An Eye For Murder: A Medical Thriller

by Martin Sherwood

  39

  Apparently, a cemetery is a good place to get a cab.

  It’s a piece of cake.

  I asked the driver to take me to the medical campus and stop along the service alley, behind the Animal Care Building, in front of the basement elevator.

  Everyone knew about the gap in the fence. In early autumn, the fire department had cut a hole in the fence to evacuate leaking gas tanks from the basement, and never bothered to seal it.

  Why didn’t I take the test tube straight to the police? Inspector Ramzi would have most likely arrested me the moment I showed up. It was way past eight o’clock, and I was in breach of our agreement. And even if the inspector was inclined to show some leniency, give me a chance to explain, he would definitely put me in a cell the minute I’d finished telling him what happened to me over the past hour. But he would also have the tube sent to the police lab.

  But I’m such a putz, and something Professor Efron repeated often during her lectures about original research—her motto, “rely only on thyself”—had infected me. I couldn’t control my curiosity. I had to know more about this magic molecule in tube #12, and only Efron’s lab had all the ingredients for an accurate answer. In any case, the analysis would take no more than twenty minutes.

  My driver and I had spent the preceding hour zigzagging through some of Louisville’s suburban side alleys, with frequent glances in the rearview mirror. I even offered the driver extra to pass through a car wash machine, despite the torrential rain outside, because I knew the tunnel’s exit led to a one-way street, and a stranger could not get there without circumnavigating half the city.

  I crawled through the hole in the ACB fence and rushed to the basement. In the corner of my eye I saw the guard’s shack, lit by two spotlights. The elevator traveled nonstop to the seventh floor.

  I stepped out and looked around. Friday night; everything was closed. The departmental nerve center—the secretary’s office—was locked. A notepad with a pencil hung on a nail by the door. The usual disorder prevailed in the seminar room: coffee cups, leftover snacks, and parts of Friday’s newspaper, perused during the meeting but not worth taking home.

  I passed the blood bank, and for the first time in all my months here I saw its front doors closed. From inside came a cacophony of buzzing centrifuges and ticking machines. The windows in the emergency exit at the far corner of the hallway were the only openable windows. They were smaller than the others, with tilted glass. Yet, someone had forgotten to close the one on the seventh floor and cold wind whistled its way in.

  Then I noticed the lights in Efron’s room. They were on.

  I remembered having turned off the light—I’m meticulous about saving electricity, even when I’m not paying the bill. I approached the room and opened the door slowly.

  At first everything seemed in order. The mug on the table, the solution jars, the books—they looked friendly, reassuring. Then I noticed that the binders were not in their usual alphabetical order. The professor’s desk drawers were open, including the permanently locked bottom one. Instead of a lock, there was a circular cavity with excavation marks left by a screwdriver.

  The redhead had already been here. This time the search was delicate, perhaps to avoid attracting the attention of the university’s security personnel. But something must have surprised him, because he forgot to turn off the lights.

  I dug into my coat pocket and pulled out the tube. I raised it to the light, shaking the foamy liquid. I went to the adjacent room, grabbed a pipette dropper, and instilled a sample into an examination flacon.

  I entered the scanner room and gazed at the chromatograph—or what was left of it. The vials in the tracks resembled dominoes that had fallen over each other. Solution dripped onto the floor. The computer printouts were torn.

  But it was not critical. For initial analysis I needed just a tiny sampling of the tube, and the photometer—a small, gray instrument, characteristics which had probably helped it survive the intrusion—was unmolested.

  I knew how to conduct the experiment with my eyes closed. I transferred a few drops from tube #12 into the testing cell, and heard the automatic syringe suck up the stuff. I glanced at the clock and walked away.

  Back in Efron’s room I started probing the contents of the bottom drawer, the one that had been permanently locked. I scrutinized the remains of the Irish bastard’s search, though I doubted he had left me anything of value. He had sought only the tube, but the professor had an extensive system of yellow sticky notes, and these remained intact. Most of them were reminders for Efron herself—”File with Sigma,” “Grants,” “Student lectures,” “Florida conference,” “Faulkner,” “Davis visit.”

