“Mr. Potter, how are you feeling today?”
Potter looked at Riesner, who shrugged. “Fine,” he said.
“Do you suffer from any sort of chronic or intermittent illness?”
“Objection. Irrelevant, immaterial. And—it almost goes without saying, doesn’t it?—incompetent.”
“Uh, it goes to the witness’s ability to perceive the events spoken of,” Nina said. She was hoping to skate by with that, since she wasn’t sure what it went to at all.
“What events? What’s she talking about? When he talked to Eppley? If so, the question has to be whether he was ill on that day.”
“Reframe the question,” Amagosian said.
“Certainly, Your Honor.” Jun’s yellow sheet of paper said RECURRENT FEVER. “Do you suffer from attacks of recurrent fever?”
“Objection. I must reiterate. What is she talking about?”
Amagosian put down his head and seemed to meditate for a moment. Then he said, “Sustained.”
NO! MUST FIND OUT!
“May I be permitted to argue the objection before the court rules on the objection?” Nina said, although Amagosian had in fact just ruled on it.
Amagosian scratched his white head, said, “Go ahead, though I don’t think you’re going to get anywhere, since Mr. Potter’s general health is irrelevant to the issues in this hearing.”
Several tortured moments went by. You’ve got to find a way in! Nina told herself. All the years of training, all the bitter experience, all came down to this—she couldn’t figure out how to get this question in. Pretending to drop her file, she said, “A moment, Your Honor.” As she knelt to the floor to retrieve it she saw Riesner’s boots at the table on the right. They were made of some kind of snakeskin. Wasn’t that just perfect! While her guts reacted unfavorably to his footwear, her mind zipped through the rules of admissible evidence. Had to be relevant to an issue in this hearing. What issue? Bribery? Fraud? Procedural defectiveness?
No. The question wasn’t relevant to any of that. She straightened up and tucked her hair behind her ear. Her eyes caught Jessie, with her ramrod posture and the look of suffering under the steel.
The issue was—the issue was—
The issue was, did Jessie kill her husband. Of course!
“This question goes to the ultimate fact issue in this case, Your Honor,” Nina blurted, stumbling over the words. “Whether there was a wrongful death. Whether my client had something to do with the death of her husband.”
“I am all ears, Counsel.” But he said this wearily, because what she was saying sounded bizarre. She knew it. They all knew it.
CONGENITAL ILLNESS DIFFERENT SYMPTOMS!
“My client maintains, has maintained all along, and would have testified at the trial, that her husband suffered an acute attack of illness that caused him to fall out of the kayak and drown,” she said. “It is our contention that Mr. Potter may suffer from the same illness, although the symptomology may be different.”
“So?”
“So, we may be able to finally identify the illness if I can just ask a few more questions along these lines.”
“Invasion of privacy,” Riesner said, ticking it off on his fingers. “Speculation. Beyond the bounds of any issue introduced in the trial. Vague. Immaterial. Off we go on another one of her inadequately financed flights into outer space, Your Honor.”
“The objection is sustained,” Amagosian said.
She had lost that battle. She put her hand to the mouth that had just been muzzled.
Another sheet of yellow paper. ETHNICITY! ADOPTED!
She almost burst out in bitter laughter. Didn’t Jun get it—if she couldn’t ask about Potter’s health, how in hell was she going to get away with asking about his ethnicity?
“C’mon, Nina,” Paul said in a low voice.
“Next question, Counsel.”
“All right. Now, Mr. Potter, you were adopted as a child, is that correct?”
“Your Honor, this has gone far enough. I ask for sanctions against Counsel. She’s wasting our time with her incompetent questioning. What is she trying to imply? That my client is somehow a lesser human being because he may have been adopted? I move to strike the question.”
“The question shall be stricken. The objection is sustained. Next question.” Amagosian’s patience was strained, never a good thing.
Nina inhaled. Exhaled. “What is your ethnic background?” she asked Potter.
An indignant buzz of voices behind her. “Sanctions! Sanctions!” Riesner bayed. Potter sat back in his chair, an incredulous grin stuck on his face.
