She continued to reminisce. “My mother was a nurse in one of Amsterdam’s most prestigious obstetrics clinics. It was my parents’ dream that Julie and I would follow their route. Dad always joked that we ‘would lose our family name before getting our white coats.’”
But Beatrice had never regained her passion for medicine. She disliked Vienna. “I was there for three years, I traveled throughout Europe, went to concerts, operas, cathedrals… Just before I lost my mind completely, Leopold put me on a plane to Bolivia. I worked there at an Indian summer camp near Vera Cruz, and that brought me the same joy I had experienced when I was a counselor at Desert Island. I loved the informal ‘unbuttoned’ life. But the budget dwindled, and I had to finally face the real world. I returned to the US and worked in Lucy’s lab. She’d just obtained her baccalaureate at Penn and had a single miserable room on campus. Twice a week I would visit a local butcher—euphemistically known as a ‘packing company’—to collect bovine eyeballs for her research.”
She had graduated as a registered nurse. Her father and uncle owned a prosperous chain of nursing homes in Europe and America, the most recent of which was Blue Meadows. When the former administrator had retired, Beatrice was offered the job, and her managerial skills were immediately obvious.
But someone else had continued the family tradition of medical school: Johanna Berger, the only daughter of Juliana and magister Leopold.
Her eyes stung with tears. “Then Julie got cancer and died. Poldi was devastated. His only consolation was Johanna, who graduated with honors. She was offered the chance to specialize in any area she wanted. When I heard she was considering ophthalmology, I told her about Lucy. They even met at one of those conferences. And then poor Poldi became ill.”
And Johanna left the University Hospital and moved to the village.
“Where did it start? Who knows, perhaps with Poldi’s rapid deterioration? I don’t know all the details. I heard she had a long affair with the director of anesthesiology at the university, a ‘happily married’ SOB.”
“It gave her easy access to drugs.”
“I had no idea what she was going through. I didn’t see her again after Poldi’s funeral. Only phones. I heard she’d been employed by a pharmaceutical giant, with an excellent salary and perks. I was glad she’d distanced herself from the flames. On the other hand, I wished she had chosen a clinical course. She could have soared.”
Johanna continued to work night shifts. Apparently she had a morbid attraction to the terminally ill, those beyond the salvage of modern medicine.
“She attached herself to a lonely old terminal cancer patient and helped him end his life during one of her night shifts. It was a violation of hospital rules, a serious disciplinary offense. Possibly manslaughter.”
Nor was he the first. Then had been others.
About that time, Bernie Cooperstein had paid an enormous sum of money for the patent rights to Efron’s eyedrops. Although the acquisition was supposed to signal the end of the feud between him and Peter Lister, it had actually only exacerbated it, because the test results on human donor eyes were very promising. Lucy had treated Hertz to a fancy gourmet dinner at Dietrich’s. Her eyes sparkled and she spoke with childish enthusiasm. This orphan girl from Romania was about to make medical history. Her name would be in every ophthalmology textbook worldwide.
The waiter finally returned with the macchiato, which he placed in front of Hertz. But she just stared at the foam, piled up like a snowdrift. Then she stabbed it with a teaspoon and mixed it compulsively. The spoon clinked against the edge of the cup repeatedly. It drove me crazy, so finally I reached out and grabbed her arm. The clattering stopped.
“Everything went so smoothly,” she murmured into the cup.
Until I’d shown up.
Apparently the three women had underestimated me. Johanna was sure she could distract me by using her feminine wiles. Hertz didn’t give me a second thought. Lucy spent most of her time in her laboratory, but her suspicions were aroused when the nursing home’s mortality rate had begun to accelerate together with plastic bags containing eyes in Styrofoam boxes. The professor did some snooping and didn’t like what she found; she decided to rely only on me.
“Lucy didn’t want you involved,” Hertz said, then licked foam off the tip of her spoon. “She asked you to hide the tube because she’d been under terrible pressure and had no one else to turn to. She intended it to be for a few days only. She never dreamed it would go so far. She insisted on Johanna leaving you out of it. To her you were just a toy, something to amuse herself with.”
