“Thank you, Linda. I’ll send somebody to pick her up.”
Boris was happy he’d insisted on fitting Bertha’s wrist with a new heavy-duty plastic bracelet bearing her name and that of the institution, instead of the thin one she had torn off with her teeth.
He was about to hang up when Linda asked, “By the way, Boris, who is this Joseph-Arthur? She keeps repeating that name.”
Twenty minutes later the outer wall of the nursing home was washed by the bright lights of a minivan with the Blue Meadows logo painted on its doors. It stopped in the now-empty asphalt-covered horseshoe entrance.
Jimmy, the driver, came out and rushed to push the side door open along its rail. He helped Mrs. Bertha Zucker to climb out of the backseat. As Boris approached with a folding wheelchair, he noticed that the old lady was limping and stumbling, muttering and shaking her head from side to side.
She looked thinner and paler than ever.
Boris wheeled the chair around behind Bertha, but when Jimmy tried to slide her into it, she shook him off violently. The driver looked startled.
“You new here, aren’t you?”
“Yep.” Jimmy nodded. ‘’I’m a second-year student at Spalding. Psychology major.”
“Moonlighting,” Boris sighed with a comforting smile. “I’ve done that too. Well, don’t you worry. Sometimes she’s like this, especially after she’s tried to run away.”
“It’s so sad—”
“Getting old. Outliving your brain. I guess it’s waiting for us all.”
“She’s run away before?”
Boris nodded. “Many times. It’s the same every time. She comes back a bit confused and raging until we give her a tranquilizer.”
“She has no family?”
“Actually, she does.”
“And they know all this?”
“Sure. Her grandson visits her regularly.” As Boris spoke, his mobile buzzed. Before he had a chance press the green button, Bertha tried to escape again. She twisted free from his grip and almost reached the front of the minivan. Jimmy went after her, gently embraced her, and guided her back into the wheelchair.
“Be careful,” Boris said with a grin. “Sometimes she bites.”
His phone kept ringing. With a glance at the familiar number, he answered and said, “She’s back. No, no problem, Mrs. Hertz, everything is under control.”
He hung up as the stubborn old lady made another try towards the park.
Finally, by means of a joint effort, they managed to trap Bertha in the wheelchair and wrap her in a blanket. As they emerged out of the darkness and into the spotlight that raked the bottom of the stairs, evidence of the attempted breakout became obvious—a gruesome bruise around the old lady’s eyes, scratches across her forehead, and a blood clot under her left elbow. Her right knee was swollen, and when the blanket slipped, it revealed a twisted shoulder in a large sling over the collarbone.
“The lady at the hospital told me that the police found her behind a bench, lying in a ditch,” Jimmy said. “She was probably injured when she fell. No telling how long she was there. But then they noticed the plastic tag.”
“Did they say where exactly they found her?”
“On the other side of the park, near the statues.”
“Further than before, “ Boris muttered.
Bertha’s voice rose from the chair. At first it sounded like a grunt, but it gained intensity as she repeated herself, trying to correct her errors.
“Joseph-Arthur—something happened to Joseph-Arthur!”
“She keeps saying that, in the van, all the way here,” Jimmy said. “Who’s this Joseph-Arthur?”
“We have a Joseph-Arthur in Room 17.”
“Is he all right, this Joseph…?”
“Mr. Ginzburg died two hours ago,” Boris said. Jimmy turned pale, and Boris shrugged apologetically. “He was almost ninety.” He leaned forward, released the brake of the wheelchair, and started to push it up the disabled access ramp. “Mrs. Zucker’s taking it hard. This is not the first time she’s become excited when someone died here.”
“Joseph-Arthur… Joseph-Arthur! Something’s happened to him!” Bertha’s anxious body shook uncontrollably.
As they went through the automatic doors and passed the empty lobby Boris waved to the nurse at the station. “Check that the doctor signed the order and have it ready for me.” Then, to Jimmy, “I’ll take her back. Don’t you worry.”
