Prophet (52 page)

Al interjected again, “You know what the final story was on it, right? That Hillary Slater died from an overdose of warfarin?”

John and Carl nodded.

“Well, that’s what it turned out to be in the end, that’s what the doctor at the hospital said it was, but up to that time . . . Well, we were never sure, but we had it in the back of our minds that we could be working with a fouled-up abortion. I mean, it looked bad, and we both remember the dispatcher saying there may have been an abortion. That didn’t pan out, but . . . boy, the whole time, from what we saw, it sure could have been. I remember Joel, my partner, whispered to me so nobody could hear him, ‘Maybe this is what a coat hanger does,’ but we thought that out and knew it didn’t make sense, not with the abortion laws making it so easy for anybody to get one. But anyway, we were thinking about it.”

Glen spread his hands and asked John, “So how did your dad know about that? He wasn’t there.”

John was about to venture an answer, but Glen kept going, not needing one. “So anyway, I told your dad what Al and I talked about, and your dad said he wanted to talk to Al himself, so we set it up, just like we set this up.”

“So Dad met with you . . . when?”

“Oh, first or second week in May. It wasn’t long after the Slater girl had been buried and things were beginning to settle down.” Al paused a moment to reflect on the memory. “I liked your dad. I’m real sorry he died. I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you.”

Al looked at John and Carl with inquisitive eyes. “Talking to you, I almost feel like I’m talking to him again. You know how it is. You don’t like to make waves or ask too many questions. But your dad seemed to be the kind of guy who did, and I liked that about him. I can’t speak for him; I don’t know exactly why he was going after this, but . . . I don’t think it was just to get some spicy stuff on the governor. I think he had something more in mind. He was feeling pain for somebody.” Al turned to Glen. “Don’t you think so?”

Glen shrugged a little and said, “I think he was grieving for Hillary—maybe for a lot of Hillarys.”

“Well, anyway,” said Al, “maybe you’ll be able to finish where he left off.”

“We hope to,” said Carl.

John added, “Right now we’re trying to find out where he left off. So . . . why don’t you tell us what you told him? Tell us what happened.”

“Sure . . . okay.” Al pulled a piece of paper from his pocket, some brief notes to aid his memory. “I’m with District Twelve. Been a paramedic there for the past five years. I was on the evening shift on Friday, April 19th, when we got the dispatch at 18:02, a ‘vaginal bleed’ at 1527 Roanoke West, which is the governor’s residence, his mansion.”

Glen jumped in with, “Hey, Al, tell him about that . . . how much you hear about vaginal bleeds.”

“Well, they’re not uncommon. I’ve noticed it, and the people I work with have talked about it—not out in the open, but, you know, just here and there, just a little bit. But when you come right down to it, we get ‘vaginal bleed’ calls on a pretty regular basis. It makes you wonder.”

“How many are from abortions gone wrong?” John ventured.

Al shook his head. “We just don’t talk about it. And you know, the manual we use doesn’t say a thing about it either. It mentions spontaneous abortion, which is miscarriage, but not botched, intentional abortions.”

“Hm.”

“But anyway, we don’t always go out on vaginal bleeds. A lot of times they aren’t real serious, and the aid units and EMTs handle those by themselves. But this was a bad one. They had an aid unit and us together. Anyway, we responded, and while en route we got our short report from the dispatcher: ‘unknown age female experiencing difficulty breathing, unknown if conscious, possible induced abortion.’”

John wanted clarification. “So the dispatcher actually said ‘abortion’?”

“‘Possible induced abortion.’ Until you get there, you don’t really know. But the reporting party must have said something to that effect or the dispatcher wouldn’t have relayed it to us.”

John and Carl exchanged another glance. So far Al’s account was lining up with the 911 recording.

Al continued, “So we got to the governor’s mansion, and that’s a nice big place. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen it . . .”

“Never been inside.”

“Oh, it’s nice. Big entryway and a long, curving staircase and fancy paneling, all that stuff. Governor Slater’s wife met us right at the door. It was kind of strange, seeing her upset, frantic, just like real people. You forget they’re people like anybody else. But she took us upstairs and down the big long hallway to their daughter’s bedroom, and there Hillary was, laid out on her bed, and we knew we had ourselves a real problem. Mrs. Slater had been trying to sop up the blood with towels, and we almost had to grab her and wrestle her to get her out of the way so we could do our job. The patient was gasping for breath, cyanotic—”

“What’s ‘cyanotic’?”

“Uh . . . turning blue. Her lips and her fingernails were turning a bluish purple, from loss of blood and oxygen.”

“Mm.”

“So we got an oxygen mask right on her and worked on her vital signs. Her pulse was weak and rapid, and the blood pressure . . . Well, we couldn’t hear well enough to get a reading with a stethoscope, Mrs. Slater was hollering so much and the governor was hollering trying to keep her from hollering and . . .” Al had to pause for a moment. The memory was obviously still disturbing to him. “Well, it was just a real mess, I want to tell you. We finally got a blood pressure reading by palpating . . .”

“Mm, you mean, by touch?”

“Right—holding her wrist and feeling for a pulse. And we counted respiration, which was rapid. She was in trouble all around, to put it simply. She was bleeding to death, just bleeding out. The EMTs were there then, and they shared the load. We gave her an IV, got a tube into her airway, got the bag valve hooked up to the tube to assist her breathing—you know, pump air into her lungs because she wasn’t getting enough. Then we radioed the police to do a blood run for us.”

“What’s that?”

“Well, we draw blood samples from the patient, fill three vials, and then send the cop after blood. He meets us at the hospital and then
we’re ready to transfuse.”

“Got it.”

