False Accusations (27 page)

“Fine. I’ll move on.” He looked down at his pad.

“A question if I may, Maurice.” This from Ingle.

Mather waved him on.

“Dr. Stevens, you acted as if you didn’t know of the rape charges against Dr. Madison.”

“I have no comment on that.”

“I’ll take that as a no.”

“You can take it just as I answered the question.”

“Then you didn’t know of the payoff he made to the woman to keep her quiet.”

“I’ll have to answer that question the same way as I answered your last question.”

Ingle scribbled some notes.

“How long have you known Madison?” Mather asked.

“About thirteen years. We started out at the hospital together.”

“Would you consider him your friend?”

“Yes, I would.”

“And would you say that you would go out of your way to protect your friend?”

“Mr. Mather...yes, I would go out of my way to assist a friend in need. But that does not mean I’d go so far as to do anything that would impair my job as a hospital administrator, nor would I do anything that would jeopardize this hospital in any manner. Now, I believe this interview is over. Gentlemen,” he said, as he stood from behind his desk and walked over to the door.

After they exited his office, Mather began walking at a fast clip. “We’ll have Andy get some footage of the hospital interior, and a few seconds of Stevens’s door as we try to open it, and then have it close hard on the camera. It dramatizes the way we were shut out from filming the interview.”

“But he was pretty cooperative, he just didn’t want to go on-camera.”

“That,” Mather said with a grin that could sour milk, “will turn out to be a mistake.”

The mobile van sat parked in front of the hospital with its antenna telescoping into the sky fifteen feet. The camera was mounted on a tripod just to the left and in front of the hospital’s main entrance. A small television monitor sat below the tripod on the floor, as they set up for a live remote shot for the noon newscast. Ingle was helping Andy, the cameraman, set up the shot while Maurice Mather stood with his lapel microphone in place, his handwritten notes on a small pad in front of him.

“Minute thirty out,” Andy said as he pressed the headset radio against his ear. Mather looked into the camera and practiced a few lines from his pad. “How did ‘we sound?” he asked into the mike, listening through his earpiece to the director back at the station. “Testing, one-two-three,” he said.

“They’re not getting us,” Andy said. “Your mike’s dead.”

“Do we have another?”

“Checking.” Andy trotted over to the van and rummaged through a box of electronic equipment and jumbled wires.

“Thirty seconds out,” called Mather, trying not to show visible signs of sweat—perspiration did not look good on camera. Ingle was standing next to the tripod, perspiring profusely, watching as Andy rummaged through the box, counting out the remaining seconds.

“Got one, but it’s a handheld job,” Andy said as he fumbled to plug the microphone into his camera. He handed it to Mather and jumped back behind the tripod to check its position. “Counting,” Andy said, holding up five fingers. “Five-four-three-two-one.”

As Andy hit “two” in the count, a broad smile spread across Mather’s plastic face and he brought the mike up to his mouth. “Thanks, Patrick. We’re here at Sacramento General Hospital, the very hospital where Dr. Phillip Madison was on staff at the time of the grisly hit-and-run murders.

“The hospital administrator, Dr. John Stevens, refused to allow our cameras in, but he did permit us to interview him.” Mather watched the monitor as the tape that Andy had shot an hour earlier was rolling at the station, reviewing the prior events in the story, showing the hospital footage, and setting the stage for the remainder of Mather’s report. Mather squinted into the lens of the camera, adjusted his hair in the reflection, looked down at his pad to review his notes. Glanced at the monitor. Caught his cue.

“And Patrick, Dr. Stevens said that Madison’s privileges were suspended due to an upper-level management decision. A decision designed to protect the hospital from further embarrassment by disassociating itself from the accused murderer before the relationship created irreparable damage.” Mather glanced down at his pad.

“Dr. Stevens declined to go into details about the payoff that Madison made to a woman who accused him of rape a couple of months ago. But he did say that the hospital’s current decision to suspend his privileges was a separate issue from the rape. Now, when I asked Dr. Stevens, who’s a longtime personal friend of Madison, if he thought his star surgeon was capable of committing murder, his response was that no one can predict the actions of another. Not the strongest statement of support, Patrick,” Mather said with a slight smile. “In fact, he likened trying to predict Phillip Madison’s behavior to playing the stock market—apparently, he’s unpredictable and it’s impossible to know how he’d react in any given situation with any degree of accuracy.”

