The Doctor and Mr. Dylan (24 page)

It was more than I could bear. I couldn’t listen to the transplant team banter with my wife’s lover for one more second. I needed to get away. I walked out of the room, only to have Beard Man follow me and grab me by the elbow.

“Murder, that’s what this was,” he said. “Mark my word, I will bring the fury of the legal system down on you. You killed her, and you’re going down.”

I batted his hand away and said, “Mr. Demitree, I’m very sad about what happened, but I did nothing wrong. Leave me alone.” I turned to leave, but Beard Man had to have the last word.

“You’re going to jail, Dr. Death. I won’t rest until I’ve seen you in jail for Murder One.”

My patience was exhausted. “To hell with you. You’re nobody around here. Go back to California and climb under the same rock you were hiding behind when my wife found you.”

“Alexandra loved me,” Beard Man said. “You were a pathetic excuse for a husband and a miserable little cuckold. You deserve to be buggered by some convict in a prison shower.”

This guy was asking to be punched in the nose. I could continue to trade verbal jousts, I could slug the man in the jaw, or I could leave now and try to put together the pieces of the rest of my life.

There was no way to win. I shut my mouth, slackened my fists, and walked away.

CHAPTER 20

NOBODY EXCEPT YOU

I sat on the edge of a wing-backed leather chair in the office of my newest ally, Edward Martinovich, Esquire, of Duluth, Minnesota. Mr. Martinovich stood behind a broad mahogany desk in his penthouse suite and stared through his floor-to-ceiling windows at the flat, snow-covered expanse of Wisconsin on the distant shore of Lake Superior. His college diploma from Carleton College, law school diploma from the University of Minnesota, and a dozen honorary degrees and professional society awards hung on the burgundy office walls. A plaque from the Croatian American Association honored him as their Man of the Year for 2012.

Martinovich was in constant motion. The shining toe of his black wingtip tapped against the carpet. The fingers of his right hand spun his platinum wedding band. His upper lip bounced as he sharpened his teeth on the corner of his moustache. Martinovich’s attire belonged on Wall Street, not alongside the Great Lakes. The lawyer wore a slim-fitting ebony suit, a white shirt, and a powder blue necktie secured in a perfect symmetrical knot. His full head of jet-black hair was combed straight back. A pair of baby blue reading glasses perched on the end of a hawk-like nose.

I hired Martinovich when I learned of his reputation as a pugnacious courtroom brawler. He was the highest-priced litigator in the northern half of the state of Minnesota. I had money. Martinovich had moxie. I was a minnow swimming scared. Martinovich was a muskellunge poised to defend me. I was in deep trouble, and I needed the undisputed star of North Country courtrooms at my side.

I was disheveled and unshaven. I hadn’t slept more than one hour any night since Alexandra’s death. My attire was a wrinkled corduroy shirt and a pair of baggy blue jeans, and I looked like a ditch-digger in contrast to Martinovich’s slickness. I didn’t care about my appearance—I just wanted to stay out of jail. For the past hour I’d spewed out paragraphs of worry as I obsessed over every detail of Alexandra’s demise.

Martinovich glanced at his Rolex and sighed. He’d listened to my version of the truth without speaking a word. He paced to the window again, knit his hands together behind his back, and watched the ore boats coursing in and out of the port of Duluth. Martinovich turned about to face me, and spoke in slow, assertive terms. “Yes, Doctor, I can help you. I love this case already. It’s no doubt the highest profile medical malpractice case in the history of Minnesota, and as of yesterday it became more. As of yesterday, your case became the highest profile homicide case in the history of Minnesota. This is a great case. An important case. It’s my kind of case. I reviewed the medical records and evidence last evening. Let me go over the pertinent legal issues with you, Doctor, and then let us outline a plan.

“You are charged with first-degree murder. These are the key facts surrounding your wife’s death, as I see them: Fact #1: You and your wife were estranged. You were aware that she was sleeping with another man. It was well known that you were angry at her. This establishes motive.

