Prophet

by Frank Peretti

  “And it’s the claims part of Annie’s estate we’re going after here. One of her assets left behind for you to marshal is a potential claim for damages from the doctor, the nurse, the abortion clinic, whoever’s responsible, and you, as the personal representative of your daughter’s estate, would not only have a right but a duty to determine whether or not Annie had a valid claim. Are you with me so far?”

  “I’d be standing in for my dead daughter,” Max said.

  “Right.”

  “And that means her right to an abortion and privacy, that’d be mine. Those records would be mine.”

  “Once you’re appointed as personal representative of her estate, yes. You’ve received enough information to cause you to believe that she has a claim against the clinic as an asset, and in order to marshal that asset, you’d have to have those records, and the clinic would have to produce them.”

  Max liked the sound of this. “Gotcha.”

  “How do we do that?” Deanne asked, a glint of hope in her eyes.

  Aaron went back to his legal pad and started a list. “Okay, first thing would be to get one of you appointed as the personal representative of the estate. We could get those papers prepared and then have you in to sign them and then file them with the court to get you appointed.

  “In the meantime we would draft a letter for you to sign, a Request for Medical Records. The letter would state . . .” Aaron scribbled it down as he said it. “. . . that Annie was in the medical clinic for medical treatment . . . that you’ve been appointed as the personal representative of her estate . . . and . . . in order to settle her estate, you need to obtain her medical records. We would enclose a check for, say, twenty-five dollars, to cover copying costs. So you would send them the letter, and . . . well, usually a clerk in a hospital or clinic handles that routinely and releases the records, but I’m not sure how routine such a request would be for an abortion clinic.” Aaron hesitated just a little, then mused, “With a little luck, the clinic’s records custodian would just fill the request and none of the clinic’s bigwigs would ever see it. But if things don’t go our way the people in charge are going to know about it real quick and then you’ll have to deal with them.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you one thing,” said Max. “I ain’t mailin’ them nothin’. I’m takin’ that letter in there and puttin’ it right in their face.”

  “Well . . . these things are routinely handled through the mail, but . . . I can understand your going there personally. I don’t recommend it, but . . . sure, I understand.”

  But Deanne had a problem with that. “Babe, you can’t go in there.”

  Max deflated with a recollection and cursed. “Excuse me. I’ve given that clinic trouble, Mr. Hart. The judge said he would jail me if I didn’t stay away from there. I can’t go.”

  “How about Deanne?” Aaron asked. “Is she under any judge’s order?”

  Max laughed at that. “No . . . no way, she’s too good a woman for that.” He grabbed her hand when he said it.

  “So we could make Deanne the personal representative. Is that all right with both of you?”

  “So she takes the letter and puts it right in their face?” asked Max.

  “Well . . . I imagine she would be courteous about it, but . . . yes, she could go.”

  Max and Deanne consulted each other with their eyes, and it was all right.

  “Good enough. Now, Linda’s our paralegal, so if you decide you want to go with this, she’ll prepare the documents in the next day or so to get you appointed, and then she’ll call you. You’ll have to sign several papers to have you appointed by the court as the personal representative of your daughter’s estate. Now while all that’s going on, I’ll prepare a letter for you to sign, a Request for Medical Records. Once your appointment goes through and the letter’s drafted and signed, you’ll be all set to go to the clinic and get the records.

  “Now, do you think that’s enough?” Max and Deanne started thinking about it, and Aaron further clarified, “If there’s anything I’ve left out, or anything you need to have explained, or any other action you want to take . . .”

  Deanne asked, “What if they really did kill Annie? I mean, what if we can prove it? How can we stop them?”

  “How can we get ’em?” asked Max.

  Aaron scribbled some more. “We have another lawyer in our office, Bill McLoughlin, and all Bill does is personal injury claims such as this one. Tell you what—let’s get those records first, and then, having proof from which to build a case, I’d like to turn this claim over to Bill for further action. For now I’ll run this by him and see if he thinks of anything else we could be doing at this time to get those records.”

