The Doctor and Mr. Dylan (25 page)

In my months in jail, I’d had only two visitors: Edward Martinovich and Lena. Martinovich came every day, for logistical reasons. He needed my input to prepare my defense.

Lena was my beacon in the fog, the only person who cared about me. She visited once a week, and I craved her presence. In a world of pale green walls and iron bars, I lived to see Lena’s face. With each sunrise, the prospect of Lena’s next visit fueled my will to survive. She was my only portal to Johnny. Johnny was an orphan, and he chose to live with Lena. She became his chef, his chauffeur, his psychotherapist, and his surrogate mother. My knowledge of Johnny’s life and times came solely through Lena.

The jail guard banged a metal cup on the bars of my cell and said, “The lady’s here to see you, Doc. Freshen up. You’ve got twenty minutes.” I combed ten fingers through my oily hair, and brushed unkempt waves off my forehead. I had no mirror and could only imagine how frightful I looked. I hadn’t shaved in months, and shampooing was an every fifth day luxury.

Lena faced me from the opposite side of a Plexiglas barrier. She wore a white turtleneck and no eye makeup. Her face was a wan mask, a false copy of her former self. She wasn’t enamored with the role of the prisoner’s girlfriend. I hadn’t seen a free world woman other than Lena in four months. Even a somber Lena was an angel to me.

“You look tired,” she said. “Are you sleeping any better?”

“I’m hanging in there. How are the kids?”

“The pregnancy’s perking along. Echo’s still not showing much, so it’s not too awkward for her at school. Her nausea is gone now that she’s into her second trimester. We’re meeting with an adoption agency out of Duluth this weekend. Echo goes to school, she comes home, and she studies. She’s coping.”

“And Johnny?”

“No change. He’s a night owl, troubled and sad. He talks to me for an hour every night after Echo goes to sleep. He feels very alone.”

“Does he talk about me?”

She looked uneasy. “Not often.”

“What does he say?”

“He’s mad at you.”

“He thinks I’m guilty?”

“He does. Johnny’s angry and he’s embarrassed. One parent is dead and the other one is her presumed murderer. He believes the bloggers. Johnny believes you killed his mother.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

She shrugged. “Get out of jail, for all of our sakes. Come home an innocent man. Be his dad again. As long as you’re in here, Johnny will ignore you. He has to, just to survive.”

“And you?”

“I’m tired, Nico. I’m tired of all this. Does your attorney have a plan?  Are you ever going to be free?”

“Martinovich has a solid defense strategy. Yes, I believe I’ll be free someday.”

“I hope so. I want to move far, far away from here.” She reached out her hand and splayed her fingers across the Plexiglas window between us. I extended my fingers against the glass on my side and matched them to Lena’s across the barrier.

In my sensory-deprived world here in prison, she was my mooring. Before jail, I’d been stingy with my emotions for Lena. Behind bars, the wonder of her affection was clear. I emoted without reservation.

“I love you,” I said. It was the first time she’d heard these words from me.

“Now you tell me you love me? Now that you can’t have me?” Lena peeled her fingers from the window and folded them on the tabletop before her. She took in a long, slow breath, and said nothing. She stood and left without saying goodbye, and I felt more alone than ever.

I returned to my cell, stretched out on the cot, and closed my eyes. As I did every day, I replayed every detail of Alexandra’s anesthetic in my mind. The gnawing in my gut grew. I was worn out and fatigued on the morning of Alexandra’s appendectomy. I’d been overwhelmed and distracted by my disgust for her.

A solitary image from that morning haunted me. Inside Lena’s refrigerator, next to the orange juice, next to the carton of milk, stood a full box of insulin vials. Echo’s insulin vials. I’d seen those vials that morning before dawn. I could not remember what transpired after I held that refrigerator door. Had I closed the door and turned away? Or had I pocketed one insulin vial and taken it with me to the operating room? How badly had I wanted Alexandra vanquished? Could I have blocked all memory of the deed, the theft of the insulin, the injection of the insulin, and murdered my own wife in the operating room?

