Doctored Evidence

by Michael Biehl

  Karen decided to try a different approach, which she knew was a long shot. She went back to the menu and entered Larry’s Rolodex. Possibly Larry kept his access codes right in his computer. That would have been convenient, if uncharacteristically cavalier. Not finding the list in the Rolodex, she entered Larry’s word processing software. Word processing programs like the one used by the hospital were set up to permit the user to store documents prepared on the computer in files, for retrieval at a later time. Larry could have stored his access codes in his word processing files for easy reference.

  Karen scrolled through the names of Larry’s word processing files, finding nothing that looked like it might be a list of access codes. She did spot one file name, however, that stopped her in her tracks: “L. CONKEL TRUST.” She pressed “Enter,” and the first page of the trust document that Ben McCormick said he was looking for appeared on the monitor.

  Karen turned on the printer and read the screen while the printer warmed up. When the printer was ready, she printed out a copy of the trust document, stuffed it in her jacket pocket, turned off the computer and the lights, and left.

  “This is the stupidest damn thing I’ve done in a long time,” said Max. “Sittin’ here watchin’ numbers change on a TV screen. 6:09, 6:09, 6:09, the suspense is killin’ me. Woo-ha, there it is, 6:10. What a relief. Mrs. Hayes is a smart lady, but sometimes she can act a little tetched in the head.”

  Anne sat attentively, pen in hand, her eyes glued to the screen. “I’m sure she has a good reason for making us do this. She’s not one to waste other peopled time.”

  Max challenged her on the point. “Oh, yeah? Thursday she had me get the cath lab key out of safekeeping, run down to the cath lab and lock it, just to open it up again with the key. Then, she has me lock it again to open it up with the other key, then lock it again to try to open it with another damn key, even though I told her there’s only the two keys. Then she has me watch these damn tapes to get the license number of a pickup truck, use up a favor with the police department to get the owner’s name, then she drops the whole thing. Now this. 6:11, whoo-pee. I tell you, she’s tetched.”

  Anne watched the monitor as Joe Grimes walked the length of the hall with determination, passing the cath lab without the slightest pause. She noted the time, put the end of the pen in her mouth, and gnawed.

  “It does seem a bit excessive,” she said. “At least she let me watch the Saturday night through Monday morning tapes on fast forward.”

  “Hey, maybe we could do that with this one,” suggested Max.

  “No, Max,” asserted Anne. “We’ve stayed with it this long, we can make it another forty-five minutes.”

  Max corrected her, “Forty-nine minutes. Whoops, there’s 6:12. Forty-eight minutes. Say, Annie, do you know what you get when you cross a donkey with an onion?”

  As twilight yielded to darkness in the city of Jefferson, Vincent Bernard gave up trying to repair the muffler on his twelve-year-old pickup truck. The epoxy patch would not do the job; he would have to replace the muffler. Paula Conkel’s friend Lisa Fuller sprayed her blond hair in preparation for a Saturday night date with a married veterinarian. Dr. Leonard Herwitz sat in the doctors’ lounge of Shoreview Memorial Hospital, reading an article in a medical economics journal about investing in dotcom IPOs. Ben McCormick and his wife sat down to dinner at the Palmer House in Chicago with a county judge and his wife. Dr. Norman Caswell sat in the video room of his suburban tract mansion, watching a rerun of Bewitched on cable. Elizabeth Decker sat at the dining room table in her apartment, addressing Christmas cards and sipping a double Old-fashioned. Her daughter Karen sat at the computer in Joe Grimes’s huge office, scrolling his word processing files for a list of access codes.