“Counsel, what is the meaning of this outrageous question?” Amagosian asked. She had to get this one through.
She thought for a minute, then said, “Ethnicity does matter, Your Honor. It matters in many ways, including in the world of medicine. And it matters legally in this case. My questions are crucial to showing what happened to Dan Potter, Your Honor. There is no other way to ask them. A miscarriage of justice will result if I cannot ask this question and have it answered.” She pulled out her one-eyed Jack. “Just as my client’s ethnicity, which is half-Armenian and half-Washoe, is crucial in this case.”
A beat. “Half-Armenian?” Amagosian said. “Really?”
“Her father was of Armenian heritage,” Nina said.
“From Alpine County. Her maiden name was Kiyan.” The whole courtroom took a look at Jessie with her cockeyed ethnic background, Amagosian, the Armenian-American, first and foremost. Nina had drawn him in and in spite of Riesner’s asking in what way this amounted to a hill of beans in the background, even Riesner seemed curious to know how she could dig her way out of this one.
Amagosian said, “Kiyan. Really. I will allow some latitude, but I hope you know what you are doing.”
“Thank you. Thank you very much, Your Honor.
What is your ethnicity, Mr. Potter?”
Potter looked at Riesner, who shrugged again. “I really resent having to answer such a personal question,” he said.
“What is your ethnicity?” Nina repeated.
“Well, I’m . . . I was adopted. My birth parents, I was told, were from North Africa.”
NOT GOOD ENOUGH. ETHNICITY.
“I didn’t ask where they were from. I asked your ethnic background.”
“They were Jews. All right? Sephardic Jews.” A pained expression crossed his face, and Nina thought, And I bet his adoptive parents gave him hell for it. So they had been anti-Semitic. Suddenly he came into focus. Yes. His heritage was there in his face. His treatment of Jessie was beginning to make sense. As Jessie had said, he had suffered from his adoptive parents’ prejudice growing up, but he had internalized it, becoming prejudiced himself.
“Those people—the birth parents—they died in Algeria. My adopted parents were traveling there. They had false papers prepared and got me out of there. I was a baby. I don’t remember any of it. There aren’t even any pictures. Anyway, I don’t think of those people as my parents. My mother didn’t wish to discuss them.”
Nina turned to Jun. The doc was practically panting in excitement. With a twist of his slender wrist, he scrawled on the pad. He showed it to her.
JACKPOT! BUT—RECURRENT ILLNESS— FEVER! PLEASE!
“Your Honor, the court has kindly permitted me the latitude to ask the last question, and the answer will be linked up to the factual issue in a moment. But I must ask the court to reconsider one more question I asked before, which is also crucial in this inquiry. I must know if Mr. Potter has a recurrent illness involving fever.”
But she didn’t have to wait. Potter answered before Amagosian could open his mouth.
“Over the last six months,” Potter said. “High fever. Very debilitating, but seems to resolve on its own.”
Jun was tugging at her arm. She looked down.
MEGAJACKPOT!
“What is it?” she whispered to him urgently. He wrote it down for her.
FAMILIAL MEDITERR
ANEAN FEVER. UNKNOWN IN HAWAII.
“Has your illness been diagnosed, Mr. Potter?”
“That’s one question too many,” Riesner said. “Move that this entire line of questioning be stricken.”
“I’m undergoing tests,” Potter said.
“Wait until this objection is ruled upon, sir,” Amagosian said to Potter, but too late.
“But what is this all about?” Potter said, a plaintive note entering his voice.
Nina said, “Your Honor, I would like to recall Dr. Jun to the stand at this time.”
“What about this witness here?”
“I will excuse this witness.”
“Then, unless the rules of court have been completely overturned, it is my turn to cross-examine,” Riesner said. “Or have we all gone through the looking glass?”
“In the interests of making our proof in an orderly fashion, may we just have Dr. Jun on the stand for ten minutes out of order?” Nina said. “He has to catch a plane.” Maybe not right away, but they didn’t have to know that.
Riesner started to say something, but Amagosian held up his hand. “Let us continue this line of questioning for ten more minutes,” he said. “I admit I am not fully aware of what Counsel is getting at, but I have the impression that something important is going on. I am going to allow Dr. Jun to take the stand out of order.”