He waited until Jimmy left, then rolled the chair into the sterile storage room. The nurse slipped in behind them and closed the door. She wore latex gloves and was holding a syringe filled with clear liquid and an antiseptic swab.
Boris nodded, locked the brakes, rolled back the old woman’s sleeve, and—with the aid of the nurse—administered the injection into Bertha’s arm. She jolted and cursed, but within seconds the syringe had emptied.
Bertha’s eyes stared blankly at the crowded shelves. Boris and the nurse waited till the old lady’s body went limp before leaving the storage room.
But as they approached the nurses’ station, Bertha began to squirm in the chair. She managed to free a hand and stuck her claws in Boris’s thigh.
Her scream echoed off the corridor walls. “Milbert! I want Milbert!”
Her whole body was jackknifing violently.
“Milbert! Where are you?”
Her sagging pigeon chest wobbled for a few more seconds, then the sedative took hold.
45
A ray of light penetrated the slit in the blinds and hit my eyelids.
I’d had another sleepless night, kept awake by the fear of the Irishman getting at me. Here, in the laboratory on Saturday, there wasn’t a soul within at least a mile. If anything happened to me, who would notice?
I’d half-dozed on my left arm so it took a while to get oriented, to feel the blood flow rejuvenating me. I felt cold metal and when I tried to shift, I almost tipped myself over the edge.
I found myself on the edge of an operating table. No pillow, no sheet, no nothing.
I lay in a fetal position, arm folded under my ear. Outside it was already daylight. I had probably managed to snooze only in the last thirty minutes, judging by how groggy I felt. I yawned and stretched, still supine.
I vaguely remembered that shortly after breaking into Professor Wexler’s fifth-floor brain research lab through the outside window, I had left it and travelled two floors down, where Wexler’s cats were replaced by those of Jennifer Cook from biochemistry.
Cook was an unpopular teacher, but a highly esteemed diabetes researcher and the partner, if not more, of Vice Dean Copeland. She was raising a rare breed of sphinx felines, suffering from type I diabetes mellitus and kidney failure. These miserable creatures urinated a lot outside their litter box, and some of the overspill had dripped onto the cot I’d been dozing on.
I raised my head and gazed at a mirror on the opposite wall. Again, I confronted a complete stranger. I had a two-day stubble and probably stank from a mile away. Then it dawned on me that, in addition to all my troubles, I had missed reporting to the police station at eight p.m. last night. What now? Had I become a fugitive from justice? Was I now also wanted by the police?
I wandered over to the sink and quickly freshened up, because Professor Cook’s techs were known to have no personal life outside the lab. Saturday or not, for them six thirty was not too early. The duty technician would come any moment now and find me there.
I searched in my coat pocket for my cellphone, then remembered it falling into the square while I was balance-beam walking on the Medical School’s outer wall. I cursed. That made two mobile phones lost in one weekend.
There were no phone devices in Cook’s animal care facility. The doctor removed the cord and locked them away in her cabinet at the end of each working day to prevent personal use by the techs.
I felt close to a nervous breakdown. I just needed to get away quickly and find a phone; this nightmare would soon be over.
My clothes stank enough to make me want to vomit. A short white lab coat hung on the wall. The name Mia was embroidered on the front left pocket, and its University of Louisville laundry number was 139. In one of the bottom pockets I found three quarters and two one-dollar bills.
I unbuttoned my shirt and ripped it off my body, along with my undershirt. I balled them up, lifted the lid of the trashcan, and threw them inside. I donned the white coat, which fit well. Mia would have to forgive me.
Above the sink I found a head cover. I pulled a face mask from a lower drawer and tied it over my ears. Then I covered my shoes with booties, took my coat, and opened the door cautiously.
I peered out. The corridor was empty.
According to the illuminating bulb above the elevator, someone had last used it to get to the fifth floor—perhaps Gibbons. I chose the emergency stairs and descended two flights.
