huge block of white stone-in the middle, and the choir had sung in Latin, I remembered. My father had behaved himself and, remarkably, so had Jane. Rebecca and I had spent the Sunday walking round the West End and in Hyde Park. I remembered lying on the grass by the Serpentine with her, feeling as if I had no cares in the world.
This wasn’t such a nice occasion, and the surroundings were a lot gloomier. I sat in a witness box in a drab windowless room in the Riverhead court building, with a grand jury spread out in front of me. Few of its members had made much of an effort to dress up. The men were in casual pants and sweatshirts except for two middle-aged guys in jackets, and the women weren’t much smarter. They didn’t seem to be taking the matter as seriously as I was-they had less at stake. Most of them seemed bored, and a man at the back was already yawning, although it was only ten thirty a.m. You’d have thought that the Shapiro case would have been more exciting than routine indictments, but it didn’t appear to be.
The only other people in the room were a court reporter and Baer, who sat cozily with each other in another box; he shuffled through his papers and she stroked the keys of her transcription machine. The twenty-three members of the jury were sitting on two raked rows of chairs as if we were in an experimental Off-Broadway theater.
Joe had briefed me one last time on how it worked-urging me not to talk too much, just to answer questions briefly-and was cooling his heels in the hallway. As Pagonis had said, he wasn’t allowed in the room. There was no judge to interrupt Baer, who’d walked us up to the jury room at his usual stately pace, and Joe’s plea for me to halt proceedings and come out to consult him if I was worried felt like a poor substitute.
When I’d called Joe to tell him about Pagonis delivering the subpoena, he’d sounded gloomily unsurprised, like a man who wasn’t disappointed by events because he always expected the worst. “I didn’t want to worry you, but I thought he might do this. We should talk,” he’d said.
The next day at his office, he’d told me how it worked. Mostly, grand juries were impaneled to arraign and indict suspects. They heard ADAs present preliminary evidence and rubber-stamped indictments. The hard work of proving that the suspect had committed the crime came later, in a full trial. But the grand jury could also investigate a case if the ADA had an unwilling witness he wanted to put under oath. That was what Baer had done to me- unless I took the Fifth Amendment, I had to testify.
“You first treated Mr. Shapiro in the psychiatric emergency room at Episcopal, is that correct?” Baer said.
Joe had told me to look at the jury and to try to be sympathetic, but when I glanced up, I wasn’t encouraged. The foreman who had put me under oath, a chunky man with a gold chain and a chin bulging beneath a trimmed beard, was staring at me as if I were a defendant rather than a witness.
“Mr. Shapiro was brought to the hospital by his wife. I assessed him there and advised him to admit himself voluntarily, which he did.”
“On what grounds?”
“I believed he was a danger to self-that he was at risk of suicide. He had a number of symptoms of depression. He’d lost his job and his wife was concerned about his mental state.”
“Did he tell you he might kill himself?”
“He didn’t say that directly.”
“Why did you believe it, then?”
“His wife had found him earlier that day at their house in East Hampton with a gun on his desk. She’d been worried.”
Mention of the gun brought the jury to life. A woman in the front row who had been glancing around as if not fully engaged sat up in her seat, and a man at the back gave a silent exclamation, his mouth shaped in an “O.” I tried to maintain a blank, neutral expression, as if I were an expert witness, but my heart thudded as I waited for Baer’s next question. If he asked me more about the gun, I’d have to say that Nora had brought it into the ER and I’d let her leave with it. There were too many witnesses to lie.
“So you knew he was dangerous?” Baer said, an edge in his voice.
It was his toughest question so far, but it wasn’t what I had feared, and I relaxed a little. Joe had anticipated that question, and so far, we were within our prepared testimony. We had practiced in a long rectangular room at his office with blinds covering the windows to block out the sunshine. I’d sat at one end of a mahogany table and Joe had walked up and down, lobbing questions at me. He’d filmed my responses and afterward we’d watched my performance on a screen that covered an entire wall at the head of the table, observing each hesitation and note of anxiety. It was reverse therapy-an exercise in hiding my feelings.
“I was concerned that Mr. Shapiro might be a danger to himself. I never believed he was a danger to anyone else.”
“Your diagnosis was wrong, then?”
I started to feel the absence of a judge in the room.
“Mr. Shapiro hasn’t faced trial, so I can’t say,” I said.
Strictly speaking, I was pushing the truth since Harry had admitted killing Greene to me, but I was legally correct, as Baer conceded with a tight smile and a skeptical glance to the jury.
“He stayed in the hospital two days and then you discharged him, I believe. You let him out, just like that. The man you’d been so worried about only two days before, a man who had been found with a gun?”
“He’d admitted himself voluntarily and he expressed the wish to leave on Monday. We’d started treatment and I didn’t think there was cause to convert him to involuntary status.”
Baer’s eyes glinted. “So Mr. Shapiro became your private patient. Until he was arrested one week later for killing Mr. Greene, that is. That must have felt good. He was a rich and powerful banker, Episcopal’s biggest donor. Quite a catch.”
I felt things slipping out of my control. Baer was right-that was exactly the thought that had gone through my mind. Wanting to acquire a rich patient wasn’t such a crime; that was why Jim had relocated to Park Avenue, for God’s sake. But Greene’s death had changed everything, transformed human ambition into medical misconduct. I hesitated, wondering whether I should insist on a pause in the hearing and go out to the hallway to get Joe’s advice, but it felt as if it would be an open indication of guilt.
“I–I wanted to ensure that Mr. Shapiro was cared for properly,” I stammered. “Just as I’d have done for any patient.”
“How do you normally treat patients?”
“I don’t understand.”
“They come to your office, don’t they? But Mr. Shapiro didn’t do that. You went to his house in East Hampton. And you got special treatment in return. You’d helped him out, so he flew you to London in his private jet, didn’t he?”
One juror gasped when he said it, and another one scribbled a note on paper. My mind went blank and I struggled to find a way to explain why I’d taken that Gulfstream flight.
“My father had taken ill and I had to visit him. Mrs. Shapiro offered the flight so I could see her husband promptly. I thought it would be wise.”
“You’re saying Mr. Shapiro wasn’t stable? You’d discharged him but you were still worried about him?”
“I just wanted to be sure.”
The half truth I’d just told about Harry’s discharge made me sound guilty of terrible misconduct-guilty alone.
“You did everything Shapiro wanted because he’d bought you off. He had you on a string, didn’t he?”
“It wasn’t like that,” I muttered, unable to look at him. My face was flushed and two middle-aged women on the jury were gazing at me sympathetically, as if it were a one-sided boxing match that should be halted.
“Thank you, Doctor,” Baer said, sensing the mood and bringing his questioning adeptly to an end.
I found Joe outside, sitting on a low bench by one window, doing correspondence on a BlackBerry. “Go okay?” he said brightly.
