Natural Causes

by Michael Palmer

  The truth was, he admitted now, he wished it was over. Deep down, he wished she had simply said “Pay the man. Pay the man the two hundred thousand and close the book. I want to spend some time getting to know this lover of mine without having this suit hanging over our heads.”

  The plastic, fortune-telling eight-ball on his desk doubled as a paperweight. It was a gift from Harry several Father’s Days ago. Matt knew in the most sensible, practical parts of his intellect that it was a toy—molded plastic, filled with water, enclosing a floating octahedron, or whatever. It had been manufactured and sold for decades now … by the millions. And certainly this particular one had no more predictive ability than any of the others.

  “Are we going to win this thing?” he asked, hefting the eight-ball in his hand.

  If anyone knew the number of major life decisions he had made after consulting the plastic sphere, he would probably be disbarred, he thought.

  Ask again later, the ball replied.

  As expected, Roger Phelps was furious that despite his offer to settle, Sarah had elected to continue fighting the malpractice suit against her. Her obstinacy, Matt knew, left doubt at the MMPO about the $200,000 Phelps had instructed them to give away. That doubt would linger for however many months—or years—it took for the case to come to trial. Then, if Sarah lost for a big jury reward, Phelps would be Hero for a Day. But if she won, Phelps would have approximately $200,000 worth of egg on his face. Even for someone without Phelps’s arrogance, that was the fixin’s for a big league omelette.

  But Matt also knew that he had no less at stake in this game than Phelps. For starters, he would have to bill Sarah to maintain appearances should his motives and ethics be called into question. A loss in court, and he could be accused of convincing Sarah to continue the case in order to keep his billable hours going as well; a win, and the best he personally could hope to come away with was some positive publicity. To all intents, he had earned his last dollar from Grayson v. Baldwin.

  And in addition, Matt knew that lose or win, he had also seen his last malpractice case from the MMPO, by far the largest medical liability carrier in the state. Thanks to Phelps’s insistence on settling, what had started as a huge break for him, with unlimited potential, was now doomed. He snatched up his glove and ball and began to pace. With his credit cards maxed out and much of his time to be spent on Sarah’s case, flying Harry east for Thanksgiving or Christmas was going to be the longest financial stretch yet. Left alone, he quite possibly could have won Sarah’s case while he continued to have a decent income for his work. Why in the hell couldn’t Phelps have just let him be? His fees to defend Sarah would have stayed well below $200,000. And bit by bit, Mallon’s case was beginning to crumble. Why hadn’t Phelps been able to see that?

  Something wasn’t right about this whole business, he began to think, something he already knew but simply could not put a finger on. How could Phelps not believe that the families of Alethea Worthington and Constanza Hidalgo would go after similar settlements? It stood to reason they would. The cost of his move wasn’t $200,000, it was $600,000. With the case Matt was beginning to build, and with the possibilities raised by Rosa Suarez’s discoveries, a $600,000 giveaway was a hell of a vote of no confidence.

  Something wasn’t right.

  For five minutes he paced, snapping the old ball into his mitt. The source of his concern remained vague—a hazy mist, swirling in his mind. He thought about Peter Ettinger’s deposition. He had spent much of the day—most of the past week, in fact—reading and rereading the two-inch-thick document. Much of it he knew by heart. Perhaps what was troubling him wasn’t Roger Phelps, but something Ettinger had said. Something.…

  The pops of ball against leather were like rifle shots now. Beneath the paper-thin pocket of the glove, Matt’s palm was beginning to sting. His problem-solving ritual was threatening to break a bone in his hand. But stopping wasn’t an option. Black Cat Daniels never gave up on a ritual until it absolutely let him down. He had to stuff a sponge in there, as he did when playing catch with Ricky and the boys. Or better still, he thought, he might get a grip on himself and snap the ball in a bit more gently. What was bothering him so? Some strange wording in one of Ettinger’s answers? Some odd reference? Something.…

  The intercom from the waiting room crackled on.

