The Near Death Experience (Thaddeus Murfee Legal Thriller Series Book 10)

by John Ellsworth

“The machine was breathing for her. But you’re right, her heart was beating.”

  “That’s enough to get to the jury. I say go for it. Argue that this Dr. Sewell himself came back from the dead. I read his book on the plane. It’s pretty damn interesting, by the way.”

  “They’re making a big production out of brain death versus brain activity.”

  “Yeah, he goes over that in his book, too. He was definitely brain dead and he definitely came back to life.”

  “No shit? I better read that tonight.”

  “Download it from Amazon. It’s only about nine bucks. Take you all of three hours to get through. But be sure to look at the medical records in the back of the book. He’s got his EEG there. Shows very clearly there was no brain activity when he suddenly opened his eyes and said hello to the family.”

  An electric shock pulsed up the D.A.’s broad back. “Shit, Connie, that’s exactly my case here!”

  The detective said, thoughtfully, “Then I suppose that makes the defendant your best witness. You can ask him about what happened to him.”

  “But only if they allow him to testify.”

  “They have to allow him to testify. Or have you forgotten he says that the reason he did all this was because her spirit asked him to set her free?”

  “Yes, that’s true. He has to get up on the stand and explain that. Otherwise he looks like a rank killer.”

  “Exactly. I don’t want to tell you how to do your job or anything, but you can also cross-examine Dr. Sewell’s expert witness, the neurologist, by using Sewell’s own book. Don’t forget that.”

  “Connie, you’re brilliant,” said Sanders, taking a huge slug of bourbon. “I’m really glad we talked.”

  “You hadn’t come up with this shit on your own?”

  “Of course I had. I just wanted to see if there was anything else you hadn’t told me besides the money they voted to themselves.”

  “We’re back on that? Turns out I did tell you. Read the fucking memo, Gary.”

  “All right. Well, look, how’s your sister?”

  “My mom? Not good.”

  “Well, give her my best.”

  “I would, but she’s unconscious. Is that all you had?”

  “Guess so. Thanks for picking up.”

  “Goes with the job, Mr. D.A.”

  “Right. So long.”

  51

  Bill Bernhardt from L.A. XFBI flew over to Flagstaff. He wanted to deliver the news personally and help take action before it was too late.

  He caught Thaddeus at the office, just before he left for home.

  “Bill,” said Thaddeus, and extended his hand to shake.

  “Not now,” muttered Bernhardt anxiously, and flopped into a chair across from Thaddeus. “This can’t wait. Your man we backgrounded? Straight from Mascari’s nest in Termini, Sicily.

  “No way.”

  “I’ve got men swarming him but he doesn’t know it. We’ve intercepted his cell calls. Hopefully we’ll learn how far this thing spreads.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning it’s very likely he’s not here in the U.S. alone. That’s our fear.”

  “So we’re not taking him down yet. How do we protect Katy?”

  “We’re having Peak reassign him to the office for special training. So far he’s going along with it. He’s been told it will only take about a week and then he’s out in the field again.”

  “So we’ve got a week of holding our breath at home, hoping he doesn’t shoot out our windows again.”

  “I can promise you that won’t happen. He’s swarmed and he doesn’t have a clue.”

  “I wouldn’t count on that.”

  “We’re not counting on it either. But we’re not going to turn him out. Not yet, Thaddeus.”

  “I can tell you, Bill, you don’t have my support in this. When I see a roach I step on it. He’s pure roach, as far as I’m concerned.”

  “We’re thinking bigger than that, Thad. You’re just going to have to trust me this time. Don’t ever forget: Mascari has still got a small army of thugs operating in Chicago. Luchesi has their full support. We are certain of that.”

  “Why? Has he been in contact with them?”

  “He’s been in contact with several numbers we’ve located on the ground. So far, Chicago and its environs are not included.”

  “What is?”

  “Local stuff, mostly. Pizza deliveries. Call girls. That sort of thing.”