The monitor showed a split screen, with Mather on one side and news anchor Patrick Baud on the other.

“Maurice,” Patrick said, “it’s interesting that the hospital would not take any disciplinary action against Madison for suspicion of rape, but they did suspend him for suspicion of murder.”

Mather smiled; it was the exact question he had recommended that Baud ask him. “Yes, Patrick. It seems that the hospital does not consider rape a reason to discipline its doctors—but that’s a subject of an investigative report. Perhaps we should leave that story to
Hard: Edition
,” he said, giving a toothy smile for the camera. “This is Maurice Mather reporting for KMRA news.”

Mather kept smiling until Andy gave him the cue that they were off the air. As Andy began breaking down the equipment, Ingle walked over toward Mather.

“Well, there it is, Tom. Your first live remote. Interesting, huh?”

“Yeah,” was all Ingle could manage.

“Any questions?”

Ingle looked down at his shoes and hesitated. “Well, you kind of left out some important stuff.”

“How so?” Mather asked.

“Well,” he said, consulting his notes, “Stevens also said that Madison was one of the finest human being she’d known, and that he’d never even hurt a fly.”

Mather grinned and began to walk back toward the van. Another news truck pulled up in front; its telescoping antenna began to unwind like a giant corkscrew ascending toward the heavens.

Ingle followed at Mather’s heels. “Didn’t Stevens also say that he didn’t know about the rape, and that’s probably why no action was taken against Madison at the time? It had nothing to do with the hospital looking the other way, which is how you made it sound.”

Mather stopped walking and turned to face Ingle. “I believe he said ‘no comment’ when I asked him about the rape.”

“Maurice, he only said that after you pressed him on it. It seemed to me like he didn’t know what you were talking about. And if the hospital didn’t know about it, then what you said—”

“Tom, do you know for sure that the hospital
didn’t
know about it?”

“Well, I—”

“Do you really think that a doctor like Phillip Madison could be accused of rape, and the hospital wouldn’t be aware of it? Come off it, Tom.” Mather turned away and started back toward the van.

“I’m just saying that we don’t know whether they knew of it or not.”

“We sure as hell don’t know for sure that they
didn’t
know, do we?”

Ingle hesitated. “No...”

“That’s right, so we didn’t say anything that was factually wrong.”

“But isn’t omitting information just as much of a lie as giving false information?”

Mather turned hard and faced Ingle. “Tom, do you remember that ratings chart I showed you before we left the newsroom? KONE was beating the pants off us. We need to boost our ratings, or we stand to lose some big money. And if we continue to lose more money, then cuts are going to be made—especially with a new GM taking over next month. I don’t intend to lose my job or take a pay cut, do you?” He climbed into the van as Andy finished packing up the equipment. “News sells, Tom, if you know how to present it. We’re under pressure from cable, from blogs, even from comedy shows—people are getting their news from other places. I’m just trying to be more aggressive, that’s all,” Mather said, holding both his hands out in front of him, palms up.

Ingle climbed in, shut the door, and watched the competing news cameraman prepare to set up his live remote shot while the reporter entered the hospital. As he wondered what angle that reporter would choose to take, the KMRA van pulled away and headed back to the newsroom.

CHANDLER AND MADISON were sitting around the conference table watching Hellman pace the room. The law library at Hellman, Mackenzie & McKnight was appointed like the rest of the office. His wife had spared no expense, and it therefore had the flair and professional appeal of the most expensively decorated law libraries of the wealthiest firms in the state. Books lined two of the longest walls, with three large picture windows occupying the other side of the room.

Hellman made another pass in front of Madison. “It had to have been Movis Ehrhardt. That asshole must’ve leaked word of the payoff to the press. I’ll bet he was so pissed off at having to return the money that this was the only way he could get back at us.”

“Sit down, Jeffrey. You’re making me nervous,” Madison said.

“I can’t sit down. I’m all worked up. I think better when I’m pacing.”

