An Eye For Murder: A Medical Thriller Read online

  Efron didn’t give up. She divested Johanna of her coat and hung it on the hook behind the door. “I don’t care about the deadline. You look completely wrung out.”

  “I’m fine, Professor, honestly.”

  “No, no. You just sit and relax. This time let me make you some tea. I’ve got a special brand, from Sri Lanka. Then we’ll go briefly over my notes in the research proposal. I need only that mailed today. The rest can wait.”

  Twenty minutes later Dr. Berger was gone.

  Efron left the podium, descended the stairs and looked over the emptying auditorium.

  She reached into her coat pocket, fingered tube #12 and grinned broadly.

  She glanced at the giant wall clock. How had thirty minutes disappeared? She was late again. Barb was waiting for her in the animal building with the piglets. Of all animals, she wondered, why did God choose pigs to be the most genetically compatible with humans?

  The rest of the evening was likely to be long and exhausting. Efron was supposed to teach the students how to examine animal eyes with a slit lamp. She and Barbara would put on their gloves, then Barb would pick up a writhing piglet from the stinking swamp, while Efron would open its eyelids and hold the pig chazer in the lamp’s chinrest for each student to practice on. One eye would receive the medicine, the other would get saline only.

  Efron herself was in charge of the records. She trusted nobody.

  Her headache spread rapidly. Her restlessness increased. She decided to give black coffee a pass and settled for a soft drink from a vending machine on the ground floor. She searched her pocket for change, found two Advils, placed them hurriedly on her tongue, pushed coins into the slot, and pulled out a can of soda.

  She leaned for a moment on the wall, gasping from an incomplete swallow. From the corner of her eye she saw Johanna pushing open the front door and walking toward the elevator, her cellphone wedged between shoulder and cheek.

  Outside, the rain resumed. Efron pushed herself into an alcove, within reach but out of Johanna’s visual field.

  The Austrian’s work was finished for today. Why, then, was she back in the lab?

  13

  I was so absorbed in thought that I bumped into her as I entered the elevator.

  Johanna’s cellphone sprang from her shoulder. She bent down to retrieve the device, which landed between my legs.

  She was slow to rise. Half-kneeling, she looked up at me without an iota of embarrassment. Then she stuck her hand under my elbow—the second woman to do this today—and we cruised into the lab.

  “So, how is your day so far?”

  I shrugged. “It’s becoming increasingly like all previous days.”

  “It’s like that in any line of work. We say that anyone who loves his routine is a lucky person. But it happens to only fifty percent of working people. Even the ophthalmologists must see boring cases every day—conjunctivitis, dry eyes, et cetera. Not all patients are interesting.” We passed Efron’s room. “Where is she?”

  “At a lecture in the auditorium.”

  “Ha! Thursday.” Johanna smiled and nodded. She was already familiar with the professor’s crazy schedule.

  We went into the adjacent lab, the one with the shaking fridges and the long table crowded with tubes, rubber bridges with stoppers, and Erlenmeyer bottles.

  “How is your grandmother?”

  I waved my hand. “You really don’t want to know.” I went to the cold room and—between sneezes—took out the reagents. I mixed the solutions, armed the pipette, and filled the tubes. Then I sealed the lids and put them in the scanner cell. As I closed the door, I mumbled a little prayer and pressed the ‘start’ button.

  “What are you doing now?” she whispered, peering over my shoulder.

  “Just checking the level of Efron’s drug inside the lenses. To know if it concentrates inside, and to what extent.” I noticed that she wanted to ask more, but I saved her the trouble and pointed to the row of numbered tubes. “We have here from number one to… eleven.”

  Strange, I was sure that I had seen tube #12 as well, marked with Efron’s heavy black marker. But now it was missing. There were only eleven tubes on the stand. Maybe Efron was already working on it and had placed it in the incubator.

  “And you’ve already checked all the others?”

  “She was at number nine when I started.”

  “And now you check number twelve.”

