She nodded.
“Here?”
She nodded once more.
“Then let’s go and put an end to it.”
I went into the elevator and pulled her in, but she clung to the bar of the door and refused to enter. “Let’s go there together. This is what you wanted, isn’t it?”
The elevator cage bounced in the shaft, but the door remained stuck.
“Come with me.” I leaped out and had started walking toward the stairs when her voice reached me.
“Milbert, wait a minute!”
Johanna now stood in the middle of the open space, her hair disheveled and flapping in the wind. Her hands were deep in her coat pockets. From an inside pocket she pulled out a Styrofoam container, opened it and dangled a tube in front of me. “Who is promising us peace and quiet?”
“What?”
“He said that after we return the tube, he’ll truly leave us alone.” She strode directly up to me. “No one can guarantee our safety, not even the cop. You think he’d get out of our hair if we turned it in?”
“Why? Why would he want to kill you?” I swallowed. “And me?”
“He’s a sociopath, Milbert; you saw for yourself. Efron is dead, right? Why did he have to kill her?”
“We’re going to give the tube to the police. Now.”
Feeling daring and resolute, I turned and headed back to the stairs, but she slipped around me and blocked my way. Her fingers were clasped, knuckle-white, around the tube. With her other hand she crumpled the Styrofoam container.
“No, not the police. I thought it best to give it to… him.”
“What?” I shouted, my voice echoing. “He’s on his way here?”
Johanna shrugged. “I don’t know what I was thinking, but it struck me as the most sensible thing to do. I wanted to give it to him in a crowded café, but he asked me to hand it over here, and go away. He promised we wouldn’t hear from him… ever.” Her eyes darted in panic. “What time is it?”
She saw I was completely thrown by the thought of her being even more gullible than I was. But as she began to talk, I realized she was already thinking about something else, something less naïve—the next step.
“Milbert, listen, please—I have a new plan, for us both. I admit I was panicked at first; I was thinking like a child. But now, after all we’ve been through, don’t we deserve a piece of the dough? What, are we just a couple of suckers? Why should we hand him the tube for free? It’s worth a lot of money—Efron already got quite a bit. Are you really sure you want to be a doctor? I already know what it’s like—I work in a hospital. It’s not so romantic. How long d’you think you’d last on bad coffee, stale tuna sandwiches, sleepless nights, having to deal with all those elderly patients who wish they were dead already? We could take the tube and go far away, just you and me. Far away…”
I stared at her.
“What about New Zealand?”
We heard something slam at the bottom of the stairwell. I thought it might be just the wind, but it was followed by the echoes of footsteps. We froze in the middle of the bare top floor, with no hope of finding refuge from the wind. The elevator cage shuddered, and the heavy door chain rattled insanely, but the elevator was firmly stuck. The slanting rain reached the center of the floor.
I turned away, to protect my face, and blinked at my mobile phone display.
“What are you doing?”
“Calling the police,” I told her.
“No!” Her shriek echoed in the elevator shaft. She pulled my free hand and handed me the container. “Here. You go now, give it to him.”
Unable to get the elevator to descend, the redhead was using the stairs—and he was approaching rapidly, already two or three floors below.
I lunged into the open elevator space. Our only escape route. I turned around to draw the cage door shut, thinking she was behind me. But she had disappeared from sight. I darted back to the threshold to look for her at the far end of the floor when a silhouette emerged from behind the last pole, and then came a terrible thud.
***
Gibbons loosened his shirt collar.
He had barely escaped a traffic jam caused by a fallen tree near the seminary; the fucking sedan had been out of sight by the time he got clear. He would have to go back and take care of the student later.
Because of the developing thunderstorm, he decided to avoid the small side roads. He went westbound on Eastern Parkway, then south on Preston Highway.
The flashes of lightning accentuated the edge of the industrial area. A skeletal structure towered above a sea of locked-up warehouses. Trucks huddled in nearby bays, waiting for the new day to load goods.
Gibbons braked behind the tall building. When he got to the gravel, he was welcomed by a biting wind that seemed even sharper in the open air. This road wasn’t dotted with mud and pits, but the gravel was a slippery obstacle, nonetheless.
He saw the Audi parked near the building; its trunk raised. He approached the car, careful to stay out of range of the vehicle’s side mirrors. But there was no need. The two front doors were also open, and the car was empty.
His flashlight beam wandered around until it located the entrance to the building—an unpainted wooden door, part of the fence around the construction site, with a loose chain. He snuck in and approached the naked staircase.
The wind whistled as he stepped to the elevator shaft behind the stairs. The space was empty. He looked up and saw that the cage was stopped a few floors above.
Gibbons pressed a button on the shaft, but the elevator remained where it was. Someone had left the door open on purpose. What on earth was going on here?
Then he heard voices from above—a man and a woman. The bitch had not come alone.
“What are you doing?”
“Calling the police.”
“No! Here. You go now; give it to him.”
