An Eye For Murder: A Medical Thriller

by Martin Sherwood

  I blinked in the meager light. As I turned, I was attacked by a new bout of vertigo. Something was wrong. Had something happened to the bamboo curtain?

  I went back to the table, donned my glasses, and froze in shock. The room appeared to have sustained a direct hit. The curtain was on the floor, its rod torn off the wall. All our framed pictures had been removed from the walls and lay scattered around the room, their backs split and torn, the glass shattered. The pseudo-ancient mirror and the Tibetan carpet lay dead on the floor.

  My room had been ransacked, as had Leanira’s. The stereo system was dismantled, the phone cord ripped from the wall, and the lampshade swung in the air. Clothing had been tugged out of the drawers and strewn around. The mattresses were sliced and reduced to stuffing, springs, and boards. My favorite pillowcase had been shredded.

  Broken chochkas from Leanira’s bookshelf were scattered on the floor amid torn pages from my textbooks. The reflex hammer I’d bought for next semester’s Physical Diagnosis course lay next to the bed.

  Electric kettle! screamed a sole synapse in my muddled brain. I hurried to the kitchen, ignored the broken Formica that was once my kitchen table, and pushed through the mess on the floor—emptied refrigerator drawers, puddles of eggs and mayonnaise.

  I spotted the old electric kettle on the kitchen floor. The Irishman had probably remembered me mumbling about it and spent his wrath on it. Gibbons had not spared the new Braun kettle Leanira had bought either; its entrails, heating fork, plug, and screws were scattered at the foot of the stove. The sight made me cringe in pain, as if they were human bones.

  As I stood there, I heard a strange ringing noise; it took me a while to recall the new cellphone Harrison had gotten for me.

  “Milbert.”

  My heart skipped a beat.

  “Milbert, are you there? Answer me,” she said in a quavering voice. “Milbert, why don’t you speak?”

  “You’ve got the tube.”

  She didn’t answer.

  “He was here.” I waited for her response, but she remained silent. “He ransacked my place. What the hell? Why did you take the tube?”

  “I know I made a big mistake. I wanted to protect you. I know someone is hunting the professor, trying to sabotage her groundbreaking research. I just wanted to help her. You have to believe me.”

  “Help her? That’s no longer possible.”

  “Why? What happened?”

  “She’s dead. Drowned in a drainage pit. And someone sent a crazy Irishman to get the tube. And because you took it, he nearly killed me too.”

  “Mein Gott!” She let out a muffled sob. “What chaos. I knew about this man. I thought he was just threatening. He’s been after the professor since the conference in Rome.”

  “Who is he?”

  “Now he’s chasing me. He tried to kill me in the hotel, but I ran away.”

  The mad Irishman had already got to her.

  “Milbert, have you thought about me? Because I think of you all the time.” She burst into tears. “I want to see you.”

  “I want to see you too,” I said. “It’s not too late.” I heard noises on the other end of the line I could not decipher. “Where are you?”

  “I drove away in my car. As far as I could.”

  “You have the tube, right? So, listen to me good. Go straight to the nearest police station and give the tube to the first officer you see. Do not leave the station—I repeat, do not leave the station. Ask the officer to immediately call Inspector Ramzi with the Louisville Metro police. That’s R-A-M-Z-I. He’s in the Major Crimes Division downtown.”

  She was silent for a moment.

  “Milbert, honigbiene,” she said finally, “I’m scared of doing it alone. I don’t feel safe leaving this place alone. Please come here first and we’ll do it together. Come quickly, schatzi.”

  36

  Now she had to die.

  She didn’t lose her head. No, she couldn’t afford that. She fingered her handbag. The interior of the car was dark, and it was impossible to see the bag’s contents while driving, but she didn’t need to see them. Just to feel.

  There was a makeup set, an oval box with tiny dents in different shades, a brush, pencils, a pencil sharpener, a hairbrush, nail files, and two packages of false eyelashes.