  Joshua Faulkner was the university’s patents attorney. Inside the drawer I found a transparent folder bearing his name with a tiny folded paper that had apparently escaped the Irishman’s notice. I unfolded it and read.

  Lucy, i wrote an answer to L at Medionetyx. i hope when he sees this comes from our legal dept he’ll get out of your hair. made it clear there’s no binding agreement btwn the 2 of u. green light to proceed c Oculoris. Cprstn transfers 20% next week, Patent office bills him directly to cover filing & registration costs in all countries requested. Well done. Sign below and bring to Belknap by next Tue. Josh

  I looked for more notes, but there were none. The note was undated, so I didn’t know which Tuesday he meant. But it was clear that Oculoris and Efron had signed some sort of agreement.

  Oculoris. My heart thudded wildly. My lovely Johanna. What had she been going through? She’d worked for Oculoris—I remembered the professor introducing her to me as such at our first meeting. Had she been caught in a crossfire of some sort? What was it that had driven her over the edge?

  And that psychopath—who was he working for? Was Efron part of it? She must’ve been. But to what extent? She and Johanna had both paid with their lives.

  Was I to be next?

  I turned on the professor’s computer, checked the icons on her desktop and found nothing unusual. Then I went into Outlook. I typed in VISUS1738—her room number at the National Eye Institute, one of the three options I considered most likely—and got in. I started to go over her incoming and outgoing mail, descending line by line. After going back two months, I started to see Johanna’s name. She used an address from a small hospital in Tyrol, Grieshaber Krankenhaus, but there was nothing beyond a single line of polite greeting and a request of authorization for a special delivery.

  Grieshaber Krankenhaus, Grieshaber Hospital. Where had I seen that name before?

  Just then I smelled the foul odor of rotten eggs—dihydrogen sulfide, H2S. The terrible stench came from the cold room, down the hall.

  The room had two work areas: the front—where solutions readily available for use were stocked—and the tomb-sized area in the rear, which I rarely visited. It had an inner door and required a code to enter. Sensitive materials were kept there—embryos, organs, and tissue parts.

  The front door of the cold room was closed but unlocked. A dark puddle seeped from the crack under the door. When I opened it, the puddle expanded.

  Here, too, he had preceded me. My eyes fell on the shelves in the anteroom. The sulfuric acid glass tank lay shattered on the floor like a broken aquarium, and the gelatinous material swam out like clam chowder. I hopped over the pond.

  I typed the four-digit code and the inner door moved. The room’s highest shelves were loaded with a plethora of rare items. There were expensive solutions, tissue parts, fetal rats in formaldehyde, and six small containers, each carefully wrapped in aluminum foil, like unbaked cupcakes.

  I scratched a covered corner and immediately recognized the label of the Austrian hospital on four vials. Tissues, shipped from one medical center to another. I had remembered right.

  I climbed a footstool and removed a lid from a container. The tank was empty. I check
ed the rest. Empty. Only in the last one did I find a tissue relic at the bottom of the vial—an external eye muscle ring. But my own eyes focused on a neatly folded paper, taped to the bottom of the tray.

  The ensuing adrenaline surge had deadened my sense of temperature; now I realized I was almost frozen and I retreated, shivering, into the hallway. I unfolded the paper. It was a table, divided into two, and scribbled in the professor’s tiny crowded handwriting. The upper half contained German-sounding names of four individuals, along with the age, a date—mortality?—cause of death, duration and frequency of drops, pre- and post-treatment visual acuity, cataracts rated on +++ scale, and a column for notes, dedicated to exceptional side effects.

  Looking at the lower table, I focused on two names: Rebecca Cox and Belle Mohay.

  I searched for a safe corner to phone Harrison. My whole body was shaking, and I decided to wait a few minutes on the other side of the floor, behind the locked door of one of the empty rooms belonging to the blood bank, watching the elevators through the peephole.