“Amuse herself with,” I whispered.
“She even boasted about it to me.” Hertz held her cup with two fingers like an Austro-Hungarian duchess and sipped very slowly. Then she placed it back on its saucer and dabbed her lips with a napkin. “She had confided in me once, saying that she preferred them virgin.”
My eyes wandered to the playground across the street. A little girl with golden locks sat on the swing, clutching the ropes, straightening her legs for momentum. Maybe that was how it had begun with Johanna twenty-five years ago at Pratter Park. According to her aunt, she’d had a marvelous start. She may have felt miserable despite the pampering—the loneliness of an only child. But there were other only children in the world. So where had it gone wrong for Johanna? What made the beautiful and talented woman become an angel of death?
Beatrice Hertz rose to her feet.
“Wait—before you go…”
“Mil-bert, I told you, I’m in a hurry to a meeting.”
“Yes, with social services. I know. It will only take a minute.”
But she pulled away and stood up. “I’m very sorry…”
“We haven’t discussed the reason I asked you here,” I called after her.
Hertz had managed to pass only two empty tables; she froze. She returned to her chair, her upper body inclined toward the exit.
She swung around, her eyes narrow and hostile. “What exactly are you talking about? I think I have said everything I needed to say—”
“The idea to eliminate the old residents in Blue Meadows.”
“What about it?” she said stiffly.
“It was yours.”
She looked at me blankly.
“The pressure on Efron increased,” I continued. “A further four pairs of eyes were needed, fast. In Blue Meadows you had an unlimited reservoir, right under your nose.”
Could it still have been Efron’s brainchild? No; her conscience would never have allowed her to go so far. It was definitely Mrs. Hertz’s spark of genius. They only needed someone to do the job. Someone with a medical degree, to sign the death certificates, no questions asked; someone who knew how to quickly enucleate and harvest eyes. What could be better than the night shift doctor? And Hertz had the perfect candidate.
For Johanna it had been a lifeline—just when the Austrian police were beginning to close in on her. Euthanasia was legal in Austria, but only if the patient requested it. Because of the delicacy of the subject in post-Nazi Austria, she had considered moving to the Netherlands or Switzerland, where assisted suicide rules were more lax. But then came the call from the beloved aunt.
Beatrice Hertz shook her head. “Mil-bert, for God’s sake, drop it! Just leave it.”
“Leave it?” I shouted and received glances from distant tables. “You forget you were about to kill my grandmother. You are a full accomplice to several murders.”
“Euthanasia.”
“Murders. The inspector is not stupid. He won’t believe for a minute that those old people were snuffed in your prestigious nursing home, under your eyes, and you knew nothing. You’d do better to go to the police station instead of your ‘social services’ meeting and tell them everything you know.”
Hertz’s body was tilted on the armchair, facing away from me. Standing up, she swayed awk
wardly. A flat bottle of bourbon protruded from her bag, hidden under a folded scarf.
That night, beside Granny’s bed, Hertz had broken down. She couldn’t stomach another killing. My killing. She hadn’t minded before, but somehow it seemed killing me would have meant crossing her own limit.
She had no meeting downtown, or anywhere else.
I said to her back, “Because you saved my life, I’m giving you another chance.”
But Hertz rushed away, maneuvered between the tables, pushed open the café door, and burst into the street. I ran after her and grabbed her arm before she lost her balance, stumbling across the street.
Cars screeched to a halt and horns blared. A driver opened a window and shouted angrily. We crossed the road and went into a garden square, then walked a short distance until she slumped onto a bench.
I sat down beside her; she was sobbing, soft little whimpers. “Did you think I would finish my life in that nursing home? That I would become like those miserable crones, Zelda and Marijuszka? Thirty years! Thirty bloody years I gave my all. I never had a life of my own. Only the office, medications, and meals, and medications again, and more meals, and bowel movements and enemas and diapers—and after all that, instead of gratitude, all I got was abuse from those nasty lowlifes.”
