Prophet

by Frank Peretti

  John knew Carl was teasing him and joined the game as he prepared the equipment. “Hey, come on, I’ve been coming across pretty good on the tube, you have to admit. I don’t even wiggle my thumbs anymore, did you notice?”

  “Oh, I’ve noticed, Dad, I really have. It’s made a world of difference!”

  “Well, there you go.” John’s eyes twinkled as he measured a quarter inch between his thumb and forefinger. “Now I’m that far from perfect!”

  Carl laughed, lounging on the couch. “Aw, get outa town!”

  “No, just ask my public out there!”

  “Well, sure, they get to watch you, but I have to have you for my old man.” He held up his root beer in a toast. “Vive la différence!”

  John shook his head. “Well, we press on toward the mark. We press on.”

  “So press the Play button. Let’s roll this thing!”

  “Right on.”

  Blip. John hit the Play button, and the cassette from Midwestern University began to roll. Tom Carey, a reporter for a Midwest station and a longtime associate of John’s, had sent it Federal Express, and it had arrived on John’s desk that afternoon. John didn’t open the package at the station, but hid it in his briefcase, did the Five O’clock, did the Seven O’clock, and then got safely home first.

  Shannon DuPliese appeared on the screen in a typical talking-head interview format, looking off-camera, a bit of halogen lighting on her face, a small, black, clip-on microphone attached to her blouse.

  “Okay,” came Tom Carey’s voice off-camera, “this is the interview with Shannon DuPliese, 2:41 P.M., October 9, 1991. This is for you, John, old buddy.”

  Shannon looked at the camera and smiled good-naturedly, though she seemed nervous.

  Then Tom had another thought. “Oh, and John . . .” He stuck his head between Shannon and the camera, and though his face was a little blurred, his big glasses and wild head of black hair were unmistakable. “Hi, it’s me. Listen, we can do this both ways if you want. Shannon says she’d just as soon have her face shown, she’s got nothing to hide, but we’ll go back and do some key sound bites with her in silhouette in case you decide to go that way.” He vanished from the screen with a Muppet-like jerk and began the interview.

  “So, Shannon,” came his voice, “why don’t you start by telling us who you are?”

  She looked off-camera at Tom and introduced herself. “My name is Shannon DuPliese, I’m nineteen, and right now I’m going to Midwestern University . . .”

  Wow, thought John, this is gonna be heavy. The real scoop, straight from the person who was there. What a story—if it ever becomes one.

  The phone rang. “Oh-oh,” John said, hitting the Pause button. “Come on, Leslie, don’t tell me you couldn’t get together with the Brewers . . .”

  John strode over to the kitchen counter and grabbed the phone. “John Barrett.”

  “John, this is Charley Manning.”

  Well! Charley Manning, John’s friend with close ties to the governor’s office!

  “Hey, Charley, what do you know?”

  “John, I’ve come up with a pretty good hunch. See what you think of it. Right before the governor’s campaign started, he had two special assistants. Martin Devin was one, and the other one was an older guy named Ed Lake. Lake was there first and served as chief of staff during the governor’s first term until Devin came on the scene as special assistant and the chain of command got muddled. After that, those two men couldn’t agree on who was special assistant and who was chief of staff, and what those titles meant anyway, and then this Devin character started muscling his way directly to the governor instead of going through Lake. Some of the governor’s staff told me they had a real feud going for a while.

  “Well anyway, things finally came to a head, and Lake was forced out. And check this timing—he left the job the Monday after the governor’s kickoff rally.”

  John immediately saw the connection. “Monday after the rally . . . That’s when Dad got that tape.”

  “From what some of the staffers told me, Lake and Devin were always trying power plays on each other. It sounds to me like Lake gave the tape to your dad just to knife Martin Devin.”

  “So where’s Lake now?”

  “Gone. He’s left town—to begin his retirement, I understand. He might be with a sister in Alaska or at a winter home he owns in Florida, either one. Or he could be somewhere else we don’t know about.”

  “Thanks, Charley.”