  This must be how a theatre or TV studio makeup artist felt, she reflected. How nice it would be to revive and rouge pale cheeks, highlight dimples, diminish wrinkles and obscure scars. Create an image.

  She had no need to open the bag, but through the partition she felt the tip of the double-coiled tattoo device, complete with five different textured surface needle heads—from the delicate round liner to the magnum shader.

  Gabriel had also provided Johanna with chameleon ink dye and two pairs of latex gloves. Dead bodies can transmit disease. She had heard about pathologists who contracted hepatitis, tuberculosis, and even AIDS.

  Purple twilight came early, low clouds sharpened by flaming halos and a pearly haze. Around the corner, a commercial building loomed, rain-soaked naked concrete. The wooden fence encircling it moaned in the fierce wind. An abandoned crane was parked at the far corner of the yard. Gabriel told her the constructor had gone bankrupt. Construction had ceased halfway through, and the builder had only been able to finish the concrete castings—poles, floor, a central elevator cage, and ramps without stairs, railings, or walls. Now the construction site was deserted, and moss climbed the outer wall.

  Johanna spotted the entrance—a gravel path—and turned the car into the yard. The tires slipped on a puddle and screeched as she braked in the rear.

  She turned off the engine, got out of the car and walked back to the paved road, a cul-de-sac.

  Johanna looked around. There was no movement or traffic. The industrial warehouses across the road were closed and shuttered, with heavy locks on the gates.

  The rain had stopped, but water from the puddles continued to gush into the drainage canals. She located an illuminated sign hanging on a pole at the intersection.

  She reentered the yard, came back to the car, and opened the trunk.

  ***

  The traffic on the main road was quite heavy.

  I yearned for sleep in the back seat of the cab but didn’t allow myself to even snooze. Soon I would be with Johanna. As far as I knew, I wasn’t violating the agreement with the inspector—I wasn’t leaving town. Besides, I was so excited I couldn’t care less.

  She sounded distressed, but she was alive—and that was something. When we got there, I would ask the Uber driver to wait while I collected her, then we would continue together to the police station. I wished to seize the moment when Johanna brandished the damned tube and wiped the Ricola-smeared smirk off the inspector’s smug face.

  My exhaustion grew rapidly. I had read somewhere that cold air interfered with sleep. It could be a legend, like feeling refreshed by washing your face in cold water, but I opened the window a slit. A cool breeze ruffled new trails in my hair and low hissing sounds filled the car’s interior.

  Soon I would meet Johanna. We’d settle our misunderstandings, get rid of tube #12, and—most importantly—be together again. Then we’d take it from there.

  I tensed as we left the freeway and climbed onto the exit. Lines of well-tended houses were replaced by commercial buildings, a football stadium, and an endless chain of shopping malls and used car lots, which were replaced in turn by lines of scattered, partially functioning streetlights and a cemetery wall.

  ***

  Johanna leaned all her weight on the Audi, her arms embracing the thick plastic roll.

  She put one end of the roll on the gravel, searching for a comfortable angle to balance it. She had received precious help at the beginning of her journey: Gabriel had wrapped the corpse for her, opened the rear gate of the pathology department’s basement, and helped he
r load it into the trunk of the vehicle. He also promised to take care of the records. Nobody cared about illegal immigrants anyway.

  Furthermore, Gabriel’s cousin was a foreman for the construction company that had temporarily abandoned this building. The company had run into financial difficulties but had just recently raised additional funds to finish the project. He’d told Gabriel how to reactivate the power. “Don’t forget to disconnect when you’re done. I don’t want to pay the bills. We won’t be onsite till spring.” The place was only half-built, but at least the lights and elevator would be working.

  Now she was on her own. She was afraid, but she trusted herself, her sturdy body.

  In the elevator she leaned her burden upright like a carpet and slashed the knots with a pocketknife.

  The elevator stopped on the top floor, and the cage opened with a slight upward thrust. She shoved the package off the elevator, and it hit the ground and rolled. By the time she knelt next to it, the plastic covering had already made two unwrapping rounds, exposing a shoulder and leg. She continued to tug at the plastic, and the body of the woman slithered to the edge of the folds.

