An Eye for Murder

by Libby Fischer Hellmann

  I glared at him.

  He folded his arms across his chest, all business now. “We know you found the document. You and your boyfriend. The question is, who else knows about it, Ellie? That’s what you must tell us.”

  I eyed him steadily.

  “Don’t be a hero. It doesn’t suit you. Does Lamont know?” I kept my mouth shut.

  “You’d be wise to tell me.” He yanked a thumb toward

  Gravel Mouth.

  I shook my head.

  “Oh, Ellie.” He nodded to Gravel Mouth. “I thought you had more sense.”

  Keeping the Glock at my neck, Gravel Mouth sidestepped around to the front and extracted a Swiss Army knife from his pocket. Flicking it open, he used the gun barrel to raise my T-shirt and slashed a line across my right breast. I screamed as hot, searing pain shot through me. Bright red blood bubbled up through the incision. I started to collapse, but Gravel Mouth caught me and shoved me back in the chair. A red mist of pain rolled over me, and my head lolled to the side. A mixture of horror and fascination registered on Gibbs’s face, as if he was witnessing a gruesome accident and couldn’t look away. He licked his lips.

  “Well, Ellie?” He leaned forward, his voice deep and hoarse, as if he were sexually aroused. “What does Lamont know?”

  “I don’t know.” I wheezed.

  “You’ve been working together, haven’t you?”

  “No.”

  “Don’t lie to me.”

  I tried to move my head to the other side, but I couldn’t. Again Gibbs nodded. Gravel Mouth set the gun down and grabbed my T-shirt, bunching it at my neck. His hand dropped to my left breast, and squeezing it like a grapefruit, he slashed it with the knife. Blood spurted, and I slumped to the floor. Once again he hoisted me up and pushed me back on the chair. The pain lashed my skin, clanged in my ears, made my entire body throb. I gulped down air, trying not to pass out.

  Gibbs rose and came closer to me, his breath quick and shallow. I tried to shrink back. “You are proving to be a problem, Ellie.”

  “I warned you.” A new voice came from behind me. Deep. Barely female. I twisted around. Frances Iverson was at the door.

  I gasped.

  “Frances.” Gibbs smiled. “How lovely to see you this evening.”

  Frances slowly wheeled herself into the room. Lifting a gnarled hand off the giant wheels, she motioned to the table. Gibbs poured her a glass of water. She drank half of it, then handed it back.

  “I told you she would cause problems.” She sniffed. “We should never have waited.”

  “We’re handling it now,” Gibbs replied.

  Gravel Mouth spoke up. “Burl’s got her car. You still want to run it over the bridge?”

  Gibbs held up his palm. “A few minutes.” I buckled in the chair.

  “I am sorry, Ellie. Marian was very fond of you. In fact, that’s why you’re still alive. She persuaded us not to harm you. But now, of course, we don’t have a choice.”

  The presence of pain is so overwhelming, demanding so much from the brain, that the remaining neurons sometimes compensate and perform amazing feats. Thought patterns are clarified. Previously obscure connections emerge. Maybe because I was fighting the pain so fiercely, the rest of my brain freed itself up. I swiveled toward Frances. “It was your name on the report. Not your husband’s.”

  “I told you not to underestimate her.” She set the brake and sank back in her wheelchair.

  Gravel Mouth broke in. “Ma’am, with all due respect, we’re running out of time.”

  Warm sticky blood clung to my T-shirt. My breasts throbbed with pain. I was weak and dizzy. Part of me wanted to curl up on the floor in a fetal position. Give up. Let it end. But the pain wouldn’t release me. Keep them talking, it prodded me. Stall for time. I opened my mouth, my lips dry and cracked. “Why?” I croaked. “I don’t understand.”

  Frances appraised me with a neutral expression, then shot a look at Gravel Mouth. “She’s entitled.” She propped her arms on her chair. “Many patriotic Americans…people with means…good people…believed in Hitler. And his ideas. Separate the wheat from the chaff. The leaders from the led. It made sense. There will always be some who are superior. My father, Henry Ford, the Coughlins, they all saw the wisdom of this thinking. Hitler merely accelerated the process.” She shot me an ironic smile.

