Lassiter 01 - To Speak for the Dead (7 page)

"Both had come home drunk, and she passed out. The boyfriend tried to revive her in the bathtub, but sailing three sheets to the wind, he turned on the hot water and left her there. The scalding water burned her to death. When the boyfriend sobered up, he panicked, so he dried her off, dressed her, put her on the sofa, and called the police."

The jury sat entranced. There's nothing like tales of death, well told. Riggs testified about matching tire treads to the marks on a hit-and-run victim's back, of fitting a defendant's teeth to bite marks on a rape-murder victim, of finding teeth in a drain under a house, the only proof of the
corpus delicti
, the body of a man dissolved in sulfuric acid by his roommate.

The litany of crime had its purpose, to shock the jury with deeds of true miscreants, to deliver a subtle message that the justice system should prosecute murderers, not decent surgeons, even if they might make mistakes.
Errare humanum est.
If that's what it was, an honest error.

I hadn't told Charlie Riggs about the conversation with Susan Corrigan. What would I tell him, that a dead man's daughter, poisoned with grief and hate, thinks my client is a murderer? She had no physical evidence, no proof, no nothing, except the allegation that Roger Salisbury and Melanie Corrigan were getting it on. I would talk to Salisbury about it, but not now.

While Charlie Riggs testified, I watched Roger. He kept shooting sideways glances at Melanie Corrigan's perfect profile. She watched the witness, oblivious to the attention. She was wearing a simple cotton dress that, to me, looked about two sizes too large, but I supposed was in style. A wide belt gathered it at the waist and it ended demurely below the knee. It was one of those deceiving things women wear, so simple it disguises the name of an Italian designer and a megabucks price tag.

I tried to read the look in Roger Salisbury's eyes but could not. Was there a chance that it was true? Not just that he might have been diddling his patient's wife. I didn't care about that. But that he might have killed Corrigan. That it was all a plot, that the malpractice trial was just a cover, or better yet, a way to pick up another million. If that's what it was, there'd be plenty of chances for Salisbury to tank it. He was scheduled to testify after Riggs.

I continued my direct examination: "Now Dr. Riggs, have you had an opportunity to examine the medical records compiled by the physicians and the hospital?"

"Yes."

"And based on the records, and your years of experience, do you have an opinion to a reasonable degree of medical probability what caused the death of Philip Corrigan?"

"I do."

The courtroom was silent except for the omnipresent hum of the air conditioning. Everyone knew the next question.

"And what was the cause of death?"

"A ruptured aorta. Internal bleeding, which in turn caused a lowering of blood pressure. In layman's terms, the heart, which is the pump in a closed circulatory system, didn't have enough fluid to pump, so it stopped."

"And what, sir, caused the aorta to rupture?"

"There is no way to answer that with absolute certainty. We can only exclude certain things."

"Such as?" Keep the questions short, let the doctor carry the ball.

"Well, Dr. Salisbury here certainly didn't do it with the rongeur. If he had, the rupture would be on the posterior side of the aorta. But as reported by the surgeon who tried the emergency repair of the aorta, the rupture is on the anterior side, the front. Naturally a surgeon making an incision in a man's back, working around the spine, is not going to puncture the front of the aorta, the part that faces the abdomen."

Dan Cefalo turned ashen. There aren't many surprises in 59

trials anymore. Pretrial discovery eliminates most of that. But Charlie Riggs gave his deposition before studying the report of the second surgery, the chaotic attempt to close the bursting aorta a dozen hours after the laminectomy. When he read the report, bells went off. Nobody else had paid any attention to where the rupture was, only that it existed.

For the next fifteen minutes, it went on like that, Charles W. Riggs, M.D., witness emeritus, showing the jury his plastic model of the spine with the blood vessels attached like strings of licorice. The report of the thoracic surgeon who tried unsuccessfully to save Corrigan's life came into evidence, and the jurors kept looking at Dr. Riggs and nodding.