“So Belle had a foul mouth; was that enough reason to kill her? And Rebecca, Joseph-Arthur, and all the others?”
“What life was there left to them? What did Mrs. Mohay know or feel? She spent most of her time talking with Zelda and Marijuszka about having visited Princess Diana.”
“And Joseph-Arthur?”
She noticed me looking into her bag, which didn’t prevent her from grasping the bottle, removing the cork, and downing the remainder in a single gulp. When she discovered the bottle was completely empty, she tossed it furiously into the bushes behind her.
“Joseph-Arthur,” she said, her face flushed, “Joseph-Arthur. Do you know what he asked of me? We had a Sinatra night, we sang and danced, and Joshua did a marvelous ‘My Way’ on the piano. And J-A dragged me into his room and asked me—begged me to help him end his life.” She hiccupped. “Yeah, that’s what he wanted.”
“And my grandma?”
Hertz rocked on the bench. “No, your grandmother didn’t ask me for anything.”
We sat in silence. I could find no words to continue. Finally, I just sighed. “So, it’s all about the money.”
“It’s always about the money.”
“You were about to receive a fat check. You are the only surviving partner. They promised you enough to quit Blue Meadows.”
“Not without the tube. I haven’t the foggiest idea where she stashed it. Without the wretched tube, Lister would give me only half.” She shrugged. “Maybe it would still be enough to start a new life.”
“New life.” I pressed my fingers against the edge of the bench till they blanched. “Why haven’t you already booked a flight to Australia? Or a Caribbean cruise?”
“What makes you so sure I haven’t done exactly that?” She watched me with an inscrutable smile.
“Because no place will be far enough from Blue Meadows.”
“No place.” She nodded approvingly and began to straighten up. “Nowhere. Is that it? Are we done here?”
“I repeat my suggestion that you go from here directly to the police and tell them everything. Don’t pass on this opportunity. This way you get less or no jail time. Maybe you’ll get a suspended sentence and save them the trouble.”
She said nothing.
“Think about it.”
“Mil-bert, oh, Mil-bert! Death isn’t always a horrible option, not when life becomes superfluous.”
Beatrice Hertz rose from the bench, lumbered along the path, and collapsed onto a swing. She motioned me to come and push her. As I approached, she leaned back, and after my initial efforts she erupted into roars that made pedestrians stop and stare.
She urged me to push harder. “You want me to think about it? No, I have nothing to think about. I have been near the dead too many times… too many times.”
62
Two Weeks Later
“There’s no trace of tube #12,” grumbled Inspector Ramzi.
We sat on two folding chairs at my flimsy kitchen table. It was all I had at the time in terms of usable furniture. If I’d had more guests, they would have had to stand. Ramzi and I managed to maintain civility, despite our rocky relationship.
I suppressed my bitter feelings by nibbling a homemade coffee cake provided by a neighbor. I pointed at the new electric kettle and Ramzi nodded. But then he apparently became disenchanted, because he stood up and felt sufficiently comfortable to rifle through my kitchen drawers. He pulled out a small pan I’d completely forgotten about and set about brewing us some deliciously strong black coffee.
We sipped in silence. I hadn’t yet had a chance to repair the damage in the apartment. Ramzi had recommended a handyman from his home village—a recent immigrant to Louisville, and someone who wouldn’t rip me off—but I told him I could do it myself. When he muttered something about my landlord’s reaction to all the destruction, I reminded him that my grandma owned the apartment.
“Yes, that’s right.” Ramzi gazed around, admiring the high ceiling, the tilted skyline, the size of the rooms, and the original flooring. “They don’t build like this anymore.” The old preserved homes at Crescent Hill, although lacking in some modern amenities, had a distinguished character and a certain fortitude.
“I didn’t realize teaching people to dance was such a profitable business,” he concluded and pulled his orange notebook from his pocket.
