False Accusations

by Alan Jacobson

  “You’re trying to handle me, Jeffrey.”

  “Damn right. Get your act together. I’ll call you later.”

  “That’s odd,” Leeza said. “Can’t find the keys. Did Phil give you the spare keys to his car?” She pulled open a drawer and began rummaging through it.

  Chandler pushed his arm though the sleeve of his black leather jacket. “I’m using the rental. Why?”

  “They’re usually hanging on this hook by the phone. But they’re not here.”

  “You need a ride somewhere?” Chandler asked. “I’ve got some people I have to catch up with, but I can take you on my way out.”

  “No, no, I’m fine. I’ve got my van.” She opened a different drawer and pushed things aside.

  “Want me to help you—”

  “No, don’t worry about it. I’ll find them.”

  As Chandler started for the door, his phone rang. He brought it to his face and noticed that the Caller ID said it was Denise. “Hey, honey. What’s going on?”

  “I found something, Ryan. I don’t know what it is, but it’s got me freaked out.”

  “What are you talking about? What’d you find?”

  “A lump.”

  “A lump? Where?”

  “In my breast, Ryan. I found a lump in my breast.”

  Chandler was silent for a moment. He stopped and turned to Leeza. “Have you ever felt it before? How big is it?”

  “It wasn’t there before. It’s maybe the size of a large pea. I had Joanne come over and feel it, and she thinks I should go in and get it biopsied.”

  His eyes slid over to Leeza, whose attention was now focused on Chandler. “Call Jason and make an appointment. Let him examine it and then we’ll figure out what needs to be done. Don’t be talking about a biopsy.”

  “But Joanne’s a nurse.”

  “At a nursing home, Denise.” He sighed. “We should have a doctor look at it.”

  “I want you to come home, Ryan. I need you here.”

  Chandler’s mouth was frozen half open. “I’ll be home in a few days. There’s just—”

  “I want you to come home now.”

  He sat down on the last step of the staircase and chewed on his lip for a moment. “Look...I’ve only got a few loose ends to tie up. As soon as I do that, I’m out of here.”

  “Ryan, you don’t understand...” she said. “Breast cancer is a big deal. My grandmother had it, and it runs in families. I don’t want them to cut off my breast, but I don’t want to die.”

  “Honey, listen to me. Nobody said anything about cancer. Nobody said anything about you dying. And nobody said anything about cutting off your breast. Go in and have Jason examine. I trust him. Once he takes a look, we’ll go from there. But I promise you that no matter what happens, no matter what it is, we’ll get through it.”

  “That’s why I need you here. I’m not handling this well. I feel so far away from you.”

  “You’re under a lot of stress—worrying about your mid-term grades, having to do double duty taking care of Noah while I’m gone, and now this.”

  “I’m glad I have your permission to be stressed out. A lot of good that does me.”

  Chandler paused, rubbed his forehead. “Okay...okay. Call Jason’s office and make an appointment: Then call me and let me know when it is. I’ll see what I can do.”

  “That doesn’t sound like you’re on the next flight home.”

  “Denise, I’m at a critical point in this case. If I screw it up, Phil could go to prison for life. He was there eight years ago when I needed him. I can’t just walk out on him.”

  “What if Jason tells me that it doesn’t look good and I need a biopsy? I don’t know if I can handle that alone.”

  He arose from the step. “All right. Make the appointment. I’ll call you later and we’ll take it from there.”

  “Take it from there?”

  “You know, we’ll talk about it. Let’s deal with first things first.”

  “There’s nothing to talk about, Ryan. You’ve told me all I need to know. Phillip Madison is more important to you than I am.”

  “You’re the most important thing in the world to me, Denise. You and Noah. You should know that.”

  “Saying it is one thing. Showing it is another.”

  “Denise…if I knew for sure this was serious, I’d be home on the next flight. But right now, we don’t know that it’s anything more than, what’s it called, a fatty nodule?”

  “I’ll call you with the appointment information.”

  A second later, the line went dead. Chandler slumped back down onto the step.