  Max held up his hand to call a halt. “Well, this all sounds fine, but . . . we gotta talk money here.”

  Aaron smiled. “Yes, there is that final detail. Well, we’re willing at this point to proceed on this as a contingent fee case. That means that our fee is based on a percentage of the recovery. No recovery, no fee. Our usual percentage is thirty-three and a third percent. You’ll have to pay for our out-of-pocket expenses, but we can defer those in most cases until the case is over. Once our investigation is complete and we see what’s there, we’ll sit down with you and map out the case. Or, if there isn’t enough, we’ll advise you not to proceed. If you’re willing to go ahead on this basis, I’ll have Linda prepare an agreement along those lines.”

  Max and Deanne exchanged another consulting look, and then Max answered, “Let’s do it.”

  THURSDAY AFTERNOON, CLOSE to 4 o’clock, Tina Lewis gave Leslie’s notes a quick, cursory scan and then tried to hand them back. “Hm . . . yeah, Erica’s right, you don’t have a story here.”

  Leslie wouldn’t take the notes back, but left Tina holding them in midair. “Now wait a minute, Tina. You hardly even looked at it.”

  They were in Tina’s office. Tina was seated behind her desk, busy, now interrupted, and about to become irritated.

  She dropped the notes on Leslie’s side of the desk just to be rid of them. Now she was getting angry. “You don’t have a story. Who’s going to believe a bunch of allegations made by an unknown, anonymous, alleged witness who won’t even appear on-camera, who can’t prove a word of it? This isn’t news, it’s abortion baiting, it’s inflammatory. You don’t have a story!”

  “I have a family who lost their daughter!” Leslie tapped on the notes with her finger as she spoke.

  “So what do you have that’s solid? We can’t go on the air with severe allegations like this and nothing to back them up, no one to appear on camera, no proof. We’ll have the pro-choicers all over us—not to mention our peers, anyone out there who still has some respect for fair journalism!”

  LESLIE WAS READY to fight for this one. She picked up her notes and flipped the pages to the last item, holding it toward Tina to show her. “Tina, had you given my notes a fair reading, you would have seen that the Brewers have taken legal steps. The mother, Deanne, has been appointed as personal representative of Annie’s estate, and she’ll be hand-delivering a Request for Medical Records to the Women’s Medical Center tomorrow morning. Now if some records do turn up and the Brewers can prove Annie was really there, we’ll have some strong pieces to fit together, to build into something. All I’m asking is to be there at the clinic with a camera to get some footage we can use if this thing develops into a story. Hey, how often do we get to be there right when a story is breaking?”

  Tina probed, “And of course you’re not after an anti-choice piece?”

  Leslie took that like a slap in the face. She recovered, leaned on the desk, and spoke in a controlled voice. “Last week we did a story on new home construction rip-offs, and before that we reported on that dental clinic using poisonous amalgam in its fillings. Now, when there could be a case of malpractice so severe that a young woman is dead . . .”

  “We don’t know that.”

  Leslie pressed on. “But we’re close to finding out,
and I think it’s worth looking into, regardless of our political positions. I’m not talking about a woman’s right to an abortion. I’m talking about current abortion industry standards and safeguards, or the lack of them, a subject that would be of great interest to our viewers. Hey, why did we wave all those coat hangers at all those rallies if we can’t be sure women are really getting safe abortions?”

  Tina’s expression remained hard, but Leslie had prevailed enough to make her pause. She looked at Leslie, then at the notes still lying on the desk, and finally, with a sigh of resignation, picked up the notes and looked them over carefully. “Who’s this . . . Judy Medford?”

  “Annie Brewer. ‘Judy Medford’ was her alias. A lot of the girls use false names to protect their privacy.”

  “What about the autopsy report? Where’s the real one?”

  “Deanne Brewer and I went to the hospital on Monday, but they’d misplaced it, couldn’t find it. We still haven’t heard anything.”

  Tina gave a concessive sigh and rested against the back of her chair. “So . . . Annie Brewer’s mother is now the legal personal representative of her daughter’s estate.” Tina sat and stared. It seemed this was something new to her.

