LOST TO THE WORLD

by Libby Sternberg

  He hurried downstairs and bypassed the living room where Mrs. Wellstone was explaining to Sal how difficult it is to grow roses when the summer’s too damp.

  If Dr. Lowenstein had come into contact with the polio germs, did they linger on clothes and furniture Maybe he should ask to be off this case. He couldn’t take any chances with his boys, now that Mary was gone.

  Into the dining room, kitchen, closets. Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing in pockets. No hidden boxes or safes. A room to the left of the foyer was set up as a music studio and library with piano and books and music stand. Down in the basement, it was even barer. The old furnace and oil tank sat on one side, a washing machine on the other, indoor clothesline for the maid to use in bad weather. A few shelves with gardening items and tools for the occasional repair. If anything, Lowenstein’s house was unusually clear of any nostalgic mementoes or reminders of his past. Not even any photographs of relatives, Sean thought. Odd.

  The phone buzzed, cutting his thoughts and momentarily silencing Mrs. Wellstone. When it buzzed again, she called out, “I could answer that, if you’d like.”

  “No, no, I’ll take care of it,” Sean heard Sal say.

  Sean smiled and made his way back up into the kitchen, just in time for Sal to hand the receiver to him.

  “Dick Weyman,” Sal said, raising his eyebrows.

  Weyman was a fellow detective.

  “Hello,” he mumbled, while plopping the papers he’d gathered on a nearby table.

  “I been calling all over for you,” Weyman said. “Tried the hospital and they said you’d left. Figured you were at the vic’s house. Your housekeeper called here a half dozen times looking for you. Says to call home. Something about one of your boys.”

  He closed his eyes. Oh God. His neck and face warmed.

  “Uh-huh. Thanks, Dick.”

  He dialed his home number as soon as the line came free again. Jesus, not Robby. Don’t let Robby…

  “Mrs. Buchanan, is there a problem with the boys?”

  Her voice squawked over the line, irritating and reassuring Sean at the same time. “Robert came home from kindergarten with the sniffles and now seems to have a bad fever, Mr. Reilly. I took his temperature an hour ago and it was a hundred and one. I was thinking of calling Dr. Spencer but thought perhaps you would want to know….”

  He should have told her to keep him home this morning. But he didn’t like to baby them, to make them even more fearful. Sean sighed and looked at his watch. It was nearly one. He’d wanted to type up his notes from the morning’s interviews. It wouldn’t take him long, and it was a point of pride that he knew how to type. And then there were Lowenstein’s papers to go through. But if Robby had a fever—Jesus, he didn’t want to fool with that. He could hear the boy crying in the background.

  “Is he…does he complain of anything else? Any aches or stiffness?”

  “His head hurts but you know how he is. Silent as stone.”

  “Definitely call Dr. Spencer, and I’ll be home as soon as I can,” he said into the phone, feeling his gut pull him toward home. Robert would want him there, and he needed to see the boy with his own eyes, to make sure he wasn’t coming down with this plague. Was this case a warning to him—to keep his boys safe from the disease? He was always looking for signs now, feeling he’d missed other important ones in the past.

  Sal appeared in the doorway, overhearing his conversation. It would be the fifth week in a row Sean had had to take off early for something related to the kids. Daniel had fallen the week before, and Mrs. Buchanan had been afraid he’d broken his wrist—he’d only sprained it. And the week before that, Sean had had to speak to Sister Angela, their kindergarten teacher, about a fight they’d gotten into. And the week before that—he couldn’t remember.

  He didn’t need to go home for all those things. But he always felt if he didn’t do it, he might be missing some turning point, some imperceptible moment that would mean the difference between happiness and disaster.

  Mary had complained of being tired a year before she’d fallen ill. So tired she’d asked Sean if he could leave early one day and help with the boys. And he hadn’t. If he had—would he have seen the disease creeping into their lives as she’d stood bathed in light from their front door, looking as frail and unreal as an angel?

  She had been an angel, too, a slip of a girl with the sweetest hint of Ireland in her voice. Patient, kind, a loving wife—and never a complaint from her. Not even when they’d lost their first babe in a miscarriage. My god, she’d comforted him, then. Only later had he heard from a nurse how she’d cried.

