Doctored Evidence

by Michael Biehl

  “Hard to overestimate,” said Karen.

  “I’m hoping you can forgive me,” said Weber.

  You’re hoping I won’t tell the police who murdered Larry, thought Karen.

  “I want you to know,” he continued, “I have no hard feelings about the snooping you did into my relationship with Larry. I know it must have been you who tossed his apartment, but I’m not going to report the break-in.”

  Ah, there’s the quid pro quo, mused Karen. You don’t squeal on me and I don’t squeal on you.

  He continued. “I am curious, though, as to why you put so much effort into figuring out who …” he paused and looked uneasily at Jake.

  “Jake already knows,” said Karen. “When I started investigating Larry’s death, it was just a matter of defending his wife’s malpractice claim against the hospital. Then I learned the catheter had been sabotaged and found the files from Larry’s investigation of the Jefferson Clinic. With his last words, Larry entrusted me with those files. I owed it to him to find out whether there was a connection between his investigation and the faulty catheter. Larry was a good friend. I really cared about him.”

  “You weren’t the only one,” said Weber.

  “I know,” said Karen.

  Carson Weber smiled, crinkling the gray skin in the hollowness around his eyes. “Thank you for that,” he said. “You’ll be glad to hear, Mrs. Hayes,” Weber continued, “that you and the Medical Executive Committee can take me off your to-do list. I’m resigning from the medical staff. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

  “Yes, there is.”

  Karen asked Jake for her briefcase. She popped it open and removed a business card and a microcassette in a plastic box. She handed both to Weber.

  “Listen to as much of this tape as you like, then call Attorney Emerson Knowles at the number on this card. He has a copy of the tape, and a third copy is in safekeeping. Knowles is handling several lawsuits against Shoreview Memorial that involve you.”

  “Paula Conkel,” said Weber.

  “And Steven Linder and Dietrich Heiden,” said Karen.

  Weber looked down at his feet.

  “I know you’ve put something aside from your dealings with the clinic. Now you won’t be using that money to fund Joe Grimes’s MRI venture. Between that money and your liability insurance, you should be able to settle all three lawsuits, without any contribution from the hospital. Especially once the plaintiff’s attorneys understand there is no way to pin any responsibility on the hospital and its deep pockets.”

  Weber continued to study the floor, his face gaunt and impassive. “Which they’ll know because what I’m going to admit to will exonerate the hospital.”

  “Exactly,” said Karen. “Once the attorneys understand the situation, you can probably negotiate a confidentiality agreement within the terms of the settlements.”

  After a long silence, Weber looked up and sighed, the vestiges of his bout with pneumonia giving his sigh a gravelly rumble. His eyelids drooped and he smiled. “I don’t see I have a choice. Ah, well. Perhaps accepting responsibility and compensating the victims will help ease my conscience a little about Larry. What do you think, counselor?”

  “One can hope,” said Karen. She gave Weber a sharp look, confessing that she herself felt partially responsible for Larry’s death, because she had talked Larry out of having his biopsy performed at St. Peter’s Hospital by pointing out to him the possible adverse effect that might have on his career. Weber assured her that she had had nothing to do with Larry’s decision. Larry had originally planned to go to St. Pete’s so he would not have to disclose his HIV status to his coworkers.

  “Once I’d set my course,” Weber explained, “there was no resistance. I made sure Larry switched cardiologists so his biopsy would be done here. I persuaded him that it was okay not to tell anyone about his HIV status. He never even mentioned your comment about the effect on his career. Frankly, he wasn’t that focused on his career at the time.”

  Karen felt a little foolish for having so overestimated the impact of her advice on Larry. She also felt the last remnants of her guilt dissolve. After Weber left, she said to Jake, “I guess it’s safe for me to hand out advice. Apparently nobody listens to it anyway.”

  “They should,” he responded. “Why, look at the way you’ve made all the hospital’s legal hassles disappear. I don’t think very many lawyers could have pulled that off so neatly. But what was that remark about a confidentiality agreement? Aren’t you going to finger Weber for Larry’s murder?”

  Karen stared at him with a forlorn expression. “He’s really not dangerous to anyone at this point, and he’s going to pay for the patient assaults.”

  “That doesn’t undo what he did to Larry.”

  “I think at this point he sincerely believes that what he did was euthanasia.” Karen began to cry and Jake handed her a box of tissue. He reached over and touched her shoulder.

  “You just can’t do it to him, can you?”

  “Jake, he’s dying,” she said.

  “He’s big-time sick, that’s for sure,” Jake said, “but I’ve read that with all the drugs they have now, AIDS patients can live for a long … what? Why are you shaking your head?”

  “I see it in his eyes. It’s imminent, and he knows it.”

  Jake stroked his wife’s hair. “The quality of mercy is not strained,” he said. “It droppeth …”

  “Not up to your usual standards of obscurity, sweetheart,” said Karen.

  “Wait. All right, here you go. ‘Mercy shines with even more brilliancy than justice.’”

  “Who ’dat?”

  “Cervantes.”