  “I planned to begin the first experiment. But I still have to finish the final round with the stuff in eleven.” I glanced at the clock and frowned. Its ticking irritated me more than ever. “I’m not sure I’ll get to it today. It’s late. I need to input the computer data, centrifuge, take a sample with the pipette, put it inside the scanner. Such a pain.”

  “Can I help?” She took off her raincoat and went to the hook behind the door. “I can wash tubes, clean the centrifuge.” My brow furrowed. “So… at least I can make for us a mélange.” She slipped into a lab coat, felt the pockets until a winning smirk appeared, and with it, a silver bag. “Any milk in the fridge?”

  While her eyes wandered around in search of suitable tools for making the hot mixture of milk and coffee, I heard the clicking sound of the last vial on the track and went to the computer room.

  I knew the order of the commands by heart. After all, I had been doing it on a daily basis over the last month. So I was surprised when I punched in the access code and password and the system rejected me with an insolent message: “Unidentified user.”

  Unidentified user? Who? Me?

  I went back and repeated the sequence, which had become second nature to me, like playing a piano. And the same answer came up. The tube remained standing in the rail with the syringe frozen above, in a half-bent position.

  I flipped my red notebook to a page full of numbers and letters that an outsider would never understand. I descended to the tenth row and counted five digits to the left.

  I had remembered right. The username was VISUS, the Latin term for visual acuity, and the password was 1738, the number of Efron’s lab room in Maryland.

  After my third attempt the system declared that I was blocked from further attempts. If I were at the ATM, the instrument would have swallowed my card. Farewell to my hope to surprise the professor and finish the first experiment with tube #12 ahead of schedule.

  I stared at the files on the desktop. Something had happened to the files in the folder labeled LE12. The other folders showed a volume of 50 MB each, but LE12 contained only 30KB, less than one-thousandth. The file LE12.doc was empty except for several lines of gibberish. How the hell had this happened?

  “Damn!”

  Johanna heard me swear as I thumped down heavily in one of the seats. She rushed in from the department’s kitchenette with two cups of foam and a worried look on her face. She put one on the table in front of me. I kept staring at the screen, shaking my head in disbelief.

  “Is something wrong?”

  I was too stunned to answer. I looked again at the wall clock, a gift from Merck Sharp & Dohme. Right now, Professor Efron was in the middle of her experiment with the students, hugging a piglet and pushing its face into the chinrest of the slit lamp. I wondered why she hadn’t stopped by, as usual, between the lecture and the animals.

  I felt Johanna’s warm hand on my nape. “Something went wrong with the experiment?”

  “Worse. The data on the last test tube.”

  “Tube #12?” she asked anxiously. “What happened to it?”

  “I… I can’t find it. It’s… gone.”

  14

  I rummaged through Efron’s top drawers in search of a new code.

  The bottom drawer was locked.

  By the noise from the room next Johanna was carrying out a blitz on the dishes; I wasn’t surprised, as my one and only trip to Vienna and Salzburg had impressed
upon me that Austrians dislike dirt of any kind.

  I remembered seeing Efron push a little box under the desk, and went down on all fours to investigate it, but there wasn’t a hint.

  I squinted at the door as my cellphone buzzed in my pocket. Maybe Efron will show up.

  But she didn’t need to—it was her on the phone. True to character, she scolded me. “Why did it take you so long to answer?”

  “I thought you were going to stop here on your way to the piglets. I didn’t notice the time.” I sank into her chair. “Aren’t you done yet?”

  She sounded drained. “Nearly. Had lot of delays.”

  “Ditto. There’s a problem with folder #12, and with the scanner. I give the username and password, but the system keeps kicking me out.”

  Such news would normally have made her curse out loud. But she reacted with exceptional equanimity. “Don’t worry, I’ll handle it later.”

  “Anything wrong?”

  “I don’t feel well. Nothing serious; just overworked. I need a favor.” This was a novelty. Her voice dropped. “Are you alone?”

  I didn’t understand her question.

