Florida Is Murder (Due Justice and Surface Tension Mystery Double Feature) (Florida Mystery Double Feature) (15 page)

“I found b-blood and b-brains all over the k-kitchen.”  She broke down completely. She was hysterical, sobbing uncontrollably, keening as if Dr. Morgan was here in the kitchen with us and she’d just seen him. I went around to her and held her, but she was sobbing hard enough to shake both of us. George came to the doorway, arched one eyebrow at me and I nodded him in.

“Help me get her into the bedroom please, and bring me a Valium from the medicine cabinet.” Calmly. Trying not to let her know I’d like to be falling apart, too. She had been such a bubbly child. How did she get like this?

George went to get the Valium and water. I gave it to Carly and we helped her back to bed. She’d calmed down some and I sat with her while she either passed out or went to sleep, I’m not sure which. I closed the door to her room and went out on the veranda, where George was waiting. It was early for drinking, but he’d poured both of us a Sapphire and tonic. I took mine with a twist of lemon and without a twinge of remorse. Three gulps later, I got up for a refill.

“Now, Willa, suppose you tell me exactly what’s going on here,” George said, “And I’m not kidding around.”   It was perfectly okay with me. I’d never seen a murder scene and I was pretty sure Carly never had either. Just hearing Carly describe it shook me up. I have a very vivid imagination. I see movies in my head when I think and just her description was enough. Besides that, now she’d have to go to the police and I wasn’t sure exactly how to convince her to do it. If she wouldn’t, I’d have to do it myself and then there’d be all kinds of hell to pay, with Kate and the CJ for starters. Before, I only suspected a crime had been committed. Now I knew for sure. I’d taken an oath to uphold the law, and I had to do it or face the consequences. I hoped George would have some insight.

We talked for a long time, about Carly and her predicament, and about mine. We poked and prodded the problem, looked at it from all the angles. There was just no way around it in the end. One of us would have to go to Chief Hathaway. I didn’t want it to be me, and Carly obviously didn’t want it to be her. I knew what my reasons were, but I wasn’t clear on hers. If we’d had a different relationship, I might have told the CJ. As it was, I was hoping he’d never find out I was involved. It would be just one more thing for him to ride me about. George and I agreed the only thing we could do was to try to persuade Carly to call Chief Hathaway when she woke up. If she wouldn’t, then I had some tough choices to make.

After we finished our third gin, it seemed important to get more facts from another source before pressuring Carly, as I fully intended to do. She’d lied to me at least once that I knew of, and I couldn’t trust the rest of her story. There was no way I was going to get any deeper into this; I was afraid of walking right into the middle of something worse that neither Carly nor I could control.

It could be that Michael Morgan’s death, if he was dead, had nothing to do with this breast implant business, but the chances of that were really slim. When the largest breast implant manufacturer went into bankruptcy a couple of years ago, I remembered reading in the
Tampa Today Business Journal
that several of the law firms in town had financed the costs of breast implant litigation. One of them was my former firm, some of my former partners having gone over to the “other side” representing women with implants.

I called Mitchell and asked him to meet me for a drink here at Minaret this afternoon. Although he said he was surprised to hear from me since I had canceled our weekly golf game, he agreed to come. If you’re a lawyer in a small town, it’s not wise to ignore the summons of a judge, even though it may be a purely social call. Knowing this, I try not to use the advantage too often.  This was one of those times when it was necessary.

I was waiting for Mitch in the Sunset Bar and when he arrived, I suggested that we take our drinks to a secluded table. The bar was deserted, so I didn’t expect any interruptions. The last thing I needed was to be overheard discussing the very cases I’m supposed to be presiding over. I had recused myself from all of my former firm’s cases, so it wasn’t technically a breach of ethics to talk to Mitch about it generally. Nevertheless, I didn’t want to have to explain myself to anyone on the issue, particularly the CJ, who is always looking for something to complain about where I’m concerned. Anyway, if I didn’t get this worked out, I was going to have a lot more to explain. Private conversations on privileged matters would be the least of my worries.