  But just then a familiar rattling sound came from the adjacent room.

  The photometer chirped in the background, signaling that the analysis was over. The computer spat a list of substances that caused my eyes to double their size in astonishment: “Ketone, nitrate, bilirubin, protein, uric acid, phosphates, oxalates, epithelial cells, isolated leukocytes…”

  This can’t be!

  40

  Johanna was already two floors below when Gibbons stumbled upon the oblique plank.

  She slipped out through what would have been the building’s fire escape and heard his cry just before she pushed the wooden side door.

  She saw her Audi parked in the wide gravel yard, the beams of the headlights capturing the mutilated corpse.

  Deciding that the way to her car was no longer safe, Johanna clung to the hollow cement wall, trembling and bewildered. But not for long. Since childhood, she’d had her own technique for regaining her composure—talking to herself, reminding herself of more difficult situations from which she had emerged unscathed.

  She had to get away from the vehicle as quickly as possible. In the dark she found a gap in the hedge, and saw a silhouette slipping stealthily toward the adjacent cemetery.

  Milbert?

  Johanna stood on her tiptoes and peeked at the grounds of the construction site. The Irishman was bent over the body, his hands gloved. Then he rose and walked to the car.

  I mustn’t waste a spare moment, she said to herself. She pulled on a black woolen balaclava and carefully tucked in her blond curls.

  All the way to the nearest shopping mall she kept looking over her shoulder. She crossed the main entrance and blended into the flowing throng. Only then did she feel safer. She would pass the time between shop windows and changing rooms.

  An hour later she was still sitting on a bench inside a dressing room in one of the stores, taking deep breaths, trying to control another wave of shivers running through her body. Beside her lay a pile of dresses, shirts and belts. Dressing rooms were always situated at the back of the store, forcing shoppers to mindlessly pass aisles of merchandise on their way in and out. Tonight, that suited her fine. The senior saleswoman had started to turn off the lights and move the carts to block the cashier lanes when the cellphone vibrated in her pocket.

  Blue Meadows.

  Still a long night ahead.

  ***

  “Ketone, nitrate, bilirubin, protein, uric acid, phosphates, oxalates, epithelial cells, isolated leukocytes…”

  This can’t be!

  Test tube number 12 contained… urine?

  Could the instrument be wrong? Like the hallucinogens the police laboratory had accused me of taking?

  I opened the analyzing cell, removed the lid, and smelled. Despite the multiple odors around and my allergies, it was not hard to recognize the familiar ammonia scent.

  There was no mistake. And that meant there must have been another tube—unless Professor Efron had sent this package on its lunatic journey as part of a sophisticated deception and hid the real thing God-knows-where. Or perhaps it was Johanna’s doing. But now there was no one left to ask.

  I poured the rest of the material back into the dispenser, added crushed ice padding, inserted it into my pocket, and searched my other coat pocket for my alternate mobile phone. I needed to call Harrison and update him. On the way to the elevator I clicked his number, but the screen flashed before I completed my task.

  I heard jumbled, breathless words on the other end of the line. The background was infused with loud phone calls, echoing footsteps, and rattling potties. I recognized the commotion at the nurses’ station at Granny’s institution.

  “Hello?”

  “Milbert!” Grandma cried excitedly. “You didn’t come today. Are you sick?”

  “No, Granny, I’m… fine, just tired.”

  “Oh! I’m probably bothering you. But you must believe me, this is important. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be calling. It’s about Joseph-Arthur, the nice gentleman from Room 17…”

  I was reaching up to push the door when I saw Jeffrey Gibbons stepping out of the elevator and heading toward me. I saw his bloodshot eyes, and through the window I saw him say, “Mister Greene!” His expression was exuberant.

  “Grandma—I’m sorry. I can’t talk right now.”

