Michael Crichton: A Case of Need

“John Berry.”

His handshake was hearty, but his eyes were cold and inquiring. He waved me to a chair.

“The sergeant said he hadn’t seen you around before and I thought I ought to meet you. We know most of the criminal lawyers in Boston.”

“Don’t you mean trial lawyers?”

“Of course,” he said easily. “Trial lawyers.” He looked at me expectantly.

I said nothing at all. A short silence passed, then Peterson said, “Which firm do you represent?”

“Firm?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not a lawyer,” I said, “and I don’t know what makes you think I am.”

He pretended to be surprised. “That’s not the impression you gave the sergeant.”

“No?”

“No. You told him you were a lawyer.”

“I did?”

“Yes,” Peterson said, placing his hands flat on his desk.

“Who says so?”

“He says so.”

“Then he’s wrong.”

Peterson leaned back in his chair and smiled at me, a very pleasant, let’s-not-get-all-excited smile.

“If we had known you weren’t a lawyer, you’d never have been allowed to see Lee.”

“That’s possible. On the other hand, I was not asked for my name or my occupation. Nor was I asked to sign in as a visitor.”

“The sergeant was probably confused.”

“That’s logical,” I said, “considering the sergeant.”

Peterson smiled blankly. I recognized his type: he was a successful cop, a guy who had learned when to take it and when to dish it out. A very diplomatic and polite cop, until he got the upper hand.

“Well?” he said at last.

“I’m a colleague of Dr. Lee.”

If he was surprised, he didn’t show it. “A doctor?”

“That’s right.”

“You doctors certainly stick together,” he said, still smiling. He had probably smiled more in the last two minutes than he had in the last two years.

“Not really,” I said.

The smile began to fall, probably from fatigue and unused muscles. “If you are a doctor,” Peterson said, “my advice to you is to stay the hell away from Lee. The publicity could kill your practice.”

“What publicity?”

“The publicity from the trial.”

“There’s going to be a trial?”

“Yes,” Peterson said. “And the publicity could kill your practice.”

“I don’t have a practice,” I said.

“You’re in research?”

“No,” I said. “I’m a pathologist.”

He reacted to that. He started to sit forward, caught himself, and leaned back again. “A pathologist,” he repeated.

“That’s right. I work in hospitals, doing autopsies and things.”

Peterson was silent for some time. He frowned, scratched the back of his hand, and looked at his desk. Finally he said, “I don’t know what you’re trying to prove, Doctor. But we don’t need your help, and Lee is too far gone to—”

“That remains to be seen.”

Peterson shook his head. “You know better than that.”

“I’m not sure I do.”

“Do you know,” Peterson said, “what a doctor could claim in a false-arrest suit?”

“A million dollars,” I said.

“Well, let’s say five hundred thousand. It doesn’t matter much. The point is essentially the same.”

“You think you have a case.”

“We have a case.” Peterson smiled again. “Oh, Dr. Lee can call you as a witness. We know that. And you can talk up a storm using the big words, trying to fool the jury, to impress them with your weighty scientific evidence. But you can’t get past the central fact. You just can’t get past it.”

“And what fact is that?”

“A young girl bled to death in the Boston Memorial Hospital this morning, from an illegal abortion. That fact, straight and simple.”

“And you allege Dr. Lee did it?”

“There is some evidence,” Peterson said mildly.

“It had better be good,” I said, “because Dr. Lee is an established and respected—”

“Listen,” Peterson said, showing impatience for the first time, “what do you think this girl was, a ten-dollar doxy? This was a nice girl, a hell of a nice girl, from a good family. She was young and pretty and sweet, and she got butchered. But she didn’t go to some Roxbury midwife or some North End quack. She had too much sense and too much money for that.”

“What makes you think Dr. Lee did it?”

“That’s none of your business.”

I shrugged. “Dr. Lee’s lawyer will ask the same question, and then it will be his business. And if you don’t have an answer—”

“We have an answer.”

I waited. In a sense, I was curious to see just how good, just how diplomatic Peterson was. He didn’t have to tell me anything; he didn’t have to say another word. If he did say more, it would be a mistake.

Peterson said, “We have a witness who heard the girl implicate Dr. Lee.”

“The girl arrived at the hospital in a state of shock, delirious and precomatose. Anything she said will constitute weak evidence.”

“At the time she said it, she wasn’t in a state of shock. She said it much earlier.”

“To whom?”

“To her mother,” Peterson said, with a grin of satisfaction. “She told her mother that Lee did it. As they were leaving for the hospital. And her mother will swear to that.”

I TRIED TO PLAY IT PETERSON’S WAY. I tried to keep my face blank. Fortunately you have a lot of practice at that in medicine; you are trained to show no surprise if a patient tells you they make love ten times a night, or have dreams of stabbing their children, or drink a gallon of vodka daily. It is part of the mystique of the doctor that nothing surprises him. “I see,” I said.

Peterson nodded. “A reliable witness,” he said. “A mature woman, stable, careful in her judgments. And very attractive. She will make an excellent impression on the jury.”

“Perhaps.”

“And now that I have been so frank,” Peterson said, “perhaps you would tell me your special interest in Dr. Lee.”

“I have no special interest. He is my friend.”

“He called you before he called his lawyer.”

“He is allowed two telephone calls.”

“Yes,” Peterson said, “but most people use them to call their lawyer and their wife.”

“He wanted to talk to me.”

“Yes,” he said. “But the question is why.”

“I have had some legal training,” I said, “as well as my medical experience.”

“You have an L.L.B.?”

“No,” I said.

Peterson ran his fingers across the edge of his desk. “I don’t think I understand.”

“I’m not convinced,” I said, “that it is important that you do.”

“Could it be you are involved in this business in some way?”

“Anything is possible,” I said.

“Does that mean yes?”

“That means anything is possible.”

He regarded me for a moment. “You take a very tough line, Dr. Berry.”

“Skeptical.”

“If you are so skeptical, why are you convinced Dr. Lee didn’t do it?”

“I’m not the defense attorney.”

“You know,” Peterson said, “anyone can make a mistake. Even a doctor.”

WHEN I GOT OUTSIDE into the October drizzle, I decided this was a hell of a time to quit smoking. Peterson had unnerved me; I smoked two cigarettes as I walked to the drugstore to buy another pack. I had expected him to be stupid and pointlessly tough. He was neither of those things. If what he had said was true, then he had a case. It might not work, but it was strong enough to protect his job.

Peterson was caught in a quandary. On the one hand, it was dangerous to arrest Dr. Lee; on the other, it was dangerous not to arrest him, if the case seemed strong enough. Peterson was forced into a decision, and he had made it. Now he would stick by it as long as he could. And he had an escape: if things began to go bad, he could blame it all on Mrs. Randall. He could use the familiar line so famous among surgeons and internists that it was abbreviated DHJ: doing his job. That meant that if the evidence was strong enough, you acted and did not care whether you were right or not; you were justified in acting on the evidence. [8] This happens a lot in medicine. For example, a patient presents with fever, leukocytosis—increased numbers of white cells—and pain in the right-lower quadrant of the abdomen. The obvious diagnosis is appendicitis. The surgeon may perform an appendectomy only to find that the appendix is normal. But he is vindicated, so long as he is not overhasty, because the evidence is consistent with appendicitis, and delay may be fatal. In that sense, Peterson’s position was strengthened. He was taking no gambles: if Art was convicted, Peterson would receive no accolades. But if Art was acquitted, Peterson was covered. Because he was doing his job.