  Joe had very few files in his word processor, and nothing on his Rolodex. Karen wondered if Joe ever did any actual work. She used his password to check his e-mail. The list of messages was immense. Joe apparently never deleted messages, possibly never read them. She skimmed the messages. One caught her eye. It was dated November 29, sent by “EMS.” It confirmed “the availability of needed venture capital within estimated 120 days.” Karen forwarded the message to her own terminal and shut off the computer. She skimmed the hospital telephone directory next to Joe’s telephone console. Nobody in the hospital with a telephone extension had the initials “E.M.S.” As Karen finished scanning the directory, she heard footsteps in the hall, approaching Joe’s office. She immediately switched off the computer and froze, her ear to the door. Her stomach knotted, and cold sweat formed on the backs of her hands. The footsteps got louder until they were coming from immediately outside Joe’s office. Karen stood and faced the door, her chin raised.

  “I don’t care if it’s Jack the Ripper,” she said, through clenched teeth. “I’m not going back in that urn.”

  CHAPTER

  29

  “6:59, 6:59, 6:59, 6:59, 7:00. That’s it, I’m outa’ here. I wish I knew what the hell that was all about.”

  “Wait, Max,” said Anne. “Karen will call soon, then we’ll find out. Believe me, she knows what she’s doing.”

  “Really. Well I heard her say she’d call back in exactly two hours. Where’s the call? Who knows what she’s up to? She and her husband do some kooky stuff, I tell you. Besides, I got better things to do than … Hey, what’s the matter, Annie?”

  A tear trickled down Anne’s cheek. She pointed at the monitor.

  “Look, Max, it’s Larry on the tape. He must have come down early from Admitting, like they tell you to. The big goof, he works here for years and still follows the rules like any other unsuspecting patient. Now he’ll sit there for an hour and a half while they set up. The fatted calf waiting patiently for the slaughter.”

  “He don’t look any fatter than I do,” said Max. “Now, Annie, if you don’t mind, my wife is gonna have a hemorrhage if I don’t get home. We’ve got Bulls tickets for tonight.”

  Anne’s telephone console chirped. “See?” said Anne, sniffing unselfconsciously. “I told you Karen would call soon. But, wait a minute, my console readout says it’s not her extension calling.”

  “Whose is it?” asked Max.

  “Yours,” responded Anne.

  The caller was a security guard, who asked to speak to Max. Anne put the call on the speakerphone.

  “Max, it’s Billy. I just detained a female, about age forty, five foot two or three, say one hundred pounds, dark hair, blue eyes. Caught her prowling around in the CEO’s office. She claims she’s the hospital attorney, but she has no ID badge and, frankly, I don’t think she’s no lawyer.”

  Max grinned from ear to ear and winked at Anne. “What makes you doubt she’s a lawyer, Billy?”

  “For one thing, she didn’t question my authority to detain her. For another, she’s wearing white pajamas.”

  Six feet away from the receiver, Karen could hear Anne laughing. She picked up an extension.

  “Annie, try not to injure yourself. Max, would you ID me so your storm trooper will back off?”

  Max chortled. “She sounds dangerous, Billy. Better put the cuffs on.”

  “Max! So help me God …”

  “All right, all right. Sheesh, where’s your sense of humor? Go back to your rounds, Billy, she’s who she says she is. She had permission to be in Grimes’s office. Karen, stay on the line.”

  After Billy left, Max asked Karen what she was doing in Grimes’s office. Karen said Joe’s palm tree looked like it needed some water, which was true enough. She changed the subject abruptly, asking Max how the security cameras were controlled. Max said they could be controlled from the cameras themselves, which required entering a locked steel panel in the wall to which there were only two keys—one of which Max kept, and the other of which was kept in safe deposit. The cameras could also be controlled from a master panel in his office where the live-action monitors were located, or through the hospital’s central computer from a terminal with the right software, if the user ha
d an authorized password and the access code. Max said he, the CEO, and the CFO all were given the access code.

  Anne interrupted. “You should see this, Karen. Larry is on the tape, reading a magazine, waiting patiently. Poor guy.”

  “Annie, did you watch the tape from 5:00 A.M. to 7:00 A.M. continuously?”

  “Yes.”

  “Notice anything unusual?”

  “No.”

  “You noted the times when each of the people on the tape appeared?”

  “Yes.”

  “How frequently do people walk down that hall at that time of day on a Monday?” asked Karen.