  “Is Johanna there with you?”

  “She’s in the next room.”

  “What’s she doing there?” she asked angrily.

  “She’s washing tubes.” There was an awkward pause. “I didn’t know I was supposed to watch her.”

  “Which tubes?”

  “Bunny tubes.” I heard a puff of relief and continued, “Actually, I wanted to surprise you—move forward with the tests by myself, do the kinetics of #12—but it’s impossible to even start anything. All the stuff on the hard disc was deleted, wiped out. I hope you have a backup somewhere.”

  She ignored this, saying instead, “I want you to come to Barb’s room. Alone. Do you know where?”

  I did; room 411 at the Animal Care Building. I glanced out the window. The lightning finished its firework display and rain lashed at the frozen glass. The passageway under Muhammad Ali Boulevard was closed for renovations and I had no desire to use the second-floor open bridge. But she said it was important and asked me to lock up before I left.

  Just as I hung up, I heard a door slam in the next room. The water stopped flowing into the sink. I took the keys from the top drawer and stepped into the corridor.

  There was a rigorous protocol for locking the laboratories. I had to tell Johanna we were done for the day, so I went to the lab. I didn’t see her at first. Bright tubes and glasses hung upside-down on diagonal wooden rods, in typical Austrian order. A folded towel lay by the basin.

  I heard a noise from behind me, where the dressing area and lockers were. I turned to see her hanging up her lab coat, and before she slipped into a twill shirt, I found myself staring at a pair of perfect cream-colored breasts.

  Less than five minutes later I was with Efron—so quickly that she suspected I had neglected to lock up.

  I allayed her fears and placed the keys on the table in room 411, more aptly called a dungeon. Barbara was no longer there; her lab coat hung on a hook behind the door.

  Efron grabbed the keys and I noticed for the first time a faint tremor. Her eyes were bloodshot and her eyelids heavy. I knew she’d had a difficult time lately, but hard work wasn’t foreign to her. According to departmental rumors, she had no family. At home there was neither a husband waiting nor a child to feed. The laboratory was her life.

  “Where is Johanna?”

  “Gone.”

  I didn’t tell her Johanna knew she’d called me to the ACB and insisted I come alone. I also didn’t tell her that Johanna and I had a date at ten thirty in a jazz club on Grinstead Drive. It was none of her business. I just said, “I locked up after her.”

  Efron nodded and swallowed. “Milbert, you can start your weekend now. Take tomorrow off.” This was also new. As my mouth dropped open, she turned around and pulled a foil-wrapped tube from a fridge next to the sink. She double-checked the cork, then laid it in Styrofoam container resembling a baby crib. “And take this with you.”

  “Oh?” Another anomaly.

  “I know it’s against policy, but I want you to keep tube #12—just for a few days. Hide it somewhere in your apartment. You don’t even have to refrigerate it. A cool place will do. It’s stable at room temperature, and non-toxic.”

  “Can I have an explanation?”

  “Milbert, just do me a favor, please.”

  “What exactly am I supposed to do? Stash it in my freezer? Dig a hole in my yard and put it in a jam jar?”

  She mouthed a silent, Is it so much to ask? “It’s only for three days. They’re doing maintenance work on the university vents over the weekend. Things may fly through the pipes or—or who knows what. I’m afraid of the contents being damaged.”

  “Why don’t you give it to Johanna?”

  “Milbert, she’s barely been here. Comes and goes all the time. I hardly know her. It’ll be safer with you.”

  Unconvinced, I asked, “So why don’t you take it home?”

  Efron snorted impatiently. “I just moved to a new apartment. My things are still in boxes. Three days, Milbert.” She studied me with a mute gaze, then said, “I’ll name you first on one of the articles. It’ll help, believe me, if you’re serious about being an eye doctor.”

  I snatched the box and buried it in the inside pocket of my old green coat. “Monday morning I’ll replace it alongside the other tubes.”

  She closed her eyes and nodded a fatigued thank you. Her voice followed me to the door. “And not a word to anyone.”