“Fact #2: You administered general anesthesia to your wife for her appendectomy, and after the surgery she was brain dead due to hypoglycemia. The cause was an apparent administration of an insulin overdose. The prosecution will portray this as a premeditated insulin overdose.

“Fact #3: Her death could be construed as medical malpractice, because the standard of care would be for you, as her attending anesthesiologist, to protect your patient while she was asleep. If you inadvertently gave her the insulin by mistake when you believed you were administering a different medication, then you would be guilty of negligence. Negligence is not murder.

“Your plight worsened by a quantum leap yesterday after the discovery of Fact #4: Internet news services exploded with an additional tidy circumstance about your case. The value of Alexandra Antone’s company and estate exceeds 90 million dollars, all of which now becomes the sole property of the surviving spouse, one Dr. Nicolai Antone.”

“Everyone in the world who reads that crap gossip on the Internet will think I bumped her off for the money,” I said.

“Yes. Money is a powerful motivator. All of a sudden what might have been a tragic, unintentional drug error becomes an arraignment for first-degree murder. The prosecution’s case reads like this: You had the desire to kill your wife. You planned to kill Alexandra, you had the opportunity to kill her, and you carried out that plan in the operating room that day.”

“But people have to realize it makes no sense. If I tried to kill her that way, I’d never get away with it. The blood on my hands would be apparent the minute I stepped out of the operating room. I’m too smart of a guy to kill my wife in this fashion.”

“That may be true,” Martinovich said with a smirk, “but unfortunately, ‘I’m too smart to have done this’ is not going to be a useful defense argument. Ninety million dollars buys a lot of lawyering. Perhaps you murdered her out of anger and greed, and gambled that an outstanding lawyer could convince the jury that you were innocent.”

He sat on the edge of his desk, inches away from me, so close that I could smell the peppermint on his breath. “Have you ever heard of the Claus von Bülow case?”

“No.”

“Claus von Bülow was a wealthy socialite who was tried in Rhode Island in 1982 for the attempted murder of his wife, Sunny. Sunny was found comatose, with a very low blood sugar and a high insulin level. Scenario sound familiar?”

“Yes.”

“They found syringes and insulin in a locked closet in the von Bülow home. Claus von Bülow was found guilty of attempted murder, and sentenced to 30 years in prison. Alas, Mr. von Bülow hired the famed lawyer Alan Dershowitz to file an appeal. Dershowitz masterminded a successful defense, and Mr. von Bülow was found not guilty on all counts. Dershowitz described the case in his book
Reversal of Fortune
, which was also made into an Academy Award-winning movie. In that case, Mr. von Bülow paid for the best lawyering he could find, and walked away an innocent man.”

Martinovich’s chest swelled with pride. “The good news is that you too have chosen an outstanding lawyer.”

“Do you think I killed my wife?”

Martinovich waved his hand. “I don’t know if you killed her. I don’t care if you killed her. My job is to convince a jury of Iron Rangers that you did not murder Alexandra Antone.”

“You don’t care if I killed her?”

“It’s not my job to prosecute you. My job is to defend you. My mission is to assemble a sympathetic jury, devise a credible defense strategy, and present that strategy in a convincing, compelling manner so the jury will acquit you. It’s not going to be easy, and it’s not going to be cheap.”

“I don’t care how much it costs. I can’t sleep. My son won’t talk to me. Every news channel, newspaper, Internet news site, and Eskimo riding a dogsled is enamored with my guilt. I have no life. I’m dead.”

“No, your wife is dead. You are quite alive. Play it my way, and there’s a good chance you’ll walk away from this a free man, with most of that $90 million dollars in your back pocket.”

I wasn’t sure if I liked Martinovich. The man was part shark, part huckster, and a good part blowhard. His persona reeked of self-absorption and egomania. I was trusting my life to this P.T. Barnum of the North Country. “Play it your way means what?”

“Play it my way means this: Fall on the grenade and avoid a murder trial altogether. We can establish which anesthetic drugs come in vials nearly identical to insulin. You testify that you gave the insulin by mistake when you meant to administer another, safer drug. Is that bad medicine? Yes. Is it malpractice? Without a doubt. Is it murder? No way. You will walk. So tell me, did you commit such a negligent act?”

