Harmful Intent (27 page)

“The doc left this stuff behind in his hotel room,” he said, pushing them toward Michael. “I don't think he's going anyplace. In fact, I think he's up to something. Something that's keeping him here. What do you make of these papers?”

Michael picked up a page of Chris Everson's notes. “It's a bunch of scientific mumbo-jumbo. I don't make anything of it.”

“Some of it's in the doc's handwriting,” Devlin said. “But most of it isn't. I assume it was written by this Christopher Everson, whoever he is. His name is on some of the papers; does the name mean anything to you?”

“Nope,” Michael said.

“Let me have the phone directory,” Devlin said.

Michael handed it over. Devlin turned to the page where Eversons were listed. There was a handful, but no Chris. The closest was a K. C. Everson in Brookline.

“The man's not in the directory,” Devlin said. “I suppose that would have been too easy.”

“Maybe he's a doctor too,” Michael suggested. “His number could be unlisted.”

Devlin nodded. That was a good possibility. He opened the directory to the Yellow Pages and looked under Physicians. There were no Eversons. He closed the book.

“The point is,” Devlin said, “the doctor is working on this scientific stuff while he's on the lam and holed up in a fleabag hotel. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense. He's up to something, but I don't know what. I think I'll find this Chris Everson and ask him.”

“Yeah,” Mosconi said, losing his patience. “Just don't take four years to go to medical school. I want results. If you can't deliver, just say the word. I'll get someone else.”

Devlin got to his feet. He put the phone book down on Michael's desk and picked up Jeffrey's and Chris's notes. “Don't
worry,” he said. “I'll find him. It's getting to be sorta a personal thing at this point.”

Leaving Michael's office, Devlin descended to the street. It was raining harder now than it had been when he'd arrived. Fortunately he'd parked close to an arcade, so he had only a short dash in the open to get to his car. He'd parked in a loading zone on Cambridge Street. One of the perks he enjoyed from having been on the police force was that he could park anywhere. Traffic cops turned a blind eye. It was a professional courtesy.

Getting into his car, Devlin worked his way around the State House to get on Beacon Street. The route was convoluted and complicated, as most Boston driving was. He turned left on Exeter and parked by the closest hydrant he could find to the Boston Public Library. Getting out of his car, he bolted for the entrance.

In the reference section he used city directories for Boston and all the outlying towns. There were plenty of Eversons but no Christopher Everson. He made a list of the Eversons he found.

Going to the nearest pay phone, he dialed the K. C. Everson in Brookline first. Although he figured the initials meant it was a female, he thought he'd give it a try anyway. At first he was encouraged: a sleepy male voice answered the phone.

“Is this Christopher Everson?” Devlin asked.

There was a pause. “No,” said the voice. “Would you like to speak with Kelly? She's—”

Devlin hung up the phone. He'd been right. K. C. Everson was a woman.

Scanning his list of Eversons, he wondered which one was the next most promising. It was tough to say. There weren't even any others with a middle initial C. That meant he'd have to start making house calls. It would be a time-consuming process, but he couldn't think of what else to do. One of the Eversons was bound to know this Christopher Everson. Devlin still had a hunch that this was his best lead.

 

As tired as he was, Jeffrey could not get back to sleep after being awakened by the telephone. Had he been fully awake when it had rung, he probably wouldn't have answered it. He'd not discussed how to handle phone calls with Kelly, but he was probably safer not picking up. Lying in bed, Jeffrey remained vaguely troubled by the caller. Who could have been asking for Chris? His first thought was that it had been a cruel prank. But it could have been someone trying to sell something. They could have gotten Chris's name from some list. Maybe he wouldn't mention
the call to Kelly. He hated to dredge up the past just when she was beginning to put it behind her.

Jeffrey's mind returned to considering the contaminant theory instead of dwelling on the mysterious caller. Rolling over on his back, he reviewed the details. Then he decided to get up and shower and shave.

While he was making coffee, he began to wonder if his anesthetic complication and Chris's were isolated episodes or if there had been other similar incidents in the Boston area. What if the killer had tampered with Marcaine other times besides the two Jeffrey knew of? If he had, Jeffrey would have thought reports of such bizarre reactions would have filtered through the grapevine. But then again, look what had happened to him and Chris. They'd each been served with malpractice suits instantly. At that point, defense of the case had become of paramount importance, dwarfing other issues.