  “Not bad, Sancho Panza,” said Karen. Her eyes cleared and she put the box of tissues on the nightstand. “But that isn’t quite it. The fact that Weber is dying just makes it pointless to turn him in. He would die before he even got to trial In the meantime, the investigation and the publicity would severely damage the hospital and cause a lot of innocent people grief and anxiety. It’s my job to protect the hospital.”

  “And you want to do your job without hurting anybody,” said Jake.

  “Why are you smirking?” asked Karen.

  “Right Livelihood!” said Jake. “Earning your living without harming others!”

  “Okay,” said Karen. “Score one for Buddha’s Eightfold Path. It’s just too bad the Jefferson Clinic docs strayed so far off it.”

  “And the feds aren’t exactly famous for the quality of their mercy,” said Jake. “What’s going to happen to those guys?”

  Once each day, Dr. Herwitz popped into Karen’s patient room, glanced at her chart, made quick notes adjusting her medications, and briefly inspected the dressings on her wounds. There was little conversation beyond “How are you today?” and “Fine, how are you?” until the morning of the day Karen was discharged. Karen had read her own medical record, including the operative report, and thought she understood fairly well what had gone on in the surgical suite for over three hours. Repair of a tear in the inferior mesenteric artery. Removal of three pieces of irregularly shaped glass. Suturing abdominal lacerations. On his last visit to Karen’s room, Dr. Herwitz sat down and talked with Karen and Jake for a few minutes.

  “You’ll be going home this afternoon,” he said. “The nurse will give you written instructions. Change your dressings twice a day. Use an antiseptic soap and apply the Neosporin for ten days. I’ll give you a prescription for a pain medication. You may not need it.” He shifted in his chair and cleared his throat. “Mrs. Hayes,” he said, “about your surgery …”

  Outside the room and down the hall, a hopelessly bad children’s choir from Our Redeemer Lutheran Church Sunday School launched into a barely recognizable version of “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” Jake cocked his head to one side, screwed his face into a comically exaggerated expression of pain, and stuck the middle finger of his right hand in his ear.

  “Somebody should tell those guys not to quit the
ir day jobs,” said Jake, getting up to close the door. Dr. Herwitz waited for him before beginning again.

  “The reason your incision is so long, Mrs. Hayes. We found three large pieces of glass in your abdomen almost immediately, one of which had penetrated your peritoneal cavity, where the intestines are, and nicked an artery. The cavity was filled with blood. We had no way of knowing if there were lacerations of your intestines or other organs without examining them. We also had no way of knowing if there were additional glass fragments in you other than the three large pieces. If there were, and we left one in, it could have nicked you at any time and started an internal bleed. Consequently, I had to perform a total lower ab exploratory. Basically, this involved removing each of your internal organs below the diaphragm far enough to inspect each carefully for bleeding and glass fragments, and then restoring each organ to its normal position.”

  Karen made a face like she had swallowed a bad oyster. She grabbed Jake’s hand and squeezed it.

  Dr. Herwitz looked away from Karen. “Your mother told me a couple of years ago that the two of you were trying to have children. Are you still?”

  “Like Sisyphus with his boulder,” replied Jake.

  “Beg pardon?” said Dr. Herwitz.

  “We’re trying,” said Jake.

  “Well, I’m not surprised you’ve been unsuccessful Mrs. Hayes, you have quite a bit of endometriosis. While I had you open, I took the liberty of removing as much as I easily could without significantly extending the duration of the surgery, and without risking injury to the bowel I don’t know if it will make any difference, but you may notice that your menstrual periods are a little lighter than they have been, at least for a while.”

  Jake and Karen looked at each other with expressions of sad, knowing resignation.

  “Well, that’s something,” said Jake.

  “It may redevelop in a few years,” said Dr. Herwitz, “but by then you’ll be reaching menopause.”

  “Oh,” said Karen. “So much to look forward to.”

  “Well,” announced Dr. Herwitz, clapping his hands on his thighs and rising from his chair. “I did my best. If your incision turns red or oozes, or if you develop a fever, call my office.” He walked to the door. As he opened it, Karen called after him.

  “Dr. Herwitz!”

  “Yes, Mrs. Hayes?”

  Karen took a deep breath and let it out. “Thank you for saving my life.”

  EPILOGUE

  A month after Karen was discharged as a patient from Shoreview Memorial Hospital, Joe Grimes was fired by the Board of Directors. Three weeks later he began his new position as CEO of Raasch Evangelical Medical Center at a forty percent increase in salary.

  The following June, Norman Caswell, the spooky cancer specialist who had grown rich giving unnecessary chemotherapy, voluntarily surrendered his medical license in exchange for the government dropping all criminal charges and actions for forfeitures against him. He retired on the $250,000-per-year tax-free income he received from his municipal bond holdings.

  Edward Bernard decided not to retire. In July he moved with his wife and son to Cancún, Mexico, to set up a practice in cardiology at the Hospital Americano.

