Prophet (38 page)

Deanne looked at Leslie, who nodded and said, “It’s okay.” Deanne stepped back while the two women spread the first group of documents across the table in a neat, overlapping row with just the patients’ names showing. Then Ms. Adams covered the last names with some sheets of paper, leaving only the first names exposed. At her signal, Deanne and Leslie approached the table.

“You are seeing something no one else will ever see—I hope you realize that. These are the patient charts—all the information pertaining to each patient and the service they received, filed alphabetically. You’ll notice the signed consent forms are included. We pulled everything from Ba- to Bu-, so Brewer would be in this group. You’ll notice I’ve concealed the last names. I hope you’ll scan them now and look only for the name of your daughter.”

There were at least fifty charts. They scanned down the names. They did not find an Annie, nor a Delores. Deanne’s face sank a little.

“How about Medford?” Leslie asked, hoping.

“All right, step back please,” said Ms. Spurr, and then she and Claire repeated the process, laying out the other set of files in the same way as the first, again covering the last names. “All right.”

Leslie and Deanne approached the table and scanned the names. Deanne’s heart leaped. “There she is!” She pointed at a Judy about a third of the way through the stack.

Ms. Spurr carefully pulled that file from the others, looked it over, and then risked showing it to Leslie and Deanne. “Are you sure about your daughter’s code name? This Judy’s last name is not Medford. She’s white, twenty-five, has two children already and a husband named Jack, and she was here a year and a half ago.”

Leslie grabbed at a possibility, “Perhaps the first name was wrong. Are there any Medfords in here?”

Ms. Spurr’s voice and expression were especially grim. “What I’m about to do is unlawful. But just to show you how serious I am about settling this matter . . .” She lifted the paper away from the files just
enough for them to scan the last names. “I never let people see these records, and Claire is my witness, but here—let me pull these . . .” She pulled out about a dozen files to show them. “Here, see the names? Mavis, Meacham, Mead, McKling, Medina, Meaker, Melanetti, Melvin, Mendelson, Michaels, Mitchell, Montgomery. No Medford.”

“But she’s got to be in here somewhere,” said Deanne.

Now Ms. Spurr actually used a comforting tone. “Mrs. Brewer, there are eight different abortion-providing facilities like ours in this town. Your daughter could have gone to any one of them.”

Leslie had one more card to play, “What about the schedule sheet from May 24th?”

Ms. Spurr only sighed impatiently and pulled open a file drawer and thumbed through the tabs. She found the folder for May and withdrew it, then went through the schedule sheets arranged inside. “May 24th. This year, right?”

“Right,” said Deanne.

She found the schedule. It was several pages long. She scanned it, saying, “I could simply tell you that we show no Annie Brewer or Judy Medford here, but I suppose you’ll want to violate all policy and privacy laws and see it yourselves?”

“I want to see it.” said Deanne.

Ms. Spurr held the pages so they could see them. “Please, quickly scan the names for your daughter’s names, and try to forget the rest.”

They scanned one page, and then the next. The schedule reflected about twenty to twenty-five patient names per doctor for that day.

Madonna. Leslie saw it but said nothing. The girl Mary, who told her story from behind a screen, had been here on the 24th of May, just like she said.

But there was no record of Annie Brewer or Judy Medford receiving any kind of treatment that day.

They prevailed upon Ms. Spurr to show them the schedules from the two days previous and the two days afterward, but found nothing.

“That’s it,” said Ms. Spurr. “That’s all I have. I hope I’ve satisfied you.”

Deanne didn’t raise her voice, but did firmly inquire, “Did you destroy Annie’s records?”

Ms. Spurr took the question as an insult. “Mrs. Brewer . . . this is a
medical clinic. We do not destroy patient records!”

Deanne pressed ahead. “My husband, Max, was in here, and he gave you so much trouble he got arrested. You knew who he was, and you knew the name of his daughter. You could’ve cleaned Annie’s records out of your files to protect yourselves.”