  “Ryan,” Leeza said, approaching him. “I wasn’t eavesdropping, but I got the gist of your conversation.” She sat down next to him. “Mind if I give you some advice?”

  “Please...” Chandler said, motioning for her to continue. “God knows I screwed up royally handling it my way.”

  “Women deal with these types of things differently than men do. Men tend to see things analytically, logically. They want to find ways of solving problems—to them, finding the solution is the most important thing.”

  Chandler nodded. “Shouldn’t it be?”

  Leeza smiled. “Women look at things more emotionally. When we tell you about a problem or an insecurity we have, we’re not looking for solutions. We’re looking for support.”

  “I can see where support’s helpful, but all the support in the world isn’t going to solve your problems.”

  “True, but it validates our feelings, and sometimes that’s more important.” She looked at him, as if gauging his reaction to see if he was grasping what she was saying. “For example, instead of saying ‘I’m sure everything will be fine,’ you could say ‘I know you’re scared, this is a very frightening thing to deal with. I’ll be there for you, don’t worry.”

  Chandler stared off at the wall for a moment. “I did kind of the opposite, didn’t I?”

  “She probably felt as if you were dismissing her fears as just hysterical ranting.”

  “But that wasn’t my intention.”

  “Don’t tell me, tell her.”

  Trying to put Denise out of his mind for a few moments proved difficult for Chandler. He stopped in at Food & More, the market where Madison and Harding had their public argument, to see if he could locate the checkout employee who was working the night the altercation occurred.

  Madison had been able to give him only a loose description of the young man, but he hoped that it would be enough. With the store manager off, he was able to assemble only a partial list of employees fitting the checker’s description. To determine which ones on his list had worked the night in question, he would have to wait until the manager returned. Chandler said he would stop by tomorrow.

  On his way back to his car, he phoned the crime lab in New York. He made the mistake of asking Valerie, Hennessy’s assistant, how the office was holding up. Not so well, she responded, and proceeded to tell him about the leaky roof and the tainted evidence that resulted from the water damage. “The division head blamed maintenance…which blamed scheduling and supply. But no matter whose fault it was, the evidence was ruined, and they’re gonna have to let Bobby Lee Walker go free. You can imagine what’s going on here,” she said. “Big political mess for the mayor, letting a murderer go free, Ryan, I’m telling you. Made him look bad. He was real pissed off.”

  “So let me guess,” Chandler said. “Hennessy’s having a fit.”

  “The director came down on him this morning. So now the captain’s walking around saying ‘I’ll wring Chandler’s neck when he gets back: That’s a direct quote, Ryan. But I kind of spared you all the cursing.”

  “How did I get involved in this? I’m not even there.”

  “He was babbling up a storm, but he said something about if you were here, the evidence already would’ve been evaluated and logged, reported on, and secured in the storage room, long before the roof leak.”

  “Let me talk to him, Valerie.�
��

  “You crazy? He hasn’t gotten over it yet. Maybe you should wait until things die down a bit.”

  “I’m a big boy, Valerie. I can take it.”

  A moment later, Hennessy picked up the line and launched into a continuous sea of expletives; Chandler held the phone away from his ear until he detected Hennessy’s need to take a breath.

  “I’m going to be coming home in a few days,” he managed to get in.

  “You understand what I’m saying? I want you back here now!”

  “Fine, then beam me over. Otherwise; you’ll have to wait till I arrive on the flight I’ve got scheduled for Tuesday.”

  “Chandler—you’re in deep shit. I’ll own your ass when you get back.”

  “Sorry, chief, my wife’s already laid claim to that part of my anatomy.” Chandler held the phone away from his ear until Hennessy was done shouting.

  “Chief,” Chandler said, trying to get a word in so that he could end the conversation. “Chief, I’ve got to go.”

  “It’s captain!”

  “If you want me to be on that plane, I need to get off the phone. I have leads to follow up on before I leave.”

  Hennessy made some comment about Chandler caring more about his case out West than he did about those that he was being paid to work on by the City of New York.