  Johanna donned a pair of latex gloves, leaned over and grabbed the corpse under the armpits, trying to push her fingers in the space between the arms and the chest. But she encountered resistance—rigor mortis? Whatever it was, years of practice and her knowledge of pathology had taught her not to try to straighten the limbs with force.

  She lifted the corpse off the plastic, dragged it to the outermost concrete pole and leaned it up. Then she knelt and pulled off the white sheet.

  Johanna undressed, changed into a black dress and put her own clothes on the dead woman. Even their dark dresses looked very much alike, but she wanted to be as close to perfection as she could be. Then she tilted the stiff chin toward the light pole in the yard.

  In the dim light, the visage—hairstyle, orbital position, bridge of the nose, and high cheekbones—provided a striking resemblance, even more than under the powerful fluorescent lights of the hospital ward. The jaw was a little coarser and swelling from the refrigeration in the morgue concealed the dimple in the center of the chin.

  She stuck two fingers into the mouth and carefully spread the jaws, revealing two rows of perfect teeth. Then, with one fingertip, she stroked the skin between the left nostril and the upper lip.

  Johanna opened her handbag. She unfolded a tray and arranged the tattoo heads on it in order of their size. Alongside it she placed a blacklight tattoo container with chameleon ink and a battery-operated double-coiled gun. She activated it, and it came to life with a soft buzzing sound. First, she tried the delicate needle, but then she clicked her lips and switched to the magnum head, loaded it with extra dye, and leaned over the face. In the dim light, it seemed to be a mixture of wax and marble.

  A minute later she straightened up, smiling contentedly. She was filled with a renewed energy, and when she dragged and tilted the body to a sitting position, the burden felt as light as feather, floating in the wind. She moved the corpse to the very edge of the paved floor, four stories above the abyss.

  Then she rubbed her palms, took a deep breath, pulled out her cellphone and tapped a number. “I… I want to put an end to this thing,” she said between chokes and wails. “I made a terrible mistake. I’ll give you the test tube if you promise to leave me alone. Forget all about me.”

  “Agreed.”

  Johanna gave him the details over the phone, then turned around.

  There was no protective railing yet. A brief look down to the ground below made her ecstatic. She returned to her bag, took out an empty tube, ducked behind a partition relatively protected from the harsh wind, hiked up her black dress, and pulled down her panties.

  ***

  The squad car left a temporary haze over the black asphalt.

  Gibbons cursed the student, cursed the police, and cursed the fucking poodle. He knew he now had ample time for a thorough search. Police interviews took hours. Gibbons left his car between two minivans and sneaked around to the service alley. Just before he stepped out, he spotted another police car coming. After it came to a halt, a policewoman stepped out and picked up the dog. She looked around and seemed about to leave until a lady rushed over from across the court. They spoke for a few minutes, and then the policewoman handed the poodle to the lady. Judging by the dog’s reaction, they knew each other. The neighbor pointed towards Judd’s window, took the dog by the leash, and then disappeared with him into the split-level at the northern edge of the court.

  Gibbons headed to the back entrance of the student’s apartment and climbed stealthily the fire exit. He broke in easily.

  After forty-five minutes of searching, he had to admit defeat. The tube wasn’t there. The smartass had been playing with him.

  After he calmed his anger, the redhead drove to the police station. He stayed in his car, watching the entrance from a safe distance. The student came out late in the evening, escorted by a bald man with a thin black tie. From the expensive attire and the luxury car, Gibbons deduced he was a high-end lawyer.

  He followed them all the way to Frankfort Avenue and quickly maneuvered his Mazda into a space behind the pedestrian crosswalk. He watched as the student got out of the Volvo and sprinted to his apartment. He was emptyhanded. The Volvo sped away.

  Gibbons sat in his car for a while, considering his options. He could go right away for the student. He noticed his silhouette in the window upstairs. This time he wouldn’t escape. But what if the student was waiting for that Austrian tramp? Perhaps they were in it together, conspiring how to get the treasure tube.

