Michael Baden - Remains Silent

Manny leaned forward. “Patrice, there were other skeletons found with your father’s. Two were men. One was female, a young female.”

She seems angry now. Why? “I want to find out about my father. I loved him and my mother. But he hurt us when he left.” She turned her wrists upward, displaying healed, thin parallel scars. A suicide attempt. Maybe more than one. “And I hurt Mom when I ran away from home…” She paused, evidently reliving the past. “Dr. Rosen said that since four bodies were found, maybe it was an old graveyard.”

“He doesn’t really think so. The bodies weren’t properly buried, just put in the ground. It’s one of the facts that makes us wonder if the four were mistreated.”

“What do their families say?”

“We don’t know. The other remains haven’t been identified yet.”

“How awful!” Please don’t cry. “Do you think somebody will find out who they are?”

“Dr. Rosen’s working on it. In the meantime, I’ll try to make sure that no remains are disposed of until they’re identified. The remains may be vital to our case, and I want to make sure to preserve them. Oh, and don’t worry about the cost. I won’t ask you to pay for anything unless we get a monetary award, in which case my firm gets one-third.”

Patrice squinted at her. Anger again, more overt. “I knew it,” she said. “I knew somebody like you wouldn’t just help me. I’m not after money. I just want to find out what happened to my dad.”

“I know. And I sympathize. But if we find out he was mistreated in the hospital, wouldn’t you want to make whoever’s responsible pay?”

She thought about it. “If somebody did something really wrong, could he still go to jail? That’d be the way to make him pay, not by getting money from him.”

“Maybe. But after all this time, criminal behavior would be hard to prove, and the perpetrator might be dead. The only way to get satisfaction is to sue the government. It doesn’t mean you’re greedy. It just means you want to hold the system accountable. And maybe it’ll keep another family from suffering the way you have. Your father was a hero; he fought for his country. The circumstances of his death are important. I want both for you to have the truth and for the person who did this to be punished. The way to get at that person, dead or alive, is through a lawsuit. But I won’t mislead you. It’s going to be a tough fight.”

It was a speech Manny had given many times before, and it had the virtue of being true. Justice, immediate or long delayed, had to be fought for, particularly if the victim was unable to fight for herself. The part of the settlement she received in Patrice’s case, assuming she won, would pay for the losing fights and broken hearts, including her own.

She watched relief flow into Patrice’s face. I’ve gotten through.

“Do you remember your father ever telling you he was being treated with electroshock therapy?”

Patrice gasped. “No. Is that what killed him?”

“Might have. Dr. Rosen says it’s a possibility.”

“He died during his treatment? And they put him in the ground so nobody would know they’d screwed up?”

Healthy anger now. We’re allies. “I don’t know,” Manny said, squeezing Patrice’s hand. “But together we’re going to find out.”

KENNETH BOYD was standing on the sidewalk in front of Manny’s office when she drove up. Dressed in his black velveteen jacket with a fuchsia and orange brocade silk lining, he looked ready to escort her to the opera rather than a day in court.

He slid into the passenger seat of the Porsche. “Who was sitting in this seat, or perhaps I should ask what you were doing in it? With this much legroom, you either had a date with a basketball player or you-”

Manny laughed. “Stop right there. Actually, the seat was occupied by Dr. Rosen.”

“The Dr. Rosen? The traitorous, lying, moneygrubbing, amoral son of a bitch?”

“The very one. Do you want to know what I was up to?”

“Of course I do, girlfriend! Spit it out. That is, if it’s suitable for my delicate ears.”

“I was with a naked body.”

“I knew it! Shocking, but about time.”

“A dead naked body. I assisted Dr. Rigor Mortis, as you call him, at an autopsy. I was with him when he sliced open-”

“No more!” Kenneth shouted. “Unsuitable!” He stared at her. “You gotta be careful who you consort with. I know you watch out for me, but remember, I watch out for you, too.” He handed her the papers he had prepared for her. “The petition.”

She glanced through it. “You’re a godsend. There isn’t another paralegal who could have drafted this so quickly.”

“I can be buttered up day or night. But a petition to stop the state from burying bones? That message you left for me before you met with Perez was wacko, even for you.”

“Not really. The Baxter County judge agreed to hear my application to preserve the skeletons on an emergency basis. I called the lawyer for Baxter County and community hospital to tell him what I’m doing, and he’ll be in court, kicking and screaming, to try to stop me.” She started the car. “By the way, you’ll have to get the passenger window replaced. I’ll fill you in as we drive up to Turner.”

The old mahogany walls of the once-proud courtroom were patched with mismatched walnut pasteboard. The common man gets pasteboard, the rich corporation marble. Even worse, the client had to pay a filing fee before being permitted to seek justice. She had laid out the money, knowing her chances of ever seeing it again were slim to nonexistent.

She knew the attorney going up against her: good ol’ fat toupeed Chester Gruen, a member of the old boys’ club, whom she had met at her first Bar Association meeting in New York. There he had charmed her by pointing to his crotch. “You’ll never be a match for this in the courtroom,” he had said. Manny had squinted. “I’m sorry. I seem to have forgotten my magnifying glass.” He’ll remember me, she thought now, fidgeting as they waited at counsel tables for the judge to take the bench.

“What are you so impatient about, Ms. Manfreda? Your client ain’t going anyplace,” Gruen said, roaring at his own witticism.

Manny stifled the temptation to ask if it had gotten any bigger since she’d last seen him. Probably not, she decided, and comforted herself with the notion that it had shrunk.

Judge Melvin Bradford III, it turned out, was as fidgety as she. Manny made her case succinctly, stressing the need to identify all the people who had been buried with Lyons in case there was a connection between them that could add to her contention that Turner Psychiatric had been remiss, at the very least.

Gruen, who represented both Baxter County and its hospital- a blatant conflict of interest, Manny told herself- tried to dismiss the suit as frivolous and a nuisance, “designed to cost the county taxpayers their hard-earned pay in these economically troubled times” and to “smear with false charges an institution that was the pride of Turner Township for more than a century.”

He hadn’t done his homework; thanks to Kenneth, Manny had. Judge Bradford, who had evidently listened to Gruen too many times, allowed her the first order ever granted in the State of New York to preserve four skeletons, dirt, the results of toxicological testing, X-rays if any, autopsy reports, medical examiner’s notes and files, photos, police officers’ reports and notes, clothing, medical records, paraffin blocks, formal-fixed tissues, microscopic slides, “and a whole lot of other stuff- anything you need.”

Euphoric, Manny skipped out of the courtroom, ignoring Gruen, who had approached the bench to ask for a meeting in judge’s chambers.