Remembering that the role of the Board of Registration in Medicine in the state of Massachusetts had been statutorially expanded to keep track of “major incidents” in health care facilities, Jeffrey called the board.

After a brief runaround, Jeffrey was put through to a member of the Patient Care Assessment Committee. He explained the sort of incidents he was interested in. She put him on hold for a few minutes.

“You said you are interested in deaths during epidural anesthesia?” she asked, coming back on the line.

“Exactly,” Jeffrey said.

“I can find four,” the woman said. “All within the last four years.”

Jeffrey was amazed. Four sounded like a lot. Fatalities during epidural anesthesia were extremely rare, especially after the .75% Marcaine was proscribed for obstetrical use. To have four occur in the last four years should have raised some red flags.

“Are you interested in knowing where they occurred?” the woman asked.

“Please.”

“There was one last year at Boston Memorial.”

Jeffrey wrote down “Memorial, 1988.” That had to be his case.

“There was one at Valley Hospital in 1987,” she said.

Jeffrey wrote that down. That case would have been Chris's.

“Then the Commonwealth Hospital in 1986 and at Suffolk General in 1985. That's it.”

That's plenty, Jeffrey thought. He was equally amazed that all the episodes had been in Boston. “Has the Board done anything about these cases?” he asked.

“No, we haven't,” the woman said. “If they had all occurred at one institution, it would have been put under review. But seeing that four different hospitals and four different doctors were involved, it didn't seem appropriate for us to get involved. Besides, it's indicated here that all four cases led to malpractice litigation.”

“What are the names of the doctors involved at the Commonwealth and Suffolk?” Jeffrey asked. He wanted to discuss the cases with these doctors in great detail to see how similar their experiences were to his. In particular, he wanted to know if they had been using Marcaine from a 30 cc ampule for the local anesthetic.

“The doctors' names? I'm sorry, but that information is confidential,” the woman said.

Jeffrey thought for a moment, then he asked: “What about the patients or the plaintiffs in those cases? What were their names?”

“I don't know if that is confidential or not,” the woman said. “Just one moment.”

She put Jeffrey on hold again. While he waited, Jeffrey again marveled about Boston having four deaths during epidural anesthesia and that he did not know it. He couldn't understand why such a series of complications hadn't become a topic of speculation and concern. Then he realized the explanation had to have been the unfortunate fact that all four had resulted in malpractice litigation. Jeffrey knew that one of the insidious effects of such litigation was the secrecy that the involved lawyers insisted on. He remembered his own lawyer, Randolph, had told him at the outset of his case that Jeffrey was not to discuss it with anyone.

“No one seems to know about this confidentiality issue,” the woman said when she came back on the line. “But it would seem to me it's a matter of public record. The two patients were Clark DeVries and Lucy Havalin.”

Jeffrey wrote the names down, thanked the woman, and hung up the phone. Back in the guest room Kelly had made up for him, Jeffrey pulled his duffel bag from under the bed and got out a couple of hundred-dollar bills. He would have to find the time to get some more clothes to replace the ones he'd had to leave at the Essex Hotel. Briefly he wondered what Pan Am had
done with his small suitcase, not that it was a matter that was safe to pursue.

Next he called for a cab. He figured it was safe to take one as long as he did nothing to arouse the driver's suspicions. The weather hadn't improved since he'd come from the hospital that morning, so Jeffrey hunted for an umbrella in the front hall closet. By the time the cab arrived, he was waiting on the front steps, umbrella in hand.

Jeffrey's first objective was to buy another pair of plano dark-rimmed glasses. He had the cab wait while he went into an optician's along the way. His ultimate destination was the courthouse. It was eerie to be entering the building where only a few days earlier a jury had voted him guilty of the second-degree murder charge.

As he went through the metal detector, Jeffrey's anxiety increased. It reminded him too much of his episodes at the airport. He did his best to appear calm. He knew that if he seemed nervous, he'd only attract attention to himself. Despite his good intentions, however, he was visibly shaking as he entered the clerk's office on the first floor of the old building.

