Where was Milbert? Why hadn’t he arrived?
Bertha was especially angered when she discovered that someone had rummaged under her pillow and removed her mobile phone. No—she’d dropped it, hadn’t she? So where was it? By the two pieces of French toast leaning against her bowl of porridge, she knew it was Saturday already.
Strange—although nothing had entered her mouth since yesterday, she had no appetite. She spat the drug powder in the face of the nurse and refused to even taste the mashed potatoes.
At three in the afternoon, Dr. Winthrop examined her and could find nothing beyond increased peristalsis. He prescribed papaverine to alleviate her discomfort and recommended increasing her fluid intake. He ordered an IV drip, mildly worried by her tense abdominal muscles.
“Irritable bowel syndrome. Something is bothering her,” he whispered to the chief nurse. “Add twenty milliliters of Atarax syrup and her appetite should return.”
Atarax syrup was the most common tranquilizer dispensed in Blue Meadows, and it worked wonders. Many of the patients received it up to three times a day. The drug was mixed into their breakfast oatmeal, in the five o’clock applesauce, and sometimes in their nightly pudding.
But the patient in Room 22, like everyone else who had reached the Preparation Phase of the experiment, received a miniscule addition that was concealed from the nurses.
The medication cart always stood behind the treatment room, covered with a white sheet. The drug trolley was identical to all other hospital and clinic carts. It had graded rows of tiny cells, with colored stickers, meticulously arranged and numbered according to the patients’ rooms.
At half past seven the drug cart would be rolled back into the hallway for the regular round of evening medications. But earlier that evening, the cup filled with Atarax syrup for Room 22 had been removed and replaced with an identical cup that contained a teaspoon of syrup of ipecac, a potent substance that stimulated vomiting and was used to treat emergency poison intake in the ER.
The cup would be placed deep inside the doctor’s white coat pocket after administration. If any suspicions were to arise, there would be no trace left for forensics to find. That was precisely the way it had been done with the late Rebecca Cox, Belle Mohay, and Joseph-Arthur Ginzburg, God rest their souls.
Many old people experienced attacks of unrest and disobedience, and the patient in Room 22 was notorious for her rebellious personality. Mrs. Bertha Zucker went on frequent ‘hunger strikes’ when things didn’t go her way. Since last night, she had slept almost twelve hours straight and awakened in a belligerent mood.
Bertha was as stubborn as a mule, and Nurse Zoe was the only one able to convince her to taste a few scoops of the strawberry pudding. After all, the doctors had ordered sedation, and a nasogastric tube in case she continued to refuse to comply.
***
The deep purple skies above Anshei Sfard Cemetery were illuminated with cracks of lightning as Joseph-Arthur Ginzburg’s final journey was about to commence.
Fragments of conversations diffused from among the Grecian columns and I made it to the door of the back room just in time to recognize the squeaky voice of the knitting lady. She was talking to two women I was unfamiliar with.
“Where is Bertha?” asked one. “Why didn’t she come?”
“I wonder, too,” said the knitting lady. “They were pretty close.”
“Bertha wasn’t feeling well,” interjected the third.
“I wouldn’t be surprised. They say she made one of her attempts to escape last night; she disappeared again into the park.”
“In this weather you can be damn sure of catching a cold.” I heard murmurs of agreement. “Who found her?”
“The police brought her back.”
“She must have been sick ever since.”
“No, no. She actually slept very well, didn’t awaken until late. I saw them bring her tray only after ten.”
“It actually happened at noon, after the medicines. She began to vomit. They’ll probably give her an IV.”
53
Jeffery Gibbons climbed into the public garden in front of Blue Meadows.
The nocturnal loitering in the rain and mud got on his nerves. He couldn’t remember the last time anyone had managed to escape him alive, let alone three people. He was irked that, although the two women had finally met their destiny, the student was still alive and kicking. Milbert had most certainly given Gibbons’ description to the police; he would have to overcome this additional hurdle for his mission to be completed.
He shouldn’t have underestimated the student in the first place. The thin, bespectacled boy had proven to be a worthy adversary, with a sharp mind and good instincts. But tonight he would be surprised.
His earphones in place, Gibbons was soothed by a combo of jazz and contemporary soft rock on one of the local radio stations. He studied the printout in his hands—a list of names, with columns for age, room number, and the date on which the eyedrop treatment had begun.
Seven of the eight names had been erased already.
The last name on the list was Bertha Charlotte Zucker, 84, Room 22. Tonight, according to the list, she would conclude exactly five weeks of treatment.
Gibbons had entered the nursing home earlier during visiting hours, masquerading as a prospective customer, a devoted son scouting the facility for his father. He wanted to familiarize himself with the scene, the room and corridor layouts, and the rear exits.
The weather had improved; the skies cleared, and the sun came out. But the cold wind kept the tenants indoors, assembled in the big hall at the rear of the compound, arranged in two parallel rows of wheelchairs facing the French windows overlooking the park. Relatives and guests sat opposite nearby, some conversing, others silent. A Saturday afternoon movie played on the TV, watched by a handful of residents.
The nurses’ station was empty. Loud voices came from the radio in the drug room behind.
