Mercy

CHAPTER 24

Imposing.

That was the first word that popped into Julie’s head as she stood at the base of a twenty-foot-high wall topped by razor wire. The sun appeared as a pale disc behind a thin cover of clouds. It was Election Day in the Commonwealth, but the inmates would not be voting. Julie did up the top button of her camel hair coat to protect herself from a chilly November wind. The gray prison walls matched a bleak landscape that held all the warmth of a morgue.

Aerial photos of MCI Cedar Junction that Julie had sourced online showed something that resembled a college campus with concrete and brick buildings nestled close together, grassy areas for inmate recreation, blacktop basketball courts, and even a regulation-size baseball field. From the ground Julie found it stark and profoundly intimidating. The massive walls kept out all noise, even birdsong, and the eerie quiet heightened her anxiety.

Julie parked in the visitor lot adjacent to the institution rotary and locked her car as required by prison rules. She followed signs to the visitor-processing trap and wondered again why it had such an ominous-sounding name. She half expected to find protesters camped out front of the prison entrance, but without news cameras they had no audience and no reason to be there.

She pulled open the glass and metal doors to the front entrance and stepped into an austere lobby, sterile as any hospital ward. Julie swallowed hard as she approached the reception area, barricaded behind Plexiglas. She knew to leave her valuables in the car, including the engagement ring Sam had given her.

Underneath her coat, Julie had on black slacks and a white blouse because she had no idea what one should wear to a prison visit. She wanted something benign, not too dressy, but not too casual either, and hoped she had struck the right note. Turned out she was the best dressed here. Some of the other visitors (all of them women, who came in a variety of shapes, sizes, and colors) wore uniforms for retail jobs, or had on casual clothing such as baggy sweats and oversized shirts. These were hardened women who appeared to have led hard lives and were connected somehow to the hard men locked inside. Julie interacted with people from all walks of life at her job, so this part of the experience was not especially unnerving.

A heavyset woman wearing the red shirt/khaki pants uniform of a Target employee tried to pull open the entrance door. It was locked from the inside and Julie then understood the meaning of the visitor trap. This was a prison. You could get in, but you could not get out.

Following prison policy, Julie had scheduled her visit forty-eight hours earlier, and slept poorly for two nights. Her thoughts swirled with possibilities as she tried to make a connection between a high-profile inmate in the state’s maximum-security prison and her deceased fiancé. She got in line behind four other women and waited her turn at the processing window. Nobody spoke. This place did not lend itself to friendly chitchat.

A stern-faced woman dressed in a blue uniform took Julie’s ID and ran it through a series of checks. Julie spent several minutes filling out the necessary forms. Once approved, Julie slipped her coat inside a locker and then passed through a metal detector on her way to the secured steel door just beyond. A trap guard, bigger than BC quarterback Max Hartsock, opened the heavy door as soon as everyone in the group had cleared the metal detector.

Julie followed the phalanx down a long, brightly lit corridor. There were no shadows here, probably by design. The door slammed shut behind her and Julie’s heart jumped a little.

They marched in silence with the guard leading the way. Julie listened to the lonely slap of her footsteps against the linoleum flooring. The life energy here was utterly alien. She could not imagine a worse place a person could be.

Taking her assigned seat on a tall-backed metal stool, Julie turned it to face a scuffed Plexiglas divider marked by handprints and coated with a film of prison grime. Her side of the room was a big open space. A meager splash of sunlight filtered in through a row of hopper windows ten feet off the ground and covered in mesh wire. Other visitors took up the remaining stools and waited. They appeared practiced at this and far more at ease than Julie, who clutched her hands in nervous anticipation.

On the other side of the glass partition was a room big enough to walk single file. Julie could see a single metal door off to the left. At precisely 12:30 P.M. a loud buzzer sounded and a guard opened the door. In shuffled a row of severe-looking men, who, like the visitors, came in a variety of shapes, sizes, and colors.

Each man took a seat at his assigned window and the room instantly filled with chatter, indiscriminate as at any party. A man carrying a large manila envelope seated himself in front of Julie. She recognized him from various media reports, but he looked like a phantom of the image splashed across the evening news.

Julie’s first thought was that Brandon Stahl was too frail to survive in here, among such men. He had a thin build, delicate face, and a smallish head topped by a wavy mop of brown hair that descended past his forehead to tickle his eyes. A full goatee, peppered with gray hairs, could not offset the liability of Brandon’s high cheekbones, and did not give him the prison look of the other inmates. He had on a beige uniform reminiscent of the nurse’s scrubs he’d once worn. The short sleeves revealed no tattoos, not that they would have made him any more threatening. His sunken eyes, dark like the rings surrounding them, conveyed profound sadness. Years behind bars had not hardened Brandon, but appeared to have drained him of life force.

After he settled, Brandon pushed a few strands of hair away from his face, picked up the phone on his side of the divider, and indicated Julie should do the same.

“Thank you for coming to see me,” Brandon said into the phone.

He had the compassionate, gentle voice of a nurse-a tone she knew so well. Compared to the other voices Julie heard rattling about the visitation room, abrasive and angry as blaring horns, Brandon spoke with the sweet timbre of a flute.