  For a little while after Mary had died, he’d actually felt immunized against other griefs. It would have been too cruel for the God he believed in to strike his family with any other tragedy after such a wrenching loss. But time marched on, and with it his sense of safety faded. Now he saw trouble lurking around every doorway, floating through every window. He wouldn’t be caught unawares.

  “Everything okay?” Sal asked, patting his pocket for a cigarette. Finding one, he lit it and blew a plume of smoke.

  “Robby’s sick.”

  “He couldn’t have caught anything from this…” Sal gestured to the house. So he’d thought of it too, the possibility of taking germs home with him. “It’s probably just a cold or something.”

  Sal was a good soul and an unlikely friend. Right before the war, Sean had worked on a case that had nearly put Sal’s best friend, innocent of a murder, in prison or worse. But once he’d come on the force after the war, Sal had learned quickly that Sean was a man he could trust. He’d let bygones be bygones. The war did that—made the years before it recede into mist.

  “I was going to type up my notes and then head home.”

  “Look, I can do it,” Sal said softly so Mrs. Wellstone wouldn’t hear them.

  But she was too curious to be deterred by low voices. She showed up at Sal’s elbow.

  “Who was that on the phone?” she asked, as if she were part of the detective force.

  “Nothing we can talk about, ma’am. Top secret,” Sal said with a wink toward Sean. Then Sal ushered the woman to the living room, toward the front door. “Thank you for all your help. We can let ourselves out. My partner has the key. We’ll be talking to you again soon. Keep your doors and windows locked, now. Don’t let any strangers in…” He kept up a constant flow of talk as he walked her to the door, not giving her time to respond, or to protest being forced out of Lowenstein’s home.

  Clutching Lowenstein’s papers by his side, Sean caught up with him in the living room as Sal closed the door on the old lady.

  “Hand ’em over, pardner,” Sal said with a smile. “Your notes.”

  Sean just shrugged. Sal had covered for him a few times, saying he was out on a case, but Sean wouldn’t ask him to do it again. He’d used up all his vacation days when Mary had been sick, and as understanding as his boss had been in the past, there were limits. Sean was discovering them now.

  “I’ll manage,” Sean said.

  “O’Brien won’t miss you. Probably doesn’t even know when we’re there.” Sal held out his hand. “Besides, I have a favor to ask.”

  Sean smiled. Sal was just a pup on the job and yet already jaded. Maybe that happened to all of them after serving in the war. Sal had been wounded in a training accident and mustered out early, not seeing action. He was sensitive about it, though, especially since a lot of his buddies were gone. Sean didn’t press. He knew men who didn’t like to talk about their experiences, especially those who’d served in the South Pacific. He’d heard stories of that fighting that curdled his stomach and made him glad his war had ended in Europe.

  “These are papers I found upstairs. Just take them back to the office and drop them on my desk.” Sean handed the bunch to Sal, glad to be rid of them. “I’ll look at them in the morning.” He took out his notebook and motioned to the sofa where they both sat down. “You don’t need to type these, but let’s go over them, in
case I missed something.” He flipped through the pages, talking his notes out loud as Sal puffed on a smoke:

  “Preliminary findings—Dr. Lowenstein died from several blows to the head, struck above and around the man’s left eye and ear. Lowenstein’s hands were clean. It was likely the first blow knocked him down and out and the murderer kept punching to make sure the man was gone.”

  Had Robby complained of a stiff neck in the last day or so? He couldn’t remember.

  “The only witness was Julia Dell, secretary for another doctor—Jansen—who wasn’t yet in. No one else was on the floor. She heard arguing. Thought she heard the name ‘Buck.’”

  It was too early for polio. Probably just a cold. He’d ask the doctor about the risks.

  “The office manager, Adelaide Wilcox, has a list of doctors who knew the victim. I talked with some but they don’t know of anyone who had a beef with the vic. Still to interview—Jansen and some docs who are in Bethesda now. Something to do with a snafu with the polio vaccine. Monkeys infected or something. Something that might derail the vaccine work. Wilcox emphasized that—maybe she thought it was sabotage, related to the murder? Wilcox doesn’t have much else on the vic.”

