False Accusations by Jacobson, Alan (great novels of all time .txt) 📕

Valentine held his gaze, but did not ask a follow up question.

Coleman directed the focus back to him. “Were you, as president of the Consortium, in the position to dictate who was hired and who was fired?”

“I had input, but Michael Murphy, the regional executive officer, does the hiring and firing.”

“Let’s get back to the night of September eleventh. After you got home and ate dinner, what did you do?”

“I don’t remember. Probably read a journal article or watched television.”

“You’re married, aren’t you, doctor?”

Hellman pulled his client close and whispered into his ear.

Madison did not react, but then faced Valentine. “Yes.”

“Was your wife at home on the night of September eleventh?”

He again consulted his calendar. “No. She and my children were visiting a relative out of town.”

“Hmm,” remarked Coleman. “Did anyone—”

“Look, detectives,” Hellman said, “with all due respect, I think we’re done here. We’ve cooperated and it’s getting late; it’s enough for one night, and Dr. Madison has surgery scheduled for early tomorrow morning.”

“Can I see your calendar, doctor?”

Madison glanced at Hellman, who took the DayTracker and looked at it again. Flipped a couple of pages, read the entries. “You can look at September eleventh and October first,” he said, handing Coleman the wallet opened to the correct location.

The detective scanned the pages. “Okay,” he said, closing the wallet and returning it to Madison. He looked over at Valentine, who gave him a nod. “Thanks for your time.”

CHAPTER 22

BRITTANY HARDING was pacing back and forth in front of her coffee table, smoking a Marlboro. “What do you mean you don’t have enough evidence?”

Detective Coleman stepped to his right in an attempt to avoid the lingering cloud of smoke. “I mean we don’t have enough to charge the man with anything. We talked with him and he seemed pretty credible. It didn’t look like he had anything to hide. I even saw his calendar. There was nothing in there mentioning you on September eleventh.”

“Rape is a very serious charge, Miss Harding,” Valentine said. “We usually like to make it stick when we arrest someone. It’s painful enough for you to have to relive the experience, to go through it in public during the trial. We want to make sure we have enough to put the guy away. Right now, we don’t. It’s hard enough even when we have all the evidence we need.”

“Unless there’s some piece of evidence, someone who saw you there at his house that night,” Coleman said, “we don’t even have any proof that you were there, let alone raped. If you’d come in right after, we could’ve done a rape kit—”

“I told you, I was embarrassed. He’s a powerful, well-regarded man. I didn’t know what would happen if I went to the police.”

“How about the clothes you were wearing?” Valentine asked. “That’d be a start, if you haven’t washed them. They’d still have his semen on them.”

Harding took a puff on her cigarette. “I threw them out. They got torn when he ripped them off me. I could’ve had them repaired, but to be honest with you, just seeing them reminded me of what he did to me.” She took another drag. “But I’ve got the belt I was wearing that night. He touched it while unbuckling it. You can see if his fingerprints are on it.”

“You haven’t worn it since September eleventh?” Valentine asked.

Harding shook her head. “It only goes with two outfits—the one I threw out, and a pantsuit I haven’t worn since then.”

“We’ll take it,” Coleman said, “but we need something to prove that you were in his house that night. We might then be able to link the fingerprints on the belt, if there are any, to the fact that you were in his home.”

“It’s a reach,” Valentine said, “but you never know. It may give us enough to rattle him, at least get him to admit that the two of you were together that night and that something happened.”

Harding blew a puff of smoke toward the ceiling and watched it rise. “How about a couple of phone calls?”

“Phone calls?”

“Yeah. I made a couple of calls while I was there, before he attacked me. One was to my mother, and one to my sister. I’ll give you the numbers. Check his phone bill.”

“Now we’re cooking,” Valentine said. She pulled out her pad and made a note of the numbers. “We’ll be in touch in a few days.”

“Don’t forget the belt,” she said, the trail of smoke following her like a snake as she disappeared into her bedroom.

CHAPTER 23

ELEVEN DAYS PASSED without event. Neither Madison nor Hellman had heard anything from the detectives, and Hellman assured him that no news was good news—if they had enough to charge him, they would have already done so. Still, Madison’s concentration was off; he had difficulty focusing on the patients while they were talking to him during their examinations. His mind kept coming back to the Harding matter, and what it could mean to him and his family should they arrest him and charge him with sexual misconduct.

He reasoned that about the only charge that could be more damaging to a physician would be rape. Being innocent had nothing to do with it: given the nature of the difficulties in obtaining definitive evidence in sexual misconduct cases—unless there were witnesses, generally it was one person’s word against another’s. The charge would stick and remain in the collective mind of the public for years to come.

If he was found not guilty, they would say it was because of a lack of evidence, her word against that of a prominent surgeon; if he was found guilty, not only would he be a victim of a sick mind, but it would no doubt destroy his family.

No matter how it turned out, it would haunt him for the rest of his medical career, hanging over his head like a lead umbrella.

The red light on his phone was flashing when he