Someone thinks that condition is the reason I’m going to die in prison. Brandon’s words came back to her. Was it possible Julie was speaking with an innocent man?

“Needless to say, I was surprised by your call,” Julie said. “I’m eager to know how you think your case is connected to Sam Talbot. And how you even know anything about him, or me, for that matter.”

“You’ve been putting out a lot of queries online. That’s how I know about you.”

Julie believed him. She and Michelle had spent several hours posting to various Web-based resources looking for a takotsubo expert. This man serving a life sentence had been her only bite.

“I didn’t know you had access to the Internet in prison.”

“It’s limited,” Brandon said. “But that’s not how I found out about you.”

“I thought you said-”

“That’s how my secret admirer found out about you.”

“Secret admirer?”

“I have someone who believes in my innocence. He or she, I don’t know, discovered your posts and brought them to my attention. My admirer also included your cell phone number.”

The revelation unnerved Julie more than a little. Someone knew enough about her to pass along private information to a convicted murderer.

“Do you have any idea who this secret admirer of yours could be?”

“None,” Brandon said. “But I’ll tell you this. It’s someone who really knows medicine.”

“A doctor?”

“That’s what I’m thinking.”

“What can I do for you, Brandon? Why is it you wanted to meet with me?”

Brandon thought a moment.

“How much do you know about my story?”

“Only what I’ve heard on the news.”

This was a bit of a lie. Julie had done extensive research on the Colchester murder case before her visit. She wanted to be prepared, but did not want Brandon to think she came here with any prejudgment. For this meeting to be of value, Brandon had to believe Julie could be an ally in his fight.

“I didn’t kill Donald Colchester. Donald wanted to die, but I didn’t help him.”

This part of Brandon Stahl’s case had been well documented during the sensational trial that took place several years ago. Donald Colchester suffered from end-stage ALS. The ravages of his disease had taken a significant toll, and prior to his death, Donald had become totally paralyzed. Though he was never a patient in Julie’s ICU, Donald lived at White Memorial as a permanent resident in the long-term acute-care floor where Brandon once worked as a nurse.

Julie had reviewed Donald Colchester’s medical records before this visit. She saw no reports of recurrent infections, pneumonia, sepsis, or kidney inflammation, all of which were common when an ALS patient neared death. He had maintained his body weight, and had no unexplained or refractory fevers, no changes in his level of consciousness. His labs showed no decrease in oxygen saturation, or an increase in tumor markers. Eventually he would present with all of those symptoms and more. But at the time of his death, Donald Colchester, same as Sam Talbot, was paralyzed and wanting to die, but incapable of committing suicide.

“You say you didn’t kill Donald Colchester, but then how do you explain the recording?” Julie asked.

“I just told him that I’d help him die because he was so miserable. That’s all he ever wanted. I said it thinking he would forget it or get over it. I just wanted to give him a little bit of comfort because he was in so much pain. I told him I’d use morphine, so he’d know it wouldn’t hurt. Sometimes words heal more than medicine, you know? All I did was give him a little hope that his suffering would end soon, but I never would kill him-and I didn’t.”

The recording was the smoking-gun piece of evidence presented at Brandon Stahl’s trial. And it had come into existence in a rather scandalous way. Donald’s father, William Colchester, a Massachusetts state legislator representing the Fourteenth Suffolk District, became convinced the insurance company and hospital were denying Donald medical services that would improve his quality of life.

The senior Colchester received support from Very Much Alive and other players in the world of health-care checks and balances. According to Michelle, with whom Julie had spoken about Colchester’s case in generalities, denying care was a common practice these days, and something her organization would have fought staunchly to address.

The lawsuit filed by William Colchester attracted massive media attention because it was the representative’s son at the center. The suit was ultimately dismissed due to a lack of evidence. However, William Colchester remained unconvinced. He took matters into his own hands and rigged his son’s hospital room with a microphone to record conversations. He wanted to hear a doctor or nurse denying some treatment because of cost. What he heard instead was Brandon Stahl agreeing to help his son die.

“Donald Colchester begged me to kill him every single day. That’s on the recording, too, if you give it a listen.”

Julie felt a stab of pain as she recalled Sam begging the same of her.

Kill me, Julie… Please help me die.

“How long after Donald’s death did that recording surface?”

“Weeks,” Brandon said. “The media would have you think it was William Colchester banging the drum to get better care for his kid, but that’s a load of crap. It was the mother, Pamela Colchester, behind it all. She was always on our case about giving her son the very best care. The dad was always pretty detached. I bet you anything bugging the room was her doing and not the father’s.

“It was the mother who gave the recording a listen, no surprise there. The surprise came when she heard my promise, and I got arrested for murder. By then, Donald was already in the ground.”

“What happened next?”

“My lawyers fought to get the evidence tossed. The Massachusetts wiretapping statue basically says it’s illegal to record someone without a person’s knowledge. They won. The evidence was thrown out, and the Colchesters were fined and given probation for the illegal wiretap. The case should have been dismissed.”

