“Yes, but he’s meeting with our attorney.”
“Better still. I’m on my way to his office. Please let me through.”
* * *
Five minutes later, Janet met Roger in the reception area.
“I’ve told Mr. Casper you’re on your way to see him,” she said. “For your sake, I sincerely hope this is a true emergency.”
“It is. Now may I go in?”
Janet nodded, preceding Roger to Jacob’s door. She knocked, and then poked her head into the office. “Roger Lewis is here to see you.”
“Send him in,” Jacob called out.
Roger rubbed his sweaty palms on his pants. He was visibly nervous. But he was also a man with a mission.
He walked inside Jacob’s office and shut the door in Janet’s face.
“Roger.” Jacob rose from behind his desk. “You know our attorney, Stephen Diamond.”
“Yes, sir, we’ve met.” Roger shook the attorney’s hand. “I’m glad you’re here. The information I’ve uncovered is something you both should know about immediately.”
“What is it?” Jacob’s forehead creased.
“I was doing my first task of
the morning, going through the hospital files on Conrad Westfield’s surgeries. Evidently he had them all recorded.”
“That doesn’t shock me,” Jacob responded. “Some surgeons prefer to do that, via the cameras in the O.R., so they can review them later or use them in a teaching capacity.”
“I didn’t know that,” Stephen Diamond said. “We should review the video recording of Ronald Lexington’s surgery immediately. It might show us something that Conrad was negligent about when he operated.”
“That’s why I’m here.” Roger stood up straighter, still proud of his discovery. “I ran through the entire list of surgical recordings. The file containing Ronald Lexington’s surgery has been permanently deleted—not just the original, but the backup copy, as well.”
“How do you know that’s the surgical recording that was deleted?” Stephen demanded.
“From the date and location. Video recordings of surgeries are all stored on a specific drive, with each date as a separate directory. This was the date of Mr. Lexington’s operation, and there’s no file with his name on it at all. In fact, that entire day of surgeries was deleted. There’s just an empty directory.”
“The only reason someone would delete those files is if there was incriminating information on it.” Jacob rubbed the back of his neck. “Shit.”
“That’s not necessarily bad,” Stephen said. “Remember that, assuming there was any wrongdoing, we need to shift the blame off the hospital and onto Conrad Westfield. If he committed medical malpractice wrongful death, and the rest of the hospital employees are innocent, then he takes the fall—Manhattan Memorial doesn’t.”
“But he couldn’t have deleted that file,” Jacob countered. “He was in a mental health facility.”
“He was?” Roger asked in surprise.
“Forget you heard that,” Jacob snapped. “It’s confidential.”
“Anything can be done electronically,” Stephen continued. “Conrad had a computer with him, didn’t he?”
“I assume so,” Jacob replied.
“Then he’s not off the hook.” Stephen turned to Roger. “Are you sure that there’s no way to recover the file or its backup copy?”
“None,” Roger replied. “It’s completely deleted from our databases.”
“Then we have to find a way to get it elsewhere,” Stephen said. “Or to prove that Conrad—or an ally of his—deleted it.”