Ms. Spurr’s face turned to stone, and her eyes burned at Deanne. “Mrs. Brewer, first of all I deeply resent what you’re suggesting. But if I must argue with you, let me tell you this, and I’ll tell you only once: I could have cleaned out Annie Brewer’s files only if her files bore her real name, which they didn’t—you said so yourself. And you can ask your husband—he didn’t say anything to us about anyone named Judy Medford. I imagine neither he nor you knew anything about that false name at the time. If you didn’t know Annie used a false name, how would
I
have known it?”

Deanne was speechless—incredulous. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.

Leslie knew it was over. “C’mon, Deanne. Thank you for your time, Ms. Spurr. Sorry for the trouble.”

“I’ll see you to the door,” Ms. Spurr replied.

As they walked out of the clinic, Mel got them on videotape.

“How’d it go?” he asked when they reached the sidewalk.

“You can put the camera away,” Leslie answered. “We came up dry. Nothing. All bets are off.”

MEL STOWED THE
camera gear in the back of the NewsSix car and then watched from behind the steering wheel while Leslie saw Mrs. Brewer back to her car. It would have made a good shot if this were a news story: the clinic in the background, the pro-lifers still out there with their signs, and Mrs. Brewer weeping with her hands to her face, walking slowly up the sidewalk with the reporter holding her arm, trying to cheer her up.

What a mess,
he thought.
Leslie got into this one too deep, getting that lady’s hopes up like that, and now we have all this footage we’ll never use and a lot of the day gone. Oh well. You win some, you lose some. This wasn’t the first story to ever come up dry, no sir.

When Leslie got back in the car, she was not too conversational.

“Well . . .” was all Mel said, not sure what he’d say after that.

Leslie cussed the whole thing off and grabbed the cellular phone. “Hey, George, we’ve just finished at the Women’s Medical Center. Scratch it. The whole thing came up dry. Yeah. We’re heading for the next stop, Avalon Elementary, the self-esteem program. Are they ready for us? Okay. We’ll grab that one and see you this afternoon. Car Twelve is clear.” She slapped the phone back in its rack and went limp with pain and frustration. “Let’s go.”

Mel hit the pedal, and they sped away from the Women’s Medical Center, passing a brown van carrying some high school girls. Leslie had immersed herself in her notes for the next story and didn’t even see it.

CHAPTER 17

LESLIE GOT BACK
to the station at just about noon, ready to sum up the day in one fabulously fluffy soft feature about Carol James, the second grade teacher at Avalon Elementary School who dressed up as Mr. Gullywump to teach kids that even though we sometimes feel we’re nothing but a Gullywump, there’s a Beautiful Prince or Princess hiding inside every one of us if we’re only willing to see him or her. Charming. Heartwarming. Great video. Mr. Gullywump put his big nose right up to the camera lens for a terrific comic shot.

Quite a switch from the story that could have been. She dropped her carrying case and purse on the floor under her desk and slumped into her chair.
Please
, she thought,
nobody talk to me, nobody ask me how my day went.

She flicked on her computer terminal, trying to formulate a clever opening for the Gullywump story.

Halfheartedly tapping the keys, she came up with: “For children who feel rotten about themselves . . .” No. How about: “A second grade teacher has come up with a novel approach to teaching self-esteem . . .” Maybe, but she couldn’t get excited about it. Then: “Of all the stories we could have covered today, we chose this one . . .” Followed by “. . . d;gl;a;oiwejt;lkahsd;gh . . .”

Leslie sighed and rested her brow on her fingers, her eyes closed, shutting out the world for a moment. All she could think about, the only thing she could see in her mind’s eye, was Deanne Brewer, crushed
and disappointed, walking that long, tearful walk back to her car, wondering what she would ever tell Max. In retrospect, Leslie knew she should have stayed with Deanne longer. They should have taken time to talk it out, depressurize, regroup. She never should have left Deanne in such a state.

