A Case of Need: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

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