“Mrs. Schlager, you’re looking for something and we know it. Maybe we’ll have to come to your home and talk to you there, look around a bit….”
The reaction wasn’t instantaneous. Her face went still as ice at first, then her lower lip began to tremble. Silent tears poured from her eyes, and her grief and fear were so profound that Sal felt like a ham-handed brute for his innocent-sounding suggestion. He reached out to touch her arm.
“Was there something going on between you and…” He nodded toward Lowenstein’s house.
She stepped back away from his comforting hand and took a deep breath, gaining control.
“No! Absolutely nothing,” she said with the vehemence of the wrongly accused. “And I’ve told you everything I know. Why won’t you believe me? You don’t need to come to my home to talk to me. I’ll just say the same thing. I’ll come to your office if you like. I’ll answer your questions for hours. Nothing will change.” The words tumbled fast as she tried to persuade him.
He wasn’t sure what to think, so he asked her a few more questions about Lowenstein and his habits, wishing Sean were with him to fill in the gaps he was surely leaving. From her answers, it was clear she only knew Lowenstein’s office routine and, in fact, had never been to his home until that morning. The map in the car had told that tale even before she said it out loud. After asking her to turn over the key to the house to him, he let her go, still hinting he might pursue this at her home, but that only got him more promises to talk to the police as much as they wanted. Sal watched her get in the car and drive off before heading back himself, feeling like a failure.
***
Julia would never be able to run away from a gun. She was more vulnerable than most. When she’d first been paralyzed, her greatest fear had been fire. Once she’d mastered walking with a cane, that fear had receded. And now this—a new fear.
Her body chilled as she stared at Dr. Jansen, stared at the gun in his hand as if it occupied an equal space to the man who held it.
She should have called the police, should have followed her instincts.
She should scream. But her tongue seemed paralyzed now as well.
Dr. Jansen stood at the far end of the room, the gun in his right hand pointing toward her and the door, his mouth hanging open in shock and surprise. His receding hair was disheveled, as if he’d been running his fingers through it in frustration. Behind him, on the black-topped lab counter, were several files, their papers spread out in untidy angles. One had fallen to the floor.
Julia swallowed. “Dr. Jansen,” she said softly in the most reasonable tone she could muster. “I’m not going to—”
“Good lord, girl, you gave me a fright!” The hand with the gun dropped to his side. Julia breathed more easily. But still her heart pounded.
“Why do you have—that?” She pointed with her cane to the gun, and he stared at it as if someone had placed it in his hand unawares.
“I—I—well, you’ve seen the letters. You know that there are people—out there—who want to do us harm, who want to stop the vaccine trials!” He scowled at her as if she was the reason he had to carry a gun. “I felt the need to protect myself. God knows Dr. Lowenstein could have benefited from such foresight.”
As the shock of having Julia startle him wore off, so did his lack of inhibition. He looked at her pale face, as if seeing for the first time the effect a pointed gun would have on her.
“I’m sorry if I scared you,” he murmured, pocketing the gun in his lab jacket. His lab jacket—did he always carry a gun in that pocket?
“You should talk to the police about those threatening letters, Dr. Jansen.” Julia tried to sound reassuring, to let him know she was on his side. “I’d be scared, too, if I got things like that.”
“They can’t help. No use involving them.”
“They’re already involved,” she reminded him.
He gave out a little snort of disgusted laughter. “A bit too late, wouldn’t you say?”
“I still think—”
“I’m all right!” he snapped. “I’ll take care of it.”
He’d just held a gun on her, and he was the one acting insulted? She was used to his peevishness, but this was too much. She turned to leave before he became even more irritated, but stopped at the door when she remembered why she’d come into the lab in the first place. She squared her shoulders. To hell with his irritation.
“I don’t think you should be in here,” Julia said. “The detectives might want to look through the lab again.” She stared at the papers, and he followed her gaze. Quickly, he turned and began shuffling papers back into file folders.
“I just needed to look up something—some tests Dr. Lowenstein was running,” he said over his shoulder. “That’s all.”
“Let me help you,” she said, coming closer, but he turned back and issued a sharp “No!” followed by a question unrelated to the matters they’d just discussed. “Did you finish typing that paper I’m submitting to the Infectious Diseases Journal?”
Another long article with a long list of footnotes. The paper filled more than a dozen legal pages and would take several days to finish, with corrections and revisions, as was his habit. “Why, no, I—”
“I’d like that as soon as possible, Miss Dell. By this afternoon.”
She knew it didn’t need to be into the journal for at least another week. And she also knew that he might not even submit it, that this might just be a piece of work to keep her busy and out of his hair. “Yes, sir.”
Angry, but impotent to lash out, she reached for anything that would sting. “I understand the vaccine trials might be delayed,” she said, as if any delay could be laid directly at his feet.
He looked up as if she’d slapped him. “Who told you that?”
“I—I just heard it around the office. Dr. Bodian went to Bethesda….”
“Yes, he did. They’re rushing things in Pittsburgh, that’s the problem.”
A curious comment from a doctor just as eager to solve the polio problem as Salk.