“Mitch, didn’t I read that your firm is very involved in representing plaintiffs in breast implant cases?”

“Why, Judge, do you want to file a claim?”  He eyed my chest speculatively, but with a smile, hoping I wouldn’t be offended. He was wrong. I would never look at some man’s crotch and suggest anything about the size of the bulge, at least not to him.

“Fortunately, no. I am looking for some information, though, and I was hoping you’d just give it to me voluntarily.”

“Well, it’s not a secret. Of course, we don’t have as many cases as Christian Grover. But he advertised on a billboard and in
The Tribune
for months, so he got a lot more calls than we did. Besides that, his partner Fred Johnson, seems to have some inside track on the Morgan cases. Morgan was the hardest working plastic surgeon in town where breast implants were concerned. I’ve heard estimates as high as forty-five thousand surgeries he did. He claims to have made $35,000 a day doing implants in the eighties. We only took what we could get that we thought were sure winners.”

“How many cases does Grover have?”

“There’s no real way of knowing that. He brags at bar meetings that he’s got three-thousand-five-hundred plaintiffs, not including Johnson’s cases.”

“Really? I had no idea Grover represented so many women.”

“Oh, sure. We have about two-hundred clients, all referred by other lawyers. Grover got most of his cases directly through advertising, but he got a lot of referrals, too.”

“Why would one plaintiffs’ attorney want to refer cases to another?”

“Well, the thinking is that a particular plaintiff’s attorney will learn the science and make it his business to become experienced in handling the cases so that he can maximize the value of each claim. The referring attorney then gets a percentage of the final fee. It’s done all the time.”

“Doesn’t it get expensive to advance costs for all of those claims?”  I imagined piles of dollars looking like the ransom money for one of the Rockefellers.

“Yes, in the beginning it was less expensive because the manufacturers were paying to remove the implants. Now, most of them refuse and the insurance carriers won’t pay, either. So, if your client wants to be explanted, which improves her case, you have to make a decision about advancing the costs. It can be as much as $5,000 a case.”

“Do you mean to say that Grover and Johnson can have as much as $1.5 million in costs in these cases?”  I was incredulous. Tampa isn’t Los Angeles. A million dollars is still a rare commodity here.

“Actually, they could have more. That would just be the price of the removal surgery for each woman. There’s the cost of experts, getting documents and all the other trial preparation stuff. My firm alone has over $300,000 invested in these cases, and we’re a relatively small player. I’ve heard stories that some of the Texas lawyers are putting out over a million dollars a month.”

“How can they afford that?”

He smiled. “Everything’s bigger in Texas.”  Since I didn’t return his smile, he said “I can’t speak for anyone else, but frankly, we can’t afford it. We took out lines of credit and loans with the local banks when we thought the cases would only last a year or so. Now, it’s been going on for years and the interest payments alone are staggering.”  He drained his glass and I offered him another. He got up to get a beer from the bar for himself and Perrier for me. When he came back with the drinks, I’d had time to consider what he’d said. The mathematics were easy, but it was a hell of a way to gamble.

“What will you do?”

“Fortunately, our firm is well-funded. We’ve had our big successes over the years and we only accepted a limited number of cases. It’s not a real problem for us.”  Sounded like wishful thinking to me, and I was not surprised when he continued a little more subdued. “Although we’ve all been taking home smaller incomes the past couple of years.”

He said this as if it were an afterthought. I was embarrassed for him. He was obviously trying to put the best face on it, but money must have been tight. Another thing I hadn’t noticed. Maybe Kate is right and I do spend too much time wrapped up in my own world, oblivious to others.

After a few moments of silence, he said, “I hear, though, that Grover is really having a problem. He not only borrowed enough money to fund his cases, but he also has been living off the anticipated settlements, which have just not happened as quickly as we all thought. They may not happen at all.”

“He always seems to be fine to me.”

He nodded and lifted one shoulder briefly. “The funny thing is that Johnson seems to be flush with cash all the time. I don’t know what their financial arrangements are, but it’s odd that one partner would be doing fine and the other struggling, when they’re both handling the same files.”