Chandler sat up straight in his chair. “I say we forget about Movis Ehrhardt, the press, the protesters, and concentrate on what we’re all here to do: get Phil off, have the case thrown out, and build a case against the real murderer.” He looked at Madison and Hellman for their buy-in to this seemingly obvious suggestion.

Hellman waved a hand. “You’re right. Getting pissed off at everyone isn’t doing us any good. Let’s get the case against Phil dismissed, and then we’ll deal with damage control.”

“Isn’t there something we can be doing while we’re waiting for the DNA results?” Madison asked.

“I’m continuing with my interviews,” Chandler said. “Got a real good one coming up: Brittany Harding.”

“How’d you arrange that one?”

“I told her I was investigating your case, and that I heard about the rape on the news. I said I didn’t want to work for you if you’d done something like that. Since you denied it, I wanted to hear her side of the story, about what she’d been through. Being that she’s probably psychotic, I figured she’d welcome the chance to get her digs in, and I’m giving her that opportunity. We set up a lunch appointment for tomorrow.”

Hellman and Madison looked at each other.

“Now you know why I asked you to hire Ryan Chandler,” Madison said.

Upon leaving the firm’s law library, Chandler was intercepted by the receptionist.

“Mr. Chandler, I just took a call for you. I didn’t want to interrupt your meeting, so I took a message.” She handed him a slip, and after barely taking the time to read all the words, he body-slammed the front door on the way out of the office.

“Who called?” Hellman asked.

“Lou Palucci. He tried reading Mr. Chandler on his cell, but it went to voicemail. He wanted me to tell him that the lip print analysis was ready.”

Hellman reached over and gave Madison’s shoulder a squeeze. “It’s okay to breathe, Phil,” he said. “We’ll know the results soon enough.”

Blowing past the thirty-five-mile-per-hour speed limit signs at near fifty, Chandler made it to the Department of Justice in under ten minutes—just as Gray was preparing to leave for a late lunch.

“They are likely not Madison’s,” Gray said as he brushed a lock of stringy hair off his face.

Chandler was still trying to clip the visitor’s pass on his shirt, but was having a tough time of it. “What kind of probability match would you give it?”

“It was only a partial,” he said, offering him an enlarged copy of the print. “I’d give it a seventy percent probability that we’re dealing with someone else.”

“Seventy percent,” Chandler said, looking at the swirling lines on the printout. “Seventy percent...not enough to get them to drop the charges. This helps, but we’re gonna need the DNA in order to get him off.”

Gray shrugged and glanced at his watch. “Look, you got what you wanted. Mind if I go to lunch now?” He pushed past Chandler and headed out of the lab.

Chandler yelled a thank-you through the rapidly closing door, and then left with his escort. While the results bolstered the argument for Madison’s innocence, they did not go far enough. For the prosecution to drop its case, he would need to produce clear and convincing evidence that his friend and client was free of all guilt and that someone else was responsible. And although he was gaining momentum, he was still far from being able to do that.

In the late afternoon, a collect call for Detective Jennings came through to the station from a person who lived in Del Morro Heights. An hour later, Jennings and Detective Moreno swung by to meet with Clarence Hollowes, the homeless man who had witnessed the hit-and-run.

“I was walking by this Giants store over by the mall,” Hollowes said, chewing on a piece of gum supplied by Moreno. “And, I saw this hat there, a black job with a white design.” He paused, eyeing the female detective. “Got anything else to eat?”

Moreno pulled a couple of fives from her pocket. “Buy yourself a sandwich, Clarence.”

“But first tell us about this hat,” Jennings said. “What kind of design was art it?”

“Take me to the store, an’ I show you.”

The mall, a fifteen-minute drive from Hollowes’s neighborhood, was teeming with shoppers. They pulled up in front of the San Francisco Giants store and Moreno took their witness inside.

“That’s it, right there. That’s the hat.”

“Chicago Cubs?”

“That’s the hat I seen.”

Moreno pulled it from the rack and turned to Clarence. “Are you a Giants fan?”

“No ma’am. Dodger blue, through and through.”

Moreno grabbed a Dodgers hat and brought them both to the register. As they walked out of the store, Clarence fingered the bill of the cap and carefully shaped it before placing it on his head.