  For the second time in one day, I cut off our conversation without a proper farewell, and immediately began running in the opposite direction. I knew what would happen—Grandma wouldn’t give up. Indeed, she was relentless and called again, but I turned the phone off as I fled.

  Milbert! Think fast!

  Perhaps these were my last minutes on earth. If there was anything to what Johanna claimed, the moment I gave him the tube he would simply kill me. My ‘insurance policy’ was a myth. The redhead left no loose threads. What exactly had I been thinking when I had come here alone? Was it courage or stupidity?

  The Irish loon could get rid of me in a snap, with no witnesses. He could open the fire exit window, toss me into the central square and turn me into fertilizer.

  To him I was no different than the professor’s lab rats.

  ***

  Bertha straightened up in her chair, glanced out the window, and tapped Milbert’s number again.

  It took him a long time to answer. What was happening with him recently? “Milbert! You didn’t come today. Are you sick?”

  “No, Granny, I’m… fine, just tired.”

  “Oh! I’m probably bothering you. But you must believe me, this is important. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be calling. It’s about Joseph-Arthur, the nice gentleman from Room 17…”

  “Grandma—I’m sorry. I can’t talk right now.”

  He hung up on her again. Maybe he did not understand the urgency. She must not give up. She called again, but this time got the voicemail: “The person you have called is currently unavailable…”

  Bertha banged her cellphone sullenly on the side of her wheelchair, and it slipped to the floor.

  The electric gate was not closed. The coast was clear. It was the chance she had been waiting for. Bertha Zucker leaned over and massaged her legs, feeling the ants-down-the-calves sensation crawl and fade. She was glad to be able to move her toes without difficulty. Were her lower limbs finally resuming their obedience to her brain’s commands?

  Stealthily she wheeled her chair forward, aware that she might have to abandon it along the way. Her legs were already stockinged; all that remained was to slip on her loafers. She hid her most comfortable pair under the chair’s cushion.

  She felt giddy as soon as she left her room. Had they put something in her herbal tea again? They did that sometimes, when they despaired at her escape attempts. But she always spat it into the sink.

  The nurses’ station looked deserted. Bertha wondered what had happened, but
a few seconds later she heard the resuscitation cart being wheeled down the back corridor, to the nearby gym. Apparently, someone had collapsed; the nurse followed the doctor on duty. Bertha waited until the sounds emanated from a safe distance.

  A bizarre floating sensation escorted her all the way to the exit door. The squelching sound of the wheels of her chair was absorbed by the background noises. In the rec hall the TV was on, without spectators. The world news edition was about to end, to be followed by one of the gameshows she had no patience to watch—”The Vault” or “Who Wants to Be A Millionaire?”

  Bertha slipped stealthily behind the pole. From there it was but a short step to the garden, through the metal door they used in the fire drill every month.

  During the commercial break she pushed open the door and slid down the slope into the garden without attracting attention, her wheels spinning toward the bougainvillea hedge. Only then did she remember she’d left her coat in the rec hall, along with the duvet.

  But Bertha didn’t care. Even now, with rebellious limbs, she remained tough and stubborn. In that damned war she had crawled over snow and ice, dug trenches and lain flat on barbed wire.

  She’d never had a fever, respiratory infection, sinusitis, or even a runny nose and was only vaguely plagued by a protruding lumbar disc. Recently, though, a damaged hard disk in her brain had become irritatingly disloyal.

  She was careful to stay on the dark side of the trail as she approached the gate. She tried her best to muffle the grinding wheel with her cyanotic hands.

  The spotlight on the roof was equipped with an oscillating light, currently aimed at the electric gate. Bertha hid in the shade of a tree, waiting for the light rays to buckle behind the hill.

  She tightened her fingers and wheeled herself toward the gate.

  And she was through, moving quietly away from Blue Meadows, climbing a moderate slope and carving parallel grooves in the wet ground. Sharp branches scratched at her ankles, cutting through her pants and tearing her stockings.

  Her eyes gazed up. The sky was relatively clear, but she knew it could be deceiving and change in an instant.