she had received. The meeting she had not attended. The debt instrument that had appeared in the company books three months later bearing her implied vote. She produced the email — original, authen
