Skinny-dipping

by Claire Matturro

  While Sam made me toast, which I noted was Roman Meal, which is pretty good even if it’s not the multigrain stuff I bought, I looked around the kitchen. Neat, clean, stark. Not a spice anywhere, unless you counted the blue cardboard container of salt. White walls. No curtains. I liked it. Nothing that suggested a woman had lived here in recent memory.

  Politely, I asked about the bathroom, got directions, and snooped my way through the center of the house. Clean, neat, stark. No knickknacks. As if I’d found a soul mate, I noted the wood floors without rugs or trash, the complete absence of any newspapers, other papers, or magazines anywhere, and the completely bare walls. And he liked Rottweilers. I calculated his age as mid- or possibly late forties, which meant he might be near to a twenty-five-year retirement point if he’d joined the force at twenty-one. I made a mental note to ask him how he felt about apple orchards and north Georgia in case I decided he should retire and head up there with me. The way the Jason Goodacre case was in the toilet, I figured I’d be heading up that way much sooner than I’d planned. Maybe with Sam and a couple of Rottweilers beside me in my 1987 Honda with the 187,000 miles on it and the new window and paint job.

  Jason Goodacre case down the drain or not, I thought another near-death experience on Dr. Randolph’s part should be worth a third continuance in his trial, and then I wondered if Stephen LaBlanc had actually filed his petition with the appellate court asking that Judge Goddard be ordered to set a trial date. I needed to talk with Bonita, but first I needed to sneak a peek at Sam’s medicine cabinet, check the tub for stains and soap scum, and scope out his bedroom.

  When I saw the bottle of Dr. Bronner’s peppermint soap on the edge of a very clean tub, I felt better than I had since Dr. Jamieson ruined my life by pointing out that I couldn’t even prove my own theory of the Jason Goodacre defense. Though, I admit, Sam’s toothbrush in an empty Jack Daniel’s pint gave me pause.

  But I didn’t let the potential relationship with Sam spoil my professional obligation to a client who had nearly died, and, of course, would sue my butt if I missed a trick in his defense. After my lunch of toast and Folgers, I made my long phone call to Bonita and got caught up on things. Then I looked up at Sam. “Guess you’d better take me home.”

  “Maybe you’d better stay here,” he said, and didn’t blink, didn’t lose the poker face. “At least till we’re done checking out your house for any break-ins or poison.”

  Hmm. Guess he knew about Angela and Newly, I figured, and I looked around, thinking I could be comfortable here after a trip to the Granary for the basics. Might as well start training Sam now. I nodded yes but wondered, Why this offer?

  Sam studied me, and his look made me wonder if he wanted to keep me in his house to protect me or to keep me under surveillance as a suspect. But, I mean, how could I be a suspect, since I got shot at too?

  Under that stare, and to divert any thoughts he might have about my being a suspect, I finally told Sam that someone had looked through my files on both the Dr. Trusdale and Dr. Randolph cases. Naturally, he berated me for not telling him sooner. Naturally, he demanded to look through the files himself, and when I began to explain about attorney-client and work-product privileges and client confidentiality and the whole nine yards, he cut me off.

  “I’ll get a subpoena,” he said.

  So much for romance. I wondered if I should ask for Jack the Bear back.

  Then, for no apparent reason at all, I thought about Henry’s red peppers and his greenhouse. Bonita had said he was an amateur botanist and a good gardener. He had screwed up both the Trusdale and the Randolph files by failing to do proper background searches. Trusdale’s death had saved him from being canned after a big judgment against the doc, which Henry’s insurance company would have had to pay. Was he aiming for two out of two? Was there a stand of oleanders in his yard and a flowering white Datura bush in his greenhouse?

  Chapter 26

  Angela was behaving more like a trial attorney every day.

  That is to say, she was increasingly melodramatic.

  That night she called me at Sam’s because she had something “really, really important” to tell me about the Goodacre case, but she wouldn’t tell me on the phone. I had to go back to the office, where she had arranged the proper audience. While on the one hand I appreciated the trial attorney instinct to be center stage, mostly I was irritated.