“But thousands could be affected if they don’t hurry,” she said. “The polio season—”
“The polio season will come and go and hardly a child could be affected. It’s bad one year, not so bad the next. Who’s to say we need to hurry this time?”
The very tips of her ears burned with his heartlessness. How many children had been afflicted the year she was paralyzed? If it were only one child…it mattered.
She waited for him to leave the lab, but he just stared at her. “Is there anything else?” he asked.
He wasn’t going to leave, and she couldn’t force him. She shook her head and exited the room. As she walked back to her desk, she chewed on her lower lip, wondering again if she should contact Detective Reilly, or if she would just seem like a tattletale. She frowned, remembering another action she’d taken that could be construed as such. No, she thought. I was just handling things in a businesslike way.
***
Sal Sabataso looked up at Sean’s smiling face as he entered the office. “What I tell ya—she’s no wallflower, right?”
“No, Sallie, a wallflower she is not!” Sean enjoyed watching his partner redden at the use of his nickname. “We might go out again.”
“Praise Jesus. I can tell my mother I did my duty.”
Sean shifted from good-natured banter to business. He didn’t bother to take off his coat. “I was going to see if I could talk to that Dr. Jansen this afternoon. You want to come?”
“Sure. Just let me finish this report.” When Sean lifted his eyebrows, Sal explained. “That burglary we wrapped up last week.”
Sean didn’t say anything. Sal hated the paperwork and often did it late. Sean had already covered for him on this latest bit of procrastination. They made a good team, watching out for each other.
As Sal worked, he told Sean about his encounter with Susan Schlager and his elimination of the theory that she had been the victim’s lover.
&n
bsp; “Just because she needed a map to find his place doesn’t disprove that theory,” Sean said, sitting at his desk. He would call Lowenstein’s attorney at Patelson and Moore while he waited for Sal. “They could have met at hotels.”
“A man lives alone and he springs for a hotel room?”
“Maybe he was afraid of nosy neighbors.”
Sal shrugged and went back to his paperwork.
Sean found the number for Patelson and Moore, then dialed through. In an authoritative voice, he asked to speak with Mr. Patelson himself, giving his police identification when asked and acting as if this were news of pressing importance. After several minutes of silence, he was put through.
“May I help you?” Soft and confident, Patelson’s tone made it clear he would be the one deciding whether help would be given, no matter what Sean’s request.
“I understand that Dr. Myron Lowenstein had his legal matters handled by you,” Sean said after identifying himself. “As you know, the doctor just passed away.” Sean waited, but Patelson remained mute. “Did anyone in particular benefit from his estate?”
He heard Patelson breathe out but couldn’t tell if it was a sigh of relief or irritation. “He had a will with us,” the lawyer said, now very businesslike and clipped. “But no one person benefits from his modest estate. He left everything to charity.”
“No relatives?” Sean asked, fumbling for more time. He sensed Patelson wanted to get off the phone.
“None that I am aware of.”
“Any friends of the deceased—people inquiring about his estate?”
“No one has contacted me in that regard.”
“Any interest at all—from anyone?”
“As I said, no.” The lawyer sounded increasingly annoyed.
“How long have you handled Dr. Lowenstein’s affairs?”
There was a pause—Sean figured the lawyer was deciding whether it was worth it to withhold the information—and then Patelson responded. “Since about 1947, I believe.”
“How’d he come to you?”
“Really, Detective Reilly, I have no idea.”
“But your office—it doesn’t handle many people like Lowenstein,” Sean said, carefully enunciating the doctor’s last name so his meaning would be clear.
“The man is dead,” Patelson said in a tight angry voice. “And should rest in peace. Now, I really must go. Contact my secretary with any further questions and I’ll be happy to answer them when I can.”
Sean didn’t think Patelson sounded happy to answer any more questions at all. He hung up the phone and looked over at Sal, but his seat was now empty. He was about to go find him when he saw him leaving the office of their boss, Mark O’Brien. O’Brien, a tall heavy man with bushy eyebrows and thick dark hair, didn’t look pleased. He stood with his hands on his hips at the doorway, and Sean picked up the last of what he was saying.
“….you’ll be in the soup, too, if I catch you covering for each other again.”
Shit. Now what?
“Everything all right?” Sean asked. Sal returned to the desk.
Sal shrugged but didn’t look at him. “Yeah. He’s just pissed ’cause I was late with the report.”
Sean stood. “Let’s go,” he said. As they left the office a few minutes later, Sean vowed never again to let Sal cover for him when he was late.
***
“Tell them it’s true, honey.”
“Don’t be silly. We’d have read it in the papers.”
“Or heard it on the radio.”
Will Beschmann sat on the edge of Julia’s desk, teasing the other secretaries. He winked at Julia as he continued his tale of Gene Kelly running off with Doris Day to get married in Las Vegas.
“It’s very hush-hush,” Will said, winking again. Julia shot him a smile but quickly dropped it as she resumed typing. She didn’t have time to chitchat if she was going to finish the article Dr. Jansen wanted typed by the end of the day. Already she’d had to redo two pages because she knew he wouldn’t accept too many erasures and typeovers. He was a perfectionist. Will’s conversation kept distracting her.