  “Interestingly, our quarrel was not with the Jews. At least, not at first. You were smart. Useful. For us, it has always been the coloreds. The browns, the blacks. The yellows. They are the problem. They breed like rabbits. Overpopulate the world. Consume precious resources.” She tossed her head. “We knew that even before the war.”

  “Before World War Two?”

  “Of course.”

  “But—but you were just a young woman.”

  “A young woman with polio. Confined to a wheelchair.” Keep going, the pain said. “Polio?”

  “My parents searched the world for a cure. There was none, but that didn’t stop them. They took me to every spa, every sanatorium, though our hopes were flimsy at best.” Her eyes grew dense and smoky. “It was in Switzerland, during the Thirties, that we met a handsome, ambitious young doctor. He was studying genetics in Frankfurt. My father owned a pharmaceutical company, so we had much in common. This doctor couldn’t cure me, but we ‘bonded,’ as you young people say. We listened. We learned. We liked what he said.”

  “Mengele,” I breathed.

  “A few years later, he began to research the concept of the master race. First while he fought with the Waffen SS, then through his experiments at Auschwitz. Unfortunately, though, his funding was cut back. Hitler had other priorities: the military, the Einsatzgruppen, the camps. That’s when Mengele remembered the rich American with the crippled daughter. By then, of course, the rich man had died, and his daughter inherited his firm.”

  “You financed Mengele.”

  The smile deepened. “Not at first. I was wary. The concept of the master race was appealing. Tantalizing. But so unrealistic. How could it be done? How much would it cost? How long would it take? And I was busy with the children, busy being Paul Iverson’s wife.”

  “But you did it anyway. The sterilizations. The torture.

  The killings. It was your doing.”

  Her smile faded, and her eyes turned into pools of steel. “Do you know what it’s like to have your husband leave you for a whore?”

  Lisle.

  “He was besotted with her. Bought her clothes, paid for her apartment, even gave money to her causes. And she manipulated him. Used him. The proof of it was that as soon as Weiss came home, she ran back to his bed like a jackrabbit.”

  Her eyes softened, and for an instant, filled with pity. “Paul was a fool.” Then the steely look came back. “He started to respect, admire Jews. The others too. He even came to believe the people we knew, our family and friends, were wrong. And then, when he started to give money—” A brittle look suffused her face. “It wasn’t acceptable.”

  “So you retaliated by bankrolling Mengele.”

  “The concept had merit. It still does. The war may be over, but the problems are not. We have a moral responsibility to continue. Quietly. In our laboratories. And now, of course, we are light years beyond Mengele.”

  Recombinant DNA. Designer genes. I pushed the images out of my mind. How could her family—How could her husband have condoned it? Paul Iverson was a decent man. With a defined sense of justice. How could he have lived with a woman who—Unless—“Paul didn’t know,” I said suddenly. “He didn’t know you were financing Mengele.”

  “That is correct.”

  “Then, how—why—who…” I reached, trying to unwind the skeins of the past. She financed Mengele. Mengele sent her reports. Paul Iverson didn’t know. But someone else did. Someone who saw the documents. Or copies of them. The report David found in the clock. “Kurt Weiss. He had the report.”

  She arched an eyebrow. “He got it from Skulnick.”

  Skull and Kurt
. Together. They had known each other. “Skull’s woman slept with a German courier, I’m told.

  She lifted the report from his pouch.”

  The woman with Skull. In the snapshot.

  A bitter smile crossed her face. “Skulnick turned it over to Weiss. But Weiss never passed it through channels.” She took another sip of water. “Instead he confronted Paul with it after the war.”

  I heard the whine of a broken muffler outside. My eyes flicked to Gibbs, then Frances. They didn’t seem to notice. I sat up straighter.

  “Paul assured Weiss he would look into it. He rushed home and demanded an explanation. When I told him, he said we were through. That he was going to divorce me.” She gazed at the French doors, shrouded in white tulle against the night. “I laughed in his face. I said it didn’t matter. He had already lost the whore. ‘After Weiss shows her the Iverson name on the report,’ I said, ‘she won’t believe anything you say.’