  “Well, it isn’t much, I know.”

  “It’ll help. We’ll follow it up.”

  CHAPTER 29

  VIDEO: A BLACK-AND-WHITE still from an old TV show showing a handsome doctor and a mischievous, ponytailed nurse.

  Voice over the picture: “I’m not a doctor, but I’ve played one on TV . . .” Video: The black-and-white TV still lap dissolves to another still, this one showing an older doctor surrounded by bright-eyed, somewhat ragged children.

  Voice over the picture: “. . . and the role of Dr. Harrigan in the classic film Angels in White was one of my most memorable.”

  Cut to the present, color video, as Theodore Packard, silver-haired, distinguished actor of stage and screen, dressed in a smartly tailored suit, replaces a thick book on one of many full bookshelves that cover the whole wall behind him. He looks with eyes of wisdom at the camera.

  “Having identified as an actor with the high drama of medicine, I am daily reminded that . . .” As he speaks, he crosses to his desk and sits on the corner of it. Behind him a microscope can be seen on a table, and on another wall full-color anatomy charts. “. . . not too many years ago, women, free citizens of this country, were still forced by society’s bonds and ignorance to resort to unspeakable, desperate measures in attempting to undo a crisis, unwanted pregnancy.” He turns his head to one side just as another camera picks him up looking straight into the lens, a closer shot.

  “Now, thanks to visionaries like Governor Hiram Slater, those days are finally coming to a permanent end, and I’m happy to relate that your governor is still at work to ensure that all abortions in this state will be not only legal but available and, most of all, safe. Hiram Slater cares about women. He will fight for them and for their privacy . . .” His voice takes on an especially gentle, compassionate tone. “. . . and has done so, even to the point of personal sacrifice.” He rises from the desk and walks toward a third camera, his marvelous study full of books spread out behind him. “I hope you’ll share Hiram Slater’s dream and place your vote where your heart is this November.”

  Fade to a heavenly, ethereal, slow-motion shot of a young mother dressed in flowing white, lifting a tiny pink baby and cuddling it close. A soft, soothing female voice: “That we may choose if . . . and when . . . without fear.”

  Freeze frame. Lacy, gentle script appears over the mother and child: “Hiram Slater cares about women.”

  Small title across bottom of screen: “Paid for by the Committee to Reelect Governor Slater, Wilma Benthoff, Chairperson.”

  WEDNESDAY MORNING, 10 O’CLOCK, Bayview Memorial Hospital. Dr. Harlan Matthews, pathologist, expected to hear the knock on his open office door. Looking up, he saw his visitors from yesterday. The detective was holding a folded sheet of paper.

  “Good morning, Doctor,” said Henderson. “I brought you something.”

  Matthews rose from his desk, received the sheet of paper from Henderson’s hand, and took the time to read it thoroughly.

  He laughed. “A search warrant! Ah, that’s even better!”

  Then he closed his office door, but not before John dragged a large carrying case in from the hall.

  Matthews looked at Henderson, who shrugged and replied, “Hey, I owe him a lot. We’ve got a buddy system going here.”

  Matthews placed the search warrant reverently upon his desk and answered, “Let’s have a little meeting first. Have a seat, gentlemen.”

  Dr. Matthews already had two chairs ready and waiting for them. They sat, and th
en Matthews took his place behind his desk, slid open the center drawer, and immediately produced two manila folders. One he kept for himself, the other he handed to Henderson.

  “To encapsulate the findings of the report . . . give you the bottom line, in other words . . .” He watched as they opened their folder and perused their copy. “. . . the patient died from hypovolemic shock, which is a severe drop in the volume of blood to the vital organs—the brain, kidneys, liver, even the heart itself—resulting in death. The hypovolemic shock was due to exsanguination, severe loss of blood, which was due to . . .” Matthews flipped through his copy of the report. “Here it is, written out briefly, the bottom of the last page, just that one paragraph, you see there?”

  They found it.