It was time to slam the door. "If Dr. Salisbury did not puncture the aorta with the rongeur, could not have, as you have testified, what might have caused it to rupture?"

"We call it spontaneous aortic aneurysm. Of course, that's the effect, not the cause. The causes are many. Various illnesses or severe trauma to the abdomen can cause the aorta to burst. Arteriosclerosis can weaken the aorta and make it susceptible to aneurysm. So can high blood pressure. It could be a breakdown that medicine simply can't explain, as they said in the Middle Ages,
ex visitatione divina."

I smiled at Dr. Riggs. He smiled back at me. The jury smiled at both of us. One big happy family.

I was nearly through but had one more little surprise for Dan Cefalo. A nail in the coffin. I handed Riggs Plaintiff's Exhibit Three, a composite of Philip Corrigan's medical history. "Dr. Riggs, did Philip Corrigan have any prior medical abnormalities?"

Charlie Riggs scanned the document but already knew the answer from our preparation sessions. "Yes, he was previously diagnosed by a cardiologist as having some degree of arteriosclerosis."

"And the effect of such a disease?"

"Weakening of the arteries, susceptibility to aneurysm. Men in their fifties or beyond commonly show signs of arterial disease. Blame the typical American diet of saturated fats, too much beef and butter. In that condition, Mr. Corrigan could have had an artery blow out at any time."

"At any time," I repeated, just in case they missed it.

"Yes, without a trauma, just watching TV, eating dinner, any time."

"Thank you, Doctor." I nodded toward the witness stand in deference to the wisdom that had filled the courtroom. Then I turned toward Dan Cefalo, and with the placid assurance of a man who has seen the future and owns a fine chunk of it, I gently advised him, "Your witness, Counselor."

Cefalo stood up and his suitcoat fell open, revealing a dark stain of red ink under his shirt pocket, the trail of an uncapped marking pen. Or a self-inflicted wound.

His cross-examination fell flat. He scored a meaningless point getting Riggs to admit that he was not an orthopedic surgeon and had never performed a laminectomy. "But I've done thousands of autopsies, and that's how you determine cause of death," Riggs quickly added.

"You testified that trauma could cause the rupture, did you not?" Cefalo asked.

"Yes, I can't tell you how many drivers I saw in the morgue in the days before seat belts. In a collision, the steering wheel can hit the chest and abdomen with such force as to rupture the aorta. That, of course, is trauma from the front."

"But a misguided rongeur could produce the kind of trauma to rupture the aorta?"

Hit me again, Cefalo seemed to plead.

"It could, but not in the front of the blood vessel when the surgeon is coming in from the back," Riggs said.

Cefalo wouldn't call it quits. "The thoracic surgeon was working under conditions of extreme emergency trying to do the repair, was he not?"

"I assume so," Riggs said.

"And in such conditions, he could have made a mistake as to the location of the rupture, could he not?"

Riggs smiled a gentle, fatherly smile. "Every piece of evidence ever adduced in a courtroom could be the product of a mistake. Your witnesses could all be wrong. Mr. Lassiter's witnesses could all be wrong. But it's all we've got, and there's nothing to indicate the rupture was anywhere but where the chest buster—excuse me, the thoracic surgeon— said, the anterior of the aorta."

Fine. Outstanding. I couldn't have said it better myself. Cefalo sat down without laying a glove on him. It was after one o'clock and we had not yet recessed for lunch. Judge Leonard was fidgeting.

"Noting the lateness of the hour, perhaps this is an opportune time to adjourn for the day," the judge said. Translation:
There's a stakes race at Hialeah and I've got a tip from a jockey who hasn't paid alimony since his divorce fell into my division last year.
"Hearing no objection, court stands adjourned until nine-thirty tomorrow morning."

Roger Salisbury was beaming. He didn't look like a man

who wanted to lose. It had been a fine morning of lawy and I was feeling pretty full of myself. In the back of courtroom I caught a glimpse of Susan Corrigan wearing a Super Bowl XVI nylon jacket over a T-shirt. She eyed me as if I'd just spit in church.