  “Paul said I was wrong. He would beg her to forgive him. And spend the rest of his life atoning for my sins.”

  She smoothed out her robe, a dark, shiny material. “I was right, of course. She cut him off. Oh, Paul tried to win her back. But she wouldn’t see him. Then, after Weiss met his untimely death, it was finished. Paul knew the whore would blame him.”

  “Untimely death? But I thought—”

  “It was an ugly time. The news about the camps was just starting to come out. People were appalled. We would have been ruined.”

  A heart-chilling terror slapped me. “You killed Weiss.”

  She gave me a curt nod.

  “And Paul couldn’t live with it. Knowing Lisle would think

  he did it. ”

  “As I said, he was a fool.”

  “So he took his own life.”

  “So it seemed.”

  So it seemed? “No. It’s not possible. He was your husband.” She shrugged. “A heart attack. Perhaps a suicide. He was threatening to expose us. The company. The research. We couldn’t allow that.”

  A car door slammed. My pulse started to race.

  “What was that?” Alarm flickered across Gibbs’s face. “Burl. Get in here,” Gravel Mouth shouted. The man in the fishing hat appeared. “Go see who’s outside.”

  “Sure thing, Eugene.”

  Gibbs fidgeted in his chair. I had to keep them talking. Especially if who I thought was outside, in fact, was. But after taking another sip of water, Frances grew quiet. Shit. Think, Ellie. I cleared my throat, willing away the pain.

  “How did you know that Skull became active again, after so many years in prison?”

  “Good question, my dear.” Frances spread her hands. “We have allies. Friends. In powerful positions. They alerted us.”

  I frowned. What friends? What positions? Then it came to me. Skull had been E-mailing the CIA. “The CIA?”

  “There are many—in the highest levels of the public and private sectors—who still believe as we do. Particularly now.”

  “Now?”

  “Isn’t it obvious? Society has coarsened. We have lost all sense of order. Rage and violence are the rule. A child cannot even go to school in safety.”

  Gibbs picked up the thread. “So many inequities still exist.

  Fine young men lose jobs to minorities because of affirmative action. Food stamps and welfare subsidize the shiftless. Money is wasted on diversity programs that do nothing but institutionalize mediocrity. Millions of dollars are lost to economic development projects that themselves become slums.” My brain refused to complete the circuits. I felt as if I had stepped through a warped looking-glass where black was white, bad was good, and fascists were the saviors of society. “Carl von Clausewitz,” Frances said, “probably the finest theoretician to ever write about warfare, said, ‘to secure peace is to prepare for war.’ We have been preparing.” Her eyes slanted sideways. “My young able friend understands the new technology. His associates are my arms and legs, so to speak.”

  She chuckled. “I provide the strategic thinking and—”

  “The money.”

  The darkness closed in, pressing in on us as if it were alive. I tried to wiggle my fingers, but they were numb. I thought of Dory and Raoul. “A bomb at a Labor Day demonstration is part of the strategy?”

  Frances pressed her hands together. “A war cannot be fought on one front alone.”

  “You’re inciting chaos. Civil disorder and anarchy.”

  “We are accelerating what already exists.”

  “You’re orchestrating it so others will be blamed.”

  “The masses are restless and undisciplined. ”

  “In order to save the world, you’re destroying it first.”

  “Isn’t that the essence of true revolution? What happened sixty years ago was just the prologue. We are in the fight of our lives.”

  “You’re not fighting a war,” I said. “You’re financing terrorism.”

  “Semantics.” Frances waved a hand. “Only afterward will people see the need for structure and order. A firm guiding hand. To lead them out of the storm.”

  “Marian.”

  Frances smiled. “Perhaps.”

  “But she’s the reason you’re—she’s an integral part of this.” I stopped. My voice was a strangled whisper. Maybe she wasn’t.

  Frances anticipated my question. “She may think she isn’t.

  She’s spent years modeling herself after her father, trying to convince herself she is nothing like me. But she’s a politician. Survival is a powerful motivator. In time, I expect her to embrace her responsibilities.”

  “And if she doesn’t?”