Perspiration soaked through my shirt. My body betrayed my guilt. I was Alexandra’s killer. I was the assassin. Who else could have done it?

If I was ever to live as a free man again, my fervent hope was that Edward Martinovich was a magician.

CHAPTER 22

AT MY TIME OF TRIAL

The wind chill was minus thirty degrees Fahrenheit, and the sun had barely risen over the treetops. Dozens of Chevy, Ford, and Dodge SUVs with rusted-out fenders and billowing exhaust pipes carried denim-clad workers to their jobs in the mines of the Mesabi Iron Range. They drove past a circus array of media vans from CNN, ABC, FOX, NBC, and CBS, all parked on the streets surrounding the gray limestone walls of the St. Louis County District Courtroom.

I marched through this sub-zero morning air amidst the throngs of reporters and paparazzi, each pushing and shouting, jockeying for a better position to get the best photograph, or trying to provoke me to make some comment for the evening’s sound bite. My face was close-shaven. My hair was cropped. I wore my best, and only, Giorgio Armani navy blue suit. My white shirt was starched, and the knot in my blue and red striped tie was tight. The heels of my dress shoes clacked on ice-coated pavement. The air smelled fresh and wonderful. Nothing inside the jail ever smelled fresh or wonderful. The breeze on my face was wicked and rare.

If I’d ever dreamed of fame, it had never looked like this—surrounded by a raucous crowd who thought of me as a notorious murder suspect. The juries of Twitter, Facebook, and TMZ had already convicted me. A loudspeaker across the street blared “No Sugar Tonight” by The Guess Who, a song that had become the signature soundtrack for the Alexandra Antone low-blood-glucose murder case. The rock song would air every time I entered and exited the courthouse. Like Ricky Vaughn walking from the bullpen to the pitcher’s mound to the rocking of “Wild Thing” in the movie
Major League
, I left my incarceration van and entered the legal arena to the beat of my own anthem.

My armpits were drenched with sweat, my tongue was dry as a pinecone, and I felt like vomiting all over my Italian wool slacks. In the operating room I took pride in calm demeanor under pressure. When a patient tried to die on me, the correct synapses in my brain always seemed to fire to enable me to diagnose the problem and apply appropriate treatment. In the operating room, I was an expert.

In this courtroom, I was a melting candle. 

The interior of the courtroom was jammed with non-Hibbingites—I surveyed a hundred faces and recognized no one. The individuals in the gallery buzzed like honeybees over a flower garden. Representatives of the state and national press populated the first four rows, the men conspicuous in their tailored suits and precision haircuts, the women cosmopolitan in their dress and make-up, more attuned to Vogue magazine than to the tundra of the Iron Range. The reporters scrutinized me and followed my every move. Pens scurried over sketchpads and fingers tapped on laptops and tablet computers.

Everyone I cared about was banned from the courtroom. Johnny, Lena, and Echo were all sequestered. As subpoenaed witnesses, they were not permitted to watch the trial until after they had testified.

Martinovich busied himself crossing out and underlining notes on a yellow legal pad. He wore a dark gray suit and a lavender necktie, and his hair was combed into a flamboyant pompadour. Martinovich paid no attention to me. I felt alone and exposed in the middle of the stark courtroom.

The bailiff strode to the front of the room and said, “All rise for the Honorable Judge Satrum.” Judge Marcus Satrum entered from his chambers and seated himself atop the bench. He was a broad-shouldered hulk of a man with a thick head of white hair and a full beard to match. He eyed the crowded room with a proud countenance, as if presiding over a sensational murder trial was an every day occurrence. In truth, Satrum was accustomed to audiences far greater than this one. The judge was a former Iron Range hockey legend who’d played in the National Hockey League for the New York Rangers. Compared to Madison Square Garden, the St. Louis County Courtroom was a minor league venue.

Satrum wore the scowl of a man late for dinner. A deep diagonal scar sliced above his left eyebrow. A hockey stick to the forehead? A right cross from a barroom brawl? He looked like a grim executioner to me. I felt an immediate dislike toward the man.