  “Mr. Daniels,” Ruth said. “I’m leaving now. You do remember I said I had to leave early?”

  “I don’t remember, no, Ruth. But that’s okay. I’m sure you told me. Have a good time.”

  Ruth was another problem he would have to face, he thought. She had been with him since day one, and he did feel loyal to her. But she had made no effort to curb her chattering to clients about anything and everything. The feedback from several of them was downright embarrassing. Besides, the way things were going, it might be coming down to her paycheck versus a plane ticket for Harry. Damn you, Phelps!

  “Mr. Daniels, what do you mean, ‘Have a good time’? I told you I had a dentist’s appointment. No one has a good time at the—”

  “Ruth, that’s it!”

  “What?”

  “The dentist. That’s it. That’s what was eating at me. Put yourself in for a raise.… On second thought, better make that an extra day off.”

  The secretary muttered a bewildered thanks, but Matt did not hear her. He had dropped his glove and ball on a chair, and was skimming through the deposition once again. But this time, it wasn’t a response by Peter Ettinger for which he was searching. It was something said by Jeremy Mallon. It took about twenty minutes, but he found it. He knew he would.

  D: Shipping, too?

  E: In a separate building, but yes. Shipping is done at Xanadu also.

  D: Mr. Ettinger, just how much money are you two raking in off this powder?

  M: Objection. Peter, don’t answer. Mr. Daniels, the form and content of that question are amateurish. In the baseball terms you might better understand, strictly bush league. Until now I have made a number of allowances for the fact that aside from a misplaced molar or whatever, this is your first malpractice case …

  Matt took a yellow marker from his desk and highlighted Mallon’s words. How could his opponent have known about his only other malpractice case? There was one answer to that question that made sense—but only one.

  Matt snatched up the phone and dialed the Mutual Medical Protective Organization.

  “Mr. Phelps, please. Attorney Matt Daniels here.… Phelps, listen. I’ve spoken with Sarah Baldwin, and I think she’s willing to reverse her position on this settlement thing. How about you and me meeting to talk out the details first thing tomorrow? Eight o’clock, my office?… Perfect, Roger. That’s great. It’ll be a relief to finally get some of this business cleared up.” He set the receiver back in its cradle and then added, “Beginning with why in the hell you hired me in the first place.”

  Matt hefted the plastic eight-ball once again.

  “Am I the turkey of the decade for not seeing what they were doing to me?” he asked out loud.

  The answer is most definitely yes.

  • • •

  CRV113 in Lisa Grayson’s bloodstream at the time of her DIC and three and a half months later. Seated at the nurses’ station on the obstetrics floor, Sarah scratched out the characters “CRV113” on a progress notepad. CRV113—a man-made virus, constructed years before by a lab in Cambridge. She had rounds to make, and a number of notes to write, but the remarkable discovery of the virus was making it next to impossible to concentrate. As had been the case for months now, most of the nurses were keeping their physical and emotional distance from her. Sarah was quite conscious of their coolness. She always was. But this afternoon, it did not affect her as much as usual. The pieces were finally coming together. The end of the nightmare was drawing closer. CRV113—created to speed the clotting of blood. How could infection with such a microbe not be somehow responsible for Lisa’s DIC?

  “Dr. Baldwin.”

  The nu
rse speaking to her, Joanne Delbanco, was about Sarah’s age. At one time they had gotten along quite well and had even gone out once for dinner. Now there was never any extraneous conversation between them. Another casualty of CRV113.

  “Oh, hi, Joanne,” Sarah said with exaggerated cheer.

  “Dr. Baldwin, you have a visitor. A woman. She’s very anxious to see you, and she’s very upset. I put her in your call room. She won’t tell me what the problem is.”

  “Thank”—the nurse turned and headed off—“you.”

  The obstetricians’ on-call room was at the far end of the hallway. As she hurried there, Sarah ticked through a quick mental list of women who might be waiting for her. The list did not include Annalee Ettinger.

  “Oh, God, I’m so glad you’re here,” Annalee said.

