Chapter 11: What Dennis Rourke Said
He drove up from Florida.
Patricia arranged for him to give a formal statement, but he asked to speak with me first.
Alone.
She agreed, reluctantly, and sat in the hallway outside while Dennis Rourke sat across from me in her small conference room with his hands on the table and the look of a man who had been carrying something much heavier than I had.
He was in his late sixties.
Thin.
He'd lost the tan you'd expect from someone living in Florida.
He looked like he hadn't slept well in a long time.
"I need you to understand something before I say any of this," he said.
"I was not a bad man.
I want to believe that.
I made a terrible choice and I have lived with it every day since."
"Tell me what happened," I said.
He looked at the table.
"Gerald Marsh came to me six weeks before your father was admitted.
We'd known each other socially for years.
Golf, charity dinners, that kind of thing." He paused.
"He told me your father had discovered some financial irregularities in their partnership.
He said your father was unstable.
That he was going to make accusations that would destroy Gerald's reputation and hurt a lot of people who depended on him."
"And you believed him?"
"I wanted to believe him.
Gerald was persuasive and I owed him a favor — a significant one, from years before.
He said he just needed me to be the attending physician if your father was ever admitted.
That if something happened, I should handle the paperwork quickly and not ask too many questions."
My hands were flat on the table.
I kept them there.
"He told you my father might be coming in," I said.
"Not in those words.
But yes." He looked up.
"When your father was brought in that night, I was called.
His symptoms were consistent with cardiac arrest.
But there were also things that didn't fit cleanly.
I told myself it was stress.
I told myself he was a man in his fifties with a high-pressure business and it was exactly what it looked like."
"But it wasn't."
"I don't know for certain," he said.
"That's the honest answer.
I didn't run every test I should have run.
I processed the paperwork quickly.
I signed the certificate without requesting a full toxicology panel." He stopped.
"Gerald called me the next morning to thank me.
That was when I knew."
The room was very quiet.
"Why didn't you come forward?" I asked.
"Because I was a coward," he said simply.
"Because I had a career and a family and I told myself there was no proof and nothing could be undone." He met my eyes.
"I've told myself that for eleven years.
It stopped working about three years ago."
"What changed three years ago?"
"I retired.
I had time to think." He reached into his jacket and placed a folded piece of paper on the table.
"Before I left the hospital, I made a copy of your father's admitting notes.
The ones I should have flagged.
I've kept them." He pushed the paper toward me.
"I don't know if it's enough.
But it's everything I have."
I didn't touch the paper yet.
"Gerald called you after the investigators contacted you," I said.
"He told you to call me.
To remind me what was at stake."
"Yes."
"What did he think that would accomplish?"
Dennis Rourke looked at me for a long moment.
"I think he believed you would be frightened.
That you would back down." He looked at the paper on the table.
"I think he's spent eleven years believing that frightened people always back down."
I picked up the paper.
"Thank you for coming," I said.
"I should have come eleven years ago," he said.
"I'm sorry I didn't."
I stood and opened the door.
Patricia was already on her feet in the hallway.
"He has the admitting notes," I said.
"And he's willing to give a full statement."
Patricia looked past me at Dennis Rourke.
He was still seated, both hands on the table, like a man who had finally put something down and wasn't sure yet how to stand without it.
"Mr.
May you like
Rourke," she said.
"Let's get started."
