Michael Crichton - A Case of Need

I wasn’t going to push Sanderson. He could take his time in telling me; I lit a cigarette and waited patiently.

“Oh hell,” Sanderson said, “it’s probably just a rumor. I can’t imagine I’d never heard of it before.”

“What?” I said finally.

“Peter Randall. Peter does abortions. Very quiet and exclusive, but he does them.”

“Jesus,” I said, sitting down in a chair.

“It’s hard to believe,” Sanderson said.

I smoked a cigarette and thought it over. If Peter did abortions, did J. D. know? Did he think Peter had done it, and was covering up for him? Was that what he meant by “a family matter”? If so, why had Art been dragged into this?

And why would Peter abort the girl in the first place? Peter had evidence that there might be something wrong with the girl. He was a good enough doctor to think of a pit tumor. If the girl came to him saying she was pregnant, he’d certainly think back to her vision trouble. And he’d run tests.

“Peter didn’t do it,” I said.

“Maybe she put pressure on him. Maybe she was in a hurry. She only had one weekend.”

“No. He wouldn’t respond to pressure from her.”

“She was family.”

“She was a young and hysterical girl,” I said, remembering Peter’s description.

Sanderson said, “Can you be sure Peter didn’t do it?”

“No,” I admitted.

“Let’s suppose he did. And let’s suppose Mrs. Randall knew about the abortion. Or that the girl told her, as she was bleeding to death, that Peter had done it. What would Mrs. Randall do? Turn in her brother-in-law?”

I could see where he was leading me. It certainly provided an explanation for one of the puzzles of the case—why Mrs. Randall had called in the police. But I didn’t like it, and I told Sanderson so.

“The reason you don’t like it is you’re fond of Peter.”

“That may be.”

“You can’t afford to exclude him or anyone else. Do you know where Peter was last Sunday night?”

“No.”

“Neither do I,” Wes Sanderson said, “but I think it’s worth checking.”

“No,” I said, “it’s not. Peter wouldn’t do it. And even if he did, he wouldn’t have botched it so badly. No professional would have.”

“You’re prejudging the case,” Sanderson said.

“Look, if Peter could have done it—without tests, without anything—then so could Art.”

“Yes,” Sanderson said mildly. “That has occurred to me.”

I WAS FEELING IRRITABLE when I left Sanderson. I couldn’t decide exactly why. Perhaps he was right; perhaps I was unreasonably and illogically searching for fixed points, for things and people to believe in.

But there was something else. In any court action, there was always the chance that Sanderson and I could be implicated, and our role in fooling the tissue committee brought out. Both Sanderson and I had a large stake in this business, a stake as large as Art’s. We hadn’t talked about that, but it was there in the back of my mind, and I was sure in the back of his as well. And that put a different interpretation on things.

Sanderson was perfectly correct: we could put the squeeze on Peter Randall. But if we did, we’d never know why we did. We could always say it was because we believed Peter was guilty. Or because it was expedient, to save a falsely accused man.

But we would always wonder whether we did it simply to protect ourselves.

Before I did anything, I would have to get more information. Sanderson’s argument made no distinction between Mrs. Randall knowing that Peter had done the abortion and merely suspecting that he had.

And there was another question. If Mrs. Randall suspected that Peter had done the abortion and wished to keep him from being arrested, why had she named Art? What did she know about Art?

Art Lee was a circumspect and cautious man. He was hardly a household word among the pregnant women of Boston. He was known to a few physicians and a relatively small number of patients. His clientele was carefully chosen.

How had Mrs. Randall known he performed abortions? There was one man who might know the answer: Fritz Werner.

FRITZ WERNER lived in a town house on Beacon Street. The ground floor was given over to his office—an anteroom and a large, comfortable room with desk, chair, and couch—and to his library. The upper two floors comprised his living quarters. I went directly to the second floor and entered the living room to find it the same as always: a large desk by the window, covered with pens, brushes, sketchbooks, pastels; drawings by Picasso and Miro on the walls; a photograph of T. S. Eliot glowering into the camera; an informal, signed portrait of Marianne Moore talking with her friend Floyd Patterson.

Fritz was sitting in a heavy armchair, wearing slacks and an enormous bulky sweater. He had stereophonic earphones on his head, was smoking a thick cigar, and crying. The tears rolled down his flat, pale cheeks. He wiped his eyes when he saw me, and took off the earphones.

“Ah, John. Do you know any Albinoni?”

“No,” I said.

“Then you don’t know the adagio.”

“I’m afraid not.”

“It always makes me sad,” he said, dabbing his eyes. “Infernally, infernally sad. So sweet. Do sit down.”

I sat. He turned off his record player and took off the record. He dusted it carefully and replaced it in the jacket.

“It was good of you to come. How was your day?”

“Interesting.”

“You’ve looked up Bubbles?”

“Yes, I did.”

“How did you find her?”

“Confusing.”

“Why do you say that?”

I smiled. “Don’t analyze me, Fritz. I never pay my doctor bills.”

“No?”

“Tell me about Karen Randall,” I said.

“This is very nasty, John.”

“Now you sound like Charlie Frank.”

“Charlie Frank is not a complete fool,” Fritz said. “By the way, did I tell you I have a new friend?”

“No,” I said.

“I do, a marvelous creature, most amusing. We must talk about him sometime.”

“Karen Randall,” I said, bringing him back to the point.

“Yes, indeed.” Fritz took a deep breath. “You didn’t know the girl, John,” he said. “She was not a nice child. Not at all. She was a mean, lying, unpleasant little child with severe neuroses. Bordering on psychosis, if you ask me.”

He walked into the bedroom, stripping off his sweater. I followed him in and watched as he put on a clean shirt and a tie.

“Her problems,” Fritz said, “were sexual in nature, stemming from a repressed childhood with her parents. Her father is not the most well-adjusted man I know. Marrying that woman is a perfect example. Have you met her?”

“The present Mrs. Randall?”

“Yes. Ghastly, ghastly woman.”

He shuddered as he knotted his tie and straightened it in the mirror.

“Did you know Karen?” I asked.

“It was my misfortune to do so. I knew her parents as well. We first met at that marvelous, glorious party given by the Baroness de—”

“Just tell me,” I said.

Fritz sighed. “This girl, this Karen Randall,” he said, “she presented her parents with their own neuroses. In a sense she acted out their fantasies.”

“What do you mean?”

“Breaking the mold—being sexually free, not caring what people said, dating the wrong kinds of people, and always with sexual undertones. Athletes. Negroes. That sort of thing.”

“Was she ever your patient?”

He sighed. “No, thank God. At one point it was suggested that I take her, but I refused. I had three other adolescent girls at the time, and they were quite enough. Quite enough.”

“Who asked you to take her?”