Gingerly Gibbons climbed the makeshift stairs to the top floor. A crisscrossed pile of wood and metal pipes lay on the concrete floor—a dismantled scaffold. When he tried to bypass the stack, he had to pass over a rod placed diagonally between the columns. When he transferred his other leg, the pile avalanched, and beams began rolling down like a rockslide. An upper board disconnected and parachuted to the bottom of the elevator shaft.
There was a horrendous screaming. Lightning flashed, and through the open atrium he saw a falling silhouette, followed by a crash.
“Christ!”
Gibbons turned, hurried downstairs, and went into the backyard. He shined his light on what remained of the blond Austrian.
She lay with her arms outstretched, as if trying to ward off the fast-approaching gravel. Her feet were rotated outward, Charlie Chaplin style. One hand was buried inside her sleeve; the fingers of the other were spread like a fan.
A door clicked behind him. He turned and shined his flashlight on the wall, catching a shadow receding into the field behind that bordered the industrial park.
Shit! The student had escaped with the tube.
Gibbons wondered briefly if he had witnessed a lovers’ quarrel or a partnership that had ended badly.
The Irishman rose up and aimed his light in the direction of the fading footsteps, but a bush obscured his view. The Audi remained in place, its lights on, its doors open.
The student had probably given up on the vehicle. He probably thought he wouldn’t have enough time to find the keys—even if she’d left them in the ignition switch—turn it on, and back out.
Gibbons returned to the woman’s body. The flashlight beam climbed upward from her feet. Johanna’s head was crushed and mangled at the junction of the neck and the skull. The eyes bulged under half-shut lids. The blow had dislocated the jaw and loosened the teeth, which were stained with blood from a ragged laceration.
But there was no mistaking the dark mole
under the left nostril.
Gibbons pulled his shirt collar above his windbreaker. Maybe she had left something valuable. Again, he fished a pair of latex gloves from his coat pocket, swearing, and knelt beside the corpse. A few minutes later, still wearing the gloves, he stomped angrily to the car. He carefully searched the glove and side compartments, and under the seats and mats. Like any other rental car, it was devoid of personal items.
There was no sign of the tube. It must be with the student.
38
That night Bertha Zucker decided again to stay awake.
The reason was a sudden deterioration in the health of Joseph-Arthur Ginzburg. During lunch the coquettish gentleman from room 17 had appeared fine, even laughing and clapping when Adele Saunders sang “Moon River.”
But only two hours later, Joseph-Arthur had begun to vomit and had to be connected to an IV.
Despite his tendency to huddle and his annoying habit of patting frequently on her arm, Bertha had taken to Joseph-Arthur. He had stunning gray eyes and a long, pleasant, and surprisingly wrinkle-free face, a rarity for a man of eighty-nine years.
He was relatively new, but throughout his stay at Blue Meadows, he had never received any guests. Bertha had wondered how this was possible, until she learned from one of the nurses that Joseph-Arthur had been widowed many years before and had no children or living relatives.
Thankfully, she’d had the sense not to pester him with unnecessary questions about family.
They had been standing on the garden terrace one evening, a day when Bertha was depressed and disoriented. Ginzburg had been relatively new to Blue Meadows, but he had noticed her distress and walked over to her side. He told her about his poor eyesight—“Damn cataracts,” he’d said. Because of them he had missed a step and fractured the head of his hipbone, and now he was undergoing orthopedic rehab. He had tried to convince her to try the new eyedrops.
“You have to register. I tell you, they do miracles.”
After years without a man, Bertha suddenly entertained the idea of a spouse. She invited him to eat dinner with her the next evening and he readily agreed. Later she had amazed even herself by sitting next to him and surviving a whole evening of poetry.
But most of all she cherished the moment when he found her in a wheelchair, clutching a wicker basket she had made in her occupational therapy class, trembling and crying. She asked him tearfully, “Why can I remember every dumb detail of World War II, but cannot remember what I ate for breakfast? Tell me please, J-A, what’s wrong with me? Is my brain all screwed up?”
He had just stroked her hair with his long, thin fingers. She appreciated the fact that he never covered up the truth with nonsense like “It happens to us all.” Silence was more supportive than idle chatter.
But Bertha had not seen him all day. He always attended prayer services at eleven, and she had waited for him on the terrace at their regular meeting place. By one o’clock she despaired of waiting, rolled herself into his room and, to her surprise, found him sleeping.
Maybe he had forgotten their rendezvous. After all, she was not the only one who tended to forget things. She had decided not to wake him and went to her room to grab a short nap herself.
Bertha awoke in a confused state, her brain muddled, her thoughts fragmented like broken pottery. She could not understand where she was or what the time was. She was late for dinner. The food on the tray next to her bed was already cold. It was bland anyway. Then Bertha remembered that Milbert was supposed to visit.
Her grandchild never missed a Shabbat candle lighting. He even brought the pair of candles to put in the candlesticks, because he knew how important it was for her “to connect with my parents, to remember and never forget.”
But it was night already and he had not shown up. The pair of silver candlesticks stood abandoned on the windowsill.
The lights in Mrs. Hertz’s office went off. Bertha saw her hang the keys in the treatment room, don her coat, and bid the staff goodnight.