  “Well,” explained Anne, “it varies. As 7:00 A.M. approaches, people walk by every few minutes, sometimes there’s two at a time. Early on, especially near 5:00 A.M., there’s long stretches of time when there’s no activity at all.”

  “Uh-huh. Max, you still there?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Did you watch the time display from 5:00 A.M. to 7:00 A.M. continuously?”

  “Sure did. And it was the only thing I’ve ever watched on TV that was more boring than golf.”

  “Notice anything unusual?”

  “Nope.”

  “What’s the time on the videotape right now?”

  “7:19 A.M.”

  “What’s the time on your watch?”

  Max paused. Anne noticed a slackening in his facial muscles. Karen prompted him. “Max?”

  “Well, I’ll be dipped in shit.”

  “What’s the matter, Max?”

  “My watch is eight minutes slow. Damn. This is supposed to be a good watch.”

  “It’s a great watch, Max. Has it got a stopwatch function?”

  “Sure, it’s got everything. Want to know what time it is in Paris?”

  “No thanks, Max. But I do want one of you to back the tape up and time the length of the minutes after 5:00 A.M. A bunch of them are shorter than sixty seconds.”

  “Come again?” said Max.

  “Sometime after 5:00 A.M. someone paused the security camera,” Karen explained, “and restarted it eight minutes later. Then he advanced the time display to the next minute in less than a full sixty seconds, repeatedly, to make up the missing time. You see, if he advanced the time display one digit every fifty seconds, in forty-eight minutes the security camera would be back in sync with the real time, and with the rest of the system.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Anne. “Wouldn’t we have noticed if the camera went off and back on? We watched the whole two hours.”

  “It would only be noticeable if something moved or was added to or removed from the scene on camera while it was shut off. If the hall looked exactly the same when the camera was restarted as it did when it was put on “pause,” the interruption would be virtually undetectable. Especially if you weren’t looking for the seam. That’s how they make things disappear on television shows. If our security cameras recorded sound, you might notice the break, but without sound, it would be hard to spot. Might just be a slight blip, like the blink of an eye.”

  “Not even that much,” said Max. “Those are real good cameras. No offense, Mrs. Hayes, but so what? Now we know how somebody got in and out of the cath lab undetected. It doesn’t tell us who it was.”

  “It does,” said Karen, “by inference. After you confirm the shortened minutes on the tape from Monday morning, do the same experiment on the tape from the security camera on the main entrance from 10:30 P.M. to midnight Thanksgiving Day.”

  “Holy shit,” remarked Anne. “I just got it. Hayes, you’re brilliant. Max, you can go home to your wife. Enjoy the game. I’ll take the tapes home with me and review them tonight. Karen, I’ll call you as soon as I’ve confirmed the missing time. By the way, you know he’s in the hospital right now? He was admitted two days ago.”

  “Who?” asked Max.

  “Where is he?” asked Karen.

  “New wing, third floor,” said Anne.

  Karen paused. “Max,” she said, “I need one more favor from you tonight. How many security guards do you have on the hospital campus right now?”

  “Just two,” said Max. “One in the jeep and your friend Billy patrolling on the inside.”

  “Before you leave,” said Karen, “post them both on the third floor of the new wing for the rest of the evening.”

  “Roger. As head of Security, do I get to know why?”

  “There’s a patient up there who might sometime this evening become a danger to himself,” said Karen, “or to others.”

  CHAPTER

  30

  The nurses at Shoreview Memorial were trained to forewarn visitors that the patient they were visiting might look worse than expected. Often, the first time a spouse, child or parent saw a loved one after surgery, a serious accident, or the onset of some abrupt illness, they were emotionally unprepared to witness the facial edema, bandages, transparent tubes bubbling with tobacco-colored bodily fluids, open wounds and other indices of pathology or trauma. Sometimes the visitor would faint on the spot and sustain an injury from the fall that required medical treatment. So Anne Delaney arranged to have the nurses trained to say things like, “Your wife might not look the way you are used to seeing her. You might want to prepare yourself.”