“So . . . we got the stretcher in, got her on it, and got ready to transport her to the hospital. Oh . . . while we were doing that, I asked the parents some real quick questions. I asked them if Hillary was pregnant or if she’d ever given birth before or if she was under a doctor’s care for any special medical problems or if she was taking any medication. It didn’t really matter what I asked—they didn’t know anything.”

“So they had no idea she was pregnant?”

“They weren’t aware of it.”

“And so I imagine they knew nothing about any abortion?”

“They . . . well, all of this was new to them. They had no idea what was going on. I had my suspicions, but it wasn’t my place to tell them that. Once we got her to the hospital and the doctor had a look at her, then he could determine what the cause was and handle the parents. So anyway we transported her to the hospital.”

“Bayview Memorial?”

“Right. We got her into the Emergency Room, and that was when the governor’s family physician, Leland Gray, got into the loop. He was waiting there at the hospital, and he basically took over, calling the shots. We told him everything we knew, including our suspicions that it might be an abortion, and he took it from there. But obviously it was too late. She died on the table. Dr. Gray called it at 7:14
P.M.
The governor and his wife were both there at the hospital, along with their other two kids, and I remember Dr. Gray going out to the waiting area to tell them, and I remember Mrs. Slater really going hysterical. She had to be sedated and admitted to the hospital for the night.”

John wanted to double-check. “You did tell Dr. Gray about the abortion factor?”

Al nodded with a resigned look on his face. “Yeah, we did, and it surprised us a little when we checked back and heard it was an overdose of warfarin. But what the doctor says, that’s what it is. You just don’t know everything when you’re on the scene, and you don’t have the whole picture ’til you bring the patient in. So when the whole picture finally comes out, well, that’s that. You had your own theories, but the doc says what it really is.”

John asked, “Dr. Gray in this case?”

“Well, him and the pathologist who did the autopsy. We didn’t find out the true cause of death until a few days later. I think they did the autopsy the next day, Saturday, and we found out on Monday.”

“We saw it was Dr. Gray who filled out the death certificate.”

“Yeah. He certified the cause of death.”

“And after all this, what do you think of Dad’s idea?”

“That it was a botched abortion? Well . . . I’m still wondering how he knew about it. But the big problem with that whole theory is that you’d have to have Dr. Gray and then the hospital pathologist both be liars or in cahoots or something. When the governor’s physician and the pathologist agree it was an accidental overdose of warfarin, and the doctor signs the death certificate to that effect, what else are you supposed to think?”

“I might take into consideration the influence the governor and his personal physician might have.”

Al smiled. “Yeah, you might.”

John’s brow wrinkled a little. “And . . . how do you know the pathologist even agreed with Dr. Gray’s finding?”

Al’s face went a little blank. “Well . . . the pathologist did the autopsy . . .”

“But how do you know the autopsy found the same cause of death that Dr. Gray states on the death certificate?”

“Well, it’s a pretty safe assumption to make, isn’t it?”

John said, mostly to himself, “It would be nice to see the autopsy report.”

Al shook his head. “Not without a court order, you won’t. It’s confidential. But you know the official version.”

“Tell us again so we can compare notes.”

Al drew a deep breath, gathered an outline in his mind, and laid it out succinctly. “The way I understand it, the governor was taking warfarin for a blood clot in his leg. Dr. Gray prescribed it. It was no secret or anything. When Hillary took those pills by mistake, well, Dr. Gray said it was just one of those freak accidents—bad timing and bad labeling at the same time. Hillary Slater was having her period and probably thought she was taking pills for menstrual cramps when she took her father’s pills by mistake, which makes sense, I suppose. The doc said the dosage of pain medication she would have taken would have been
about right, but the same dosage of her father’s medication would have been enough to bring on a hemorrhage from her uterus and . . . well, that’s what we found—an obvious hemorrhage from the uterus—and that’s the explanation we got.”

“Let’s go back to the governor’s house for a minute. Now you say you found the governor there and his wife.”

“Right.”

“Did you see anyone else in the house?”

“Well, the other two kids.”

“Hayley, the daughter, about fifteen?”

“Right. And the boy. They were pretty shook, of course.”

“Anyone else?”

“Well, besides our crew, the aid crew, and then the police who came for the blood run, no.”

“No other friends or relatives?”

“I didn’t see anyone else.”

“Uhh . . . I’m curious. Any idea who called 911?”

Al thought about that a moment. “Mm, well . . . I always thought it was the governor. Nobody said who made the call.”

“What about the dispatcher? Would he know more about that?”

Al shook his head. “That’s out of bounds; 911 calls are confidential, and the dispatcher sure isn’t going to give you any details if he values his job.”

“What about the recording of the call itself? How would someone get a copy of that?”

“I don’t think you could, to be honest. First you’d have to be a family member or a close relative, and even then you’d have to file a Request for Information form and have the station captain okay it, and then you could get a copy taken from the master tape, but . . . there’s no way some reporter with no connections at all is going to get a copy of that conversation. It just isn’t done, not without a court order, which you won’t get without a really good reason.”

John and Carl exchanged a glance.

Now Al spoke more out of fantasy than hard possibility. “It would be great if you could get the hospital pathologist, the guy who did the autopsy, to tell you what really happened. That would settle everything, wouldn’t it?”

“DR. MATTHEWS?
Harlan Matthews?”

Dr. Harlan Matthews, pathologist at Bayview Hospital, looked up from his desk to see an attractive blonde woman poking her head through the open door.

“Yes?”

Leslie stepped in and came up to his desk, offering her hand. “I’m Leslie Albright. May we talk for just a minute?”

Dr. Matthews was young-looking, although his tired expression was giving his age away, which was forty-five. “We’ll have to make it quick. I have an autopsy coming up in just a few minutes.”

“Oh, I’ll be brief. This is regarding an autopsy you performed on Hillary Slater, the governor’s daughter, back in April.”