Gibbons crossed the hall, his eyes methodically scanning the room numbers, assessing the white wheeled curtain-dividers, and gauging the distance to the split in the corridor.
The place was busy with guests, and his sortie went almost unnoticed. Gibbons was not surprised by the lack of strict security arrangements. It was a nursing home, after all, not a military compound. No one had taken names or asked him to sign in, and no one seemed to remember relatives who visited regularly.
Gibbons had prepared an answer in case he was stopped. He was an out-of-state guest who had been trying to locate a relative. He had a name ready, Donald Smith—common enough. Then he would apologize for confusing the nursing homes and vanish.
It did happen. But by the time a nurse came out to politely greet him he was already at the exit. He mumbled “So sorry,” waving his hand and hotfooting it out.
He slumped on the far bench on the avenue of trees, tilted his head to the side, and counted eleven windows on the exterior wall of the building.
The window of Room 22 was wide open.
While sitting he located the side door through which he planned to enter in due course. The student was not in sight. He picked up the brown bag that lay on the bench beside him. Since noon he’d already finished half of his fine Kentucky bourbon.
He gulped from the bottle for the last time and tossed it into the trashcan. Then, rising from the bench, he stretched and looked for a place to urinate.
Gibbons glanced back at the empty path. He circled the bench and crossed the grassy slope to the thicket, where a dense canopy of interlaced trees provided an additional layer of darkness from the antique railway streetlamps. There was no traffic in the street—not even a single pedestrian. He was concentrating on the puddle forming at his feet when he heard a rustle around the corner.
A male figure stepped under the streetlamp and wiped his glasses.
Jeff Gibbons recognized him immed
iately.
***
The first signs appeared after exactly twenty minutes.
In most cases the symptoms were quite innocuous and very common among the elderly—general malaise, loss of appetite, abdominal swelling, flatulence, hiccups, and nausea.
Then the vomiting began.
At first it was in small quantities—only liquids and gel residues—and then followed by projectile vomiting of the entire gastric contents. Fever and severe chills accompanied the seizures. The patient dehydrated rapidly and deteriorated into stupor.
The attending physician appeared in Room 22, and the nurse was sent to fetch the oxygen cylinder, the infusion set, and a tourniquet. Quick footsteps echoed off the walls. The curtain was extended to the middle of the hallway to obscure the sights from a handful of geriatrics slowly lumbering back to their rooms from recreational activities.
The window of Room 22 remained open and cool air filtered in gently. The philodendron crackled every time the broad serrated leaves brushed against the glass. Light from the lamp hanging above the bed glistened on the pale and sweaty forehead that lay helpless and moistened the pillow.
For a short while the background noises muffled her moans, but soon a froth of pudding leftovers accumulated at the corner of her lips and the sounds of anguish intensified.
Bertha Zucker was connected to an infusion.
In less than two hours everything would be over.
54
The wind picked up.
A woman in a yellow raincoat trudged down the street carrying a shopping bag. A motorcycle rumbled loudly across the junction. Finally, the sounds of rustling trees took over the background noise.
I saw the electric gate inside the cul-de-sac at the far end of the street. Here, too, I preferred to approach on foot, so I hid the orange scooter in a side yard.
I did not notice any squad cars on the street or at the gate, but to make sure, I removed my glasses and wiped the lenses with the tail of old man Schlosser’s shirt. I donned them and confirmed that I was indeed alone on the sidewalk.
The woman with the shopping bag disappeared into one of the houses. A young couple walked their dog out of the park and moved further away from me. A man in a stocking cap sat on a bench, listening to something through earphones and sipping from a bottle in a brown paper bag. Then he got up and went behind a tree and into the park.
I felt in my coat pocket for my sharp-edged screwdriver. I’d found it in the scooter’s toolbox and thought it might come in handy. I didn’t know exactly what I was thinking, but the notion of arriving unarmed and empty-handed did not appeal. Perhaps it was crazy, but the screwdriver enhanced my confidence.
I detected no sensors or cameras on the external wall of Blue Meadows and checked for a car among the trees. I took my time, my gaze resting on each visual angle like a lice comb. The make and model did not matter. For the Irishman, stealing a car would be child’s play. Inspector Ramzi could ambush me in an unmarked vehicle.
On my way I made a quick, chilling calculation. Exactly five weeks had elapsed since Mr. J-A Ginzburg had started taking the eyedrops. It had been he who had solicited my grandmother to participate in the new eyedrops experiment. He proclaimed that Belle told him she could read newspaper headlines without glasses. Grandma, always suspicious, had succumbed and joined the list the day after. She’d told me, but I was too busy with my own issues and had merely muttered a weak and impatient, “Cool!”
I crossed the street. The corner I had been looking for was completely dark. I pushed myself quickly through the narrow opening and was swallowed up by the tall, labyrinthine, thorny-branched bougainvillea.
At first, I managed to work my way through with minimal scratches. But as I stretched my arm to push away a branch, the spikes trapped my shirt, pulling it free from my baggy pants. I came away with a bruised elbow and a painful oblique cut from my right flank to the coccyx. I was now in a relatively open area, lined with gravel and exposed for all to see.