  An hour later Gibbons surrendered. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. He climbed out and glanced at the intersection. Except for a few cyclists and pedestrians there was no traffic. No squad cars.

  The Irishman was approaching the corner of Kennedy and Avon when, suddenly, two things happened at once: A Uber appeared from behind, hardly stopped as the student darted out and disappeared inside, and instantly drove away—just as the girl’s cellphone buzzed in his pocket.

  Gibbons could not believe his good fortune. It was her, the Austrian blonde, on the other end. She sounded shaken. Either the reception was poor, or her voice was quivering.

  Her offer was simple: test tube #12 in exchange for her life.

  Although her distress seemed authentic, Gibbons had learned to be cautious. As expected, she wanted to meet in a crowded place—in a café, a mall, or on a busy street. But Gibbons would not take the risk. He was sure the student had already given his detailed description to the police. By now his sketch had probably been distributed online and was on every computer screen of every squad car in the Commonwealth. How could he tell this call wasn’t a trap? He preferred a more secluded place—but he let the girl select the venue, to make her feel at ease.

  She chose an industrial structure in the open, at the outskirts of the metropolitan area. He couldn’t guess the reason for that pick. Maybe she thought that way she would secure a safe escape route. Gibbons grinned. It turned out that women were no less gullible than the albino rabbits in the lab.

  He told her to come alone.

  Gibbons rushed to his car and typed in the address on his GPS. The machine chirped, the screen darkened for a second, and then reappeared with a glowing winding streak that terminated in a miniature red flag.

  Just twenty miles to the destination.

  37

  My grandma caught me in the cab, on my way to meet Johanna.

  This time her concern was dedicated to Joseph-Arthur, the dandy gentleman from room 17. Like Belle he, too, had disappeared—he hadn’t shown up for the Friday lecture, ‘Challenges for the Golden Age in the Digital Era.’ But I was impatient and cut the phone call short with an abrupt “Goodnight, Granny, talk to you later,” hanging up before she could mumble in protest.

  The Uber s
pat me out on the street parallel to the commercial building. The driver refused to go in, or even to wait for me.

  I found the opening in the wooden fence that surrounded the building, a floppy door with a loose chain, then slipped in and located the elevator shaft of what looked like an unfinished building site. It probably wouldn’t have power. The stairs were unfinished, just an ascending ramp, pieced with equidistant horizontal boards nailed to the cement, with no rails.

  Through the shaft I thought I heard someone crying upstairs. The quickest way to reach her, I decided, would be to hang onto the horizontal boards and pray that they would carry my weight. To be on the safe side, I pressed close to the wall, even scratching it, locating dents in the bricks for my fingers to grab should the need arise. I was almost there, careful not to stumble on a crisscrossed beam.

  Then I saw her, curled up and trembling in the cage lift.

  The elevator was there. Its screen door went up on the track on the top floor and Johanna bolted straight into my arms. I clasped her to me, cupped her quaking body, stroked her wavy hair, and covered her closed eyes and dry lips with kisses.

  “Gott, how I need you,” she managed to say between the quivers.

  “He tried to kill you?”

  Her eyes opened wide and locked on mine for a long moment in the dark, before she nodded hesitantly.

  “Why did you take the tube in the first place? What’s your connection to this mess?” When she hesitated, I held her at arm’s length and lifted her tear-soaked chin, gazing straight into her reddened yet gorgeous eyes. “You owe me some answers. At least one person has already died because of this wretched tube, and in the process that wacko almost killed me, too.”

  “Milbert, I’m so sorry…”

  “There’s a cop who thinks I pushed the professor into the pit and made up the whole shebang about you and that Gibbons.” A timid smile flashed in the light, as a new phlegmy naso-labial fold splitting the mole. “Yes, I know it sounds silly, but he’s as stubborn as a mule—apparently it runs in his family—and he won’t stop unless you come with me to the police.” I grabbed her elbow. “You got the tube?”