I disarmed the alarm system with the code Harrison had given me, located the door key, and went inside.
It was state-of-the-art ‘smart home,’ equipped with the latest technological gadgets. Obviously, Mr. Naphtali Schlosser had prospered in the diamond trade. When he’d consulted my dad, he had been looking for a change from the urban density of Antwerp. He craved a little house on the prairie, with white picket fences winding like braids into the horizon, a couple of thoroughbreds, and most importantly, the scent of hay—or at least manure.
Schlosser’s original plans were even more extravagant, but Dad had curbed his enthusiasm—a farm needed a constant presence, frequent maintenance work in view of the changing seasons and risk of tornadoes, and at least a couple of farm hands.
The jeweler agreed and settled for a smaller slice of land. He sold the northern lots but did not give up the horses—an avid Kentucky patriot.
The house resembled a double-decker yacht. A huge oval window extended almost from top to bottom, facing the eastern sunrise. Two large Shaker beds were moored under the skyline ceiling, with a clear view of both the rolling hills below and the starry dome above. When Dad billed a client exorbitantly, he called this level ‘the galleria.’
The stairwell spiraling down from the galleria was wide enough to accommodate Mrs. Schlosser’s chair lift, which she required for her arthritis. The walls were painted a light lemon-peach. The library was loaded with art catalogues and ancient bijouterie, as well as encyclopedias and history books—the lady of the house was a retired history teacher. The vast reception room walls were covered with impressionist paintings and modern sculptures that led to an enormous closed space, a concert-hall-quality entertainment center—virtually a private theatre that extended a half-level underground.
The inside illumination was controlled by voice-activated sensors and electric curtains. The northern wing opened to another set of stairs leading into a wine cellar. Halfway through, a door opened into an atrium, a private and breathtaking observatory of the Ohio River, snaking into a distant gap between the rounded hills. There was an elevator attached to the inner glass wall, but I took the side corridor with its butterfly-festooned wallpaper—Mom’s contribution, no doubt.
The bathroom alone was the size of Grandma’s apartment. I washed my face, gargled, cleaned the lenses of my glasses, and returned to the window.
Life was great—aside from the fact that I was dangling between sky and earth, and there was someone, somewhere in the stratosphere above and the Louisville metropolis below, chasing the tube, on his way to do me in.
More people would be paying with their lives. The Irishman was not wasting any time.
I picked up the phone and dialed the number to Blue Meadows. I hoped Hertz would not answer this time.
My wish came true. Nurse Zoe, a pretty brunette, whispered breathlessly that they were all sad about Joseph-Arthur. Everyone had loved him. I asked her where my granny was, and Zoe reported that she was watching her right now, with her very eyes, sitting in the recreation hall. Jokingly, I said I hoped it was not another plot of my grandmother’s to slip out to the porch and escape via the gate.
Zoe reassured me, saying, “After yesterday, we don’t leave the side door to the garden open.”
“Yesterday?” I groaned. There was an awkward silence, then Zoe told me that she’d just returned from a vacation this morning and wasn’t sure about the dates. I asked her to inform Granny that I planned to visit her later today, as soon as I completed another chore.
Then I got to the reason for my call. “Who is the attending doctor tonight?”
“Doctor Nguyen,” Zoe replied. I was familiar with him—a veteran physician with a pleasant mien.
After I hung up, I threw myself on the bed, trying to turn my brain off.
***
He had a selection of fake passports.
This time, Jeffery Gibbons elected to use his Australian one.
His new persona, Marcus Sheridan, was a travel agent exploring a tourist package deal for horseracing and fine bourbon enthusiasts.
Peter Lister had perused the protocol papers Gibbons had taken from Johanna’s lab files and emailed him. The forms were similar in all pharmaceutical companies, but Lister was particularly interested in the footnotes scribbled by Bernie’s beloved employee.
