Mary Clark - We'll Meet Again

Marta put down the knife she was about to use to cut the coffee cake. She turned to her friend of thirty years. “What is Wally talking about, Edna?” she asked quietly, pieces of a very confused puzzle slowly falling together in her mind.

Edna burst into tears. “He’s not talking about anything. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Tell Marta that, Wally. Tell her. You’re not talking about anything!”

The outburst obviously startled him. “I’m sorry, Mom. I promise I won’t talk about Molly anymore.”

“No, Wally, I think you should,” Marta said. “Edna, if Wally knows anything about Dr. Lasch’s death, son or no son, you have to take him to the police and let them hear what it is. You can’t let that woman go before that parole board and be sent back to prison if she didn’t kill her husband.”

“Wally, get the bags out of the car.” Edna Barry’s voice sounded flat and resigned as she looked at Marta with pleading eyes. “I know you’re right. I have to let Wally talk to the police, but just give me till Monday morning. I have to have a lawyer with me to protect him.”

“If Molly Lasch spent five and a half years in prison for a crime she didn’t commit, and you knew it, I would think you need a lawyer to protect yourself,” Marta said, sadness and distress in her eyes as she looked across the kitchen at her friend.

There was silence between them, as Wally noisily munched a piece of Marta’s coffee cake.

Fran spent the rest of Saturday morning studying the articles that Dr. Adrian Lowe had either written, or which had been written about him. He makes Dr. Kevorkian look like another Albert Schweitzer, she thought. Lowe’s philosophy was starkly simple: Thanks to advances in medicine, too many people were living for too long. The elderly were consuming financial and medical resources better used elsewhere.

One article stated that much of the elaborate treatment of chronically ill people was wasteful and unnecessary. That decision should be reached by medical experts and carried out without family involvement.

Another article expounded Lowe’s theory that the incompetent were a useful-perhaps even necessary-resource for the study of new or untested drugs. They might be helped dramatically by the drug, or they might die. In either case they would be better off.

Following his career through the various articles, Fran learned that Lowe became so outrageous and outspoken in his theories that he was fired from the medical school where he taught and was even condemned by the AMA. At one point he was indicted for deliberately killing three patients, but the case wasn’t proved. After that, he dropped out of sight. Fran finally remembered where she had heard of him before-he had been discussed in an ethics course she had taken in college.

Did Gary Lasch set up Dr. Lowe in West Redding so that he could carry on his scientific research there? Did he also bring Lowe’s other dedicated student, Peter Black, to Lasch Hospital to help him conduct experiments on unsuspecting patients there? It was certainly beginning to look that way.

It also makes sense, Fran thought. It makes terrible, logical, brutal sense. This evening, God willing, I’ll have proof. If this crazy doctor wants his so-called accomplishments known, then he’s come to the right person. Boy, let me at him! I can’t wait.

Her unidentified caller had given her specific directions to Lowe’s location. West Redding was about sixty miles north of Manhattan. I’m glad it’s March, not August, Fran thought. She knew the Merritt Parkway in the summer could be packed with vacationers on their way to the beaches. Even so, she intended to leave with plenty of time to spare. She was due there at seven o’clock-well, it couldn’t come soon enough for her.

She debated about how much recording equipment to take with her. She didn’t want to scare Lowe into clamming up about his work, but she prayed he would let her tape the interview, perhaps even videotape it. In the end she decided to bring both her recorder and video camera. Both would easily fit into her shoulder bag, along with her notebook.

The articles written about Lowe after he had granted interviews were both specific and expansive. I hope he still likes to let everyone in on his theories, Fran thought.

At two o’clock she had finished preparing the questions she wanted to put to Dr. Lowe. By a quarter of three, she was showered and dressed. She called Molly to check on her and was alarmed by the despondent tone of her voice.

“Are you alone, Molly?”

“Yes.”

“Is anyone coming over?”

“Philip called. He wanted to come up tonight, but Jenna is going to be here. I asked him to wait until tomorrow.”

“Molly, I can’t talk about it yet, but a lot is happening, and it’s all promising. It looks like I’m onto something that may be of real help to you and to Philip in handling your case.”

“Nothing like good news, is there, Fran?”

“Molly, I have to be in Connecticut this evening, and if I left now, I could stop and visit with you for a few minutes on the way there. Would you like that?”

“Don’t bother about me, Fran.”

“I’ll be there in an hour,” Fran said, immediately hanging up before Molly could say no.

She’s given up, Fran thought as she impatiently pressed the button for the elevator. In that condition, she shouldn’t be left alone for even one minute.

It’s my fault, Philip Matthews told himself over and over again. When Molly got out of prison, I should have dragged her into the car. She didn’t know what she was doing when she talked to the media. She didn’t understand that you can’t admit to the parole board that you accept responsibility for your husband’s death, then go out and say you didn’t do it. Why didn’t I get that across to her?

The prosecutor could have asked to get her parole revoked the minute she made that statement, Philip reasoned. That means that he’s going after her now only because of the second charge.

My one chance to keep Molly out of prison when we appear before the board on Monday is to make them accept that there’s a legitimate possibility that she’s been wrongly accused of Annamarie Scalli’s death. Then I have to beg the members to understand that she didn’t actually intend to retract her admission but rather that she just wanted to regain her memory of that night so she could fully face what had happened. He thought about it. The argument might work. If he could persuade Molly to stick to that story… If, however, was the operative word.

Molly told the reporters that she had the impression there was someone else in the house the night Gary Lasch was murdered, he recalled, and she also said that in her heart, she did not believe she was capable of taking a human life. I might be able to persuade the parole board that this statement came from someone consumed with grief and despair, not from someone trying to trick them into granting parole. I could plead that it’s a matter of record that she was suffering from clinical depression in prison.

Still, all my arguments about her mental state will amount to nothing if I can’t create doubt about Annamarie Scalli’s death, he thought. It all comes down to that.

That was why, late on Saturday afternoon, Philip Matthews drove to the Sea Lamp Diner in Rowayton. The parking lot where Annamarie Scalli had died was no longer cordoned off. Badly in need of repaving and with the white lines that delineated parking spaces almost invisible, it was in use again. There was no indication that a young woman had been brutally murdered there, no hint that Molly Lasch might have to spend the rest of her life in prison because traces of blood from the dead woman had been found on her shoe and in her car.