  “Of course, I’m sure you realize that the death certificate said nothing about this, but found the third cause to be hypoprothrombinemia, due to an accidental overdose of warfarin.”

  “That’s the story we all got,” said John.

  “Well, here are my findings. ‘Obstetrical hemorrhage,’ bleeding due to retained products of conception and endometrial lacerations. In other words, whoever did the abortion was in a big hurry, didn’t finish the job, and botched it besides.”

  Matthews set down his copy and leaned back in his chair, ready to explain a little. “When a normal birth occurs, or even an induced abortion done properly, the uterus naturally clamps down and stops its own bleeding. But in this patient’s case, most of the placenta was left inside, and the wall of the uterus was lacerated, and that natural stoppage didn’t happen. The patient bled out in a matter of hours.”

  Henderson muttered a low curse, staring at the report.

  John wondered, “But . . . surely someone at the abortion clinic would have noticed the bleeding.”

  Matthews was unhappy about this whole case, that was obvious. “Should have noticed the bleeding but didn’t. There’s always bleeding after an abortion. That’s normal. What someone didn’t see or didn’t report or didn’t think to do anything about was heavy, continuous bleeding. And I can imagine it not being seen, given the sinking standards of this business. You have to realize, abortion clinics aren’t like your typical family practice. They’re under tremendous pressure from two sources: money and fear.

  “On the one hand, abortions are lucrative; you can bring in a lot of money in a short time with minimum effort. The more abortions you do, the more money you make, so the natural inclination is to do them as quickly as possible and cut corners if you can. You get the procedure down to just a few minutes, you get an assembly line going, and you don’t hire RNs to help in the back rooms because they get too picky about procedure, sterilizing the equipment, sanitation. All that stuff takes time, and you can have some thirty girls waiting in line. So instead you hire health-care workers—often marginally trained—to do all the assisting, attending, and observing, most of whom are there because they’re cause-oriented. They’re dedicated to the cause of abortion at any cost and aren’t about to jeopardize that cause by making waves or finding fault.

  “On the other hand, you’ve got the intense political pressure over this whole issue, which makes you circle the wagons all the tighter to protect yourself from intrusion, discovery, regulation, standardization. If you slip up, the last thing you want is for anyone to know about it, least of all your peers. There’s also an unwritten code out there: you don’t snitch—you don’t make trouble. Couple that with the women who get the abortions. Most of them are there secretly. They come in secretly, they go out secretly, they even use false names a lot of the time, and if something goes wrong, they’re not likely to say anything to anyone about it because they don’t want to be discovered—the young girls especially, and sometimes . . .” Matthews picked up the autopsy report and slapped it down on his desk for effect “. . . sometimes this is the result. And the whole thing was secret, from start to finish. It took a search warrant for anyone to even know about it.”

  Henderson asked, “Did Governor Slater know about it?”

  Matthews knew that was a ticklish question and balked just a little before answering. “He knew his daughter died from an abortion, yes. I’m the one who told him.”

  “Uh . . . when was that?” John asked.

  “The day after . . . that would be Saturday. Hillary died Friday evening, we did the autopsy the next day, and then . . .” Matthews fidgeted a little, looking around the room in frustration. “And then the governor came for a conference with Dr. Leland Gray, his personal physician who handled the case, and I was in on that meeting to share my findings.”

  Henderson held up his hand. “Now hold on, Doctor, let me be sure I’m following this. You say you and Dr. Gray sat down with the governor and told him exactly what happened to Hillary?”

  “Yes, sir, we did.”

  “And you told the governor she died from a botched abortion?”

  “I used the same words with him as I just now used with you in describing the cause of her death.”

  “So . . . where did this wrong-drug story come from?”

  Matthews sighed and stared at the report. “Gentlemen, I did my job as best I could. I performed the autopsy and submitted my findings to the attending physician, Dr. Gray. After that, I was out of the loop. Dr. Gray filled out the death certificate, changing the last entry as to cause of death from obstetrical hemorrhage to warfarin overdose. And as you know, that’s the story that was released to the press, with the governor’s full knowledge and approval. Obviously much of my report was . . . circumvented, ignored.”