The president of Medionetyx knew all the requirements of the Food and Drug Administration. In order to be able to demonstrate significance, p<0.05, the FDA demanded a sample size of at least eight treated eyes. The experiment had begun at a satisfactory rate. Quite remarkably, at the outset, Bernie’s clinical trial coordinator had managed to recruit four volunteers in Austria, all from the same rural hospital in Tyrol. Then, according to the dates at the top of the page, there had been an abrupt break. Only in the last two months, with the submission date nearing, had the recruitment resumed and accelerated. On September 10, Bernie had filed for an extension, which was granted until December 31.
Clearly this would be his final deadline.
The protocol was straightforward: The volunteers, elderly and terminally ill patients who also suffered from impaired vision due to bilateral cataracts, signed an informed consent form and were treated with eyedrops. One eye of each patient received Efron’s medication; the other got a placebo. The sides were randomly assigned, in a double-blind fashion: Neither the medical team nor the patient knew which eye received what—just Bottle A and Bottle B. The eyedrops were instilled three times daily for five weeks. Once a week, always a Wednesday, the participants underwent clinical evaluation. They were checked for their visual acuity, and signs of intolerance and local toxicity were recorded—redness, swelling, tearing, itching, and miosis, or constricted pupils.
After the deaths of the volunteers, the treatment code was cracked. Efron’s eyedrops were well tolerated. Although Lister knew no German, the exclamation marks in the margins left no doubt. Further down the page there were rows and columns with parallel lines crowded with numbers only—Wednesday’s acuity tests. In all patients, a remarkable improvement of at least three lines on the Snellen chart had been noted in the eye that received the active compound.
Professor Lucy Efron had laid a golden egg.
After five weeks the treatment was discontinued. One patient received the drop for an additional week—the reason for this was not specified. Twice during the clinical trial, blood samples were obtained and sent directly to Oculoris Biopharma laboratories for measuring drug levels.
At that point the written comments had ended, and the Notes column had been left blank. It was obvious that the endpoint of the experiment was harvesting the eyeballs. Post-mortem, a death certificate was added. All patients had died from congestive heart failure or pneumonia.
All documents had been signed and stamped by the Austrian coordinator, Dr. J. Berger.
There was only one woman left in the list, who tonight would complete the entire five weeks of treatment—Mrs. Bertha Zucker.
49
Drenched in sweat, I awoke on a huge foreign bed.
I leaned over the railing of the galleria and peered down. Even without glasses I could discern the end of the spiral case that led to the kitchen.
I went downstairs barefoot and headed to the ceramic hob. On the marble counter next to a SodaStream machine stood a fancy designer coffeemaker—so different from its bruised older brother, lying right now on my kitchen floor. I opened it and closed my eyes. My nostrils relished the rich aroma as I scooped up a spoonful of exquisite Colombian coffee and filled the filter, squashing it like tobacco in a pipe, and screwed in the handle. Affluent people know how to enjoy the good life. I could get used to that.
The water chamber heated up swiftly and soon began to hum and whistle. While the dark fluid started dripping into the mug, I found a bag of pretzels in the pantry, tore it open, and set my jaws free to munch away eagerly.
The phone rang and I jumped up. I stared at the annoying gadget and decided to ignore it—the house was supposed to be vacant, after all. But the nagging instrument would not give up. I focused on the display: ‘Unidentified Caller.’ After fifteen more rings I surrendered. On the line, to my relief, was a furious Harrison.
“What the hell is wrong with you? A man can expire five times before you pick up the damn phone,” he yelled.
“Nobody’s supposed to be here,” I reminded him.
Something must be very wrong, I thought. Harrison rarely lost his cool.
“Did you find out anything about Medionetyx and the Irishman?”
He said nothing, but I knew he’d heard my question. He played hardball, pitched deep inside my court. “Turn on the TV,” he commanded. “WLKY, right now.”
I found the remote in the top drawer under the huge Sony set. The screen came alive to a close-up of the familiar-looking skeleton of a commercial building.