Had anyone felt like gazing out the window, he or she would have spotted me at once. Thus, I did not slow down—I kept running toward the wall. I clung to it, sweaty and itching, like a gardener’s apprentice.
Onward, squatting, careful not to stand out beyond the windowsills, I counted five windows, then somehow lost my orientation. I decided to peek into the windows until I recognized the décor of the room I was aiming for—a floral curtain and an agricultural Kentucky landscape hanging above the sink.
Needing a wide field of vision, I decided against entering Grandma’s room and chose the one opposite. I hoped its tenants, Zelda and Marijuszka, two seriously deranged women, would be involved in advanced preparations for sleep, or were already floating on the wings of a sweet dream. I had seen them occasionally in the dining room, but Grandma tended to distance herself, claiming they were weirdos who “acted like a lesbian couple.”
I located the flowered curtains at the seventh window. The shutter was rolled up and, with one more boost I’d be able to sneak in. Since my previous night’s cruise on the outer wall of the medical school, I felt already trained for this simple maneuver.
But as I stretched up on my toes, I was disappointed to find the room empty and fully lit. I hurried back to the end of the outer wall and rose back on my aching feet, to observe the last of the basket-weavers schlepping themselves along in their walking frames or rolling in wheelchairs back to their rooms. Curfew time.
Less than an hour later, I heard the electric gate clang open and a car race in, the gravel crunching under its wheels as it halted under the stairs. The front door opened and closed with a loud bang. Then the doors of the car opened and closed once more.
I pulled myself out of my hiding place under the porch and advanced stealthily, walking in close proximity to the wall, working my way back in the shadows to the window with the floral curtains.
55
Someone turned the shade of the lamp that was hanging above the bed in Room 22, and now a fan of light climbed up the wall.
Bertha’s head lay on a big cushion. Her eyes were not completely closed, and a white stripe showed from under the eyelids. The eyeballs twitched restlessly in REM sleep.
A hand touched her arm. Her skin was warm and rough, like a page in an old book. The hand lingered over the skin. A subcutaneous hemorrhage had formed in between two fingers and spread into the space between the bones. A manicured finger drew a red stripe along the muscle until it reached the antecubital fossa, a dent above the elbow.
There was a soft puffiness under the brittle skin. The patient had gone on a rampage and the infusion had strayed from the vein. The solution inflated the space between the skin and the bones. It would be necessary to tie the wrists firmly to the bedrails. She had already prepared for this, with a splint padded with cotton gauzes and elastic bands.
By the breathing rhythm of Mrs. Bertha Zucker and her sudden profuse hypotension—plunge in blood pressure—there was no doubt that the drug injected into her vein was having an effect. But toward the impending resuscitation effort—which would happen within the next hour, for the sake of the nurses, and would fail—it was important to secure a main jugular vein.
Most elderly people had thin and brittle blood vessels, but with Mrs. Zucker, this would not be a problem. The superficial cubital vein was large enough for a sufficient concentration of the drug to flow into the shrunken body and circulate almost instantaneously.
Suddenly Bertha stirred in bed. She kicked out of sleep. Her throat emitted a medley of gentle fluttering snores, followed by a sound that resembled a deflating balloon.
Outside, an approaching car engine grunted on the gravel. Mrs. Hertz locked herself in her office. Morning staff meetings drained her of all her strength and she preferred coming the evening before, to peruse in relative quiet the patients’ treatment schedules for the next week. Over the next hour she would receive a report
from the duty nurse regarding one or two residents who’d fallen sick, and she’d sigh in sympathy.
A side door slammed. A kitchen worker rushed out, leaped over a puddle, and was picked up by a car at the gate. The front lights changed direction and the street sank back into dark anonymity.
Johanna stood behind the window in Room 22. Her gaze followed the car pulling away as she closed the curtains. She crossed the room and peeked into the corridor. The two demented women in the room opposite exchanged giggles with the staff member who was putting them to bed. Then all lights were extinguished, except for the small one above the sink. The nurses left the room, moved the white curtain into the middle of the hallway, and went to the station, where someone had been softly conversing over the phone.
Johanna returned to the room.
According to the file attached to the wooden board in the front of the bed, at 20:15 the patient had received into her medial gluteal muscle an injection of chlorpromazine and promethazine, a powerful tranquilizing combination. Together they possessed a synergistic effect that alleviated nausea and vomiting.
It was time to advance one step further in the Preparation Phase.
She had to act swiftly. She headed to the sink, where a collection of hazardous material had been stored in a small container—syringes, hypodermic needles, and glass vials of toxic medicines.
She removed the lid and looked inside, at the cotton balls and pads. A miniscule toothed blade lay on a sponge by the liquid soap dispenser. She pulled on a pair of latex gloves, snapped the neck of a glass vial, drew the full contents, and resealed the needle with the plastic cover.
Johanna gazed at her watch. Within an hour she would need all that, maybe sooner. So far, the medication had never failed, and there was only one more round left.
Elated, she tiptoed out of the room, hovering lightly at the rear of the wing, in the opposite direction of the nurses’ station.
An Eye For Murder: A Medical Thriller Page 27
