The 5th Horseman (4 page)
Authors: James Patterson
Tags: #Fiction, #Thrillers, #General, #Suspense, #antique
I eyed Cindy over the rim of my glass. A feeling was starting to grow in the center of my chest, a feeling I hoped would disappear as she continued her story.
“This hotshot lawyer named Maureen O’Mara is going after the hospital, representing a bunch of the patients’ families,” Cindy was saying.
“Which hospital?” I asked. “Can you tell me?”
“Well, sure, Linds. San Francisco Municipal.”
I heard Claire say, “Oh, no,” as the feeling in my gut mushroomed.
“I just spent the night at Municipal holding Yuki’s hand,” I said. “We brought her mom into the emergency room yesterday afternoon.”
“Let’s not go crazy, here,” Cindy said quietly. “It’s a humongous hospital. There’s one doctor in particular in the crosshairs, a guy named Garza. Apparently, most of the deceased in question were admitted on his watch.”
“Oh my God,” I said, my blood pressure spiking so I felt heat through the top of my head. “He’s the one. I met him. That’s the doctor who admitted Yuki’s mother!”
Just then, the air moved at the back of my neck, and silky hair brushed the side of my face as someone bent down to kiss my cheek.
“Did you just mention my name?” Yuki asked. She slipped into the empty seat beside Cindy. “What’d I miss?”
“Cindy is working on a story.”
“It’s something I think you should know,” said Claire.
Womans Murder Club 5 - The 5th Horseman
Chapter 15
YUKI’S EYES WERE BEAMING question marks, but suddenly Cindy seemed reluctant to talk.
“You can trust me,” Yuki said earnestly. “I understand what ‘off the record’ means.”
“It’s nothing like that,” Cindy said.
Loretta came by, greeted Yuki, and unloaded a tray of jerk chicken and spareribs dripping sauce. After a few halting starts and a few sips of her margarita, Cindy repeated to Yuki what she’d just told us about Maureen O’Mara’s pending case against Municipal Hospital.
“Actually, I know a lot about this,” Yuki said when Cindy was finished. “O’Mara’s been putting this case together for about a year.”
“Really? Come onnnn,” Cindy said. “How do you know?”
“I have a friend, an associate at Friedman, Bannion and O’Mara,” Yuki said. “She told me ’cause she’s thrown a ton of man-hours into this case. Tremendous amount of research involved. A lot of medical technicalities to plow through. It should be a hell of a trial,” Yuki continued. “O’Mara never loses. But this time, she’s shooting the moon.”
“Everyone loses sometimes,” Claire offered.
“I know, but Maureen O’Mara carefully picks cases she knows she can win,” Yuki said.
Maybe Yuki was missing the point, so I had to say it. “Yuki, doesn’t it worry you that your mom is at Municipal?”
“Nah. Just because Maureen O’Mara is taking on the case doesn’t mean the hospital is guilty. Lawyer’s credo: anyone can sue anyone for anything.
“Really, you guys,” Yuki said, her words going her usual rat-a-tat, sixty-five miles an hour. “I had my appendix taken out there a couple of years ago. Had an excellent doctor. And first-class care until I left the hospital.”
“So how is your mom?” Claire asked.
“She’s in fine form,” said Yuki. Then she laughed. “You know how I know? She tried to fix me up with her cardiologist. Bald guy in his forties with tiny hands and dog breath.”
We all laughed as Yuki’s animated reenactment lit up the table. She did her mom so well, I could see Keiko as if she were right there.
“I said, ‘Mom, he’s not for me.’ So she said, ‘Yuki-eh. Looks mean nothing. Dr. Pierce honest man. He good man. Looks for mag-azines.’ I said, ‘Mom, Daddy looked like Frank Sinatra. What are you talking about?’”
“So are you going out with him?” Cindy asked, sending us into new rounds of laughter.
Yuki shook her head. “You mean, if he asks me? You mean, if my mom grabs his cell phone and dials my number for him?”
We were having so much fun the band had to dial up the music a notch to be heard over our good time. Twenty minutes later, Yuki left the table before the coffee and chocolate mud pie, saying she wanted to see Keiko again before visiting hours were over.