  “Sounds like a hell of a guy. Well, let me tell you this. If I see him loose before you see him, it’s over. He’s dead on the spot. I can promise you that.”

  “Thaddeus, if you see him on the loose and we’re not one step behind, you have my permission. Do what you will if that’s the case. But it won’t be.”

  “You don’t have my vote, but you have my assent. That’s as good as it gets right now.”

  “That’s good enough. I don’t need your vote. I’ve got eleven ex-FBI agents on the ground here. This guy’s toast.”

  “So be it.”

  Thaddeus shuddered as the men sat staring at one another.

  The guy had actually been inside his house, alone with Katy.

  His breath caught in his throat and he coughed and uncapped a water bottle.

  Inside his house. That wasn’t going to happen again.

  The guy should be so lucky XFBI got to him first. Had it been Thaddeus it would all be over. He checked his watch. He wondered what the guy’s hours were inside Peak’s office.

  Maybe he would pay a visit there.

  Bernhardt abruptly brought him back to the moment.

  “I know what you’re thinking, Thad. Do not go there. Stay the hell away from Peak.”

  Thaddeus grimaced. His world-class poker face wasn’t so world-class.

  He would remember that for next time.

  * * *

  The CPA lugged into the courtroom a CPA briefcase as big as a dishwasher. It was tall, wide, deep and black and featured brass hinges on the top where the loading door opened up. Jack Millerton’s shoulder ached from the weight of the documents and books he had brought along just in case—just in case Thaddeus Murfee threw him a curveball and he needed documentary proof of his mother-in-law’s accounting workup he had performed. To the tune of twenty-five hundred dollars. In fact, there was another twenty-five hundred dollars owed now, for a year before the prior year which he had already audited.

  “It’s not cheap, asking a CPA to perform these cash flow analyses, Mr. Murfee,” he told Thaddeus during the examination.

  “But that’s my point, Mr. Middleton: who asked you to do it? Certainly not Ms. Turkenov—she was unconscious. And not her daughter, your wife: she’s told the jury she plans to sue you for taking her mother’s money. And not Mr. Wang, the lawyer for the conservatorship. So I can’t find who or why you even performed the so-called cash flow analysis. Except you did it and you got paid. Paid, of course, being an ambiguous term, since the only legal payments a conservator can make are under a court order, which never existed in your case. So maybe we should be saying you took the money without legal justification. Or, to be blunter, maybe we should call a spade a spade and just say you stole the money from your grievously ill mother-in-law. Does theft sound about right to you?”

  The CPA twisted nervously in the witness chair. He all but bit his own fist as he brushed his hands over his face and tried to slow his racing mind. He would need to be very careful about what he said. That much, he knew for damn sure.

  “You know, Mr. Murfee, with you making such accusations, I’m going to take the nickel.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “You know, the Fifth Amendment. I have a right not to testify against myself.”

  “So now you’re taking the Fifth Amendment? You’re afraid of theft charges being filed against you?”

  The witness looked up at Judge Hoover. “I took the Fifth, Judge. Do I have to keep answering now? Am I protected now?”

  “You rea
lly should talk to an attorney,” said the judge. “We’ll take the morning recess so you can call someone.”

  And so the morning recess of the third trial day began. Before that, midway through yesterday, the state had rested and the defense had moved for dismissal of all charges, based on the fact that all the evidence, even if taken in the light most favorable to the prosecution, wouldn’t be enough to convict the defendant. The judge had regretfully had to disagree, hanging his hat on the fact that there was a twenty percent chance the victim might have recovered, as testified by Dr. Glissandos when she scored that possibility a two on a scale of one to ten.

  And so the trial continued. Today, Thaddeus had called Jack Millerton as the first witness for the defense. Discussing the witness order with Shep, the lawyers had agreed to take another bite of the apple, putting the key mover and shaker of the dead woman’s relatives on the witness stand to once again point out their vested interest in keeping her alive even though she was legally and medically dead. Millerton had played right into that, admitting that there was a will and that his wife—and, indirectly, he—would receive nothing if the money was turned over to the nursing scholarship.