Riesner sat down, turned sideways in disgust, stretched out his legs, and crossed his snakeskin boots.
“Mr. Potter, you are excused for the moment, but you are still under oath,” Amagosian said. Potter returned to the counsel table, sitting down beside Riesner.
“I will recall Dr. Justin Jun to the stand,” Nina said.
Jun rushed up to the witness box and was called back down to be sworn in again. He breathed hard and ran his tongue over his lips.
“Dr. Jun. You have heard Mr. Potter’s testimony? Regarding his ethnicity and his illness?”
“Oh, yes.”
“You previously testified that you treated and tested Dan Potter before his death for an unspecified medical disorder?”
“Yes.”
“And has Atchison Potter’s testimony caused you in any way to wish to revise your previous testimony?”
“Yes!” They all waited, but Jun just leaned forward, eyes now wide, aflame.
“So what—”
Jun said very rapidly, “I have a diagnosis for Dan Potter’s illness. I have been through his medical files, all the test results, again. I consulted with a gastroenterologist in Reno this afternoon. And now all this is confirmed by Mr. Potter’s testimony. It is amazing, absolutely amazing.”
“What is?”
“Mr. Potter most likely has it too. It is called Familial Mediterranean Fever, or FMF. It is a congenital illness, usually passed through a recessive gene. Both parents generally have to have the gene but not always. It is found among Arabs, in Turkey, Greece, among other places. And among Sephardic Jews. Oh, yes. I also read a number of research papers on the Internet this afternoon. But I didn’t recognize it before, when Dan Potter came in to see me. He didn’t have the cardinal sign of the illness, a recurrent high fever. . . .”
Jessie gasped behind Nina, but Nina couldn’t turn around, she had to keep Jun on his roll.
“Then how do you now diagnose it as FMF?” she said.
“Because only three-quarters of patients get the fever,” he said. “As with Mr. Potter there, symptoms can vary. Acute abdominal pain is the next most common presenting factor. I shouldn’t say common. This disease is well known in Israel and Turkey, for instance, but in Hawaii it is practically unknown. Still, I might have caught it if I had known Dan was a descendant of Sephardic Jews. I said it is a recessive gene, but there are exceptions. There are reports of it passing with only one parent known to be carrying the gene.”
“Speak more slowly,” Amagosian interrupted. “I’m having trouble following.”
“I am sorry, Your Honor, but I am so—so elated to finally know what happened to my patient.”
“Objection!” came from the next table.
Amagosian said, “The court will disregard that last statement. Now then, Dr. Jun. This illness. You are making this diagnosis rather late, more than a year after the young man’s death.”
“I practice medicine in Hawaii. I am well acquainted with genetic illnesses of Portuguese, Hawaiians, Vietnamese, Pacific Islanders, Japanese, Chinese. . . .”
“But there are not that many Sephardic Jews in Hawaii. As there are not many Armenians in Alpine County, where I live,” Amagosian said.
“Precisely. The test results match perfectly what I would expect. And Dan’s symptoms. The severe pain. The recovery after about forty-eight hours.”
“I don’t understand. This young man’s illness came on in his early twenties?”
“Yes. This illness can come on at almost any time in a person’s life. So Mr. Potter here has had a late onset.”
Amagosian sat back in his chair and nodded for Nina to proceed. She asked, “Could an attack cause such debility that a person would fall out of a small boat? Could it cause such severe pain that the person wouldn’t know what he was doing?”
“Oh, yes. Some FMF patients have suffered from psychiatric problems. The fear of developing another attack was so strong, the fear of the pain. Some have actually committed suicide. That is how severe the pain may be.”
Nina heard a sob.
“A moment, Your Honor,” Nina said, and went to Jessie. Jessie pushed her away, face distorted with horror. “Gabe,” she cried. “He has it. Oh, God, my baby.”
Nina, shocked, turned back to Jun.
“Could this illness have been passed on to Dan’s son?” she said. “Based on what you currently know, Dr. Jun?” She knew Potter wouldn’t let Riesner object to that one.