I thought about it, sipping my Perrier around the lemon wedge. Something was tickling my brain, elusive, but present. I let it go, and it boomeranged back.

“What do you mean, the settlement may not happen at all?”

“Well, in the beginning, when these cases were first filed, the science was unclear and it appeared that the plaintiffs had the better end of the argument because of the common sense approach, you know, ‘where there’s smoke there’s fire’.”   George had said almost the identical words a few days earlier. Maybe he reads things other than the financial pages, after all.

“And now?”  I asked him.

“Well, now scientific study after scientific study is coming out on the side of the safety of the implants. Just like the manufacturers said all along. Even though we can prove they didn’t properly test the product, it’s becoming more and more difficult to prove that these implants cause any adverse health effects.”

“This makes no sense. The last time I looked, causation was an essential part of any plaintiff’s case. If you can’t prove causation, why haven’t all of the cases been dismissed?”

He grinned again, kind of lopsided this time and lifted his glass. “It’s the American way. There’s still enough evidence to get the cases to the jury. As long as there’s no definitive proof that the illnesses these women are suffering are caused by something other than their implants, then the cases still go to the jury and the juries are still sympathetic enough to award damages to the victims in the most severe cases.”

Mitch’s face changed. He set his drink aside and crossed his hands on the table between us. How sincere he can look when he wants to, I thought. No wonder juries have been so sympathetic to him, giving his clients whatever he asks for.

Mitch said earnestly, “What I’m curious about is why you asked me over here on a Saturday afternoon to talk about this when we could have discussed it any Saturday morning. What I’m telling you is public knowledge, and I’m sure you’re going to get most of it from that
Jones
case you’re trying right now. Why the rush?”

A legitimate question I’d been waiting for but didn’t intend to answer. “It doesn’t have anything to do with the
Jones
case, Mitch, but that’s all I can say. I do appreciate your coming over on such short notice and filling me in, though. How’s Annie and the kids?”  Such an obvious change of subject; he got the point.

Mitch graciously let the matter drop, and we talked about his family a while before he said he needed to get home for dinner. I thanked him for his advice and wished him luck with his financing.

When I went back upstairs to talk to Carly, she was nowhere to be found. I searched the remainder of the house, the restaurant and the grounds. Her clothes were gone and when I got outside, her car was gone. She had to have left while I was talking with Mitch. Deja vu, dammit. This is just great. Now what?  People think I have no patience, but really, I’m just patient for such a long time that when I finally lose it, they’re surprised.   I mean, really, wasn’t more than twenty years of patience with Carly enough already?

I didn’t bother running as I went down the stairs out into the parking lot. I asked the valet if he had seen Carly. He said she had run out to her car and sped off across the bridge about fifteen minutes earlier. Again, I had no idea where she’d gone or how to find her. I went back upstairs and tried the cellular phone in her car, her office, and her house, all with no luck.

These disappearing acts were really beginning to make me angry. Besides that, I hadn’t had a chance to persuade her to go to the police. Now what was I supposed to do?  It would serve her right if I just called Hathaway and turned it all over to him.

Old habits die hard. So I let it sit through the weekend, and give Carly one more last chance to come back, go to the police, or do something to report what she’d seen. If she didn’t do it, I would have to. I picked up some distractions, a glass of iced tea, the Friday
Times
I hadn’t had the energy to read yesterday afternoon, and Saturday’s
Tribune
, and took them out onto the veranda to try my mind control theory: think about something else. It worked briefly until page three of the
Times
, below the fold, the mention of Morgan’s name caught my eye.

Dr. Michael Morgan’s friends and colleagues have been cooperating with Tampa Police in an effort to locate Dr. Morgan, missing for over a month. Yesterday, one of the neighbors reported sighting a woman entering Dr. Morgan’s house by the side door. When he was unable to locate the woman, Chief Ben Hathaway obtained a search warrant for Dr. Morgan’s home today. Although details of the search have not been released, Chief Hathaway said that he now suspects foul play.

I dropped the rest of the
Times
and picked up Saturday’s
Tribune
, searching all the pages in the first section until I found another small item.