  Sean looked up at Sal, who was finishing the cigarette, looking for an ashtray. “What did you get from the Wellstone lady?” Sean asked.

  “An earful, let me tell you.” Sal read from his own notes. “She let someone in this morning. Some doc—in lab coat and everything. Said he was a fellow doctor who needed some papers Lowenstein had left for him, something related to ‘important research.’”

  “She give you a description?”

  Sal grimaced. “Brown hair, medium height, thin, long face.”

  “Could be you.”

  “Or half the city.”

  “What about Lowenstein’s cleaning lady?”

  “Didn’t know who he used.”

  Sean looked at his notes. He wanted to leave now.

  “I can tell O’Brien you’re doing some more questioning,” Sal said.

  Sean’s mouth twisted into a lopsided smile. “You don’t have to—”

  Sal held up a hand. “No, I have a favor to ask, remember?” He flipped closed his notebook and launched into it. “You know my sister Brigitta, her husband was killed in It’ly.”

  “Yeah, I remember you telling me about her.” And about a thousand other relatives who Sean never kept straight.

  “Well, I kind of promised my mother that I’d ask if you would like to meet Brigitta, maybe take her out for coffee or something. She’s a nice gal. You might like her.”

  Sean barked out a good-natured laugh. “That’s hardly much of a favor, Sal. It’s not like it would be a hardship.”

  Sal grinned, relieved. “She is a looker. Even if she is my sister.”

  “I’ll call her tonight,” Sean said. “I’ve got your number.” Sal still lived at home, although he complained daily about his need to find a place of his own.

  “No, she lives near the harbor. Little It’ly. Here, I’ll write it down for you.” Sal scribbled fast, as if afraid Sean would change his mind.

  Sean placed the paper in his jacket pocket. “You still don’t need to cover for me,” he said. “I’ll tell O’Brien myself I’m leaving early and he can dock my pay.”

  Sal shook his head.

  “Look, you know you’re going to be thinking about this case, figuring it out from now till Sunday and back again. And that will all be on your time, off the clock. Just do what you have to do. O’Brien’s supposed to be at a meeting. Might be gone the rest of the day anyway.”

  Sean smiled as he stood. “Are you liking anybody yet?”

  Sal flattened his mouth into two thin lines. “I talked to a couple docs, too. Got what you got. Lowenstein wasn’t a very sociable fellow. Nobody knew much about his personal life.”

  “No next of kin in his file at the hospital either,” Sean added.

  “You know, did it strike you odd, where he lives—Homeland?” Sal asked, nodding his head toward the outside. They were in a well-to-do, exclusive neighborhood not far from the Hopkins university campus. Although the medical school and hospital were located on Broadway, the university was farther in town to the west. Homeland was slightly north of it, a neighborhood of social scions, bluebloods, trust fund folks.

  Sean nodded. “Yeah. Not the sort of place for a Lowenstein.”

  Sean mentioned the empty drawer, the strange lack of photos.

  “Not even a birth certificate,” Sean said. “I just grabbed those.” He pointed to the stack of financial papers he’d handed over to Sal.

  “Whoever Wellstone let in—you think he cleaned the place out?” Sal asked.

  “Don’t know. I’m hoping the papers tell us something.” And as Sean looked at them, he wondered again if they were a death trap, capturing the unseen germs that spread the disease.

  Chapter Three

  THE RAIN STOPPED as Sean drove home, and the city smelled like just-turned earth, the odor of springtime. It gave him no joy.

  When Sean had returned from the war, he’d felt as if he were coming home to an eternal spring, a time when everything was warm and soft. No more hell. He’d set about having a family right away, but Mary’d had “female troubles” that delayed their parenthood, scars or something from the previous miscarriage. When the boys had finally come, he remembered thinking, “this is heaven.” He’d gone to the hospital chapel, wordless thanks in his heart. He was so… Damned. Happy. To be alive.

  He’d bought the house right after that, and they’d started hoping for more children, even praying the Rosary together some evenings, pleading their cause.

