Chapter 115
OVERRIDING THE PROTEST from the director of security at Metropolitan Hospital, Conklin and I took the two empty seats at the back of an amphitheater above an operating room.
The room was packed with interns and specialists. Two monitors showed close-ups of the operating table fifteen feet below, and cameras exported streaming video to medical people all over the country who wanted to see Candace Martin perform heart surgery on Leon Antin, a legendary seventy-five-year-old violinist with the San Francisco Symphony.
The patient was draped in blue, his rib cage separated and his heart open to the bright lights. Candace Martin was accompanied by other doctors, nurses, and an anesthesiologist operating the cardiac-bypass machine.
A young intern sat to my right, Dr. Ryan Pitt, according to the ID tag pinned to his pocket, and he was currently bringing me up to speed.
According to Pitt, this
was a complex operation under any circumstances, but even more so because of the patient’s age.
Pitt said, “The surgery is not going to improve his longevity by much — he’s an ASA class four. That’s high-risk. But the patient wanted his chance now that Dr. Martin was available. He just wanted his friend to do the surgery. Only her.”
Pitt explained that in the previous three hours, two of Antin’s veins had been harvested from his thighs and three of four grafts had been implanted into the coronary arteries. Dr. Martin was stitching in the last implant now.
I was staring at the screen above my head when I saw the medical personnel suddenly become highly agitated. Green lines jumped on the monitors below, and Candace Martin began shouting at the anesthesiologist while massaging Antin’s heart with her hands.
I said to the intern, “What is this? What’s going on?”
Pitt spoke pure medicalese, but I got the drift. The patient’s heart was beat-up and worn out, and it refused to work anymore. Dr. Martin was spraying curses all around the operating room, but she wasn’t giving up.
Needles went into IVs. Paddles were applied to Antin’s exposed heart, and then, once again, Candace Martin massaged the heart with her hands, begging her friend to stay with her. Demanding it.
After it was clear, even to me, that the patient wasn’t coming back, a nurse pulled Candace away, and a doctor pronounced the time of the patient’s death.
Candace ripped off her mask and made a rapid and direct line for the door. The video cameras blinked off.
I heard my name, turned toward the exit, and saw the security director beckoning to Conklin and me.
Security said, “Can I see that warrant again, please?”
Conklin took it out of his inside jacket pocket. The security chief read it and said, “Dr. Martin is in the locker room. Please follow me.”
We found Candace Martin still in her bloody scrubs, sitting on a bench, staring at a wall of lockers. I asked her to stand up, and she looked at me as though she didn’t recognize me. Conklin showed her the warrant and told her we were taking her into custody for the murder of her husband.
All the fight seemed to have gone out of her.
Chapter 116
YUKI AND I sat across a small metal table from Candace Martin and Phil Hoffman. Hoffman looked as he always did: contained, dressed for a press conference at a moment’s notice. Candace Martin looked like she’d been dragged by her hair through hell.
I was angry, feeling the calm before an emotional storm, pissed off at myself for the first time since Hoffman buffaloed me into getting involved in this case. But I’d done it, believed Candace Martin’s lies, and if I didn’t want to be patrolling the Mission in a squad car for the next year, I had to make this mess turn out right.
Yuki said, “Dr. Martin, it’s over. We’ve spoken with Caitlin’s shrink. She has recanted her testimony. She said she didn’t kill her father. She said that her father forced himself on her, yes. But she said you did the shooting.
“The People are ready to proceed with your trial, or you can tell us what really happened.”
Hoffman said, “I need to consult with my client. And she needs a little time to get her wits together. She’s suffering a grave personal loss.”
I was almost lit up with fury, the fighting-mad kind that you can control but just don’t want to. I said, “Phil, you have lied to me, your client has lied to me, and she tried to get us to look at an innocent person for murder.
“Ask me how much I care about her personal loss. Not. At. All. This woman killed her husband. She’s cooked, and this is her only chance to make a deal.”
Candace was shaking her head, her face contorted in pain. “You don’t understand.”
I was unmoved.