  She was lying on her back on the narrow bed, dressed in a nightgown and quilted housecoat. Her knees were drawn up. Tracks of tears glistened on her cheeks. Sarah sat beside her and instinctively laid her hand on Annalee’s gravid abdomen. Even through the housecoat, she could feel the solid, irregular mass of a uterine contraction.

  “Just squeeze my hands until it’s over,” Sarah said. “Don’t be frightened, Annalee. Everything’s going to be all right.”

  Nearly a minute passed before the tightness in Annalee’s womb began to abate. During that time, Sarah calculated from their conversation following the July 5 press conference, trying to determine how far along her pregnancy had come. Thirty-three weeks, perhaps thirty-four, she guessed.

  “How often are your contractions coming?”

  “Every eight or nine minutes,” Annalee said. “I’ve been having them off and on for weeks. But it’s been like this for about twelve straight hours.”

  “Your water break?”

  “No.”

  “Fever, chills?”

  “No.”

  “Bleeding of any kind?”

  “No.”

  “Where’s Taylor?”

  “Believe it or not, he’s in East Africa. The band’s touring for two more weeks. I have no idea exactly where they are right now. He wanted to cancel the tour and stay home because I was having those off-and-on contractions. But I told him to go. How stupid of me.”

  “Easy does it, Annalee. Don’t be so hard on yourself. You did the right thing. And what about Peter?”

  “He—he doesn’t know where I am. He refused to take me to a hospital, even though I told him it was too early for me to be delivering. I ended up calling a friend and then climbing out through my bedroom window. She picked me up on the road and took me here. Sarah, Peter’s crazy.” Her eyes filled with tears. “He has those two midwives he flew in from Mali at the house. They’ve been giving me some sort of tea that they say will stop my labor. I mentioned your name once, just once, and he exploded. He said if I saw you for any reason, I needn’t bother coming home.”

  Sarah took the sobbing, frightened woman in her arms.

  “Annalee, don’t even think about Peter or anything else. Let’s just think about your baby. You’re definitely in labor, and you’re still six or seven weeks early. Delivering now is a concern, but it’s not a crisis. Ideally, we’d like to see the baby stay where it is for a couple more weeks.”

  “What can I do? Can you stop labor? I—I don’t have any health insurance. Peter’s been paying for.… Sarah, I think another one’s coming.”

  “Okay, easy does it, Annalee,” Sarah whispered again, stroking her forehead. “One contraction at a time and one question at a time.”

  She glanced at the clock. Six and a half minutes since the last contraction. This time, responding perhaps to Sarah’s reassurance, Annalee closed her eyes and quietly breathed her way through the contraction.

  “Annalee, don’t worry about the insurance,” Sarah said. “Don’t worry about anything. I’m going to get you admitted here, and I’m going to get one of our staff obstetricians to care for you. In fact, I think I can get the chief of the service. His name’s Dr. Snyder.”

  “What will he do?”

  “Well, my guess is he’ll put you on an IV and give you some medication to try to stop these contractions and prolong your pregnancy. That depends, though. There are ways we have for finding out not only how far along you are, but how far along the baby is in terms of its lung development. The status of the lungs is the key to when a woman in premature labor should be allowed to deliver.”

  “You can measure the baby’s lungs before its born?”

  “We can,” Sarah said. “Actually, we’re pretty good at it.”

  Annalee pushed herself up and threw her arms around Sarah’s neck.

  “I knew I did the right thing in coming to you,” she said. “I knew it.”

  Sarah called the hospital operator and put in a page for Randall Snyder. Then she called admissions and asked to have someone sent up to the obstetrics unit. Finally she took a fetoscope from a hook on the door and listened to Annalee’s belly.

  “The baby’s doing great,” she said after half a minute or so. “Just great.”

  “That’s wonderful. I can feel it kicking. Listen, Sarah, please don’t call Peter.”

  “Hey, kid, I work for you. That means you give the orders. You may want to find a way to call and let him know you’re okay, though. You don’t have to say where you are. I know he really loves you a lot. It’s me he can’t stand.”

