Michael Crichton - A Case of Need

“And you believe in winning.”

He touched the scar along his neck. “Yes.”

“Even without honor?”

“The honor,” he said, “is in winning.”

“Is it?”

He stared at me for a moment. “Why are you so eager to protect the Randalls?”

“I’m not.”

“You sound like you are.”

“I’m doing what Art would want.”

“Art,” Wilson said, “wants to get out of jail. I’m telling you I can get him out. Nobody else in Boston will touch him; he’s a hot potato. And I’m telling you I can get him out.”

“It’s dirty.”

“Yes, Christ, it’s dirty. What did you expect—a croquet game?” He finished his drink and said, “Look, Berry. If you were me, what would you do?”

“Wait,” I said.

“For what?”

“The real abortionist.”

“And if he doesn’t turn up?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know,” I said.

“Then think about it,” he said and left the bar.

WILSON HAD IRRITATED ME, but he had also left me with plenty to think about. I drove home, poured myself a vodka on the rocks, and sat down to put it together. I thought about everyone I talked to, and I realized that there were significant questions I had never asked. There were gaps, big gaps. Like what Karen had done Saturday night, when she went out in Peter’s car. What she had said to Mrs. Randall the next day. Whether she had returned Peter’s car—it was now stolen; when had Peter gotten it back?

I drank the vodka and felt a calm settle over me. I had been too hasty; I had lost my temper too often; I had reacted more to people than to information, more to personalities than to facts.

I would be more careful in the future.

The telephone rang. It was Judith. She was over at the Lees.

“What’s going on?”

In a very steady voice, she said, “You’d better come over here. There’s some kind of demonstration outside.”

“Oh?”

“There’s a mob,” Judith said, “on the lawn.”

“I’ll be right over,” I said and hung up. I grabbed my coat and started for the car, then stopped.

It was time to be more careful.

I went back and quickly dialed the city desk of the Globe. I reported a demonstration at the Lees’ address. I made it a breathless and melodramatic call; I was sure they’d act on it.

Then I got in my car and drove over.

When I got to the Lees’, the wooden cross was still smoldering on the front lawn. A police car was there and a large crowd had gathered, mostly neighborhood kids and their stunned parents. It was still early evening; the sky was deepening blue and the smoke from the cross curled straight upward.

I pushed through the crowd toward the house. Every window that I could see had been smashed. Someone was crying inside. A cop stopped me at the door.

“Who’re you?”

“Dr. Berry. My wife and children are inside.”

He stepped aside and I went in.

They were all in the living room. Betty Lee was crying; Judith was taking care of the children. There was broken glass all around. Two of the children had been cut deeply but not seriously. A policeman was questioning Mrs. Lee. He wasn’t getting anywhere. All she said was, “We asked for protection. We asked for it. We pleaded with you, but you never came….”

“Jesus, lady,” said the cop.

“We asked. Don’t we have any rights?”

“Jesus, lady,” he said again.

I helped Judith bandage the kids.

“What happened?”

Suddenly the cop turned on me. “Who’re you?”

“I’m a doctor.”

“Yeah, well, high time,” he said and turned back to Mrs. Lee.

Judith was subdued and pale. “It started twenty minutes ago,” she said. “We’ve been getting threats all day, and letters. Then it finally happened: four cars pulled up and a bunch of kids got out. They set up the cross and poured gasoline over it and lighted it. There must have been about twenty of them. They all stood there and sang ‘Onward Christian Soldiers.’ Then they started to throw rocks when they saw us looking at them through the window. It was like a nightmare.”

“What did the kids look like? Were they well-dressed? What were the cars like?”

She shook her head. “That was the worst part. They were young, nice-looking kids. If they had been old bigots, I could understand, but they were just teen-agers. You should have seen their faces.”

We finished bandaging the children and got them out of the room.

“I’d like to see the letters you’ve received,” I said.

Just then the Lees’ year-old baby crawled into the living room. He was smiling and making little gurgling, drooling noises. The glinting glass on the carpet obviously intrigued him.

“Hey!” I said to the cop at the door. “Get him!”

The cop looked down. He had been watching the baby all along.

Now he bent over and stopped the baby by holding on to his pudgy ankle.

“Pick him up,” I said to the cop. “He can’t hurt you.”

Reluctantly, the cop picked him up. He handled the baby as if he might be diseased. You could see the distaste on his face: abortionist’s baby.

Judith walked over, her shoes crunching on the glass. She took the baby from the cop. The baby didn’t know how the cop felt. He had been happily playing with the cop’s shiny buttons and drooling on his blue uniform. He didn’t like it when Judith took him away from those buttons.

I heard the other cop say to Mrs. Lee, “Well, look, we get threats all the time. We can’t respond to them all.”

“But we called when they burned that…that thing on the lawn.”

“That’s a cross.”

“I know what it is,” she said. She was no longer crying. She was mad.

“We came as fast as we could,” the cop said. “That’s the truth, lady. As fast as we could.”

Judith said to me, “It took them fifteen minutes. By that time, all the windows were broken and the teenagers were gone.”

I went over to the table and looked at the letters. They had been carefully opened and stacked in a neat pile. Most were handscrawled; a few were typewritten. They were all short, some just a sentence, and they all had the breathless hiss of a curse.

Dirty comminist Jewlover Nigger lover killer. You and youre kind will get what you deserve, baby killers. You are the scum of the earth. You may think you are in Germany but you are not.

Our Lord and Saviour spake this ‘Suffer the little children to come to me.’ You have sinned against the Lord Jesus Our God and you will suffer the retrobution at his Almighty Hands. Praise God in his infinite wisdom and mercy.

The decent Godfearing people of the Commonwealth will not sit idly by. We shall fight you wherever the fight is to be. We shall drive you from your homes, we shall drive you from this country. We shall drive all of you out, until our Commonwealth is a decent place for all to live.

We caught you. We’ll catch all your friends. Doctors think they can do anything, a) Driving those big Cadillacs. b) charging high costs. c) making patients wait that’s why they call them patients because they wait patiently. d) But you are all evil. You will be stopped.

You like to kill kids? See how it feels to have yours killed.

Abortion is a crime against God and man and society and the newborn yet to be. You will pay on this earth. But the Lord in his infinite way will burn you in hell forever.

Abortion is worse than murder. What did they ever do to you? Answer that and you will see I am right. May you rot in jail and your family die.

There was a final letter, written in a neat feminine hand.

I am sorry to hear of your misfortune. I know this must be a trying time for all of you. I only wanted to say that I am very grateful for what you did for me last year, and that I believe in you and what you are doing. You are the most wonderful doctor I have ever known, and the most honest. You have made my life much better than it would be otherwise, and my husband and I are eternally grateful. I shall pray for you every night.