According to the digital clock it was already five p.m. God almighty! I’d been absent for hours. But what I saw jolted me out of my stupor, and I focused right away. At the bottom of the screen, words scrolled from right to left: Breaking News—Live! And above that appeared a fixed heading: Jenny Pierce, reporting from Preston Hwy.
The studio anchor was diminished to a corner image, and the rest of the screen was filled with an aerial view of the unfinished complex. The camera focused on the gravel path surrounding the building, which looked bizarrely different in the fading daylight. The rain had resumed and drops splashed on the camera lens. A sea of umbrellas bobbed in the background.
A crowd had formed a circle in front of the building. An ambulance and a flashing police car were parked in the center.
“The body was discovered following an anonymous phone call that came to our news desk and was immediately forwarded to the police.”
An officer bearing the nametag Benton Lowry stood in front of the camera. Due to the hustle and bustle and the piercing wind, he was forced to huddle over the ball of the crime reporter’s mike.
They spoke about a body of a white female that had just been discovered and said that no further details were yet available. An investigation was getting underway. By the look of the injuries, the woman had fallen from a great height, probably one of the unfinished balconies. There were no signs of struggle. The officer said suicide was a possibility, but at this stage it would be premature to comment any further, and all leads were appreciated.
The photographer swung round, and for a moment the camera lens caught a red Audi, parked on the mound parallel to the access road, with all doors open.
Jenny Pierce, the crime reporter, thanked the officer. “Back to you, Melanie,” she said, but the news anchor at the studio had an additional question. The reporter nodded, waded through the throng, and approached an empty gurney. Two policemen turned around and blocked her way.
One of them was Inspector Syd Ramzi, wearing a frown.
He knelt over a woman who was lying, fully clothed, on the gravel. The camera showed only a vague figure under opaque tarp. But a wedge of blond hair escaped the concealing efforts and I recognized the rain-darkened knit shirt and the tips of her boots.
Turning to face the camera, the reported replied to the anchor’s question. “As previously stated by Sheriff Lowry, the case is in its preliminary stage; in order not to compromise the investigation they are releasing no further details.”
Then I saw Ramzi’s chilly gaze directed at the camera. I felt like he was looking for me through the screen, looking straight at me, as if to say, ‘I’ve just let you go, and a new body has surfaced.’
His expression was sour—maybe because Sherriff Benton Lowry had stolen his fire on live TV—almost prime time, too—or perhaps because he was working on a Saturday, when many people were at home, resting, watching live.
To be honest, he had damned good reason to hate my guts. I’d missed our eight o’clock rendezvous for the second time. When we met, he would explode and unload his frustrations on me. Now we’d be dealing with two dead women.
And one of them… Johanna. Another wave of pain started building up inside me.
“You called them,” I whispered into the phone. “You’re the unidentified caller.”
“Listen to me and listen good!” Harrison said. “You do not go anywhere, you dig? No funeral, no nothing.” It had taken him too long to believe me, and time was a precious commodity in my case. Within twenty-four hours since I’d met the Irish maniac in Louisville, two women had been murdered.
Was I the next victim? Would I ever be able to feel safe leaving my hiding place at the Schlossers’? Could I put this nightmare behind me and resume anonymity? Who would guard me—Harrison Zucker, Esquire? The grumpy inspector?
On the TV they kept blabbering, but I didn’t catch a word.
Then my own picture appeared on screen and I felt the blood drain from my face. It was the one taken the day I’d returned from Nepal—we’d celebrated in a pompous seafood restaurant in Simpsonville. I wondered where they’d found it.
“The chief of the special investigation team has just released a picture of a person of interest, who is wanted for questioning. Louisville resident Milbert Greene, age 23. Anyone who can assist with information on his whereabouts is asked to call the nearest police station or the number currently shown on the bottom of your screen.”
50
All the way to the Anshei Sfard cemetery, my mind spun with futile and paranoid thoughts.
This nightmare had begun when I’d agreed to babysit for the professor’s twelfth test tube. It felt as if two years had elapsed since Thursday, not two days. I had changed into a puppet; someone had taken control of my life. I was being manipulated, left with no possibility of resistance.
