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LOST TO THE WORLD
A mystery novel by
Libby Sternberg
Copyright 2010 Libby Sternberg
Published by Istoria Books
ISBN: 9781452404196
Cover art by Sarah Myer exclusively for Istoria Books
Sean Reilly, the detective in Lost to the World, first appeared as a minor character in Libby Sternberg’s mystery novella Death Is the Cool Night, also available from Istoria Books. Lost to the World follows Reilly as he attempts to solve the case of a murdered research doctor on the eve of the groundbreaking polio vaccine trials.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty One
Chapter Twenty Two
Chapter Twenty Three
Chapter Twenty Four
Twenty Five
Epilogue
Coming Soon
Author’s Note
About the Author
Chapter One
March 1954
Julia Dell bit the insides of her cheeks. The smell of a damp wool coat made her gag. She swallowed hard, concentrating on the bland tiles on the floor, the crack in the wall, the soothing voice of the nurse kneeling by her chair, asking if she was all right.
It’s March—why is he even wearing it? Wet from rain, warm from the overheated hallways, it smells like—
Pain.
She shook her head. “There’s a coat rack down the hall, sir!”
The nurse was asking her if she needed smelling salts.
“No, no thank you. I’m fine.”
But the smell of that wool coat—it made her sick to her stomach.
“What did you say about my coat?” The detective stood in front of her.
“It…smells. From the rain.”
He sniffed his shoulder and shrugged. “I won’t be here long.” His voice was sharp, but at least he moved on. And with it, the odor receded.
Hot packs were made of woolen strips soaked to scalding. She’d never forget the smell—and the fear it had come to trigger.
“You’ve had a shock, dear. Close your eyes and breathe steadily.”
She did as she was told, and a happy memory flooded her. A happy memory? Dear God, it was the memory of the moment she’d discovered Dr. Lowenstein’s lifeless body!
She had entered the room, let out a yelping scream, and then—she shivered as the sensation returned—she’d quickly turned and fallen.
That one sliver of time when she turned, that tiniest moment. Holy mother of God, what a wonderful feeling! She’d turned. She’d turned! She’d moved as if…
She sucked in her lips. Oh God, it was gone now.
But in that instant of surprise, she’d felt again surefooted and strong, able to turn away from danger without a second glance. She had forgotten about her withered leg with its smaller shoe. She’d forgotten she couldn’t walk without will. One precious moment.
I want it back. I want it back, oh please…
Her left hand had brushed Dr. Lowenstein’s arm when she fell, while her right had pushed into the broken glass on the floor, scraping and cutting her palm, making an embarrassing mess of things so that she had to explain, when the police and doctors came, that she’d fallen like a clumsy oaf.
There had been the usual mixture of pity and recoil. The detective with the coat, a burly man with reddish hair, had glanced at her with narrowed eyes and tight mouth. You mucked up the scene, that look had said. You mucked it up because you were stupid enough to—and here Julia hadn’t been sure what to fill in. She’d been stupid enough to forget about her brace? Or stupid enough to catch the damn disease that led to the brace?
She viewed each possibility with a curious aloofness, a detachment that had plagued her since she had been afflicted with “the summer plague” itself.
Serious illness, Julia had decided when she’d lain in bed with the awful onset of polio ten years earlier, invites the sufferer into the threshold of death. Afterward, you feel as if you are not living so much as writing your obituary. Julia was such a fine girl, strong in adversity, resilient even when facing catastrophe at work …
Everyone else in her family was healthy as the proverbial horse. Even the usual childhood diseases—the poxes and measles and mumps—had whipped through her parents’ house with efficient speed, leaving Julia and her two sisters miserable for a few days and weak for a few more, and then, poof, the suffering was forgotten. There were movies to see, boys to giggle over, songs to croon with, bands to dance to, and the war’s end to celebrate.
No more. She’d missed a lot of that.
“Are you feeling better now, Julia?”
Julia opened her eyes. The kind nurse from one of the patient wards beyond the research labs knelt by Julia’s chair with ammonia spirits ready. She sat in the hallway, just outside Dr. Lowenstein’s Hopkins office, where the detective had allowed them to place a chair for her while she waited for his questions.
Smoothing her gray flannel skirt, Julia shook her head. “Yes, thank you.” It was a plain skirt, not at all like the softly feminine and extravagantly full skirts so fashionable now. She didn’t like to draw attention to her legs.
“It must have been the shock of it.” The crisp nurse straightened and placed the ammonia bottle in her pocket.
“Yes,” Julia murmured as the nurse wrapped a bandage on her bleeding hand. Yes, it was the shock. A miracle, that shock had been.
She shook her head. No self-pity. She was one of the lucky ones. The late president had spent most of his adulthood in a wheelchair. And others she’d known at the rehabilitation center had spent their last days in the torture chamber of the iron lung. Yes, count your blessings. Why was it she only remembered to do that after first being tortured by her losses?
