I am imbued with all the law-school notions about doctors. That they subscribe to a different view of social stratification than the rest of us. In their eyes they are at the top of any pecking order. Don their white smocks, and the waters must part for them. Underlying all this is the notion that since medicine is grounded on good intentions, bad results should be ignored. This starts with the scrub nurse and ends with the hospital administrator, for whom the fudging of a few medical records is considered a virtue.
In my first meeting with Crone, I sensed that he was different. He was canny in the way that most successful people are. He did not want to offend the politicians who had put me in touch with him, but wanted to ease me to the door without wasting too much of his valuable time. I sensed that he had seen enough death in his time that the passing of one more child wasn’t going to keep him up at night. It wasn’t that he was hard-hearted, only that he was a creature of statistics, and Penny Boyd’s chances on the scale of probabilities were dismal. On that point he had me.
He was a man of research science, which meant that if the issue didn’t fit into a statistical standard deviation, his mind began to wander. Yes, the child was condemned to death. It happened all the time, all over the world. The fact remained that there were not enough children afflicted with Huntington’s chorea to justify statistical inclusion of children in the current therapeutic studies.
As the director of clinical studies for genetic research, he’d make the call on whether Penny would be admitted. Crone explained that the protocols had already been written. These were tied to grants, private and federal money that was rigorously monitored by auditors. Then there was the question of liability. If he were to look the other way and allow Penny to slip through the gate and something went wrong, the university, and Crone himself, could be on the hook.
He was a man with a history of controversy. In the late seventies he came under fire for research that led him into the political minefield of racial genetics. He had published two scholarly papers on the subject and found himself the target of student demonstrations and stern rebukes from administrators who didn’t need that kind of attention.
So when I approached him regarding Penny, Crone had a veritable bookful of arguments, none of them the kind of answers I could take back to the Boyds. Increasingly their concern was for the other two children. Though I got the sense that Frank never really accepted this, I could tell that in Doris’s mind Penny was already gone. She loved the child, but she was losing her and there was nothing she could do. She saw Penny dying by the inch. Frank and Doris hoped that Penny could be admitted to the study. No matter how slim, it was her only chance. If she didn’t make it, at least she was of the same genetic strain as the other two Boyd children. Anything the researchers learned might be used to help them-that is, if they tested positive for the disease.
Crone had a zillion arguments why he shouldn’t do it at all, a boatload of downsides, not the least of which was the fact that it might un-track the studies that were soon to start and were already funded. It would require a major infusion of new research money. I stopped arguing. There was nothing I could say. In my own mind, I was headed for the door. I started making small talk, changing the subject, when he looked at me, smiled and said: “You give up too easily.”
I was dumbfounded.
“Have you ever written a grant proposal?” he asked.
I said no.
“Actually, it would take an amendment. Would you like to learn?”
I smiled, almost laughed out loud, and for six weeks through the fall and early winter we spent evenings and weekends hunched over a computer in my office, typing. I was useless. Crone did it all. Dictated the language, showed me the pitfalls, and finally sent the bundle to the gods of funding in the university administration. In the end it was all for naught, but not for want of trying.
Harry and I have had our problems with Crone, but for me it always comes back to the same issue: How do you question a man who has done this? Put his body on the blocks for a child he didn’t even know. It may be stupid, but it is the reason I cannot believe he killed Kalista Jordan.
Our efforts went up in smoke. Competing applications for grant money on other research dried up the funds that might have been available for the children’s portion of the Huntington’s study. A few weeks later, Crone was arrested for Jordan’s murder and the rest is history.
“Never thought I’d be pulling for a man accused of murder,” says Doris. Then she thinks of what she’s just said to the man who is defending him.
“No offense. It’s just that I’ve never been involved with anyone arrested before. How long could this last?”
“It could go on for weeks, perhaps months. And if he’s convicted. .”
“You don’t think that’ll happen?”
“I don’t think he did it, but I can’t predict what a jury will do.”
“Maybe he could talk to somebody at the university? Get them to take another look at the funding request?” she says.
“Unfortunately, he lost whatever pull he had within the university when they arrested him.”
“Oh.” Her expression sags in a way that tells me she has been harboring this hope for a few days.
“He’s been placed on unpaid leave pending the outcome of his trial.”
Fortunately, Crone is financially independent, able to pay my fees without strain. I am told he has family wealth, eastern roots. His great-grandfather was one of the railroad barons of the mid-Atlantic states. All I know is that my bill, computed on an hourly basis, is paid every month without question by an accounting firm in the Big Apple, and the checks don’t bounce.
“Maybe if he was out on bail the university would see it differently?” she says.
I explain to her that the court has already denied bail. And even if they did let him out pending trial, the university would never reinstate him as project director. Not while the case is pending. Crone is charged with killing a fellow employee of the university. This has implications. A possible lawsuit for damages.
“Oh.”
I can’t get into the details, but the fact that Kalista Jordan filed a sexual-harassment claim before she was killed places the employer on thin ice. Their lawyers are already conjuring thoughts of civil liability, wrongful death with the university as a party on grounds that they permitted a hostile work environment.
This leaves only one thought in Doris’s mind: that I must win the case, and do it quickly.
I’m not even sure this will change the landscape. “You should steel yourself to the possibility that none of this may help,” I tell her. “The funds are probably gone. The study may be too far along for them to change it at this stage.”
“I don’t want to think about that.” Doris is in denial.
“We may not be able to get her in, and even if we do, effective gene therapies may be a long way off.”
“I know. But I can’t think about that.”
“There’s something else,” I tell her. “The possibility that even if Dr. Crone is acquitted, the university may not reinstate him.”
This is something she hasn’t considered.
“Why not? Why wouldn’t they?” Her eyes are now large and round with indignation. Crone is the only person in a position to help her child, and I am now telling her that even this may be an illusion.
“Embarrassment. Public humiliation. The university may want to stay clear of the scandal even if the jury is not convinced that Crone killed the woman. It’s a fact that reasonable doubt is not the same thing as a social seal of approval. Crone is going to be carrying a lot of baggage when this is over, no matter what happens.”
“So what do we do?” she says.
“We may have invested too much hope,” I tell her.