It was me they had found, frozen and sedated, near a stinking slimy pit with a body of a woman I’d known, melting inside.
It was me a couple of eyewitnesses would be able to finger, running naked by the riverbank, knocking on the door of the Andromeda lobby on the coldest night of the year.
And now, another corpse.
And I, Milbert Greene, the connecting piece of the riddle, was on a one-way ticket to the electric chair.
Although I hadn’t been to a cemetery in a long while—Grandpa had died three years ago—I had a deep sense of déjà vu. I grasped the handles of the scooter with both hands, pressed the accelerator, and buried my chin in a fuzzy gray coat I’d found in Schlosser’s wardrobe, a hybrid between a windbreaker and a rescue vest. His physique was fuller than mine, so everything was a size too big. Nevertheless, I’d also borrowed a clean white undershirt.
And some baggy underwear.
I was so immersed in processing the information that I had no memory of the road from Prospect, at the outskirts of Louisville’s metropolitan area, to the ‘outskirts of life.’ Four of the five Jewish cemeteries formed a single complex south of downtown, off Preston Highway—a puzzle of tombstones, often separated only by a grass path. Anshei Sfard—”The Spaniards”—was the smallest, its entrance not facing Preston but around the corner, off Locust Lane.
The old side gate was wide open. Avoiding the main entrance, I steered the scooter onto the circular drive, still slippery from the last rain. It was starting to get dark and purple light spots stained the dome-shaped skies, an impressive intro to the impending storm. The Orthodox congregation was dwindling, and the cemetery hadn’t been very active. Some tombstones had eroded, their inscriptions worn smooth. Paths and hills were upholstered with multiple layers of leaves, mature trees and bushes in need of grooming.
The 1880s
brought a new wave of Jewish immigration to Louisville from Eastern Europe, mainly Poland and Russia. Most spoke Yiddish and practiced Orthodox Judaism. They formed the smallest congregation, usually despised by the Reform German Jews, who came fifty years earlier, were considered ‘blue-blood Kentuckians’ and clung to burial privileges like it was a treasure chest.
Joseph-Arthur had been the last surviving member of a clan of rabbis. Having lost his two brothers and beloved wife several decades earlier, and with no offspring of his own, Joseph-Arthur would soon be the last addition to the Ginzburgs’ eternal guesthouse. His plot had already been dug next to that of his wife Dora, overlooking Audubon Park.
The wind picked up and rustled through the trees. A rain-soaked branch shrugged and released a chilly shudder like a strained cello string. Some maintenance work, underway behind the posterior tree line, had stopped on account of the weather. A pile of cinder blocks and shovels was about the only evidence of life, as well as an empty pit. Here too, construction was in demand.
The wind detached a flock of ravens from a treetop, and they started circling above my head. The skies were smooth but starless. Tree trunks lined the landscape like the teeth of a comb.
I had not parted from Harrison on good terms and was afraid he would try to amend his relations with the police on my account. He was responsible for my bail, which was proving to have been a grave mistake. Could he have spoken to Ramzi already?
I decided it would be safer to continue on foot.
I hid the scooter behind a flower shop, closed at that late hour, and climbed the top of the mound in order to get a good look at the cemetery entrances. I did not see a police car.
As I returned to the circular road and trudged through a shortcut, I stumbled upon another grave that had been readied for another blueblood and was now collecting the first raindrops. The mud was ankle-high, and the slope challenging for a person with night-blindness like myself. As if answering my prayer, the moon shook off its feathery duvet and a crescent now glowed with a shiny puddle of light all the way to the main gate. Part of the way down had been paved with flat tombs, dating back to the Civil War. I felt uneasy trampling on them, but the grass at the margins was thin and flooded like drainage canals, and I was in a hurry to save the living. Returning to the main access road was out of the question. Any minute now a squad car might emerge, leaving me but few seconds to leap into the woods.
An Eye For Murder: A Medical Thriller Page 25