  After all, the Jason Goodacre case was still technically my case, even if the defendant, the nearly dead Dr. Randolph, was still recuperating from his hallucinogenic trip through Datura land and my third and most recent motion for a continuance had been filed just before the courthouse door locked at the close of my first day back from Atlanta.

  But my case or not, Angela convened Jackson, Henry, and me—and Newly. Sam had escorted me to the offices of Smith, O’Leary, and Stanley but was kept waiting outside the conference room. Newly, though, I noted, was allowed to sit in on Angela’s conference.

  “We need,” she insisted over Jackson’s roar of protest against Newly, “the plaintiff attorney’s point of view,” and she wouldn’t budge from her position.

  What she needed Newly for, I figured, was moral support, but that was fine with me.

  I just wanted to know what in the world Ronny, her computer-sleuth brother, had found out.

  Acting again as the evil stepmother of details, albeit this time at Jackson’s command, I drafted a hasty contract making Newly our “consultant” for a decent fee that with only a bleat or two of protest Henry approved on behalf of Dr. Randolph’s insurance company. I had to type the contract myself, as Bonita was long at home and Angela, being the queen bee this round, couldn’t be asked to do such a menial thing as type. This consultant contract bound Newly to the attorney-client and work-product privileges and confidentiality accords, and if that wasn’t enough, Jackson promised to personally beat the crap out of him if he took a word of this outside the conference room.

  Drumrolls were all that were missing when Angela pulled out a series of computer printouts from a folder.

  “Nancy Goodacre had amniocentesis in her fifth month, and it showed positive for CMV. She had an active CMV infection during her pregnancy, and the fetus picked up the infection from her.” Angela’s announcement was made in the clear, controlled voice of a trial attorney. I liked this girl more and more. She was saving my life and my career, and her voice didn’t quiver or squeak, not even a bit.

  No one in her audience said a thing.

  “She also had a series of ultrasounds that indicated the probability of microcephaly well before labor.”

  This time it was Henry who had to ask what that meant.

  “Abnormally small head,” I said. “One of the classic CMV birth defects.”

  “How do you know this? About the ultrasound and the amnio, I mean,” Jackson said, for once his voice low, as if Stephen LaBlanc was hovering outside the conference room door.

  “My brother, he’s a computer guru at Mrs. Goodacre’s HMO. He was checking out her records at the HMO for copies of anything from the Medical Information Bureau. MIB records show she had ultrasounds and the amnio. My brother, he’s not supposed to do this, you understand—I mean snoop in the HMO computer files. But we knew the HMO runs every applicant’s name through the MIB to check for preexisting conditions, to see if the applicants are lying when they sign up for insurance. You know the drill.”

  Yeah, we knew the drill. You apply for health insurance and if you admit, for example, that you have diabetes, the company will either refuse to insure you or raise your rates and add a rider that denies coverage for any diabetic-related claims—and everything, including a broken leg, will be deemed related to your diabetes. So the average American does the average American thing and lies, indicating on the form that he doesn’t have diabetes. He does this not knowing that the odds are that a summary of his health-care records and his prior insurance claims have been collected by the MIB, including all those records showing he is a diabetic,
and that the MIB will sell those records to the insurance company. So the insurance company gets his application form, cashes his check, and runs the applicant’s name through the MIB, discovering, of course, that he is a diabetic. The insurance company then can deny his application and return his payment or keep accepting the monthly checks until the hapless diabetic makes a claim that is larger than the company’s profit margin off his premiums, and then it can deny the claim and revoke the policy for fraud and keep the premiums. It’s a great system.

  “But she wouldn’t be in the MIB, because she didn’t have insurance coverage,” Jackson said. “Not until the eighth month, when her husband’s HMO took her in on the family plan.”

  “The thing is,” Angela said, “the amniocentesis and the ultrasounds were done under her sister’s insurance. My brother, he and I were piecing this together, but this is what we’re pretty sure happened. See, when he ran the HMO’s records and found it didn’t have any MIB information on Mrs. Goodacre, he, ah, he... hacked into the MIB databases directly and ran a search.”