  “They circled the wagons,” said John.

  Matthews nodded. “You’re getting the picture.”

  “And . . . all the time you knew this and didn’t say anything? You didn’t take any action?”

  “Try it yourself sometime. Just see what happens. Dr. Gray is not one to be tangled with if you value your job.”

  Henderson quipped at John, “Looks like you’re about to stir the waters up a little.”

  John looked at the camera case on the floor. “Well . . . what do you think, Dr. Matthews? You’re talking about it now.”

  Matthews shrugged. “The governor’s already made it public, so it’s going to come out anyway, and most importantly . . .” He pointed to the search warrant. “. . . you made me.”

  John reached tentatively for the camera case. “Well, since you’ve already made the information somewhat public . . . and the governor has too . . .”

  “And somebody out there is going to wonder why he thought it was a warfarin overdose all this time and only recently found out it was obstetrical hemorrhage . . .”

  “Yeah, right.”

  Matthews hesitated, then went on, “And since the fingers are going to be pointing and will have to land on somebody . . .”

  “You, do you think?”

  Matthews thought a moment, then said, “Set it up.”

  John grinned and opened the case. “It could take a while. I don’t have a cameraman, so I’ll have to do it all myself.”

  Matthews got up. “Let me help. I can handle that tripod.”

  “Where’s an outlet for these lights?” asked Henderson.

  TV LIGHTS ILLUMINED the wall of the reception area in the Human Life Services Center. Seated in shadow, a silhouette in front of their hot, white glow, “Mary” was talking honestly and directly with Leslie Albright, reporter for NewsSix, as a television camera perched on a tripod beside Leslie captured it all.

  “Mary’s” real name was Cindy Danforth. She was eighteen, black, and insecure, but had some new friends. She’d recently spoken with Shannon DuPliese by telephone. They’d shared their fears, wounds, and sorrows, and the healing process had begun for them both. The greatest balm for Cindy was just finding someone else who could identify with her experience, especially her experience at the Women’s Medical Center.

  But Shannon was not the only supporting influence that had brought Cindy to this point. Rachel Franklin, the waitress who first told Jo
hn and Carl about Annie, was right there in the room at this moment, behind Cindy 100 percent. Mrs. Westfall had introduced Rachel and Cindy to each other only yesterday, and now they were like sisters. Again, they had an experience, a particular place, in common.

  Deanne Brewer was also there, a loving mother who actually understood and accepted everyone as they were and where they were. Also, the fact that she was Annie’s mother evoked a deep and warm respect from the girls. They’d welcomed Deanne into their lives.

  So now, even though the camera would see only her silhouette, the protective screen from the last visit was gone, and Cindy faced Leslie Albright directly to tell her story. The interview lasted almost an hour.

  Leslie asked a closing question, still using Cindy’s code name. “Mary, why have you come forward to tell us your story? What do you hope to accomplish?”

  Cindy spoke in a timid voice, but had a firm grip on the answer. “Well, you know, I don’t want to hurt anybody, and I’m not out for revenge, but . . . after what happened to Annie, I just have to do what I can to keep it from happening to somebody else. Hillary Slater died, and nobody said anything; so then Annie died, and now if I don’t say anything about Annie, somebody else might die. Somebody has to say something, and somebody has to do something, that’s all.”

  “Is there anything else you’d like to say, anything that I haven’t asked you about?”

  Cindy thought for just a moment. “Just . . . I just want to tell all the girls out there, be careful. Abortion isn’t worth going through.”

  “Thank you. You’re a courageous young woman.”

  Cindy smiled shyly. “Thanks . . .”

  Leslie looked around at the others—at Mrs. Westfall, Rachel, and Deanne Brewer. They were all quite pleased and proud of Cindy. They began to applaud.

  “Guess that’ll do it,” said Leslie, standing up to turn off the camera. “Great job. Really great job.”

  “When’s this gonna be on TV?” Cindy asked.