Shadow of Eden (27 page)

“No,” Bell said thoughtfully. “But the pressure of this China thing has him wound up tighter than I’ve ever seen him. That’s something he never had to deal with as governor.”

“Perhaps, but I’ve been here a dozen years and I’ve never seen this kind of behavior before from a president.”

“I just don’t know, Aaron, but I’ll talk to him and let you know what he says.”

“Thanks, Jeff.”

Bell hung up, staring blankly at his computer as he mentally rewound the last two weeks of his interactions with his old friend. Robert Dixon
was
more withdrawn, more distant, and his mental edge had dulled. Bell had ascribed it to the China crisis, but maybe it was something more.

He had worked side by side with Robert Dixon through his administration as Governor of Virginia and the long, grueling presidential campaign. Only when Robert was near exhaustion did he ever slow down. At those times, the signals were clear: irritability, low energy, and mental dullness. Maybe it was just stress, but he didn’t usually make dumb mistakes like forgetting his talk at the National Cathedral and scolding China over the massacre. And these spontaneous joy rides, he supposed, were a way for him to let off steam, but it was obviously dangerous.

He would speak to Elise; Davenport’s suggestion was logical. It would make them all much happier if he stayed put. He hated making the call to her, but like so many things in his political life, they didn’t go away by just wishing. He picked up the phone and dialed.

Chapter 58

S
teve walked into his office earlier than usual and in a foul mood. Last night had gone as predicted. After he had tucked Johnnie in he had dutifully gone straight to bed. Anne had turned in already with the lights out and did not slide over to snuggle him like she usually did. After a fitful night, Steve rolled out of bed five minutes before the 6:00 alarm and got dressed.

Ann had given him a perfunctory kiss before he left and reminded him that it was his turn to pick up Johnnie from karate school this afternoon. And Marty was still dead and Shirley was still dying and Eden was still killing people.

He saw the certified letter laying on his desk as soon as he walked into his office. Steve puzzled over it a minute as he saw it was from the Arizona Board of Medical Examiners. He ripped open the envelope and read the letter in disbelief.

“Dr. James.” Etta walked into Steve’s office, finding him askew in his chair scowling. “There’s a man in the waiting room who says he needs to see you. Something about papers you need to sign for—”

“Go away.” Steve didn’t want to see anybody, much less some prick who wanted to give him papers.

“Sorry, Dr. James. He said it was important.”

“How important?”

“He wouldn’t say. Just that it had to be you.”

“What kind of bullshit is this?” Steve hauled his tired frame out of the chair.

“Another bad night?” Etta asked as he walked past.

As he entered the empty morning waiting room, a fifty-ish, tanned man, dressed casually in an open necked multicolored shirt and wrinkled Khaki pants stood up. “Dr. James?”

“Yeah,” Steve muttered irritably, looking at the fat manila envelope the man clutched in his left hand.

“I have a delivery for you. Please sign here.” He thrust a clipboard in front of Steve who scribbled his initials on the line next to his printed name. The man handed Steve the manila envelope. “Good luck, sir.”

Steve looked at the envelope. Printed in large letters, the return address said Gauthier, Olgivey and Dwyer, LLC, Attorney’s at Law. He ripped off the tamper-evident tape and opened the envelope. Inside was a set of stapled papers. Sliding them out, he read, ‘Jane Doe vs. Steven Kyle James, MD and spouse . . .’

What the hell?

‘ . . . Dr. James having willfully, neglectfully, and deliberately . . .’ Steve skimmed to the actual claim and digested its meaning. Steve reeled like he had just been punched in the gut, and sagged into a waiting room chair.

Etta peered into the waiting room. “Dr. James, you look white as a ghost. What is it?” She bustled over to sit next to him.

He examined the papers again, searching for a sign that it was a mistake, or that it was addressed to the wrong person. But, no, the name and address were correct. His eyes read the opening paragraph describing him in the most despicable terms. It was written by some dickhead lawyer, accusing him of every malfeasance of trust, dereliction of duty, and personal insult the lawyer could put in respectable English.

He was being sued for sexual abuse.
Goddamn it!

He looked at the front of the papers again, reading ‘Jane Doe.’ They wouldn’t even say who was suing him. How could he defend himself? The whole thing stunk. He walked back to his office struggling to control his anger. Etta trailed after him.

Nobody had ever sued him before, nor complained about his medical competency and here he was facing both the same day.

“What is it, Dr. James?” Etta asked quietly, breaking Steve’s thoughts.

“I’m being sued for sexual abuse.”

“You? Sexual abuse?” Etta tried to suppress a giggle. “Never in a million years. They delivered that to the wrong doctor.”

“Nope.” He tossed the papers onto his desk. He held out the medical board letter for her to read. She scanned it quickly, her cheerful face growing concerned. “Oh, my.” She looked at Steve. “This is terrible.”

His partner Julia Weisgaard walked in. “There are absolutely no secrets around here. I heard you just got served. What’s it about?”

“Sexual abuse.” Steve gave the Board letter to Julia. “And this.”

“Oh no.” Julia sat down in the padded chair in front of Steve’s desk reading the letter. “‘. . . due to the number and seriousness of the complaints, this communication was expedited . . .’ Jesus, Steve, they want you to defend your license.”

Steve paced. “I need an attorney.”

“Call your insurance. They’ll tell you what to do,” Julia said.