I crossed into the ACB, where animals were kept before being transferred to the main tower for laboratory experiments. Limited procedures were conducted in the lab; more complex operations were carried out in the two fully equipped ORs located in the basement.
I arrived at the entrance to the operating rooms. The space housed the autoclave and a line of sinks; liquid cleansers hung from spindle dispensers under an elongated mirror. I turned on a long-necked faucet and washed my face, practically drowning myself. I massaged my jaws, neck, and earlobes. I let the water flow freely, hoping to enjoy a few additional refreshing seconds. I felt a pleasant tingling, which spread a little further with each new muscle cell that decided to awaken and contribute to the joint effort of maintaining my composure.
A summary of the situation: I was in the pits. So far I’d managed to keep the crazy Irishman at bay, but I had no way of knowing if he was watching the medical school exit doors—perhaps even sitting in the lobby, awaiting my arrival.
The situation did not look too bright with Ramzi, either, especially since I had missed our eight o’clock rendezvous. I sensed that the inspector was a stickler for protocol—not one to resist the brilliant photo-op of my high-profile arrest, as Harrison had implied. Without a horse race scandal, White House inquest, or a major East Coast winter storm, I stood a good chance of being the opening story on primetime news.
And that meant good-bye to my future as a doctor.
I didn’t feel like trying to talk to Harrison this early in the morning, even if I’d had a phone. He’d unequivocally shown whom he really believed. And after I’d failed to report at eight last night, he would roar and yell and explain the obvious.
I was probably considered a fugitive from justice, an escaped criminal.
Most of all I wanted to call Blue Meadows and ask how my grandmother was. But I was afraid someone had been eavesdropping. I had to find a way to visit her.
So what now?
I rinsed my face again, searching for a scented soap or perfume. Why would I find that in the ACB basement? I thought. Male albino rabbits don’t need Chanel to woo female albino rabbits. I guess it was an automatic reflex, no brains needed.
I heard footsteps in the hallway—probably the first of the early risers, those sad techs whose experiments carried over to the Sabbath, come to finish their benevolent efforts to save humanity from itself.
I slid the mask back onto my face, tucked my hair into the cover, and rushed out. As I went through the glass door, someone on the other side greeted me, his eyes on the coffee cup he was carrying. I breezed through two more corridors until I reached a T-junction. I didn’t care about right or left, as long as I could exit the university—and the medical building in particular—quickly.
I floated away on the streams of the exhaust vents from the underground passageway.
46
Aurora, Illinois
“Did you know Ireland is the only country in the world that has a musical instrument as its official symbol?” Steve Harper said, tapping the harp on the tricolor pennant on his coffee mug.
Peter Lister blinked. He wasn’t a man of small talk, but his companion, seated across from him in the quiet bar, seemed to be a fount of useless information. “Jews have one too, don’t they?” he reflected.
“No, Jews have a menorah. King David played…”
Jesus! Hiring the man had probably been a fundamentally flawed idea. Anyone who talked this incessantly would be unable to keep a secret; he would probably absentmindedly reveal to a coworker at Oculoris that someone was secretly doubling his salary.
Stephen Michael Harper had worked at Oculoris Biopharma since its inception, but he had never been promoted. He was in charge of filing clinical trial questionnaires and ordering supplies. Every time Oculoris had started a new clinical trial in ophthalmology, some new bow-tied graduate with a bachelor’s degree in biology from a bloated private school had come in and bypassed him. The new guy would usually be someone who was about Harper’s son’s age yet immediately considered himself Raphael, the angel of medicine. Harper, son of a blue-collar family, had finished his own degree in night school, and over the years he had gained experience none of the newbies would ever get. Still, he was always left behind.
Last year, possibly encouraged by Mrs. Harper, he had noted the pattern and applied to make a lateral career move with Medionetyx. Sam from Manpower had noticed that Harper was working for Oculoris and notified Lister. That aroused the CEO’s curiosity, and he’d sought him out.