But they didn’t talk it out, they didn’t regroup, and Leslie did not stay. She had the Gullywump story to do, the ever-so-important Gullywump assignment. Time was tight, deadlines were approaching, she had her assignment to do.

She had to call Deanne. That was all there was to it. They had to talk it out. It wasn’t over yet. What about Mary, that anonymous girl hiding behind the screen? She’d been there at the clinic that day. Her false name, Madonna, was still in the records. Her story checked out. Everything else checked out.

Annie’d been in the clinic that day. Leslie was sure of it.

So why was there no record of it?

And why was Alena Spurr willing to go out on such a long, shaky limb to show them the records against all established ethics and procedure, unless . . .

The conclusion was as easy as it was disturbing. The clinic destroyed the records. Cleaned them out completely. They could have done it after Max first caused them trouble.

Okay, so how did they know to clean out Judy Medford’s records?

“Leslie!”

Leslie looked up and saw . . . Tina Lewis, beckoning from her office door.

Leslie stared, then glared as her mind began to race. She felt she’d been hit with a brick.
Careful, Leslie. Don’t jump to conclusions. You don’t know for sure.

Oh, don’t I now! Didn’t Tina see the name Judy Medford in my notes yesterday? Why that—

Careful!
Leslie wanted to curse silently, but Tina was familiar with the language and would read her lips. She took a deep breath, composed herself, got up from her desk, weaved through the rows of desks and computer terminals, and followed Tina into her office.

“How’d it go this morning?” Tina asked, circling behind her desk.

As if you didn’t know!
“It didn’t. We shot footage of the clinic and
Mrs. Brewer approaching the clinic, some pro-lifers, some cars parked outside—the whole nine yards. But when we got inside, the Request for Medical Records came up dry. We didn’t find a thing. It’s a non-story.”

Tina sat down. “Well, things have changed. It’s a story now, and we have to run it.”

That was like a punch in the stomach Leslie wasn’t braced for. “Excuse me?”

“Abortion’s a big issue in the gubernatorial campaign, and the candidates were talking about it today. On top of that, Channel 12 and Channel 8 got wind of what happened at the Women’s Medical Center and sent crews down there. I hear they’ve interviewed the Brewers and the director of the clinic, and I suspect they’re both going to be running a piece on it tonight.”

Leslie could not help the accusing tone of her question. “I would be fascinated to know how they found out about it.”

Tina shrugged innocently. “I guess the clinic called them.”

Leslie repeated the words, having a very hard time swallowing them. “The clinic called them . . .” Would Tina actually spill a story to the competition just to make sure the story would run? Could she do such a thing?

Tina was still talking. “But, hey, who came up with the idea in the first place? We were right down there, right when it was happening. Mel tells me he got video of Mrs. Brewer walking up to the front door of the place. You’ve had a relationship with the Brewers for quite some time now. We could outshine the competition on this one.”

“And I’m very curious to know the angle . . .”

“The abortion issue. Use the material you’ve gathered and put something together along the lines of, ‘The abortion battle is still with us, and here’s another example of it, another skirmish.’ We’ll tie it in with the campaign story.”

Leslie tried to keep her voice down, but the content of her words imparted her rising fury. “Don’t you mean something more like, ‘another failed attempt by anti-abortionists to skirt the privacy laws’?”

“Well, if that’s what happened, we should report it.”

Leslie was just now beginning to believe she was really hearing this, and her acting ability was giving out. She could not hide her anger.
“Tina . . . I told you what the story was about . . . malpractice . . . an innocent girl killed . . . parents at a loss, unable to do anything about it. That’s the story I went after, and that story, as far as I’m concerned, is dead. It’s over.”

Tina gave a little shrug and a tilt of her head. “You got something else instead, and we can use it. So your work paid off.”

Leslie was trying to find a thought she could actually speak. “I can’t . . . Tina, the Brewers trusted me. They confided in me. I can’t turn this story around and make it say something it wasn’t meant to say.”