  “First,” Thaddeus had said, “before you let her go, you wanted to milk the estate for ten or twenty thousand dollars each of you, am I right?”

  Millerton had turned white. “Not right.”

  “But you were well on your way. You had received seventy-five hundred and now you tell us you had another twenty-five hundred coming down the pike. So you make ten thousand and never leave the privacy of your home office. You don’t deny that, do you?”

  “I fail to see what difference it makes where I work.”

  “It doesn’t. But what does make the difference is just who, exactly, you’re working for, Mr. Millerton. Near as I can figure out, nobody asked you to do these audits. You just did them without being asked. And now you’ve been paid for doing a bunch of work nobody asked for and nobody needed.”

  “Well—”

  “Can you produce a court order that gives you money from the estate?”

  “Not yet. Mr. Wang says that will be forthcoming.”

  “But you paid yourself without a court order.”

  “I didn’t act alone.”

  “So the others got money too?”

  “Yes.”

  “That would be Roy and Albert? Five grand each?”

  “Yes.”

  Several questions later, they were on break, while Millerton discussed his plight with counsel of his own choosing. He hadn’t heard back from Detective Constance since their meeting when he had been warned not to say anymore, and he had felt justified in coming into court that morning and, despite the detective’s admonitions to shut the hell up, talk about the money he received and try to explain the whys and wherefores. Bottom line, the wool he had pulled over his own eyes left him feeling self-righteous in asking to be paid for work he had done fair and square.

  “You don’t expect a CPA to work for no pay,” he told Thaddeus at one point.

  “I might if I’m unconscious in the hospital and have no one to rely on except my CPA son-in-law. Maybe.”

  “Well, in my family we get paid, even if it’s for a family member.”

  “Not to put too fine a point on it, Mr. Millerton, but family rules don’t usually control how courts see things. You acted here without a court order and that makes what you did a crime.”

  “I have to disagree.”

  “And that’s why we have trials and courthouses and juries. You will get your chance to experience all that, I’m sure of it.”

  Sanders had at that point jumped up and down at the closing argument Thaddeus was attempting to make in the middle of the trial and the judge had sustained his objection.

  Following the break it went quickly downhill. Millerton had been instructed by an attorney to say no more, and, for once, he followed the rules. And so he was dismissed and it was with great relief and sagging shoulders he lugged his enormous CPA briefcase back up the aisle and out of Judge Hoover’s court.

  The damage had been done. He paused outside the courtroom and speed-dialed Anastasia’s cell. No answer. And he knew there wouldn’t be. She had seen her own lawyer and it was getting ugly at home, with no one speaking and great care being made to avoid all touching even when passing in the hallway or bathroom.

  He wondered if it was too late to return the money he’d been paid.

  He dialed his new attorney. Time to find out.

  52

  The Sicilian drove down to Prescott and walked into Iron Mountain Guns and Ammo. He told the clerk he needed a gun, something small that could be carried concealed in a pocket. But the magazine must hold at least fourteen rounds.

  The clerk pulled three semi-automatic pistols from the display case and spread them on the wide velvet mat that half-covered the far side of the case.

  “Here is a favorite. The Glock twenty-six.”

  “How many bullets will it carry?”

  “That’s just it. You have several magazine capacities to choose from.”

  “What’s the most it can hold?”

  “Well, that’s where you get into concealing it or not. In theory, you can get a magazine that holds thirty-three rounds. But that isn’t concealable, not like you’re talking in a pocket. You’re looking at probably ten rounds. Maybe fifteen at the most.”

  Luchesi did the math in his head. Four kids plus the mother plus Murfee himself? Six in all. Add six wasted shots if they’re moving. He’d feel safest with fifteen rounds on board.