  Leslie was glad to know something Tina didn’t. “As such, she now stands in the place of her daughter and has a legal right to her daughter’s medical records. The clinic has to release them. They can’t hide behind their usual confidentiality.”

  Tina smiled wryly—it was almost a smirk. “Well, you’d better hope the Brewers get something for all their trouble or you won’t have a story.” And then for emphasis, “Right?”

  Leslie conceded, “Right. But it’s worth a little time in the morning. Let me have it, and then I’ll cover another story the rest of the day.”

  Tina studied Leslie for a moment, thinking it over. “Okay, I’ll authorize that much. You haven’t sold me yet, but . . . let’s call this a test drive, and that’s all it is.”

  “That’s all I’m asking.”

  Tina turned to her computer console and called up the Next Day Story Outlook. She typed in Leslie’s photographer request, followed by the letters, HP—NFAT, which stood for High Priority, Not For Air Today. The entry would clue in the assignment desk the next morning, and a cameraman would be reserved for Leslie’s use for this story as well as her regular assignment.

  All set. Leslie felt giddy as she left Tina’s office. Now where was John? He’d want to know.

  It was 4:30. The Five O’clock was coming up fast, and people were scrambling around the newsroom to assemble twice the amount of material as before and have it ready half an hour earlier. Hal Rosen sat at the weather desk putting his graphics together in the computer, watching the clouds moving off the blue ocean and over the green continent, swirling in time-lapse animation. Another monitor showed a weather map with temperatures all around the state, wind velocities, and precipitation. The five-day forecast wasn’t on the screen yet. No sneak previews this time.

  “Hal.”

  “Nnyehh.” He wasn’t entirely verbal when he was working on his maps.

  “Have you seen John?”

  “Yeah, lots of times.”

  “Any idea where he is now?”

  Hal turned and smiled mischievously. “Try the set. They’re tinkering with the lights or something.”

  Leslie hurried around the big plywood backdrop and into what was beginning to look like a Disneyland ride or a scene out of Star Trek. The set was wide, expansive, awesome. The backdrop had been extended upward as high as the ceiling, but the lighting gave the illusion that it stretched upward forever, far beyond the eye’s reach. The news desk was roughly the same shape as the old one, but this one seemed to hover there like a spacecraft, carefully planned shadows and angles hiding the supports underneath. To top it all off, high above the set, poised like a steel tyrannosaurus, was the camera boom, a new state-of-the-art robotic camera perched precariously upon it, ready for that big swoop-down shot to open the show.

  John, Ali Downs, and Bing Dingham, the sportscaster, were all sitting at their places, along with Walt Bruechner, the late-night news anchor, sitting in Hal Rosen the weatherman’s usual spot. Mardell the floor director was pointing and directing the camera operators as they experimented with different angles, dollying this way, then that, back and forth. Up above, on a narrow catwalk, a lighting technician adjusted some floodlights.

  “Heads up, John,” said Mardell, and John looked up at Camera Two. “Give me more wash from the right.”

  “From the right,” echoed the lighting tech.

  Leslie gestured to Mardell and mouthed the words, “Is it okay if I talk to John?”

  “Sure, come in and sit in the weatherman’s chair for a minute. Walt, you can take a nap now if you want.”

  Walt jumped from his chair. “Ah, thank you so much! I need my beauty sleep.”

  Mardell cracked, “Better make that a long nap.”

  Walt waved at Leslie with the same motion one would use washing a windshield. “Hi there, bye there.”

  She ducked under his waving arm, scampered across the floor, stepping over cables and gaffer’s tape, and took Hal Rosen’s chair on the right end of the news desk.

  “Okay,” said Mardell, “pretend you’re Hal.”

  Leslie sat up straight and smiled at Camera Three. She muttered to John, “I talked to Tina and she gave me the okay to shoot the request for records tomorrow.”

  John sighed a worried sigh. “I don’t know if you should have done that. The story isn’t ready yet, and you know the policy. We don’t have to pitch it to anyone until we have everything.”