“May I have a few words with you now?” a tired, low voice said. “I’m Detective Sean Reilly.” He loomed over her, his hands dug into the pockets of that blasted coat. When he saw her wrinkle her nose, he heaved a sigh and took it off, looking around for a place to put it. The nurse offered to hold it for him and whisked it away.
“You won’t be tying up the lab for long, will you?” she said in that bright tone of voice she’d learned to use to get people to leave her alone. Cheerful Julia, the model patient, the model daughter, the model secretary. The rehabilitation crowd had even talked of putting her name in for the March of Dimes posters until she’d spoiled the possibility with an angry fit in the lunch room one day, all because her wheelchair had been too far from the table. She’d apologized afterward, telling the nurses she’d “try harder,” but it had been too late.
“What?”
“Dr. Lowenstein…” She waved her hand toward the lab where the doctor’s body lay. “He wasn’t involved in the research. But others are. It’s almost polio season.” She sat up straighter. It was important work and her boss was part of it, if only in a small way. She wouldn’t let these detectives delay it.
The detective stooped to talk to her as if she were a little girl, and she found herself mentally pulling back. Did he feel th
e need to affect this pose for her because she was a cripple, akin in his eyes to a child or mental defective?
“Could you describe to me what happened when you found your boss?” he said, ignoring her question. He pulled out a notebook and pencil, preparing to write with grubby fingers whose nails were ragged from chewing.
“Not my boss,” she said. “Dr. Jansen is my boss. Dr. Lowenstein’s secretary isn’t in.”
He sighed. “What time did you discover Dr. Lowenstein?”
“I came in early—before eight—and I was the only one here,” she said. She’d already told another detective the story. And Mrs. Wilcox. And the nurse. And … others she couldn’t remember now. “Dr. Lowenstein was in his lab with the door shut. He sometimes comes in early. I heard voices. Someone was with him, a man I think—”
“Do you know who it was?”
“No. I just heard them talking—”
“Arguing?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. Their voices were muffled but…strong.” Dr. Lowenstein was a quiet man, so any rise in tone, even to what most would consider normal, stood out as unusual.
“Did you hear any of it, make out anything?”
She looked down, thought. She’d been rushing to her office to finish typing Dr. Jansen’s paper. It didn’t matter that it was for a small journal. She always felt that any kernel of information about polio could be the one piece of the puzzle that solved it all, that led to discoveries and cure. Her mind had been on that. To her right, behind the pebbled glass window on Dr. Lowenstein’s door, she’d heard them. Two men. She’d thought at first it was another doctor. They could be quite passionate about their various theories, and she’d assumed they were arguing over the amount of CCs to be used in an experiment or how to attenuate a strain of the virus or how to get the best tissue from the monkeys they used. But Dr. Lowenstein didn’t do polio research, so she’d discarded that theory, or rather, filed it away to be pondered later after she’d finished her work for Dr. Jansen.
“Dr. Lowenstein said something like ‘I’ve had enough, Buck’ at one point. That’s all I remember.”
“Buck?”
“I think that was it.”
“Anyone by that name here?”
“Not that I know of.”
“The other man—was he another doctor?” He shifted his weight.
“I know all the doctors on our floor and then some. I didn’t recognize the voice.”
“You didn’t hear anything else?”
“Like I said, I heard them when I passed the office. Once I went into mine, I didn’t hear any more. I was typing.”
“So when did you go into the lab again?”
Time had passed quickly after she’d gone to her office that morning. She’d been consumed with finishing her typing before Dr. Jansen came in for the day, which was usually at nine-thirty. But a little before nine, the phone had rung.
“… it was a man, asking to talk to Dr. Lowenstein,” she said. An odd, raspy voice, faintly familiar, so low she’d almost asked the caller to repeat his request. “Dr. Lowenstein doesn’t always answer the phone in his lab and his secretary wasn’t coming in today, so I got up to go tell him he had a call.”
“And that’s when you…”
“Found him dead on the floor. Yes.” She raised her eyebrows, daring the detective to think she was soft.
“You knew immediately he was dead?”
She straightened her shoulders. “No, I just saw him on the floor, bleeding, not moving.”“It wasn’t until I fell that I determined he wasn’t breathing.” She looked around. She wanted to talk with Mrs. Wilcox, to make sure things would move forward despite this calamity. She’d thought he’d passed out, maybe had a heart attack. Perhaps she should help move them along.
“How much longer will you be here?” She moved her head toward the hallway. “The doctors have work to do.”
He ignored her question, flipping a page after writing some notes. “So you came in, saw him on the floor, fell, and then determined he was dead.”
“Yes!” She cleared her throat as her face flamed with irritation. If she’d been able-bodied, she would have bent over, shook the doctor’s shoulders and tried to rouse him. But no, she’d fallen because of her brace. What did the detective think he was proving by eking out this detail from her?