  15

  I went down to the parking lot.

  Apart from my Kia there were only two cars there—probably library users, the library being the only university facility still open so late.

  I pushed the revolving door and a bone-chilling wind whipped around me and whistled across the open ground. I remembered the weatherman on the seven o’clock news describing a barometric depression moving in from Canada: “Tonight will be the coldest night on record for this date.”

  I raised my coat lapels and increased my pace, almost running, careful across the slippery ground. I reached the car door, wheezing heavily and berating myself for skipping my gym workouts for so long. Without even glancing around, I slid quickly behind the wheel.

  As always, the ignition refused to obey my first attempt. Raindrops fused on the glass, forming a splashing mosaic. I turned the key halfway to the left and tried again. Nada. To be on the safe side, I removed the key completely from the switch and counted aloud to ten.

  I had neither an alarm nor an immobilizer. I saved money by carrying only liability insurance. Thieves these days are refined. Who would steal a thirteen-year-old Kia?

  I returned the key to the switch, closed my eyes in prayer, and tried again. There was a brief noise like a throat clearing, but it soon faded.

  Clearly this wasn’t my day. I was distressed about missing my date. I hit the steering wheel. Shit. It meant I would now, in the freezing-ass cold, have to take a look under the hood.

  What would I be able to see in the dark?

  My dad had equipped me with a spare tire, a bottle of 10/30 Pennzoil, some windshield fluid, and a pair of jumper cables. Great! But there was no one around to give me a jump.

  I pulled the lever under the dashboard, stepped out, lifted the hood, and threaded the supporting rod into the hole in the top, like a scout’s tent.

  With chattering teeth I gawked at the dark engine, with four humps and pipes that looked like octopus tentacles. My knowledge of auto mechanics did not exceed identifying the oil stick and the water tank. Even if someone had plucked out all the distributor’s wirings and waved them before my eyes, I couldn’t have identified the problem.

  I pulled my head out and scanned the entrance to the faculty building. Whence cometh my help? I thoug
ht.

  Johanna had already left. Efron was still upstairs but she probably couldn’t help; as far as I knew she had no car. Few lights dotted the seventh-floor windows. There was no sign of life in the corridor. There was a guy on night shift at the ACB and another in the blood bank. If the two cars in the parking lot were theirs, I was doomed.

  Then, all of a sudden, my luck improved. I turned to face the dazzling lights of a vehicle screeching to a halt in front of me. When my eyes adjusted, I recognized the Volkswagen symbol and the now-closed roof. The car’s interior was dark, so it took a few seconds to make out the blond curls behind the wheel. Without good brakes she would have crushed me at the hips.

  Johanna climbed out and walked toward me.

  “You still here?” I asked, surprised. We’d parted with a kiss fifteen minutes earlier.

  Johanna told me she’d made a wrong turn on the ramp and found herself in front of the locked gate of University Hospital on Jackson Street, which closed nightly at eight p.m. She had driven around for a while in search of an open gate, eventually finding herself behind the library, where she’d spotted me.

  She peered over my shoulder. “Problem with your car?”

  “It won’t start.”

  “Need help?”

  “You understand car engines?”

  Johanna shrugged. To her, my expiring Kia didn’t count as ‘a car.’

  Some inexplicable urge made me go back and lean under the hood to check the rubber hoses, the plugs, and the seals. They all looked intact and tightly attached. The engine was cold, but that didn’t tell me much.

  I considered asking her for a jump, but just then the rain picked up, accompanied by hail the size of olives. The hood banged like a tambourine. I released the rod and dropped it back in place.

  “So what now?” I asked, more to myself than to her.

  “Leave it here and come back tomorrow.”

  Johanna took two steps and a pirouette, which reminded me of the curves underneath that flapping raincoat.

  She was right, of course. Better leave the car and come back tomorrow. But for some obscure reason I remained standing next to the Kia, like someone whose heart was sinking after being estranged from a beloved relative.