  Leslie felt defensive. “John, I couldn’t wait for a free camera. Deanne’s serving the request tomorrow morning, and I’ve got to have a camera there when she does it.”

  “It’s your telling Tina that bothers me.”

  “Well, that was Erica’s doing. She didn’t have a camera to spare during the day shift, so the only thing I could do was ask for one extra stop in my schedule, and Erica wouldn’t approve that unless Tina approved it.”

  “Ohhh.”

  “So I tried, okay?”

  Mardell paced back and forth, eyeing the set’s colors, textures, balance. “Looks good. Bing’s heinie’s in the dark, though.”

  “I beg your pardon!” said Bing, and they all laughed.

  “Yeah,” said Nate, the light man, “let’s shine some light on that subject. Be thankful, Bing, it’s your best side.”

  Leslie leaned toward John and spoke quietly. “Well, Tina isn’t sold on the idea yet, but she said I can get the footage, so I’ve got the assignment for tomorrow morning.”

  John nodded, still looking toward Camera Three. “Well, we’re gambling. Something really solid would be nice.”

  “Or we don’t have a story. Tina was clear on that.”

  “She doesn’t like abortion stories.”

  Mardell called, “Okay, everybody straight ahead—let’s try the boom.”

  The intercom from the control room squawked, “Hurry it up—we’ve got fifteen minutes.”

  “Fifteen minutes, everybody,” Mardell echoed. “Okay, straight ahead. Look busy.” They looked straight ahead; they looked busy.

  Leslie whispered, “Well, this story’s different, and I think I can convince her of that.”

  John touched her hand to caution her. “But don’t say anything to anyone, okay?”

  “Let’s roll it,” said Mardell. “Music: Tumm . . . didi didi didi dahh . . . Bring it down!”

  In the monitors they could see the aerial shot of themselves, taken through the camera high above them on the boom as it began to descend. It was a marvelous sight, like a lunar landing.

  “That’s good, that’s good!” Mardell shouted in glee.

  John whispered to Leslie, “I think this is going to be an ambush story, if you know what I mean. We don’t want the clinic to know.”

  Leslie’s eyebrows went up. “Right.”

 
Mardell ordered, “Look this way, you two!”

  They both smiled at Camera Two, along with Ali Downs and Bing Dingham.

  “Okay,” said Mardell, “one more time, with the theme music!”

  The camera boom lifted toward the ceiling for another swoop. Then came the music, busy, big, sounding like news: Didi didi didi daahhh, Boom Boom, Didi didi didi daahh . . .

  “And now,” came a voice over the music, “The City’s most up-to-the-minute, most accurate newscast from The City’s Premier News Team, NewsSix at Five, with John Barrett and Ali Downs!”

  You couldn’t help but be impressed.

  CHAPTER 16

  THE WOMEN’S MEDICAL Center was housed in a two-story brick structure in the midst of a quiet neighborhood of older houses and new apartments. The shrubbery lining the front walkway was neatly trimmed, there was an attractive lawn between the building and the sidewalk, and in the center of the lawn the clinic’s sign was mounted in a matching, understated brick pedestal. To someone driving by, the clinic could have been a dentist’s office, a counseling center, even a law firm—a Mercedes and two BMWs were parked in reserved stalls in the black-topped parking area.

  But as Leslie, Deanne Brewer, and Mel the cameraman stood across the street in the cold, gray morning, knowing what they knew, the building had an imposing, ominous feeling about it.

  This was Friday, and, as was their custom, two women and a clergyman, pro-lifers, were on the sidewalk ready to counsel and, they hoped, dissuade any women or girls who might be approaching the clinic. Right now there were no patients approaching, and the three appeared to be praying.

  Leslie was dressed properly to appear on-camera—if not for this story, for the next one. Deanne was dressed to show she couldn’t be intimidated. And Mel wore his usual jeans and army jacket. Leslie and Mel had come in one of the NewsSix cars, a little white fastback with the show’s logo emblazoned on its sides. Deanne had come in her own car.