  Chandler agreed, not listening to what Hennessy was saying, and hung up. It was then that he realized that Valerie was right, he never should have bothered. Then again, this confrontation with Hennessy was no different than any other conversation they’d had over the years.

  CHAPTER 43

  MAURICE MATHER was a relative newcomer to television news reporting, with only three years of on-the-job training to his credit. But eagerness was molded into his tanned face. And while serving as a copy editor, he had learned aggressiveness from his mentor. A good reporter does not always take “no” for an answer: he does what’s necessary to obtain the story he’s after.

  A precondition for this interview with hospital administrator John Stevens, however, was that it would have to be held off-camera. While this obviously did not present a problem for a newspaper reporter, it strained the patience of their television counterparts, who relied on the visual aspect of their presentation as much as the verbal information they conveyed.

  “This is Tom Ingle, a copy editor and trainee at the station,” Mather said, introducing his assistant, a curly-haired twenty-five-year-old. Ingle and Stevens nodded at each other.

  “So what do you want to know?” Stevens asked.

  “I want to know why Phil Madison was kicked out of your hospital.”

  “Dr. Madison was not kicked out. His privileges were temporarily suspended.”

  “Why?”

  Stevens shifted in his seat. “It was an upper-level management decision.”

  “Does it have anything to do with the rape charges against him?”

  “Rape charges?” Stevens sat forward in his chair. “What are you talking about?”

  “The rape charges,” Mather said again, as if repeating it would stimulate Stevens’s memory. “Say two or three months ago. The charges he tried to sweep under the rug by paying off the woman who brought the complaint.”

  Stevens was silent for a moment, staring off at the wall behind the reporters.

  “Dr. Stevens,” Mather said. “Does it or does it not have to do with those rape charges?”

  He cleared his throat. “I have no comment, other than to say that this is an unrelated matter.”

  “Then this is solely a means of distancing the hospital from a murderer, severing a relationship before it becomes more damaging than the association already is.”

  Stevens crinkled his face and squirmed a bit. Ingle was scribbling notes on a pad. “Phillip Madison is not a murderer.”

  “Assuming you’re correct, let me rephrase the question. The action the hospital board has taken is intended to distance the hospital from an accused murderer, severing a relationship before it becomes even more damaging than it’s already been. Isn’t that right, Dr. Stevens?”

  Stevens’s head bobbed back and forth, left and right.

  “Essentially.”

  More scribbling. “Do you feel that Madison is capable of committing murder?”

  “I can’t speak for the actions of another,” Stevens said cautiously, playing the role of administrator and bureaucrat. “But I can tell you that Dr. Madison is one of the finest human beings you’ll ever meet: I’ve never known him to hurt a fly. He’s also responsible for building this hospital into what it is—a valued teaching institution with state-of-the-art equipment and an expert staff of distinguished surgeons. He’s dedicated his life to saving people, not killing them.”

  “Would you say that one’s actions in the past are an indication of what their actions will be in the future?” asked Ingle, the rookie, trying hard to contribute.

  “As I said, no one can guarantee the actions of another. To do so would be like trying to predict the stock market. It’s just not possible to do with any degree of accuracy.”

  “What about the hospital’s exposure on Madison’s arrest?”

  “What about it? We had nothing to do with the murders.”

  “Could it be said that the hours you force surgeons to work, the stress these doctors are under, results in a high degree of alcoholism, of driving while under the influence?”

  “Do you really think I’m going to answer such an absurd allegation?”

  “Statistics don’t lie, Dr. Stevens. The rate of alcoholism, and even drug abuse amongst surgeons, is quite high compared to the general—”

  “If you’re going to persist in this line of questioning, Mr. Mather, then this interview is over.”

  “Fine. I’ll move on.” He looked down at his pad.

  “A question if I may, Maurice.” This from Ingle.

  Mather waved him on.

  “Dr. Stevens, you acted as if you didn’t know of the rape charges against Dr. Madison.”

  “I have no comment on that.”

  “I’ll take that as a no.”

  “You can take it just as I answered the question.”

  “Then you didn’t know of the payoff he made to the woman to keep her quiet.”