“Except there was a witness,” Julie said.

“Except there was a witness,” Brandon repeated. “I knew the nurse who testified that she heard me make that promise to kill Donald.”

“Sherri Platt,” Julie said.

Sherri Platt had been big news during the trial years ago, and big news once again because of Brandon’s failed appeal. Brandon’s lawyers had argued during appeal that Sherri’s testimony was improperly introduced during trial. The appeals judge did not agree.

“Why do you think Sherri waited to come forward during the trial?”

“She said she felt compelled to tell the truth when news broke that the wiretap evidence was ruled inadmissible.”

“And you don’t deny saying it?”

“I said it, all right. But I didn’t mean it. Like I told you, I was trying to ease this guy’s suffering. Placate him, you know? It’s like a kid begging you to go somewhere. Sometimes you just make a promise without meaning it just to get them to stop asking. It was a stupid thing to say. Obviously, I regret it.”

“As I recall, that wasn’t the only bit of evidence against you,” Julie said.

Brandon gave a nod. “Yeah, police found morphine in my apartment.”

“Morphine stolen from White. Can you explain that?”

“No,” Brandon said. “But I didn’t take any drugs.”

“No autopsy,” Julie said.

“For a guy with end-stage ALS? Why bother?”

“And the court wouldn’t exhume the body?” Julie said. “Cause of death could still be determined, I would think.”

“My lawyer filed a request and the prosecution didn’t object. Things were moving forward when BAM! The prosecution files a motion to deny the request. Suddenly Daddy Colchester is all upset about the idea of digging up his boy. The judge sides with Colchester, something about not revealing significant exculpatory evidence.”

“Who was the judge?” Julie asked.

“The Honorable Robert Josephson, who, by the way, became a superior court judge a year after my trial. And guess which legislator was on the committee that appoints the judges to state court?”

“Um, William Colchester?”

Brandon broke into a lopsided smile. “That’s right. You ask me, I’d say Judge Josephson got some favorable treatment for putting the kibosh on our motion to exhume the body.”

“Why?”

Brandon shrugged. “No idea. I don’t know how the morphine got in my apartment, either. Maybe William Colchester got cold feet about seeing his boy dug up. Or maybe someone made it worth Colchester’s while to flex some political muscle.”

“What does your secret admirer say about all this?”

Brandon opened the manila envelope he’d carried in with him. “I received this in the mail during the initial trial.”

He held a piece of paper up against the window so that Julie could read the typewritten note for herself.

Your defense team is focused on the wrong issue. Forget about the wiretap evidence. Look closely at the enclosed EKG of Donald Colchester. Note the ST elevation and fairly short QT interval. Other ST-T abnormalities and QT prolongation with large negative T waves occurring in succession. This readout indicates a rare heart anomaly called takotsubo cardiomyopathy. The enclosed cardiac echo shows apical ballooning consistent with takotsubo. This is a stress-based condition and the likely cause of death. Morphine did not kill him. This did.

Julie knew an echo was not routine in chest pain protocols, but Colchester’s high profile ensured that when in distress he got the full workup.

“If you can cast doubt on the morphine theory-”

“I’m probably a free man,” Brandon said.

“Show me the EKG and echo, please,” Julie said.

Her pulse ticked up as Brandon fished out the images enclosed with the letter. Who was his secret admirer? Julie wondered.

Julie could not believe an inmate had access to Colchester’s private files. What she could believe was that the data existed. White Memorial had a state-of-the-art EMR-electronic medical records-system that uploaded patient data to the cloud. Years of data were collected and kept on permanent record. What Brandon showed her matched what Julie had seen in Colchester’s electronic medical record. It was convincing, but she would want a cardiologist to have a look.

“What did your defense team do with this evidence?”

“ST-T abnormalities? QT prolongation? What do you think they did? They ignored it,” Brandon said.

“Ignored?”

“Look, my parents are dead, I’m a bachelor. I didn’t have a lot of cash on hand to begin with. I spent my entire life savings on my defense, which wasn’t much. Sure, my team brought it up. Even hired a medical expert, some internist who couldn’t explain how to tie a shoe. The prosecution’s pathologists and medical experts argued pretty convincingly that the EKG and echo didn’t show anything significant enough to have caused Donald’s death. Heck, I believed them.”

Julie understood. Ninety-five percent of takotsubo cases resolved with a complete recovery. An old adage in medicine went: Common things occur commonly. Combine the low probability of a fatal takotsubo event with an eyewitness who heard Brandon offer to kill Donald Colchester and morphine in Brandon’s apartment, and the result was a life sentence with no possibility for parole.

“What do you want me to do?” Julie said. “Why did you call?”

“Help me prove that Donald Colchester died of the same thing that killed your husband.”

Julie stiffened. “He was my fiancé.”

“I’m sorry, my mistake,” Brandon said. “And I’m deeply sorry for your loss. But listen, Doc, I’m going to spend the rest of my life in prison for a crime I didn’t commit. Somebody thinks you’re the only person who can help prove my innocence. I don’t know you very well, but I’m willing to believe whoever sent me this information knows what the hell they’re talking about.”