According to Martinovich, Judge Satrum was going to be a tough cookie. During his NHL career Satrum had a reputation as a brawler, leading the league in penalty minutes five consecutive years. On the bench he was known to be an intelligent and fair judge who exalted brevity and pertinence in his courtroom. Satrum abhorred verbose and unprepared litigators. He’d never presided over a trial that had exceeded two weeks.

One way or another, I would know my fate within 14 days.

The prosecuting attorney was a local stiff named James Hamilton. He was a wide-body equipped with a pendulous gut that pushed his baggy white shirt out the front of his metallic blue suit. Hamilton carried his nose high and jutted his lower lip out in the fashion of Alfred Hitchcock. The man struck me as a confident prick, reveling in the media exposure and unprecedented attention from this sensational case. If I’d done nothing else in my life, I’d helped James Hamilton achieve his fifteen minutes of fame. 

Hamilton stood at the podium and greeted the judge and jury. After a dramatic pause, he pointed a finger at me and said, “This man… Dr. Nico Antone… is a killer. Not only is this man a killer, he is a doctor who kills. Contrary to the Hippocratic Oath, which instructs doctors to do no harm to their patients, this man killed his patient. And not only did Dr. Antone kill his patient, this doctor killed a patient who was his wife. Contrary to the oath of holy matrimony, in which a man promises to love, honor, and cherish a woman until death do them part, Dr. Antone is a wife killer.”

My heart rate climbed, and I knew the war had begun. This vile description was out there for the world to hear. Hamilton’s declaration made me sound like the most evil creature imaginable. I wanted to wrap my fingers around his jowls and silence every whiny, accusing syllable.

Hamilton continued, “The evidence in this case will demonstrate, beyond reasonable doubt, that Nicolai Antone murdered his wife Alexandra Antone on the morning of September 9th. This murder was both deliberate and premeditated. You will hear testimony from medical experts who will pinpoint the cause of Alexandra Antone’s death to an overdose of insulin. Dr. Antone alone attended to his wife on that morning. He alone had the opportunity to kill her. Dr. Antone willfully injected medications into his wife’s veins that anesthetized her into a deep sleep, and then he willfully injected an overdose of insulin into Alexandra Antone’s body that caused irreversible brain damage.

“The State will bring hard evidence on both the insulin level and the fatal low blood sugar level that killed Alexandra Antone. The State will provide witnesses to attest that no one other than Dr. Nicolai Antone had the opportunity to kill his wife. The State will provide witnesses that define the motives of jealousy, anger, and greed that drove Dr. Nicolai Antone to kill his wife.”

Hamilton ceased his oration for a paroxysm of loud coughing. It lasted for twenty or thirty seconds, and served to dampen the force of his attack on me. “The man’s a putz,” Martinovich wrote on his yellow pad for me to read.

“A villain,” I wrote back.

“I will bury him,” Martinovich wrote.

“BURY HIM!” I wrote in capital letters. As I dotted the exclamation point, I pushed on the pencil so hard that the lead snapped off.

Hamilton recovered his voice and droned on. He concluded his opening statement with a rousing accusation. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the question now before you is, ‘did this man kill his wife?’ It is no small thing to answer this question. It’s a serious undertaking. You hold the fate of another human being in your hands, so I expect you to consider this question very seriously. But be assured that the State will show that one fact is not in question. A 41-year-old woman is dead and gone. And why is she dead? We will prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Dr. Nico Antone thought nothing of murdering his wife and depriving his only son of his mother.” Hamilton pointed to me once again, and then he departed from the podium.

The Ghost of Nico’s Future had spoken. I felt a hundred pair of eyes scrutinizing my every motion. I wanted to shrink into my oaken chair.

“Amateur hour is over,” Martinovich wrote on his legal pad. Then he stood to address the jury. He looked calm, confident, and at ease. This was his stage, and Martinovich was as much an actor as he was a litigator. Game on.

“This is a simple case,” Martinovich said in a soft voice. He made eye contact with each of the twelve members of the jury before he spoke again. “The evidence will show that insulin killed Alexandra Antone. The evidence will not show who gave her that insulin. The evidence will not show when she received that insulin.