  “I’ll have to answer that question the same way as I answered your last question.”

  Ingle scribbled some notes.

  “How long have you known Madison?” Mather asked.

  “About thirteen years. We started out at the hospital together.”

  “Would you consider him your friend?”

  “Yes, I would.”

  “And would you say that you would go out of your way to protect your friend?”

  “Mr. Mather...yes, I would go out of my way to assist a friend in need. But that does not mean I’d go so far as to do anything that would impair my job as a hospital administrator, nor would I do anything that would jeopardize this hospital in any manner. Now, I believe this interview is over. Gentlemen,” he said, as he stood from behind his desk and walked over to the door.

  After they exited his office, Mather began walking at a fast clip. “We’ll have Andy get some footage of the hospital interior, and a few seconds of Stevens’s door as we try to open it, and then have it close hard on the camera. It dramatizes the way we were shut out from filming the interview.”

  “But he was pretty cooperative, he just didn’t want to go on-camera.”

  “That,” Mather said with a grin that could sour milk, “will turn out to be a mistake.”

  The mobile van sat parked in front of the hospital with its antenna telescoping into the sky fifteen feet. The camera was mounted on a tripod just to the left and in front of the hospital’s main entrance. A small television monitor sat below the tripod on the floor, as they set up for a live remote shot for the noon newscast. Ingle was helping Andy, the cameraman, set up the shot while Maurice Mather stood with his lapel microphone in place, his handwritten notes on a small pad in fron
t of him.

  “Minute thirty out,” Andy said as he pressed the headset radio against his ear. Mather looked into the camera and practiced a few lines from his pad. “How did ‘we sound?” he asked into the mike, listening through his earpiece to the director back at the station. “Testing, one-two-three,” he said.

  “They’re not getting us,” Andy said. “Your mike’s dead.”

  “Do we have another?”

  “Checking.” Andy trotted over to the van and rummaged through a box of electronic equipment and jumbled wires.

  “Thirty seconds out,” called Mather, trying not to show visible signs of sweat—perspiration did not look good on camera. Ingle was standing next to the tripod, perspiring profusely, watching as Andy rummaged through the box, counting out the remaining seconds.

  “Got one, but it’s a handheld job,” Andy said as he fumbled to plug the microphone into his camera. He handed it to Mather and jumped back behind the tripod to check its position. “Counting,” Andy said, holding up five fingers. “Five-four-three-two-one.”

  As Andy hit “two” in the count, a broad smile spread across Mather’s plastic face and he brought the mike up to his mouth. “Thanks, Patrick. We’re here at Sacramento General Hospital, the very hospital where Dr. Phillip Madison was on staff at the time of the grisly hit-and-run murders.

  “The hospital administrator, Dr. John Stevens, refused to allow our cameras in, but he did permit us to interview him.” Mather watched the monitor as the tape that Andy had shot an hour earlier was rolling at the station, reviewing the prior events in the story, showing the hospital footage, and setting the stage for the remainder of Mather’s report. Mather squinted into the lens of the camera, adjusted his hair in the reflection, looked down at his pad to review his notes. Glanced at the monitor. Caught his cue.

  “And Patrick, Dr. Stevens said that Madison’s privileges were suspended due to an upper-level management decision. A decision designed to protect the hospital from further embarrassment by disassociating itself from the accused murderer before the relationship created irreparable damage.” Mather glanced down at his pad.

  “Dr. Stevens declined to go into details about the payoff that Madison made to a woman who accused him of rape a couple of months ago. But he did say that the hospital’s current decision to suspend his privileges was a separate issue from the rape. Now, when I asked Dr. Stevens, who’s a longtime personal friend of Madison, if he thought his star surgeon was capable of committing murder, his response was that no one can predict the actions of another. Not the strongest statement of support, Patrick,” Mather said with a slight smile. “In fact, he likened trying to predict Phillip Madison’s behavior to playing the stock market—apparently, he’s unpredictable and it’s impossible to know how he’d react in any given situation with any degree of accuracy.”