“Is this even under my malpractice? I don’t know if this suit was from a patient, an ex-employee or someone off the street who wants to make a quick buck. Damn, damn, damn.” He wanted to hit something.

“Dr. James,” Jennifer, his office manager walked in. “I just heard. I’m so sorry.” She looked hesitant. “I’m afraid I have some more bad news. I was reading the paper this morning and I came across this. You may have seen it already.” She held out a folded section of the paper to Steve.

Steve looked at the paper. He had been too tired this morning to read it. He saw several ads and some local news articles, but one leaped off the page at him. It had a picture of his face under a large caption: ‘Have you had sexual assault or malpractice from Dr. Steven James?’ It had a large 800 number posted at the bottom.

Steve sat down in despair as his life unraveled. He looked around at the concerned faces.

Julia grabbed the paper and looked at it shaking her head. “Someone doesn’t like you. Who have you pissed off lately?”

The intercom buzzed. “Dr. James, there’s a Mr. Talbot from the newspaper wanting to ask you some questions. Something about a lawsuit. I told him I’d see if you were in.”

“Tell him to go to hell. And no calls today—at all.” He stood up struggling to put all the events into context, as anger began replacing his sense of helplessness. “This didn’t just happen by coincidence. This is a concerted effort to destroy my reputation. There’s got to be someone behind all this bullshit.”

“I agree,” Julia said.

“And it’s all for public consumption. Someone told the papers.”

“But who?” Julia asked.

Steve’s mind turned over the possibilities. “I have no idea.”

Chapter 59

“A
nne,” Steve said over his mobile phone, “I may have some relatively good news.” He had picked up Johnnie from karate class and they were driving back home, the December daylight having faded into a blue glow that hugged the western horizon, leaving the rest of the moonless sky black.

Earlier, Steve had told Anne everything about the suit, the medical board, and the newspaper advertisement. Her anger, if anything, was more strident than his, a she-wolf protecting her family. If there were anything good from this crisis, it had pulled them back together—a hell of a way to fix an argument.

“Steve . . .” Anne interrupted, her voice flat and distant, not at all like her earlier animation.

Steve didn’t hear her. “I had a good meeting with the attorney today.” He had canceled his office schedule to meet with Angela Burkholt, who came highly recommended by his malpractice insurance carrier. Steve was inclined to trust their choice since they had worked with her before and a lot of their money was resting on her capabilities. “She agrees that most of this seems pre-arranged and perhaps orchestrated, her words, but she says it’ll take some time to get to the bottom of it, if ever. I’m not sure I like the sound of that last bit, but she said there were plenty of things we could do to sort this thing out.”

“Steve,” Anne repeated. “I’ve—I got something just now. Some pictures. They were left in the mailbox.”

Steve glided past a jacked up one-ton pickup truck. “What is it, Honey?”

“The pictures . . . I don’t know. They’re . . .”

Steve could hear her choke up. “Sweetheart, what is it?”

“Pictures . . . Steve, it’s pictures of you with another woman.”

“What? Well, you can’t possibly believe any of that, not after all that’s happened today.”

“I don’t know what to believe. When you called today telling me all that stuff, I was plenty mad. But this—these pictures— Tell me you didn’t do this because, right now I want to strangle you.”

“Anne,” he said as calmly as he could despite the racing of his heart. “I didn’t do anything of the sort. Whatever they are, they’re fake. Trust me on this.”

Johnnie looked at his dad questioningly. “Daddy? Are you and Mommy arguing?” Steve smiled at him and winked as if everything was all right, but it wasn’t, not by a long shot. Anne was crying. “The note says these were taken in Palm Beach last September at an investigator’s meeting. How would anybody know that kind of detail?”

“Nothing happened. Nothing.” This was worse than anything that could happen to him. He could never contemplate Anne’s loss of trust.

“There’s also a bunch of e-mails to a Natalie. They’re love letters,” she cried. “You signed them, ‘love always and forever’. That’s what you always write me. How can these be faked? Tell me, damn it.”

“Daddy?”

Steve, sick to his stomach, waved him down. Johnnie stared at his father with round puzzled eyes. His mommy and daddy never argued. His face looked near tears.

Their car approached the high overpass Johnnie loved so much, but neither paid any attention. The one-ton pickup truck behind them sped up and closed the distance to Steve’s car. The two vehicles passed a tractor-trailer rig chugging up toward the overpass with a large load of steel pipe strapped to a flatbed trailer.

“I don’t know,” Steve said. “Some sort of digital manipulation, I suppose. Take my head and put it on another body. They’re always doing that with celebrities and stuff. Honey, please . . . All this happening today, it’s planned. Somebody’s trying to wreck my life—our lives.”

Steve neared the wide one-lane ramp with the pickup nearly broadside to his car. He looked over at the truck in time to see the driver staring at him with an intensity that raised the hair on the back of his neck. Was there a second man in the truck? As they entered the freeway transition, Steve noticed that the width was rapidly narrowing and soon there would barely be enough room for both of them.

Dropping the phone, he grabbed the wheel with both hands and stepped hard on his brakes just as the large truck swerved over at his car. Its tail hit the front end of the Lexus, smashing it against the concrete barrier with a shriek of metal.

Johnnie screamed and clutched at his father as they watched a section of the pre-fab concrete barrier break off and fall away into the dark night. Steve stopped the car, shaken and angry. He could hear Anne’s voice shrieking over the phone.

The truck stopped in front of Steve and to his horror began backing up, aiming the massive jacked up rear end at him.