Despite her rapid-fire talk, and our good-time chatter, there were worry lines between Yuki’s beautiful brown eyes when she told us all good night.
Womans Murder Club 5 - The 5th Horseman
Chapter 16
MAUREEN O’MARA FELT HER PULSE beating in her temples. Was that possible? Well, that’s how pumped she was. She pulled open one of the massive steel-and-glass doors to the Civic Center Courthouse and entered the cool gray interior.
Goddamn.
Today was the day. She owned this place.
She handed her briefcase to the security guard, who put it on the X-ray machine and checked it as she cleared the metal detectors. He nodded good morning and returned her seven-hundred-dollar “lucky” Louis Vuitton case with a smile.
“Best a’ luck today, Miss O’Mara.”
“Thanks, Kevin.”
O’Mara showed the guard her crossed fingers; then she cut through the milling crowd in the lobby and headed toward the elevator bank.
She was thinking as she walked — about how her stuffy, know-it-all partners had told her that she was insane to take on the huge, well-defended hospital, to try to weave twenty individual claims into one gigantic malpractice case.
But she couldn’t have turned it down. This one was too good.
The first patients had found her — then she’d seen the pattern. The momentum had built rapidly, then snowballed, and soon she’d become the go-to lawyer for patients with serious grievances against Municipal.
Putting this case together had been like corralling wild horses while standing on the seat of a motorbike and juggling bowling balls. But she’d done it.
Over the last fourteen months, she’d slogged through the discovery process, the endless depositions, lined up her seventy-six witnesses — medical experts, past and present employees of the hospital, and her clients, the families of the twenty deceased who were all finally in accord.
She had a personal reason for her total, unwavering commitment, but no one needed to know why this case was a labor of love.
She definitely felt her clients’ pain — that was reason enough.
Now she had to convince a jury of their peers.
If she could do that, the hospital would feel the pain, too, in the only way it could — by kicking out a gigantic payout, the many, many millions her clients richly deserved.
Womans Murder Club 5 - The 5th Horseman
Chapter 17
MAUREEN O’MARA MADE A RUSH for one of the courthouse elevators, stepping in then starting as a man in a charcoal-gray suit joined her just as the doors were closing.
Lawrence Kramer gave her a brilliant smile, leaned forward, and pressed number four.
“Morning, Counselor,” he said. “How are ya doing so far today?”
“Never better,” she chirped. “And you?”
“Perfecto. I had about three pounds of raw meat with my eggs this morning,” Kramer said. “Breakfast of Champions.”
“Sounds kind of bad for your heart,” Maureen said, giving the hospital’s lead attorney a sidelong look. “You do have a heart, don’t you, Larry?”
The big man threw his head back and laughed as the elevator lurched upward toward the courtroom.
God, he has a lot of teeth, and they’ve been whitened.
“Sure I do. I’m going to get my cardio workout in court, Maureen. Thanks to you.”
At forty-two, Lawrence Kramer was a gifted defense attorney — smart, good-looking, and in his prime. All that and he was rapidly gaining national media presence as well.
O’Mara had seen him interviewed a few times on Chris Matthews’ Hardball about one of his clients, a football star accused of rape. Kramer had held his own against Matthews’ verbal machine-gun attack. It hadn’t surprised Maureen, though. Hardball was Kramer’s game of choice.
And now Lawrence Kramer was defending San Francisco Municipal Hospital in an action that could throw the hospital into receivership, even possibly shut it down. But more important was that Kramer was defending the hospital against her.
The elevator stopped on the second floor of the courthouse, and three more passengers crowded into the small mahogany-lined box, forcing Maureen closer to Kramer’s side. It was a little too much contact with the man who was going to try to flatten her and run her clients into the dust.
O’Mara had a moment of doubt, felt a frisson of fear. Could she pull this off? She’d never taken on a case so complex — she didn’t know anyone who had. This was definitely the Big One, even for Larry Kramer.
The elevator jolted to a stop on four, and she stepped out just ahead of Kramer. She could almost feel her opponent’s presence behind her, as if a high-voltage charge were coming off his body.
Eyes straight ahead, the two attorneys marched along together, the clacking of their shoes on the marble floor echoing in the wide corridor.