The female body at the industrial park had been identified only yesterday—Bianca Marinescu, a foreign worker from Moldova. The identification process had taken longer because she had no papers.
The Irishman had been matched via the FBI/Interpol database. His full name was Jeffery Stuart Alistair Gibbons, a forty-two-year-old Dublin-born American citizen, owner of half a dozen passports. He had been employed by Medionetyx, a pharmaceutical company based in Chicago and headed by Peter Lister. At this point there were strong suspicions as to the conduct of the president of the drug company, including attempted bribery of federal officials, forging experiment results, and more. Ramzi told me that a piece of evidence found on the Irishman’s corpse and processed at the DNA lab had linked him—and his boss—to the unsolved disappearance of a senior scientist at Medionetyx earlier this fall, immediately after he had defected to the rival company, Oculoris Biopharma. No one knew what had happened to Dr. Nouri.
“What did they find on his body?” I asked. “What are you talking about?”
The inspector pulled a set of photographs out of an envelope and spread them on the table. “You are probably asking what these are.” His eyes avoided mine, and instead roamed the bottom of his coffee cup.
I stared at the pictures. Ramzi kept talking, but I soon lost track of what he was saying. My attention span was very short, because a wave of rage swept over me every time I looked at him. I couldn’t forget how he’d dared to insinuate I’d slept with Efron.
But I exercised restraint. Harrison would be proud of me.
Professor Lucy Efron had donated her eyes to science. The remnants of her last meal had been recovered from her gastric contents: granola with raisins, honey, and cranberry juice. More than half her body had been consumed by sodium hydroxide—caustic soda—and the remains carried no signs of violence or gunshot wounds, so the coroner had ruled it an accidental death. However, the possibility of prosecuting Evangelos Pappas—owner of Pappas & Maronidas, Volos Builders Enterprise, the developer of Andromeda—for criminal negligence was still open.
“It could be a problem, though. It was an exceptionally stormy night, strong winds, and power outages. And…” Ramzi winked. “With a top-notch lawyer, Mr. Pappas wouldn’t be in jail for a
single day.”
The body of Dr. Johanna Berger had been flown for burial in Vienna. She’d also had a Dutch passport bearing the name Hannah J. Hertz.
Syd Ramzi flipped a page in his notebook, but I’d lost patience. I stood up and said I had to pack.
“Going somewhere?”
“Yup.”
I waited for a response, but he said nothing. He did not budge from the table.
“Why?” I asked, puzzled. “Is a there a problem? Am I under arrest or something?”
“Arrest?” He shuddered, feigning innocence. “I was just wondering about your school year. Don’t you need to finish it? What’s left of it, anyway.”
“I’m waiting for an answer from the academic committee. In any case, I won’t be able to catch up before the summer semester.”
“Don’t you miss tube #12? Don’t you need it to finish the experiments or whatever?”
The fact was that I’d spent many hours trying to figure out where it could have disappeared to, but had come up with nothing. The inspector was scrutinizing me and the kitchen cabinets and walls, as if to say, ‘Okay, butterfly, fetch it now and we’ll forget it ever happened.’
“So, no ideas? Maybe something the professor said—you know, a casual remark, a joke…?”
I scoffed. “Efron? Telling a joke?”
His eyes were fixed on me; I had no idea what was on his mind. Did he think that after all this, all the dead people, I—the genius nerd—was hiding the tube from him? Did he believe I was waiting for the first chance to grab it from the hiding place, pack up, and vanish?
He continued to play dumb. “Wait a minute! Seriously, don’t you need the tube to finish your assignment?”
Having no choice, I had summarized my results without it. Everyone on the committee already knew what had happened. In fact, there was no one on the entire campus—faculty, staff, or student—who wasn’t intimately familiar with the details, courtesy of the media. “Yes, it would have been nice if I’d had the tube,” I agreed.
An Eye For Murder: A Medical Thriller Page 31