“Didn’t I mention it? One out of seven Armenians carry the gene. It’s a small world. Sephardic Jewish genes meet Armenian genes in Hawaii. The baby has the symptoms and the test results, and now, the heritage. I’m going to write it up as soon as I get back.”
“You are sure about this?”
“Reasonably sure. Recurrent high fever, ethnic background, vague test results except for the elevated ESR. The illness strikes infants as well. Early onset in the baby’s case. Usually more severe when it starts early.” He sounded cruelly clinical. Jessie continued to cry. She sounded heartbroken.
Shaken out of his reverie of scientific discovery, Jun fixed his eyes on her and focused.
“Oh. Please. No need to cry,” he said to Jessie. Atchison Potter’s mouth was set slightly shut as if to limit his ingestion of these dreadful ramifications.
“Dr. Jun . . .” Nina said. But she couldn’t think of anything else to ask him. A Pandora’s box had opened and pain and uncertainty had flown out. Jun waited for her to finish, but she couldn’t. She was thinking about Gabe, growing up, dreading the attacks, going through hell. . . .
And then, out of the box of horrors, a sunny little face emerged, as hope, true to the legend, flitted out of the box. Jun smiled. He said, “But you see, now that we know what it is, we’re all set. There’s a new treatment for FMF. Prevents the attacks. Very effective.”
“What?” Nina said, beyond all other words.
“Colchicine. Gout medicine. Very effective. Just discovered in the eighties. The baby may never have another attack. And Mr. Potter? See your doctor for the prescription right away.”
Four-thirty. Amagosian had adjourned court for the day and summoned them to his chambers for a heart-to-heart settlement talk. Parties only, so Paul and Dr. Jun were waiting in Paul’s Mustang out in the courthouse lot.
Amagosian looked much more comfortable behind his desk with its folk art and solid old furniture he must have installed himself. In front of him were arrayed Jessie, Nina, Riesner, and Potter.
“No reporter here,” he said. “Just us folks. No rules of evidence. Now, then. I feel that events have taken a turn. First of all, we have this baby. We
have this family situation. Secondly, we have a pretty good idea that Mrs. Potter’s story about the boat may be true.”
“It doesn’t prove a thing,” Riesner said.
“I have to agree with that, Jeff. It’s not proof that Dan Potter did get sick on that boat on that particular day. No, we don’t have this thing nailed down. But a number of facts have sure come together. There’s a sort of moral certainty creeping around here, isn’t there? Does your client still think Mrs. Potter poisoned her husband?”
“He stands by the Judgment and he wants it enforced,” Riesner said, not even looking at Potter.
“You have talked it over with him?” Amagosian said.
“He has not talked it over with me,” Potter said. “I— I’m not sure—”
“Ah. Well. Here’s what I propose. Jeff, you and your client go out and discuss this for a few minutes. See if there’s any change in your position. See if anything can be done.”
“Nothing’s going to change,” Riesner said.
“I would like to talk with my attorney,” Potter said. Riesner shook his head sharply, his eyes on the floor. But he had no choice in the matter, so he got up. The two men went outside.
When they were gone, Amagosian said, “How old is the baby?”
“Nine months. Almost ten months now.” Jessie’s voice was almost inaudible.
“Gabe, eh? Gabriel, that’s a good Armenian name,” Amagosian said, smiling. “Good choice. So your father was from Alpine County?”
“Yes. He was a ranch hand.” Amagosian nodded, smiling. “He and my mother were both killed in a car wreck when I was six,” Jessie added.
“I’m very sorry to hear that. I remember your father. You should come to one of our association meetings. The fourth Friday of each month. Good food, music, sometimes a little dancing. Speeches on topics of interest to the Armenian community. I’m going to suggest a talk on this illness. FMF.”
“I never had anything to do with my father’s side,” Jessie said.
“Never too late. Eh?” Nina watched them talking. Now she had the feeling that Jessie’s face was moving into focus. The smoothness of her skin, the shape of her features, a cast of the eyes—she and Amagosian were cousins in one of the families of man.
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