Beyond Suspicion

wasn’t a reason to turn it down, either. This had nothing to do with the fact that her long, auburn hair had once splayed across both their pillows. She’d come to him as an old friend in a genuine crisis. Even six months later, her words still echoed in the back of his mind.

•

“The doctor told me I have two years to live. Three, tops.”

Jack’s mouth fell open, but words came slowly. “Damn, Jessie. I’m so sorry.”

She seemed on the verge of tears. He scrambled to find her a tissue. She dug one of her own from her purse. “It’s so hard for me to talk about this.”

“I understand.”

“I was so damn unprepared for that kind of news.”

“Who wouldn’t be?”

“I take care of myself. I always have.”

“It shows.” It wasn’t intended as a come-on, just a statement of fact that underscored what a waste this was.

“My first thought was, you’re crazy, doc. This can’t be.”

“Of course.”

“I mean, I’ve never faced anything that I couldn’t beat. Then suddenly I’m in the office of some doctor who’s basically telling me, that’s it, game over. No one bothered to tell me the game had even started.”

He could hear the anger in her voice. “I’d be mad, too.”

“I was furious. And scared. Especially when he told me what I had.”

Jack didn’t ask. He figured she’d tell him if she wanted him to know.

“He said I had ALS-amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.”

“I’m not familiar with that one.”

“You probably know it as Lou Gehrig’s disease.”

“Oh.” It was a more ominous-sounding “oh” than intended. She immediately picked up on it.

“So, you know what a horrible illness it is.”

“Just from what I heard happened to Lou Gehrig.”

“Imagine how it feels to hear that it’s going to happen to you. Your mind stays healthy, but your nervous system slowly dies, causing you to lose control of your own body. Eventually you can’t swallow anymore, your throat muscles fail, and you either suffocate or choke to death on your own tongue.”

She was looking straight at him, but he was the one to blink.

“It’s always fatal,” she added. “Usually in two to five years.”

He wasn’t sure what to say. The silence was getting uncomfortable. “I don’t know how I can help, but if there’s anything I can do, just name it.”

“There is.”

“Please, don’t be afraid to ask.”

“I’m being sued.”

“For what?”

“A million and a half dollars.”

He did a double take. “That’s a lot of money.”

“It’s all the money I have in the world.”

“Funny. There was a time when you and I would have thought that was all the money in the world.”

Her smile was more sad than wistful. “Things change.”

“They sure do.”

A silence fell between them, a moment to reminisce.

“Anyway, here’s my problem. My legal problem. I tried to be responsible about my illness. The first thing I did was get my finances in order. Treatment’s expensive, and I wanted to do something extravagant for myself in the time I had left. Maybe a trip to Europe, whatever. I didn’t have a lot of money, but I did have a three-million-dollar life insurance policy.”

“Why so much?”

“When the stock market tanked a couple years ago, a financial planner talked me into believing that whole-life insurance was a good retirement vehicle. Maybe it would have been worth something by the time I reached sixty- five. But at my age, the cash surrender value is practically zilch. Obviously, the death benefit wouldn’t kick in until I was dead, which wouldn’t do me any good. I wanted a pot of money while I was alive and well enough to enjoy myself.”

Jack nodded, seeing where this was headed. “You did a viatical settlement?”

“You’ve heard of them?”

“I had a friend with AIDS who did one before he died.”

“That’s how they got popular, back in the eighties. But the concept works with any terminal disease.”

“Is it a done deal?”

“Yes. It sounded like a win-win situation. I sell my three-million-dollar policy to a group of investors for a million and a half dollars. I get a big check right now, when I can use it. They get the three-million-dollar death benefit when I die. They’d basically double their money in two or three years.”

“It’s a little ghoulish, but I can see the good in it.”

“Absolutely. Everybody was satisfied.” The sorrow seemed to drain from her expression as she looked at him and said, “Until my symptoms started to disappear.”

“Disappear?”

“Yeah. I started getting better.”

“But there’s no cure for ALS.”

“The doctor ran more tests.”

Jack saw a glimmer in her eye. His heart beat faster. “And?”

“They finally figured out I had lead poisoning. It can mimic the symptoms of ALS, but it wasn’t nearly enough to kill me.”

“You don’t have Lou Gehrig’s disease?”

“No.”

“You’re not going to die?”

“I’m completely recovered.”

A sense of joy washed over him, though he did feel a little manipulated. “Thank God. But why didn’t you tell me from the get-go?”

She smiled wryly, then turned serious. “I thought you should know how I felt, even if it was just for a few minutes. This sense of being on the fast track to such an awful death.”

“It worked.”

“Good. Because I have quite a battle on my hands, legally speaking.”

“You want to sue the quack who got the diagnosis wrong?”

“Like I said, at the moment, I’m the one being sued over this.”

“The viatical investors?”

“You got it. They thought they were coming into three million in at most three years. Turns out they may have to wait another forty or fifty years for their investment to ‘mature,’ so to speak. They want their million and a half bucks back.”

“Them’s the breaks.”

She smiled. “So you’ll take the case?”

“You bet I will.”

The crack of the gavel stirred Jack from his thoughts. The jury had returned. Judge Garcia had finished perusing his mail, the sports section, or whatever else had caught his attention. Court was back in session.

“Mr. Swyteck, any questions for Dr. Herna?”

Jack glanced toward the witness stand. Dr. Herna was the physician who’d reviewed Jessie’s medical history on behalf of the viatical investors and essentially confirmed the misdiagnosis, giving them the green light to invest.