  What power, I thought, and made a mental memo to file: Sign up for a computer-hacking course. If the local community college didn’t offer it, I’d pay Ronny handsomely to personally teach me.

  Angela paused. Nobody said a word. Everybody looked right at her. I figured Ronny was already on the list of consultants that Smith, O’Leary, and Stanley kept on its tab.

  “See, as Jackson and Lilly know, Mrs. Goodacre didn’t have insurance when she got pregnant. She lost her job as a waitress once her morning sickness started, and even after she got married, they didn’t have any money. That’s why she explained that she didn’t have any prenatal care, except some at a public health clinic that was mostly blood pressure checks and vitamin samples.”

  Yeah, we all knew that from her deposition testimony.

  “But her sister had insurance. Her sister lived right there in the same town in Idaho, in Pocatello, but Mrs. Goodacre went to a clinic in Boise, two hundred forty one miles away on I-84. Nobody knew either of them in Boise—that’s what my brother and I figured. I mean, you think about it, you go to a new doctor, you show the office staff your insurance card, and they verify the coverage. But they don’t ask to see a picture ID to prove you are the same person on the insurance card.”

  A good point, I thought, wondering at the good Samaritan implications of loaning out one’s insurance card.

  “So, it was easy. The Boise clinic accepted the sister’s insurance card, and Mrs. Goodacre just pretended to be her sister. Mrs. Goodacre used her sister’s insurance, and the MIB spit out those records nice as could be. Ronny—that’s my brother—first told me there weren’t any records for a Nancy Bazinskyson, but his descriptive word search did pick up a Bazinskyson, only it was a Nell Bazinskyson, hometown Pocatello, Idaho, with amniocentesis and ultrasound and prenatal claims right at the same times Nancy would have needed hers. We figured, I mean, how many pregnant Bazinskysons could there have been that year in Pocatello, Idaho?”

  “Mierda,” I said. Jackson glared at me. “If her maiden name was Johnson, we’d never have known this.”

  While I was reeling at the implications of this new information, Angela showed me her loyalty.

  “And to be fair, Jackson and Henry, you both need to understand,” Angela said, “that this was entirely Lilly’s idea. She got to thinking about the amniocentesis when we were interviewing Dr. Jamieson, and she’s the one who put Ronny up to it. I mean, looking into the MIB.”

  “But how do you know the sister wasn’t pregnant too?” Henry asked.

  “Well, we don’t, not absolutely, but the MIB records don’t show anything about any actual birth, nothing about a miscarriage. You know, it just didn’t look like the sister was really pregnant. All the claims stopped right about the time Mrs. Goodacre and her husband moved to Sarasota. And, really, I mean, what are the odds that two sisters would be pregnant at exactly the same time and both have a CMV infection?”

  “If the sister was really pregnant,” I said, “maybe they were both exposed to the virus from the same source and did get a CMV infection at the same time, and after the amniocentesis, knowing the baby would have birth defects, the sister aborted?”

  “Possibly, but then again, a medically necessary abortion like that probably would have shown up in the MIB, but that will be something we’ll have to run down.”

  “Henry, you son of a bitch,” Jackson said, “if you’d authorized the expenses for me to go to Idaho like I wanted, to investigate, we’d have known all this months ago. Damn it, I’m going to Idaho now and you’re going to pay for it.”

  “No, you’re not going to Idaho. It’s my case,” I said. “You passed it off to me. Angela and I will go to Idaho, won’t we, Henry?”

  Henry blushed. I took it for a yes.

  “Then at least fire that private investigator you hired for not turning up any of this,” Jackson said.

  Sitting in my chair, I felt a wave of paranoid excitement spin through me.

  We could win this veggie baby case. But we had to be careful.

  Not only did we need to protect Ronny, but we needed to protect our ability to collect evidence of our new theory before records disappeared or witnesses moved. All we had right now was inadmissible and illegally obtained evidence that Mrs. Goodacre had pulled not only a fraud on her sister’s insurance company but a fraud on the court by lying under oath in her deposition and withholding critical information in her lawsuit.