He waited for his turn at the counter. Most of the people waiting were lawyer types in dark suits whose pant legs were curiously too short. When one of the women behind the counter finally looked in his direction and said, “Next,” Jeffrey stepped up and asked how to go about obtaining the record of a specific lawsuit.

“Settled or unsettled?” the woman asked him.

“Settled,” Jeffrey said.

The woman pointed over Jeffrey's shoulder. “Gotta get the docket number from the Defendant/Plaintiff file,” she said with a yawn. “That's those looseleaf books. Once you have the docket number, bring it back here. One of us can get the case from the vault.”

Jeffrey nodded and thanked her. He went over to the shelves she had indicated. The cases were listed alphabetically year by year. Jeffrey started with the year 1986 and looked up Clark DeVries as the plaintiff. When he found the card for the case, he realized that the information he wanted was right there; he didn't need the whole record.

The information card listed the defendants, the plaintiffs, and the attorneys. The anesthesiologist in the case was a Dr. Lawrence Mann. Jeffrey used a handy copying machine to make a
copy of the card in case he needed to refer to the docket number later.

He did the same with the card he found for Lucy Havalin's case. Her suit had been brought against an anesthesiologist by the name of Dr. Madaline Bowman. Jeffrey had had some professional dealings with Bowman, but hadn't seen her in years.

Removing the copy from the copy machine, he checked to make sure it was entirely legible. As he did so, he noticed the name of the attorney was Matthew Davidson.

Jeffrey winced. The copy almost slid from his hands. Matthew Davidson had been the attorney who'd sued Jeffrey for malpractice on behalf of Patty Owen's estate.

Jeffrey knew rationally that it was ridiculous to hate the man. After all, Davidson had only done his job, and the Patty Owen estate was entitled to legal representation. Jeffrey had heard all these arguments. But they didn't make any difference. Davidson had brought ruin to Jeffrey by bringing up the irrelevant minor drug problem that Jeffrey had had. The move had been unfair and had been done purely as a calculated maneuver to win the case. Justice and truth had not been the goal; there had been no malpractice. Jeffrey was certain of this now that he'd eliminated his own self-doubt and was more and more convinced a contaminant had been involved.

But Jeffrey had more to do at the moment than review past injustices. Changing his mind, he decided to look at the court records after all. Sometimes you didn't know what you were looking for until you found it, Jeffrey told himself. Going back to the counter where he'd started, he gave the woman who'd directed him before the docket numbers.

“You gotta fill out one of those request forms on the counter over there,” she told him.

Typical bureaucracy, Jeffrey thought with some irritation, but he did as he was told. After he'd filled out the forms, he had to wait in line a third time. A different clerk handled his inquiry on this occasion. When he handed her the two forms, she looked at them and shook her head, saying, “It'll take about an hour, at the very least.”

While he was waiting, Jeffrey sought out a bank of vending machines he'd seen on his way in. He got himself a quick snack of orange juice and a tuna sandwich. Then he parked himself on a bench in the rotunda and watched the comings and goings of the courthouse. There were so many uniformed policemen, Jeffrey actually started to grow used to seeing them. It was a
kind of behavior therapy that went a long way in reducing his anxiety.

After a good hour had passed, Jeffrey returned to the clerk's room. The records he was interested in had been pulled for him. He took the large manila folders over to a side counter where he could have enough room to peruse the documents. There was a huge amount of material. Some of it was in too thick a form of legalese for Jeffrey to absorb, but he was interested in seeing what was available. There were pages and pages of testimony in the record as well as a variety of filings and briefs.

Jeffrey flipped through the testimony. He wanted to find out what local anesthetic was involved in each case. He scanned the papers pertaining to the Suffolk General case first. As he'd suspected, the local had been Marcaine. Now that he knew where in the record to look, he quickly found what he was looking for in the Commonwealth Hospital case. There, too, the local had been Marcaine. If Jeffrey's theory of a deliberate contamination was true, that meant that the killer, Boston's own Dr. or Mr. or Ms. X, had already struck four times. If only Jeffrey could come up with proof before the killer struck again.