  Of course, no one spoke to Karen before she walked into Carson Weber’s hospital room. Visiting hours were over and she was not a family member or friend of the patient. But that did not prevent her from being startled by his appearance. The thin, handsome young man looked frail and sweaty, and his pale skin had a bluish tinge. His gray eyes appeared murky and dull. His green hospital gown was wrinkled and damp. He stared blankly at a television set, his right hand holding a remote control. He had an IV tube in his left arm. It was a small, private patient room. The Venetian blinds on the single window were closed. An uneaten plate of hospital food sat on the tray adjacent to his bed, next to a deck of cards laid out in a hand of solitaire.

  “Come on in, counselor,” he said to Karen. His voice was thin. Speaking seemed to be an effort. “I can’t believe,” he said wheezing slightly, “there are people who actually enjoy these Martha Stewart Christmas specials. I mean, does anybody really spend hours making elaborate Art Deco designs out of sugar cubes and butter frosting? The woman has no shame.”

  Karen sat down in a guest chair facing the patient bed. “I’d like to talk with you, doctor, if you don’t mind.”

  He pressed the “mute” button on the remote control. “Not at all,” he said. He coughed hard and swallowed. “I heard you were out to get my staff privileges. Is that what you want to talk about?”

  “No. I want to talk about Larry Conkel,” said Karen.

  Weber raised his eyebrows. “What about him?”

  “To start—your relationship with him. How long had you and Larry been lovers?”

  Dr. Weber’s breathing got louder. “What makes you think we were lovers?”

  “For one thing, this,” said Karen, extracting the folded copy of Larry’s trust document from her jacket pocket. “He made you one of the beneficiaries of his trust, along with his children. All his assets and the proceeds of his life insurance went into the trust. From that I conclude you were pretty important to him.”

  Dr. Weber turned his head slowly away from the television and looked directly at Karen. He mopped his forehead with the sleeve of his hospital gown.

  “So, you know. Yes, I was very important to Larry. And he was just as important to me.”

  Karen returned his gaze. “Maybe so, doctor, but for different reasons. You took advantage of Larry. You exploited him. He shared something with you and you turned it to your personal advantage. You know what I’m talking about.”

  Dr. Weber stared at Karen with narrowed eyes. “Suppose you tell me, counselor.”

  Karen told him about the check from the Jefferson Clinic, payable to Emergency Medical Services, which she had seen in Larry’s apartment. As she told the story to Weber, she claimed to have made a phot
ocopy of the check before replacing it in the coffee mug.

  “Larry told you about his investigation into the Jefferson Clinic’s billing fraud. In fact, you were the only one he told. If he’d had any idea that you had told Dr. Herwitz about it, Larry would never have gone to a clinic cardiologist for his biopsy. Larry knew better than anyone that those files could destroy the clinic and the careers of several clinic physicians. He also knew that the big shareholders at the clinic would do almost anything to prevent that from happening. You knew that, too. That’s how you were blackmailing them. Emergency Medical Services is your service corporation.”

  Dr. Weber picked up a plastic cup from his bed stand. He coughed and spat into the cup. The effort seemed to exhaust him.

  “You figured all that out from one check?”

  “Not really. I knew something was going on under the table when the Medical Executive Committee didn’t yank your privileges after the patient assaults. It was out of character. Oh sure, the docs will tolerate a physician who pinches nurses, or even one who now and then amputates the wrong leg. But a homosexual assault on a patient? They would have bounced you in nothing flat if you hadn’t had something on them. The committee vote was three to two. The three clinic docs voted to go easy. The other two were ready to suspend you without a second thought.”

  Dr. Weber smiled weakly. “You’re very sharp. I like that. If I were into women, I’d ask you out. You’re right about the medical staff being hostile to gays. But you know, you’d be surprised how many of them—even ones with wives and children—shine around every now and then,” he looked Karen straight in the eye, “to take it in the ass.”