Warren Murphy - Murder Ward

"I've got to give that funny knuckle club a chance," Dr. Demmet told the golf pro. "I've tried the sand wedge, considered going back to running a three iron onto the green, but I've got to give your club a chance."

"It doesn't look pretty, Dr. Demmet, but it certainly gets the ball up to the hole from anywhere near the apron," said the pro.

"I suppose so," said Dr. Demmet sadly, and this time the mournful tone was sincere.

Mrs. Boulder woke up at three in the morning in her bedroom, saw that her husband's bed had not been slept in, and realized he would not be coming home. She had told the children the night before, and they had cried. She had spoken with the funeral people and paid more than she could afford, not really caring all that much and almost welcoming the assault of the high expenses. She had told John's brother, who would notify the rest of the family, and she had received a multitude of sympathy calls. But it was in the morning that she realized in her body and in her senses, finally understood, and began to accept that John would not be coming home again. It was then that the grief came, full and deep and unremitting.

She wanted to share the grief with him as she had shared everything else with him since they were married after his graduation from the University of Maryland. It was too much pain for her to bear alone, and she did not know how to pray.

So she began to pack his things, trying to separate what her son might want from what John's brother might want from what the Salvation Army might want. In the basement, she taped his cross-country skis together, packed his squash rackets, and wondered why he had never thrown out his old jogging sneakers. She left his scuba tanks in the corner because they were too heavy to lift.

And when she looked back at all those pairs of jogging sneakers, tattered testimony of the three miles he had run every day of their marriage, except during the honeymoon, it came to her with a jarring shock.

"Heart gave out. No way. No way. No way."

John did not smoke, rarely drank, exercised daily, watched his diet, and no one in his family had ever suffered heart disease.

"No way," she said again, and she was suddenly very excited as though by establishing this fact conclusively, it would in some way bring him back.

She forced herself to wait until nine-thirty in the morning before phoning the family physician. The doctor's receptionist-nurse answered, and she made an appointment for that day. She only needed five minutes, she said. Actually, she needed less.

"John's heart was in good shape, wasn't it, doctor?" she asked before he could offer his sympathy.

"Well, yes. For a man of his age, his heart was functioning well. He took care of himself properly."

"Should his heart have failed on the operating table?"

"Well, Mrs. Boulder, an operation puts an incredible strain on the body."

"Should it have failed?"

"Robler has some of the finest surgical teams in the country, Mrs. Boulder. Many of the nation's highest officials go there. If there were any way for them to save your husband…"

"He shouldn't have died of a heart failure, should he, doctor? Tell me. You're our family physician."

"Mrs. Boulder, I sent my own daughter to the Robler Clinic."

"But John shouldn't have died of heart failure in his condition at his age, should he?"

"There are many things in medicine that we can't explain," he said. But Mrs. Boulder wasn't listening to him; she was already composing her letter to the American Medical Association and the medical societies. By afternoon she was outlining her strategy to the family lawyer. He was more blunt than the family doctor.

"Save your money, Mrs. Boulder. The only way we can get the Robler people for malpractice is to get another physician to testify against them."

"Well, let's do that."

"It's a fine strategy, Mrs. Boulder. But it won't work."

"Why not?" she asked, her voice sharp and angry. "Because if your own family physician wouldn't back you up in private, what do you expect from some impartial doctor in the courtroom? Doctors don't testify against doctors. That's not in the Hippocratic oath, but it's one rule doctors follow faithfully."

"You mean doctors can kill patients and get away with it?"

"I mean sometimes they don't perform well, or even properly, and there's nothing anyone can do about it."

"I read of a doctor out west who was convicted of malpractice just last… last… last year, I think it was."

"That's right. You read of it. When a doctor is convicted of malpractice, it's news. And I believe that doctor was an oddball who had made waves and was fighting the medical societies. Did you read about the auto accident in Phoenix where the driver was found guilty of careless driving and reckless endangerment?"

"No, I don't think I did."

"Neither did I. That's because people are regularly convicted of careless driving. Policemen testify. For doctors, there are no policemen."

"But there are medical boards, laws, the American Medical Association."

"The AMA? That's like asking the National Association of Manufacturers to investigate excessive profits. Mrs. Boulder, I'm your friend, and I was John's friend. And as your friend and as a good lawyer, which I am, I'm going to give you some excellent professional advice. And by the way, I'm going to charge you for it, so you'd better listen to me. To bring a malpractice suit against the Robler Clinic or Dr. Demmet is a waste of your time and your money and your emotions. I won't let you do it because you can't win."

"What about an autopsy?"

"We can get one."

"Well, won't that prove our case?"

"It will probably prove Robler's case."

"The coroners are part of the club, too? Is that what you're saying?"

"It's not what I'm saying. They're not. But doctors, like everyone else, learn to cover themselves properly. If they say heart failure was the cause of death, then that's just what the coroner is going to find. A medical career is worth more than a million dollars. Doctors don't risk that lightly. Now, I will do something else. If you promise not to pursue this, Mrs. Boulder, I'll forget the bill for this appointment. I'm sorry. I grieve with you, and if there were some way we could bring John back, even on the longest chance, or make amends for his death, I would go with you on this thing despite the odds. But there's nothing we can do. I'm sorry."

"We'll see," said Mrs. Boulder, who was not thanking people for their services anymore.

Her letters were answered politely, giving the impression that the correspondents had looked into the matter. But when she reread them and analyzed each sentence carefully, she realized that all the authorities had said was how wonderful the profession of medicine was and how thorough doctors were in their concern.

And there she finally let the matter drop. The only time she ever saw Dr. Demmet's name again was in the sports pages when he won the low gross in the Fair Oaks Scotch Foursome winter tournament.

CHAPTER TWO

His name was Remo and the Bay winds out of the Pacific whipped at him with all the fury gathered over the vast stretch of ocean. The Golden Gate spun out before him to Marin County, the gateway to the northwest. Behind him was San Francisco and going east, the rest of America.

He stood on the guardrail, where four hundred and ninety-nine others had plunged to their deaths in suicides marking otherwise insignificant lives.

The man was about six feet tall, normal in build. Only extra-thick wrists suggested he might be more than just an ordinary man, but there was nothing in the wrists to suggest that he could be standing there with the soles of his bare feet just touching the round railing of the bridge.

For one thing, Volkswagens crossing the bridge in the pre-dawn darkness tended to shift as the cross-gusts buffeted them. For another, his dark pants and dark shirt whipped like flags in a hurricane. And for another, he stood upright, very casual as if doing nothing more enervating than contemplating a change of television channel in his living room.