“No, I did not.”

“But it is possible, is it not? One can inject the wrong medicine by accident, can’t they? A drug different than intended?”

“Yes, it’s possible to inject the wrong drug by accident. I’m human. I’ve done 20,000 anesthetics, and every anesthetic involves multiple drug injections. I’ve injected the wrong drug 4 or 5 times.”

“Excellent. Then we have a plausible means to keep you out of prison.”

“I understand you’d like me to lie under oath to save my ass. The problem is that I won’t do that. How can I claim that I injected insulin by mistake, when I didn’t? I’m not going through life being blamed for Alexandra’s death, with my son thinking his mother’s death was my fault. I have to plead not guilty.”

Martinovich nodded knowingly, a patient father listening to his son’s description of how the muddy shoes had nothing to do with footprints on the rug. Then the attorney held up the thick packet of medical records from Hibbing General Hospital and said, “The evidence in here is damning. The warrant for your arrest is pending. You can expect to be in jail by the end of the week. Because of the gravity of the charges, the extent of your wealth, and the risk of flight, you can expect that no bail will be offered.”

My gut sunk. “I can’t go to jail. It can’t be.”

“It can be, Dr. Antone, and it will be.” Then he said, in a slow, rhythmic cadence: “Because there is an enormous elephant in the courtroom—an elephant we will have to vaporize in order to win this case.”

“And what elephant are you speaking of?”

“Mrs. Antone was awake when you started the anesthetic. She was brain dead afterward. During the time she was asleep, did anyone else inject anything into Alexandra Antone’s bloodstream?”

“No.”

“Then there is no one else. Nobody could have committed this crime except you. You are guilty because, to quote Sherlock Holmes, ‘When you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however implausible, must be the truth.’

“Dr. Antone, there is no other explanation.”

CHAPTER 21

HIGH WATER

I plummeted feet first into the ocean, the force of the fall submerging my face deep beneath the waves. I swam upward in desperate strokes until my nose and eyes broke the surface. I filled my lungs with precious air and flailed with all four limbs to stay afloat. The pull from below was powerful. A heavy weight clung to my ankles and tugged me downward.

“Help me!” I screamed to the empty sky. No reply came—there was no sign of another human. My boots filled with water, adding to the ballast dragging me toward the bottom. My arms ached with effort. My chest heaved. Salt water splashed across my gasping mouth. I tasted my inevitable fate.

A wave rushed toward me. Panic grew as the water crested and fell. I drew my last breath, closed my eyes, and felt the sea cover me once more. I yearned for oxygen as I held my breath. The seconds ticked on and tortured me until I could wait no longer. I had to empty my lungs and inhale in turn. I opened my mouth, and my airways choked and filled with salt water. My brain exploded, and I sank toward the ocean floor.

“No,” I screamed, jerking my face away from the coarse cotton covering my stiff pillow. Bed sheets twisted around my sweat-drenched limbs. The jail cell was dark, the silhouettes of the vertical steel bars giving the room its only definition. I took in a deep breath, grateful to be alive. My heart thumped on, tormented by the nightmare. There would be no more sleep tonight. I sat up on one elbow, and took account of my circumstances.

The dream was gone and my lungs were dry. I was hundreds of miles from any ocean. The rough concrete walls that confined me were my prison and my shelter. Every night was a tedious ordeal. Rare bouts of sleep were interrupted by recurring dreams of suffocating, drowning, and death. Every night I fell to the bottom of the sea, over the edge of a waterfall, into molten lava, or into the depths of an iron mine. During waking hours, my room was a drab cocoon. I had no roommate, no alarm clock, and no one to fight with. My soul longed for only one thing.

Johnny.

I missed Johnny more than anything. I’d been in jail four months, and my son hadn’t visited once. I had no access to email or a phone, so I relied on snail mail and prayers. I’d written Johnny thirty-one letters. He hadn’t answered any of them. Each day I asked the prison guards about incoming mail, and each day there was no reply from my son. Johnny’s anger was a wall between us, and I had no opportunity for an audience with him to explain away the facts.