Read Online False Witness by Dorothy Uhnak - Free Book Online Page B

while attempting to saddle a rather jumpy polo pony. There were pictures of a grim-faced Dr. David Cohen being escorted into the ancient private wing of a large public hospital, which frequently housed an injured royal or two—they were such energetic people. There were rumors and wild stories of detached major limbs. There was even speculation in one of the more lurid journals of a nearly severed head. Within an hour after his arrival, a smiling, relaxed Dr. David Cohen emerged to face the mobs of journalists. He gracefully fended off specific questions with the well-received statement: “Surely you gentlemen know I am honor-bound not to discuss any injury incurred by a member of the royal family.” When told that the news had been leaked that it was a royal thumb that had been cleanly detached and successfully reattached, Dr. Cohen shrugged roguishly and gave a winning thumbs-up signal, which was flashed around the world. Without any violation of British ethics, he had confirmed what the journalists already knew and he had done it with style, dash and good taste.
    Dr. Cohen had trained most of the world’s specialists in the techniques he had perfected. He was consulted via long distance middle-of-the-night telephone hookups and occasionally was whisked away via private jet to supervise the reattachment of a disconnected limb in places ranging from Mexico to Saudi Arabia.
    “This surgery was not unique,” Dr. Cohen told the newspeople. “Fortunately for the patient, her hand was quickly and intelligently preserved, and the fact that there was a minimum time lapse between the severing and the restorative surgery is all to the good.”
    He introduced his colleagues: Dr. Adam Waverly, an overweight, verbose, oddly ugly man who was anxious to discuss his surgical experience in Vietnam, which was, in his words, “a marvelous field experience for any surgeon.”
    The third member of the team was Dr. Frank Esposito. He was young, good-looking, snappish, brisk and tense. He literally elbowed Dr. Waverly out of camera range as he shoved his way out of the news conference with a quick “No comment. Dr. Cohen and Dr. Waverly have covered all pertinent information.”
    Dr. Cohen ended the conference with his statement that he had no comment at this time relative to the work that would have to be done to repair the cosmetic damage inflicted on Sanderalee Dawson.
    “That is a separate matter for future consideration. Gentlemen, thank you.”
    Thumbs up and grin. He was as skilled and controlling as a movie star handling a media event.
    The New York Times ran a three-section “Man-in-the-News” feature article on the backgrounds of the doctors who worked on Sanderalee Dawson. They were instant media heroes and the correct answer to one of the questions in The New York Times weekly quiz was Esposito-Cohen-Waverly.
    For us, however, as in any homicide, the most immediate person we had to work on was the victim, Sanderalee Dawson. I decided on a “day-of-birth–day-of-death” background investigation. I spent about thirty minutes with A.D.A. Wesley Copeland, who was flying down to Greensboro, North Carolina, en route to Cullen, where Sanderalee had been born.
    Wesley Copeland had been born and raised in Atlanta; he spent three years in Korea, mustering out as one of a very few black Army captains. He moved to New York, passed the Civil Service exam for patrolman, put in his twenty years, retired with a first-grade detective’s pension, which—along with his Assistant District Attorney’s salary—comfortably took care of the remaining mortgage on his brownstone in Brooklyn.
    When Wesley Copeland applied for a spot in my Squad, my first reaction was that he was overqualified. He had a bachelor’s and a master’s in Criminology from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a law degree from NYU. Most of his academic work had been done at night. He told me, quite frankly, that he wanted no more than two years’