Harper was flattered by the attention. Not every day a VIP asked to meet him in order to ‘explore his options’! At Oculoris he was almost transparent.
Peter Lister had listened attentively. He immediately realized he was being handed something precious—a mole deep within Oculoris’ Clinical Trials Division, an invisible clerk, always there—always above suspicion. At first, he sent the Harpers to a pampering weekend at a plush resort and spa far out of town, including full-body massages and gourmet dinners. “No obligations, cross my heart,” Lister added with a conspiratorial smile as he sat with Mr. and Mrs. Harper a few days later in a private club fifty miles north of Chicago. “I came all this way just because I respect your need for discretion. I appreciate the risk you’re taking, but honestly, if they were treating me that way at Oculoris, I wouldn’t feel in debt. Isn’t that so, Mrs. Harper?”
“This is exactly what I’ve been telling him all these years,” she said, a little brunette with high heels and equal aspirations. “All these wasted years. God!”
“I won’t ask you to answer my offer right away. This will double—no, almost triple your salary. Bigger house, new cars, vacations—certainly more time with the family. Please just consider—”
“There’s nothing to consider.” That was the missus.
Now the president of Medionetyx began to fear for the fate of the money he had invested, and the program as a whole.
“Harper, I’m running short on time. What news do you have for me?”
“Johanna Berger is Leopold’s daughter.”
“The European examiner? I thought he was dead.” Lister sat back, his whole body stiffening. The pharmacist Leopold Berger was a close friend of the Coopersteins. Lister remembered well meeting the Austrian at Wendy and Bernie’s Sabbath dinners, to which he had also been invited, during the pharmacist’s frequent visits to Chicago. He knew that Bernie had also met him on his trips to Europe.
Bernie was a conniving bastard. You couldn’t take that away from him.
“Where are you with the paperwork?”
“We were granted an extension until the end of the year.”
Lister already knew that the sample required eight volunteers. “How many eyes are you missing?”
“After last night,” Harper said, “only one more. The last pair.”
&
nbsp; ***
I managed to sneak out through the campus gate without being chased by the security guy.
He actually had a very good reason to run after me—not because he knew I was a murder suspect, but because I’d forgotten to take off my head covering and face mask. Luckily the bus station had a slate mirror on three sides that reflected my image, reminding me that I wouldn’t get far in this costume.
I trudged over to a small grassy area across the street and slipped behind the hospital parking complex’s rear exit, where I peed and re-arranged my outfit to appear more dignified.
Mia’s short lab coat became my new shirt. I transferred the two bills and coins to my pants pocket, tucked the coattails under my belt, removed the shoe covers, and zipped up my green winter jacket. I raked my fingers through my hair and then over my cheeks, which felt like sandpaper.
I returned to the street but didn’t go beyond the easement before checking to make sure the Irishman wasn’t around. I thought about calling to ask how Granny was doing, but then realized that my cell phone had nosedived five floors into the concrete of the medical campus piazza. Furious with myself, I thumped the plexiglass wall, then circled the parking lot and returned to the service alley.
I walked a few blocks further down from the hospital, to a convenience store at the corner. I knew they had a small café area inside where I could sit and eat—at double the price.
The inside was heavy with the aroma of coffee, the kind my body craved. I couldn’t recall when I had last eaten. I yearned for a large macchiato and two chocolate croissants. Once they sent me to prison for life, I would be limited to insipid coffee, at best, and the pastries would surely lack that homemade taste. But the bill for my ideal ‘last treat’ would have been over seven dollars, so, being short of cash, I settled for a medium coffee and one croissant.
As I ferreted out the coins, parts of Mia’s lab coat and nametag were exposed. I glanced at the clerk and was grateful to see no signs of curiosity.
An Eye For Murder: A Medical Thriller Page 23
