Page 109 of State of Denial

“I know who you are. What do you want with me?”

“We’d like to talk to you about Marcel Blanchet,” Freddie said.

He scowled when he heard the name. “Do we have to?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Come in. I’m between patients, but I only have about twenty minutes.”

“This won’t take long.”

“What do you want to know?” LeBlanc asked when they were seated in a formal living room.

“Your wife, Leslie, was one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit against Dr. Blanchet,” Freddie said.

“That’s right.”

Sam realized he wasn’t going to volunteer anything. They’d have to pull it out of him.

“How did you feel about that?”

“Well,” he said with a bitter edge to his voice, “how would you feel if some pervert doctor got off on your wife while she was sedated?”

“I’d feel pretty angry about that,” Freddie said.

“I was pretty angry.”

“Our research has indicated that you received a ten-thousand-dollar payment from Dr. Blanchet. Can you tell us what that was for?”

“It was a refund for what we’d paid him to help us have a baby, which is no closer to happening today than it was when we turned over our life savings to him. The ten K was a fraction of what he owed us. He promised he’d reimburse us completely.”

“Did he ask you to drop the lawsuit in exchange for that payment?”

“That came up, but Leslie wasn’t willing to drop it. I followed her lead. She was the one violated by that creep.”

“Did it seem like he was trying to make it right with you by returning some of the money you’d spent?”

“Maybe to him it did, but to us, it was another empty gesture. We were looking forward to our day in court and then never having to talk about him again.” He looked away, his jaw clenched. “You can’t possibly know what we’ve been through.”

“I do know,” Sam said. “And I can’t imagine the added horror of being victimized by my doctor.”

“That’s right,” he said, glancing at her. “You’ve been through it, too. Then you do know.”

“I’m sorry that happened to Leslie—and to you,” Sam said.

“Thank you.”

“I hope you understand that we have to ask where you were Sunday night,” Freddie said.

He gasped. “You think I killed him and his family? That’s outrageous! His disgusting behavior was about to be in all the headlines. I can’t believe you’re wasting taxpayer dollars looking at anyone but him.”

“We’re not convinced it was him,” Freddie said.

He scoffed. “How could it not be?”

“We follow the evidence, and the evidence isn’t leading us to him.”

LeBlanc crossed his arms. “You’ll never convince me that anyone but him did this.”

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