He looked up at her eyes, as if probing for something. “Just needed to have the sequence right,” he said as if reading her earlier thoughts. “My boss would ask me.” He shrugged his shoulders as if to apologize, then stood.
Not liking him towering over her, she pushed herself up as well, but without her cane she wavered. When he saw her reach back to balance herself against the wall, he lightly grabbed her right arm.
“Steady,” he said, his eyes narrowing in concern, “you’ve had a big shock.”
“My cane—it’s still in the lab.” He had a strong, kind grip. She regretted her quick judgment of him. She was always doing that—seeing people’s reactions through the filter of her affliction. A thousand times she told herself to stop.
“I’ll fetch it for you,” he offered. But she shook her head.
“I can do it!” She pulled away, nearly tumbling with the effort.
“I don’t want you in the crime scene,” he said, irritation now coloring his voice. “Stay here. I’ll get it for you.” He walked past her without a second glance and disappeared into the room. She heard him talking to others—another detective, a coroner—and in a few seconds, he returned holding her cane out to her. She took it with a quiet “thanks” and slipped the metal band around her forearm while grabbing the handle grip.
“What happened to the caller—the one who asked for Dr. Lowenstein?”
“I don’t know. I assume he hung up eventually.”
“You were the only one around this morning?”
“I didn’t see anyone else. I was in early, before the offices usually open.”
“This whole lab is involved in the polio research?” He swung his pencil around indicating the quiet hallways. This part of the hospital wasn’t a hospital at all. It felt more like a library with hushed voices in labs and offices. The researchers could work for hours without saying anything to colleagues. Sometimes Julia had been surprised to come upon a doctor in a lab so silent it could have been a tomb.
“A part of it. Most of it is in Pittsburgh where Dr. Salk is working. But the doctors all have different theories, different methods, different tasks.” She felt weak, as if a weight were on her pressing her down. But she squared her shoulders. “Dr. Lowenstein wasn’t involved in all that, though. He did other research. His secretary would know.”
“She’s not in, you said.”
She looked around, blinked in the bright light of the halls. She really wanted to move on, to get back to normal, her normal. That would steady her.
“Do you need me for anything else?” she asked him.
“I’m not sure.” His eyes narrowed as he sized her up. “Not right now.”
“Then I’ll get back to work.” They all had to get back to work. She’d find Mrs. Wilcox and have her move these people along.
“Where do you live?”
“What?” She leaned on her cane and stared at him. Was he being fresh?
“In case you go home early, I’d like to know where I can reach you if I have more questions.” He had his notebook open again with pencil poised to write.
“I won’t go home early.”
He sighed heavily, and his jaw muscle worked. He flipped the notebook closed with a clap.
“Fine. I can get it from your office anyway.” He turned away from her and walked back to the lab.
***
Two hours later, she found herself with a bad case of the shakes, sitting at her desk trembling as if it were twenty below zero.
“You should go home,” her office mate, Linda, said, looking up from her typing.
Maybe she would…but the phone rang, pulling her out of her anxiety.
She sucked in her breath. “Who is this?” Her voice trembled. Linda noticed.
“You okay?” Linda got up from her desk and came over.
“Who is this?” Julia repeated, but the man just snickered and hung up, the dial tone replacing his ugly voice.
“Julia?” Linda asked, reaching out for Julia’s arm.
“It was…nothing. A prankster.” But her hand shook so much that she didn’t settle the receiver into its cradle, and it fell onto her desk. “I think I will go…I don’t have anything important now.”
“I’ll tell Mrs. Wilcox.” Linda scurried to pick up her own phone and dial their office manager. While Linda talked to Mrs. Wilcox, Julia called home to arrange a ride.
“Mrs. W. said that’s fine,” Linda said, hanging up. “She said Dr. Jansen called to say he’s under the weather, too.”
Julia frowned. The man hadn’t had the courage to call Julia after he’d berated her about finishing the paper he was not present to pick up, nor to offer condolences over the shock she’d experienced. Typical. She swallowed her irritation. It wasn’t for her to question these things. The doctors worked like artists, listening to their inner muses. They had important things to do. Poor Mrs. Wilcox—having to deal with such a temperamental crew. But she’d already handled worse. Her husband was gone five years now, and her only child, a son, had died at Normandy.
“You’ve been a trouper. I wouldn’t have stayed,” Linda said, watching her get ready to go.
Julia noticed her staring at her collar. There was a little drop of blood there, on the neckline of her sweater set. It was from her fall. One more reason to go home early—to properly wash the stain before it settled in. It was a new set, too, soft white cashmere, as light as air, with a beaded flower embroidered near the shoulder of the cardigan. Julia spent an inordinate amount of time choosing clothing that drew the eyes upward. White set off her curly, chin-length chestnut hair, another of her good features.
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