The male nurse came to Bertha’s door with her scheduled medication—the new eyedrops. Before curfew he would return with the sleeping pill. For twenty years Bertha had taken Valium to help her fall asleep. At first five milligrams were enough, but the dose had gradually increased to thirty crushed milligrams.
Tonight she planned to repeat her drill. She would pick up the spoon with the white powder; then, while pretending to take the medicine, the drug would be diverted into the space between the pajamas and the chest. The move would be fast and skillful, so when the nurse turned around again, her powder-coated lips would be one big smile.
These days, sunset arrived early, around six thirty. It was already pitch dark outside so it must be at least seven thirty. The lights in the room across the corridor were turned on.
Bertha did not remember who the doctor on duty was tonight. Earlier that evening, she had heard at the nurses’ station that the doctors had switched shifts again. Recently that was happening a lot—perhaps due to the heavy workload. They’d even added a new foreign lady doctor. Bertha did not like her.
Bertha pulled out her walking stick from the space behind her bed, between the curtain and the wall—a reminder of the days when she had still been able to walk on her own legs. She stretched it as far as she could and used it to catch the doorknob. She pulled, and the door opened a slit.
Bertha kept her gaze fixed on Joseph-Arthur’s room. From her vantage point, all she could see—every time the door was opened, and the nurse rushed either in or out—was the back of the doctor in a white coat, standing by J-A’s bed, checking the IV drip. Her distant visual acuity was crystal clear. The drops did work miracles!
The door opened again and a nurse came out to look for something. Once the doctor on duty was left alone in the room, his hand came out of his left coat pocket with a syringe. He stabbed the IV injection port and injected something directly into it. Then the glove went up to the infusion bag, and the drip rate increased.
Bertha lowered her walking stick and let her door fall closed again. She yearned to see Milbert already. What was taking him so long? Now, when her heart portended that something ominous was going to happen and she needed him right there, he wasn’t around.
Bertha’s anxiety grew stronger by the minute, and finally she called her grandson. Milbert never hung up on her. But this time he ended the conversation with a curt “Talk to you later,” and without the kiss that always sealed their calls.
“Wait! It’s Shabbat,” she managed to say. Was there a chance he was still listening to her? “How come you forgot? You always…” Finally, she realized she’d been talking to a deadline. Though not religious, Milbert knew the value of tradition in the Zucker family. But now, it seemed, he had no time for his grandmother.
He had sounded more tired than ever—no wonder, with the heavy load imposed on them in medical school. Maybe he was sick? He sounded terrible—his allergies again, with a hoarse voice and stuffed nose. He did not take care of himself, going out into the freezing cold with his green coat, which was torn in several places, and no scarf.
But she had no choice. She needed his help, because she was convinced that something bad was happening in Room 17. It was not A-J’s habit to be absent from their meetings on the terrace. Until tonight, he hadn’t missed a single one.
He could be in trouble. And, like Belle, he had no one in the world.
Murmurs arose from Room 17 and gave her no rest. She rolled over on her side and puffed up her pillow, ears tuned to the voices from across the hall.
For the next hour, nothing deviated from the routine. Snoring sounds came from the room next door. Gertrude had left her TV on again. Mrs. Johnson called for her husband, who had been dead for over twenty years.
Could she have been wrong? Perhaps Joseph-Arthur was down with a minor illness—a flare-up of his indigestion, maybe—and would be back at the terrace for t
heir regular meeting tomorrow.
It was not the first time she had suspected something irregular. Milbert had looked into her worries before. It turned out that Rebecca Fox had not disappeared without a trace but had gone to live with her daughter in Greensboro. Rose Grisham, at ninety-seven, was not poisoned; she had passed away in her sleep. So, Belle was probably okay, too—although Milbert still owed her an answer on that.
But Bertha refused to let go. There was too much fuss going on in Room 17. Why should a monitor and oxygen be needed for simple indigestion?
She rose from her bed without turning the lights on, pulled her wheelchair close, and slipped into it. Her upper body bent forward like a pocketknife as she pulled the door open a crack. Her eyes scanned the corridor. It was empty. On the right, at the end, she observed the nurses’ station. A blond nurse was fiddling with her nails and grinning into the phone while the male nurse scanned the radio stations for a program to pass the night. To the left, a hallway with empty rooms ended in a T that led to the rear treatment room.
Someone turned off the lights in the Potty Room and half of the neon bulbs in the hallway. Inside Room 17, the curtain was moved into the center and the wall lamp was diverted over the bedhead. The nurse gave the IV infusion a last glance, and left the room, holding a sphygmomanometer under her arm.
Bertha rolled her chair back into the room and let the door close to a narrow slit. So, she was being paranoid again—everything was a figment of her imagination.
Then the light flashed above the lintel of Room 17. A loud buzz sounded in the nurses’ station, and all of a sudden there was commotion in the hallway. The blond nurse hung up in the middle of her conversation and jumped up, pulling the resuscitation cart from behind the curtain. The line on the monitor screen of Room 17 went flat.
Bertha felt tears streaming down her cheeks.
She knew Joseph-Arthur Ginzburg was lost forever.
An Eye For Murder: A Medical Thriller Page 20
