now, though. He puts his glasses back on, and starts typing on the computer. He’s highlighted the main issues of the report and is now making a list of questions to ask the girl’s friend, Carrie Pinklow, whom she called a few hours before her death and was with her the night the alleged rape took place. The report is based entirely on events that had transpired in the diary and the interview with the girl’s parents. The rest of the file is the diary entries themselves—not the whole diary, just the entries that are relevant to the case, which adds up to twenty-five pages of the girl’s clear, bubbly handwriting.
The selected pages chronicle a period of about five months. They start in November, when the girl had to have an emergency operation, and finished in late March, about a month after she’d had sex with Cogan, the surgeon who’d performed the operation. It’s a bizarre little story, Madden thinks. Months after being treated at the hospital, Kristen ends up at Cogan’s home late one night after a party, drunk and practically unconscious. Her best friend, Carrie, had brought her there because she was worried about her condition but didn’t want to take her to the emergency room out of fear both girls would get in trouble with their parents. Cogan agreed to let Kristen stay the night in his guest room. Then, according to the diary, he had sex with her while her friend slept in the living room.
Madden looks at the two photographs he has of Cogan. One is a driver’s license picture, the other a photograph from the local newspaper announcing his marriage to Jennifer McFadden six years ago. The first he got from the DMV, the second from an Internet search.
Theodore Charles Cogan. Born December 10, 1963, in Chicago. Yale Undergrad. Harvard Med. Trauma surgeon at Parkview Med.
He’s good-looking, Madden thinks. Intense eyes and a pleasant, confident smile. A doctor—a surgeon, no less—with his looks can have any woman he wants, he thinks. Why, then, the girl?
No, Madden, he says to himself. The question isn’t why. It’s why not?
“Why” is intellectual. “Why not” is impulsive. And poor judgment is ninety percent impulsive.
His mind begins to drift. He imagines the scene that night—the girl in the doctor’s guest room. Cogan sits down on the bed, starts talking to the girl. Then, lightly, he touches her. Maybe it’s by accident. Maybe it’s a test. But he touches her and she doesn’t seem to mind. Then he lets his hand stray underneath her shirt. And while he’s doing it, he isn’t asking himself why he’s doing it. The point is he can do it. So, why not?
“What are you doing, Daddy?”
Madden turns around. His daughter has walked into the room and is standing behind him.
“Daddy’s doing his homework,” he says.
She comes and sits in his lap.
“Who’s that?” she asks, pointing at Cogan’s picture.
“He’s a doctor.”
“Did he do something bad?”
“Maybe.”
“What did he do?”
“Something you’re too young to hear about.”
“Is it X-rated?”
“Yes.”
“Are you going to catch him?”
“I don’t know. It’s going to be very difficult to prove what he did. I’m not sure I can.”
“That’s why you’re doing your homework?”
He smiles. “Yeah, that’s why.”
A short silence. She’s buttered him up, now it’s time for the kill.
“Can I play on the computer?” she asks.
“Did you eat breakfast?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You sure?”
“Ask Mommy.”
Madden looks at his watch. It’s eight-fifteen.
“Just give Daddy ten minutes,” he says. “Then you can play. But only for half an hour. You have to get ready for church.”
“I can’t get to the next level in a half an hour,” she says.
“Sure, you can.”
“I didn’t last time.”
“That’s not my fault, is it?”
“Can’t we go to a later service?”
“The longer you keep Daddy from doing his homework, the less time you get to play,” he says. “By my calculation, you’re about to lose a minute.”
She jumps off him.
“That’s not fair,” she says. “You didn’t say anything before.”
Madden looks at his watch. “There it is. You’re down to twenty-nine.”
“Cheater,” she says, and runs out of the room.
9/ THREE BALLS DANCING
November 10, 2006—6:57 a.m.
THE GIRL WAS THE FIRST OF SEVERAL PATIENTS COGAN HAD TO SEE that morning. Residents like Kim also did rounds, but when Cogan was in the hospital he had to see his patients twice a day—once in the morning and once in the afternoon.
There was O’Dwyer, the big, burly guy who’d gotten cracked in the back by a bar stool and almost lost a kidney. Sanchez, who’d been shot in the leg very