  “Give me a fifteen round magazine. I’ll take the gun and magazine right now. And Arizona has no waiting period to buy a gun?”

  “Correctamundo. No waiting period. If you’ve got six hundred and forty dollars plus change, you’re leaving here fully armed.”

  Which he had and which he did.

  Never mind that XFBI sat across the street and recorded the entire drop-in on video. Never mind that two agents entered the store and watched the purchase from nearby.

  Luchesi saw the men come in and he had noticed the van across the street. It pulled in just after he had parked and exited his car. He was no dummy and instantly knew he was being followed. Well, so be it. When the moment presented itself, he would bypass them altogether and show up for work. The gun would already be waiting.

  * * *

  Supplies were delivered from Peak Home Health to the Murfee residence. Among them was a large box of 4x4 sponges, critical in the nursing care of cancer patients. The box had been steamed over and then resealed. In the bottom of that box, unnoticed lay the Glock 26 and it’s 15 round magazine. The box went into the supply cabinet and was pushed behind the already-opened 4x4 sponge dispensing box.

  Now he was ready.

  53

  Thaddeus had found neurologist Jacqueline Field very attractive and he knew he would have to make doubly sure that didn’t come across when he put her on the witness stand as his first expert witness in Dr. Sewell’s defense. But it was difficult: she was again wearing the daisy barrette in her blonde hair, pulled to the side, lending her face a scrubbed, cherubic look that said it was way too young to actually hold the degree of medical doctor.

  But she did.

  He didn’t waste any time. “So tell me, Doc,” he said, “how do you decide when a patient is brain dead?”

  “The EEGs showed no brain stem activity at all. Look, how about I do this. How about I tell you what I did here.”

  “Please do.”

  “First, I pinched the patient to see if there was any flinch. Any reflex. Next, I made sure there were no brain stem reflexes. I shined a light in her eyes to determine whether there was pupillary reaction. Last, I disconnected the ventilator and checked to see whether rising carbon dioxide levels in the blood stimulated the brain. None of these three findings was present. I declared brain death to Dr. Glissandos. It was pretty straightforward, Mr. Murfee.”

  “What about the electroencepha
logram?”

  “Never saw it at the time I examined her. But I have since. The EEG recorded a complete absence of brain activity. She was brain dead.”

  “So that’s all it took?”

  “Yes. As you can see, it’s a combination of factors. In this case, I’ve reviewed the EEG. Ms. Turkenov had no brain activity at all, zero brain stem activity. The woman was medically dead.”

  “Can you tell us about the state of medicine in the United States regarding brain death?”

  “I can. In the United States and many other countries, a person is legally dead if he or she permanently loses all brain activity or all breathing and circulatory functions. However, the heart's intrinsic electrical system can keep the organ beating for a short time after a person becomes brain-dead—in fact, the heart can even beat outside the body. But without a ventilator to keep blood and oxygen moving, this beating would stop very quickly, usually in less than an hour.”

  “Which is what happened when Dr. Sewell turned off the life support.”

  “I suppose. With just a ventilator, some biological processes—including kidney and gastric functions—can continue for about a week. But it is extremely important to understand that such functions do not mean the person is alive. If you're brain-dead, you're dead, but with technology we can make the body do some of the things it used to do when you were alive.”

  “Tell us what is missing when the brain is dead.”

  “Well, without the brain, the body does not secrete important hormones needed to keep biological processes—including gastric, kidney and immune functions—running for periods longer than about a week. For example, thyroid hormone is important for regulating body metabolism, and vasopressin is needed for the kidneys to retain water. Normal blood pressure, which is also critical for bodily functions, often cannot be maintained without blood-pressure medications in a brain-dead person. Also, a brain-dead person cannot maintain her own body temperature, so the body is kept warm with blankets, a high room temperature and, sometimes, warm IV fluids. That was happening with Ms. Turkenov, especially the high room temperature. It was stifling in her suite.”