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.”