  “If she doesn’t, well…” She met my eyes with a small smile. The sounds of a scuffle broke through from outside. Gravel Mouth sprinted to the window. “Burl?” There was no response. Pushing the curtains aside, he peered out into the night. “Burl?” Still nothing. Wheeling around, he pointed the gun at my chest.

  “What are you doing?” Gibbs leaped out of his chair.

  “I’m finishing the job.” He pulled back the slide. “Then, I’m going—”

  “No,” Gibbs screamed, cutting him off. “We can’t risk the bullets. Or gunshot wounds. We need an accident. The car over the bridge is better.” His eyes blazed. “Give me the gun.”

  “There’s no time—”

  “Give it to me.”

  Gravel Mouth hesitated, his eyes darting from Gibbs to

  Frances.

  “Do what he says, Eugene.” Frances commanded. “Get your equipment.” Her eyes were cold, her voice deadly calm.

  Reluctantly, Gravel Mouth handed Gibbs the Glock and bent over a canvas bag I hadn’t noticed before. I thought about rushing Gibbs. If I were fast enough, I might reach him before he fired. Or he might miss. But my arms were still cuffed behind me, and I couldn’t stand up without help. Think, I screamed to myself. Think how to stall. But I was groggy, and I wanted to sleep. I forced myself to pull against the cuffs. They sliced into my skin, paining me awake.

  “Lamont knows,” I lied. “His story will be running in forty-eight hours.”

  “You’ll say anything at this point.” My lips cracked. “Are you sure?”

  Gibbs narrowed his eyes. Gravel Mouth hurried back, carrying a syringe filled with a clear liquid. “I’m ready.”

  “Do it.” Gibbs nodded.

  Chapter Fifty-two

  Gravel Mouth closed in on me. He fumbled with my T-shirt with his free hand, but the folds of cotton, which had helped stanch the flow of blood, were stiff and sticky. I shrank back in the chair, my eyes level with the Nike logo on his shirt. I had one chance left. I swung my knees up as high and fast and far as I could. They hit him in the groin.

  His eyes filled with something fierce and ugly. Balling his hand into a fist, he slammed it into my head. The side of my face exploded with pain. I collapsed sideways, gasping for air. He caught me as I fell to the floor and threw me back on the chair. I sprawled against the seat, my chin on my chest.
r />   Seizing my right breast, he squeezed as hard as he could.

  Fresh blood spurted out of the cut. I screamed. Tears sprang to my eyes, and a new wave of light-headedness washed over me. But somewhere, in the recesses of my consciousness, I knew I had to keep fighting. Even if it was only symbolic.

  My mouth was parched. My throat was tight. I coughed, summoning up a clump of spittle from somewhere. I let it fly. It landed on Gravel Mouth’s cheek. He didn’t wipe it off, but his eyes narrowed. Releasing my breast, he straddled me and slammed himself down on my thighs. I felt myself cramp. He positioned his thumb on the plunger, ejected a drop or two of fluid, and drew back the syringe.

  But before he could act, a flash lit up the deep blue of the drawing room, followed by a tremendous explosion. The glass panels of the French doors shattered. Shards of glass blew out across the room. Gravel Mouth fell off my thighs and out of sight.

  A series of images and sounds strafed the room. Gravel

  Mouth writhing on the floor, screaming, most of his head blown off. Blood and pink brain matter splattered on the rugs. Frances screaming, hands on her head, horror on her face. David aiming a shotgun. Gibbs pointing the Glock, not at David, but behind me.

  A crack. Another flash, not as bright, from the muzzle of the pistol. I heard a scream. It was me. I heard a curse. It was Gibbs. I twisted around. Fouad was crumpled on the floor, his rifle at his feet. I swung around. Gibbs was slumped on the sofa, his body limp, a stream of red blood staining his silk shirt. The Glock was on the floor. I looked at David. He lowered the shotgun.

  Chapter Fifty-three

  Fouad made it to the hospital in time. Gibbs didn’t. Neither did Gravel Mouth. They found Burl unconscious on the ground at the back door. Fouad or David, I never found out who, had whacked him over the head with a shovel. They dressed my wounds in the ER; I needed stitches. They took David to the Lake Forest police station. I never saw him. They took Frances there too. David apparently left a few hours later. Frances didn’t.