  In August, Carson Weber died of complications from pneumonia. That same month, Jake Hayes’s song, “Karaoke Bites,” was recorded on CD by a Chicago-based band called the Swinging Chads. Royalty checks began arriving at the Hayes household in October, the same month the Jefferson Clinic was assessed a forfeiture of $48 million by the federal investigators. No fines were imposed on any of the physicians as individuals, and the clinic was subsequently placed in bankruptcy. The government collected two-and-a-half cents on the dollar.

  A year after Karen’s surgery, Leonard Herwitz was the subject of a disciplinary hearing at Shoreview Memorial, based on his complicity in the fraudulent practices of the Jefferson Clinic physicians. The hospital was represented at the hearing by Emerson Knowles. For Dr. Herwitz, in a three-hour surgery in the middle of the night, had managed to repay at least part of the debt he owed.

  Karen Hayes was on maternity leave.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Michael Biehl graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Law School and was a partner at Foley & Lardner in Milwaukee, where he specialized in law governing health care systems. He’s also a professional musician, playing keyboard with regional blues bands. He and wife Cathleen live in Sarasota, Florida, and Mequon, Wisconsin. In 2007 Michael Biehl Park in Venice, Florida, was named in recognition of the author’s support of the Conservation Foundation of the Gulf Coast. In addition to the Karen Hayes series, he wrote Seven Mile Bridge, also published by Pineapple Press.

  Here are some other books from Pineapple Press on related topics. For a complete catalog, write to Pineapple Press, P.O. Box 3889, Sarasota, Florida 34230-3889, or call (800) 746-3275. Or visit our website at www.pineapplepress.com.

  Lawyered to Death by Michael Biehl. Hospital attorney Karen Hayes is called to defend the hospital CEO against a claim of sexual harassment but soon finds she must also defend him against a murder charge. The trail of clues leads her into a further fight for her own life and that of her infant son.

  Nursing a Grudge by Michael Biehl. An elderly nursing home resident, who was once an Olympic champion swimmer with a murky background in the German army, drowns in a lake behind the home. Does anyone know how it happened? Does anyone care? Hospital attorney Karen Hayes battles bureaucracy, listens to the geriatric residents ignored by the authorities, and risks her own life to find the truth.

  Seven Mile Bridge by Michael Biehl. Florida Keys dive shop owner Jonathan Bruckner returns home to Wisconsin after his mother’s death, searching for clues to his father’s death years before. He is stunned by what he discovers about his father’s life and comes to know his parents in a way he never did as a child. Mostly, he’s surprised by what he learns about himself. Fluidly moving between past and present, between hope and despair, Seven Mile Bridge is a story about one man’s obsession for the truth and how much can depend on finding it.

  Conflict of Interest by Terry Lewis. Trial lawyer Ted Stevens fights his own battles, including his alcoholism and his pending divorce, as he fights for his client in a murder case. But it’s the other suspect in the case who causes the conflict of interest. Ted must choose between concealing evidence that would be helpful to his client and revealing it, thereby becoming a suspect himself.

  Privileged Information by Terry Lewis. Ted Stevens’ partner, Paul Morganstein, is defending his late brother’s best friend on a murder charge when he obtains privileged information leading him to conclude that his client committed another murder thirty years earlier. The victim? Paul’s brother. Faced with numerous difficulties, Paul must decide if he will divulge privileged information.

  Delusional by Terry Lewis. Ted Stevens’ new client is a mental patient who is either a delusional, psychotic killer or an innocent man framed for the murder of his psychologist—or maybe both. Ted needs to uncover the truth quickly. His life, and that of his family, will depend on it.

  Secrets of San Blas by Charles Farley. Most towns have their secrets. In the 1930s, Port St. Joe on the Gulf in Florida’s Panhandle has more than its share. Old Doc Berber, the town’s only general practitioner, thought he knew all of the secrets, but a grisly murder out at the Cape San Blas Lighthouse drags him into a series of intrigues that even he can’t diagnose.

  Secrets of St. Vincent by Charles Farley. Things are not always as serene as they seem in the little Florida Panhandle village of Port St. Joe. When bluesman Reggie Robinson is wrongly arrested for the gruesome murder of Sheriff Byrd “Dog” Batson, old Doc Berber and his best friend, Gator Mica, mount a Quixotic search for the real killer on savage St. Vincent Island. If they survive the frightening adventure, they’ll return with the shocking secrets that will shatter the town’s tranquility forever.

  Death in Bloodhound Red by Virginia Lanier. Jo Beth Sidden is a Georgia peach with an iron pit. She raises
and trains bloodhounds for search-and-rescue missions in the Okefenokee Swamp. In an attempt to save a friend from ruin, she organizes an illegal operation that makes a credible alibi impossible just when she needs one most: She’s indicted for attempted murder. If the victim dies, the charge will be murder one.

  Mystery in the Sunshine State edited by Stuart Kaminsky. Offers a selection of Florida mysteries from many of Florida’s notable writers, including Edna Buchanan, Jeremiah Healy, Stuart McIver, and Les Standiford. Follow professional investigators and amateur sleuths alike as they patiently uncover clues to finally reveal the identity of a killer or the answer to a riddle.