I told Roger Salisbury I'd treat him to stone crabs, home fries, and cold beer for lunch. Time for a mini-celebration. Time, too, for some questions I needed to ask.

We walked from the dim light and dank air of the old courtroom into the sunshine of December in Miami. A glorious day. Not even the buzzards endlessly circling the wedding cake tiers of the courthouse could darken my mood. Souls of lawyers doing penance, a Cuban spiritualist told me. The huge black birds were as much a part of wintertime Miami as sunburned tourists, drug deals, and crooked cops. The buzzards congregated around the courthouse and on the upper ledges of the Southeast Financial Center, where for fifty dollars a square foot, the lawyers, accountants, and bankers expected a better view than birdshit two feet deep.

Building management installed sonar devices that supposedly made unfriendly bird sounds. Instead of being frightened, the buzzards were turned on; they tried mating with the sonar boxes.

The doctor gave me a second look when he got into my canary yellow Olds 442 convertible, vintage 1968. At home was my old Jeep, but it was rusted out from windsurfing gear, and my clients deserve the best. Having already passed through my respectable sedan phase when I temporarily decided to grow up, I had regressed to a simpler time of big engines and Beach Boys' songs.

We drove to a seafood restaurant in a new shopping arcade that the developer spent a bundle making look like an Italian villa, circa the Renaissance. It's full of boutiques instead of stores, places with two names that always start with
Le,
and women who'll spend a fortune for clothes so they'll look good shopping for more clothes. Notwithstanding the glitz of the surroundings, there's a decent fish house tucked away in back.

"The tide turned today, didn't it?" Salisbury asked.

"Right. We pulled even, which means we're actually ahead. The plaintiff has the burden of proof. Riggs negated Watkins's testimony about the rongeur. Back to square one. They'll have to call Watkins again on rebuttal and attack Riggs. They're stuck. They can't bring in a new expert now. Our strategy is to lay low. We don't want to get fancy, just hold our position."

"What about my testimony?"

"You'll do fine. What you say isn't as important as how you look, how the jury perceives you. If you're a nice guy and it's a close battle of the experts, they'll cut you a break.

If you're arrogant and a prick, they'll cut off your nuts and hand them to the widow."

He thought that over and I looked around for some service. We'd been there ten minutes before the waiter shuffled over to take our order. The kid needed a shave and was missing one earring, or is that the way they wear them?

"Whatcha want?" he asked, displaying the personality of a mollusk and half the energy. Service in restaurants now rivals that at gas stations for indifference and sloth.

I ordered for both of us. "Two portions of jumbo stoners, two Caesar salads, and two beers." Best to keep it simple.

"Kinda beers?" the waiter said. I figured him for a speech communications major at the UM.

"Grolsch. Sixteen-ouncers if you have them."

"Dunno. Got Bud, Miller, Coors Light, maybe."

"Any beer's okay with me," Salisbury said. Not hard to please. A lot of doctors are that way. They get used to hospital cafeteria food and pretty soon everything tastes alike. Not me. I'll start drinking American beer when it gets as good as its TV commercials.

The waiter shrugged and disappeared, probably to replenish his chemical stimulants. I was about to extol the glories of the Dutch brewmasters when Roger Salisbury asked, "Do you think I killed him, committed malpractice I mean?"

He wanted me to respect him. With most clients, winning is enough.

"Hey Roger, I checked around town. The med school has nice things to say about you. You've never been sued before, which in this town is an upset. Don't let my general cynicism get you down."

"Just so you believe me."

He had thrown me off stride. I wanted to ask questions, not answer them. "Roger, you know how important it is to tell your lawyer everything?"

"Sure thing. Soul mates."

"Right. Before you testify tomorrow, is there anything you want to tell me? Anything you left out?"

He cradled his chin in his hand. Something flickered behind his eyes but he blinked it away. "No, don't think so. I told you all about the surgery. No signs of an aneurysm, no drop in blood pressure. I didn't slip with the rongeur. I didn't do it."