  “Well, that’s his problem. You know, while you were on the phone, I was looking at you and thinking about the incredible things you can do. And I was remembering what you were like when you first came to live with us.”

  “And?”

  “Let’s just say you’ve come a long way, baby. A hell of a long way.”

  Sarah hugged the woman once again. Save for her moderately prominent abdomen and engorged breasts, there was virtually no bulge on her body—no loose skin; no fat whatsoever.

  “You’re a member of the Long Way Club, too, Annalee,” she said, taking pains to mask her concern. “One more thing. When did you take that weight loss powder of Peter’s, and for how long?”

  “About four years ago, and for about three months. Dr. Singh had already tested the powder someplace on a number of people. But before Peter would allow himself to be associated with it, he arranged for ten or twelve people he knew to take it. Altogether, we lost about a half a ton. Why? Is there something wrong with it?”

  “No, no. I was just wondering. Nothing’s wrong with it. Nothing at all.”

  “Well, I hope not,” Annalee said. “Because according to the last figures I saw, since they began marketing the powder about seven months ago, a few hundred thousand people have done exactly the same thing.”

  “I know,” Sarah said, flashing on a stainless steel surgical pan and the dusky, severed arm of a young woman. “I know.”

  CHAPTER 33

  October 26

  MATT ARRIVED AT HIS OFFICE AT 7:15 A.M. FEELING the sort of nervous energy he had once associated with game day. Earlier in the morning, he had run three miles—part of the fitness regimen he had instituted after being so badly outclassed by Sarah in Chinatown. He had also read several sections of the Globe and the sports section in the Herald, and spent fifteen minutes of intense practice on Nintendo baseball—the impressively realistic game at which he was determined, at least once in his lifetime, to beat Harry.

  After four arduous, confusing months, pieces in the bewildering puzzle of Grayson v. Baldwin were beginning to come together. Rosa Suarez and a virologist from the CDC had identified the genetically altered virus circulating in Lisa Grayson’s bloodstream and had traced it to a company across the river in Cambridge. The virus, labeled CRV113 by the BIO-Vir Corporation, had been developed to enhance the clotting of blood and the healing of wounds. Later that morning, Rosa and Ken Mulholland would be meeting with the director of the lab. The BIO-Vir bug still might prove to be a red herring in terms of Lisa Grayson’s DIC. But given the purpose of its creation, that possibility seemed remote.

&
nbsp; And with any luck, before the hour was out, yet another piece of the jigsaw would be set in place. Matt had done what homework he had time for and had rehearsed the scenario in his mind. Now it was showtime. Unless he was way off base, Roger Phelps had two Achilles’ heels—arrogance and greed. The trick was to expose one or both of them without alerting the man. Failing to accomplish that, there was always Plan B—the frontal assault approach he had used with such mastery against Tommy Sze-to. His groin ached at the memory. He was reaching nervously for his glove and ball when, with a soft knock, Phelps entered the outer office.

  “Daniels?”

  “In here, Roger. Come on in.”

  The claims adjuster, wearing a three-piece suit, tapped playfully on Matt’s office door and then entered. Despite his dandyish appearance, Matt knew he was calculating and intelligent—a man to be dealt with carefully. Matt offered him coffee and then motioned him to the seat across the desk from his.

  “So,” Phelps said, settling in, “it’s a change of heart we’ve had, is it?”

  “Dr. Baldwin’s getting cold feet about going to court.”

  “You can call her Sarah. I’ve heard rumors that the two of you know each other on—um—shall we say a first-name basis.”

  “Now, Roger, what in the hell am I supposed to say in response to that remark?”

  “Nothing. She’s very attractive—in a tomboy sort of way. I really wouldn’t blame you if you were carrying on with her.”

  Right away an assertion of power and control, Matt thought. The man is good. Damn good.

  “To tell you the truth, Roger, the thought has crossed my mind. But believe me, nothing’s going to happen on that front until this case is resolved.”

  “Smart. Is that perhaps a reason you want to settle?”