  Mary had thought she was pregnant. But she hadn’t been. She’d been sick.

  He let out a long sigh and pulled the car up to the curb in front of his house.

  Inside his home, he rubbed his boys’ heads when they came out to greet him, half listening to Mrs. Buchanan as she told him when the doc was expected and how she needed to take off a week from Friday because her sister was coming into town and they were going to Hutzler’s Tea Room together.

  This last bit of news jostled his thoughts to the present, away from the scene of Lowenstein lying on the floor with blood pooled around his head, away from that blasted smell of antiseptic and something rotten that lingered in the air at a hospital. God, he needed to forget that smell.

  “Do you know of someone else?” he asked her as she pulled on her coat and hat.

  “Now, Mr. Reilly—” She always called him Mr. Reilly even though he was fifteen years younger than she was and more than once had told her to call him Sean. “I’ve told you I don’t know anyone willing to take on an all-day job. Did you talk to the Sisters like I suggested?”

  No, he hadn’t. When did he have time to do that? He couldn’t do it during the day—they were all teaching. And at night they abided by Grand Silence and wouldn’t answer calls.

  “I’ll find someone,” he murmured, holding open the door. “Are you sure you want to walk?” He pointed to the still-wet sidewalk, glistening with puddles. If the weather was bad or it was dark, as it often was in winter when he returned home, Mrs. Buchanan’s husband would pick her up. Otherwise she walked the three blocks out toward Old Philadelphia Road, then down it a block and into her street below his toward the city.

  She waggled her gloved hand in the air. “You certainly can’t take me home, not with Robby being sick!” Her sturdy shoes clomped out her departure, and he turned back into the house.

  Robby now dozed, curled up on the sofa with his thumb in his mouth. He wore pajamas, the blue ones with the sailboat pattern on them that Mary had picked out her last Christmas. The boy’s feet and ankles poked out a good two inches from the hem, and for an awful second Sean imagined the boy in a hospital emergency room with nurses looking disapprovingly at the child’s apparel. He’d have to get them new pajamas—new clothes in general—this weekend. But how would he do it if Robby were still sick?


  Daniel hung on to his leg and asked for some candy. When Mary had been in the hospital, Sean had taken to bringing them home a Hershey bar or other treat.

  “Will you read me a story?” Daniel pleaded, looking up at him with eager eyes. Sometimes the treat was a Golden Book from the drugstore, a fairy tale or adventure story.

  Sean rubbed Daniel’s blond head. “Nope, son. I hurried home because of your brother.” Disappointed, Daniel let go of his father’s leg and slid to the floor where he crawled under a barrel-backed chair near the door. “I’m hungry,” he said.

  Sean ignored him and went to the sofa, sitting at the edge of Robby’s feet while he leaned over him to stroke his head. The boy felt hot, but he couldn’t tell how hot. He’d meant to ask Mrs. Buchanan if she’d taken his temperature again.

  “Does your neck hurt?” he whispered to the boy. Sean wondered if Robby would guess the reason for that question. Kids picked up things, and the boys were more susceptible than most to fears. Robby shook his head. A tear curled out of the corner of his eye and made its way down his cheek toward his nose. Sean pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his son’s face.

  “Raise your arm for me, son.” Robby dutifully complied, and Sean lightly tickled the boy’s feet, causing him to flinch while a slight smile floated across his face. No paralysis.

  Sean wished Robby would complain more. He was often a silent sufferer, tears appearing out of nowhere, leaving Sean puzzling over what series of events had led to the outburst. Was he crying now because he ached or because he’d wanted Sean home earlier?

  “The doctor will be here soon. You’ll be fine. He’ll fix you up!” he said with false cheer.

  “He won’t have to go to the hoppital, will he?” Daniel asked from his hiding place across the room.

  Sean snapped out a reply. “No. The doctor will give him some medicine and he’ll be right as rain!” Danny’s mouth turned down. Sean had sounded too angry. Maybe he was. Maybe he was daring God to prove him wrong. He patted Robby’s feet and stood. “Let me make some tea. Tea with honey.” That’s what Mary had always made when they had sore throats.