Maureen went inside her head.
Even though Kramer had ten years on her, she was his equal, or could be. She, too, was Harvard Law. She, too, thrived on a hard and bloody fight. And she had something that Kramer didn’t have. She had right on her side.
Right is might. Right is might.
The affirmation was like cool water, soothing her and at the same time bracing her for the biggest trial of her career. This one might get her on Hardball.
She reached the open door to the courtroom seconds before her opponent and saw that the oak-paneled room was just about filled with spectators.
Down the aisle at the plaintiffs’ table on her right, Bobby Perlstein, her associate and second chair, was going over his notes. Maureen’s assistant, Karen Palmer, was setting out the exhibits and documents. Both turned to her, flashing eager smiles.
Maureen grinned back. As she approached her associates, she passed her many clients, acknowledging them with a smile, a wink, a wave of her hand. Their grateful eyes warmed her.
Right is might.
Maureen couldn’t wait for the trial to start.
She was ready. And today was her day.
Womans Murder Club 5 - The 5th Horseman
Chapter 18
YUKI WAS FILING a motion on the ground floor of the Civic Center Courthouse at 400 McAllister that Monday morning, when she remembered that Maureen O’Mara’s case against San Francisco Municipal was starting right about now.
This was something the lawyer in her wanted to see.
She glanced at her watch, bypassed the mob at the elevator bank, and took to the stairs. Slightly out of breath, she slipped into the wood-paneled courtroom at the end of the fourth-floor hallway.
Yuki saw that Judge Bevins was on the bench.
Bevins was in his seventies, wore his white hair in a ponytail, and was considered fair but quirky, impossible to second-guess.
As Yuki settled into a seat near the door, she noticed a dark-haired man across the aisle wearing khakis and a blazer over his pink button-down shirt and club tie. He was plucking at the wristband of his watch.
It took a second for the handsome face to click with a name; then, with a shock of recognition, Yuki realized that she knew him — Dennis Garza, the doctor who’d admitted her mother to the emergency room.
Of course. He’s a witness in this trial, Yuki thought.
Her attention was pulled away from Garza by a rustling and buzzing in the crowded courtroom as Maureen O’Mara stood and took the floor.
O’Mara was tall, a solid size twelve, Yuki guessed, dressed in a fitted gray Armani pantsuit and low-heeled black shoes. She had strong features and truly remarkable hair, a dark red mane that hung to her shoulders, swinging when O’Mara turned her head — as she did now.
The attractive attorney faced the court, said good morning to the jury, introduced herself, then began her opening statement by lifting a large and awkward cardboard-mounted photograph from a stack of photos on the table in front of her.
“Please, take a good, long look. This lovely young woman is Amanda Clemmons,” O’Mara said, holding up the picture of a freckled blonde who looked to be about thirty-five years old.
“Last May, Amanda Clemmons was in her driveway playing basketball with her three young boys,” O’Mara said. “Simon Clemmons, her husband, the boys’ father, had been killed in an automobile accident only six months before.
“Amanda wasn’t much of a ballplayer,” O’Mara continued, “but this young widow knew she had to be both a mother and a father to Adam, John, and Chris. And she was as up to the task as anyone could be.
“Imagine this plucky woman if you can. Picture her in your mind,” Maureen said, calling up the scene.
“She’s wearing white shorts and a blue-and-gold Warriors T-shirt, dribbling circles around her little kids in the driveway, getting ready to make a shot through the hoop hanging from the garage.
“John Clemmons told me that his mom was laughing and ragging them, just before she snagged her shoe on a crack in the asphalt and went down.
“Half an hour later, an ambulance came and took Amanda to the hospital, where she was X-rayed and diagnosed in emergency with a broken left leg.
“That injury shouldn’t have been more than a temporary setback for Amanda Clemmons,” O’Mara continued. “She was young; she was strong and resilient. She was a real warrior, that woman. A homegrown American hero. But she had been admitted to San Francisco Municipal Hospital.
“And that was the beginning of the end of her life. Please, take a good, long look at this picture of Amanda Clemmons. This is the one the family used at her funeral.”
Womans Murder Club 5 - The 5th Horseman
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