  I wondered if Stephen LaBlanc knew about the amniocentesis.

  If he did, The Florida Bar’s ethics division would have a field day yanking his license. I’d file the complaint myself at the first hint that he knew his clients were lying their way up the slippery slope of the litigation lottery.

  “You think they set this up, deliberately, to sue?” Henry asked. “I mean, after they knew the baby had contracted the CMV and would have birth defects.”

  “I don’t see how. Really, how on earth could they possibly know that she’d get into trouble during delivery and the doctor wouldn’t do a cesarean?” I said.

  “Right, I agree,” Newly said. “This was purely an afterthought. I can imagine how it came about. You type in cerebral palsy as a descriptive word on an Internet search engine and you’ll get a dozen hits for law firms advertising that they handle birth defect lawsuits for cerebral palsy. Plus, some attorneys pay hospital workers for tips about babies with bad birth defects. The hospital employees slip the attorneys copies of the records, and if they see something they call the parents, pay the employees for the tip.”

  “You don’t do that, do you?” Angela asked.

  “No, hon, you know I don’t,” Newly said.

  Jackson made a loud, rude noise deep in his throat. Even I wasn’t sure I believed Newly’s denial.

  “I’ve been researching ways that we can bring this evidence in—I mean, once we nail it down so it can’t be traced back to Ronny,” Angela said. “I’ve been studying the evidence code, and I think I see a way to introduce this as impeachment to Mrs. Goodacre, assuming she testifies she didn’t have amniocentesis. So we don’t have to put any witnesses like her sister or the people at the Boise clinic on the witness list, or disclose any evidence to Mr. LaBlanc. I mean, just think of the impact on the jury to catch her in such a big lie in the middle of the trial.”

  Well, there were some serious problems with that, I realized. I mean, why would the sister admit this scheme without a subpoena? And the medical staff at the Boise clinic couldn’t divulge patient information without a subpoena, and as soon as we started issuing subpoenas and setting up depositions in Idaho, we’d have to notify Stephen LaBlanc.

  But yes, as Angela pointed out, it would be great fun to drop this in the middle of cross-examining the teary good-mother during the trial.

  Glancing toward Jackson, I saw a look of admiration on his face as he watched Angela turning into a trial attorney before our very eyes, and I felt my crown slipping of
f another notch.

  “So, why’d she have all this postpartum stuff from Dr. Randolph?” Newly asked, as he flipped through the purloined computer printouts that Angela had handed him. “I mean, you’d think she wouldn’t want the man to touch her again. Look at all these office visits. Damn, the man wasn’t a pediatrician. Plus, why have two ultrasounds after the delivery?”

  Not my problem, I thought. So, spank me for my narrow vision, but my job was to defend Dr. Randolph against allegations his negligence had caused Jason’s brain damage during Mrs. Goodacre’s labor and delivery. What transpired after young Jason entered the world of the living had nothing to do with my defense of the doctor.

  Chapter 27

  While I was busily violating all kinds of client-confidentiality, work-product, attorney-client privileges by spilling all this to Sam on the ride back to his house, my subconscious was spinning and churning.

  By the time we were back at Sam’s and I was draped over his couch while he poured the wine, which, of course, I’d had to buy since Sam’s idea of good wine was basically Bud Light, my subconscious had spit out two ideas. Neither of which I liked.

  First, Jackson, my beloved mentor, my ardent defender, and my personal god of thunder, had been negligent in handling the discovery phase of this case. Sure, he’d deposed half of the citizens of Sarasota County, but he had never gone to Idaho and deposed the people there, where young Jason had spent more than half of his gestation period. With an even half-assed investigation into the Idaho prenatal experiences of Mrs. Goodacre, Jackson stood a good chance of discovering what had gone on in Boise. And, as Jackson is anything but half-assed, he’d have deposed everybody with the remotest connection to Mrs. Goodacre and he would have found out the truth.

  In other words, if Jackson had done what he was supposed to have done, this case would have ended many months and many thousands of dollars ago.