She’d told Will she didn’t have time for lunch or even a break when he came by, but he’d run to the cafeteria for her, bringing her back a tuna sandwich and chocolate milkshake. She’d been grateful and touched at first. She was hungry, after all, and it was thoughtful of him to bring her something. But she’d only been able to eat half the sandwich because she wanted to start typing right away. She didn’t want to ask her father to come get her again today if she stayed late. Will had lingered to “pass the time,” saying it wasn’t nearly as “pretty” in his office.
“Well, where do you get your information if it’s so hush-hush?” Susan asked. She sat at her desk, obsessively straightening things to give the impression she was busy. After she’d come back from her lunch, she had offered to help Julia with the typing but there was no good way to divide the project.
Linda laughed. “Next you’re going to tell us you know somebody who works in Hollywood.” She sat at her desk proofreading the work she’d typed the day before.
“As a matter of fact, I do. Isn’t that right, Jules?”
“Huh?” Damn. She made another mistake. She rolled the paper up three lines and deftly erased the type, then repositioned the paper to type the correction. She peered at the typeover through slitted eyes. It was good enough. “Shouldn’t you be getting back to work?”
Will wasn’t much of a go-getter, which Julia had learned to accept. But now she worried he was actually turning into a slacker. She knew he took his time at lunch and never seemed in any hurry to get back to his job. Sometimes she felt this was her fault, and she needed to encourage him more to be punctual and attentive to his duties.
“Just a minute, I have some time,” he answered with no acrimony. He smiled at Linda. “Look, it should have been clear they had something going on when they did that movie together.”
“Doris Day and Gene Kelly?” Linda asked, incredulous.
“Yeah, they were in that one last year. Singin’ in the Rain,” Susan added, proud of her film knowledge.
Will concurred. “That’s what I’m talking about.”
Linda snorted out a laugh. “Some know-it-all you are. That wasn’t Doris Day in that movie. It was Debbie Reynolds.”
Julia’s fingers flew over the keyboard as she half listened to the conversation. She was only on page five. She estimated she had another dozen to go at least. And then Dr. Jansen would review it, make changes. And, depending on how extensive they were, she might end up completely retyping the article. She finished the page and pulled it out of the roller with such force that it ripped at the bottom.
“Dammit!” she cried. And immediately flamed with blush. She never cursed. At least not out loud.
Linda turned toward her. “Can you tape it, hon? It’s just the first draft, right?”
“I wish I could help you with it,” Susan said weakly.
“Dr. Jansen requires first drafts as clean as the final copy,” Julia said in an angry monotone that she immediately regretted. Without looking up, she pulled another sheet of paper from her stationery drawer and began the page again.
Will stood, finally taking the cue that he should leave. “I better get going before they discover I’m missing,” he said with a cheer that now fell flat. “I’ll call you later, Jules.”
She just nodded without turning from her job. He would call and they would talk and she would go to bed and get up and start everything again. Dr. Jansen would be mad, she would still wonder about him, and nothing would be different. A weight settled over her, one she’d not felt in a long time. She blinked fast and took a deep breath, then sat up straighter in her chair. She’d type five more pages, then throw away the rest of the sandwich and get a glass of water for a quick break.
As she settled into a new rhythm, the office resumed its usual afternoon cadences. The phone rang at Susan’s desk, and she answered in appropriately mournful tone
s, explaining to the caller that Dr. Lowenstein was deceased and providing an explanation that both Julia and Linda had helped her devise for just such moments. “The police are investigating but we don’t know anything beyond what’s in the papers. There will be a memorial at the hospital but a time hasn’t yet been set.”
Linda slowly flipped pages, often scratching at one with a pencil. Those were the ones she’d have to retype. Linda wasn’t nearly as good a typist as Julia and spent half her time redoing work. It was one of the reasons she was always behind. Julia often helped her out.
Just as she had reached the quasi-hypnotic state that allowed her to type with greatest accuracy and speed, Julia heard footsteps in the hallway. Will again? He really had to stop this. It wasn’t good for his job—
“What now?” She turned in her seat toward the door. But Will wasn’t standing there. It was Detective Reilly with another man, one of the detectives who’d been there the day of the murder. As her face warmed, he smiled.
“Just checking to see if your boss is in,” Sean said.
She stood, figuring it best to take them directly to Dr. Jansen, instead of ringing him first.
“No need to get up,” he said, wincing slightly at her effort. But this only made her stand straighter and walk around the desk with more purpose.
“I’ll show you his office.” She walked by them, wrinkling her nose now at the faint odor of her half eaten sandwich. She’d throw it away in a trash can outside the office so it wouldn’t stink up the room.
“You remember my partner—Sal Sabataso.”
She didn’t but nodded her head at the introduction. As she reached the doorway, her phone rang. She quickly grabbed it, racing through her usual greeting only to be met with…nothing.
“Hello?” Silence greeted her. She shrugged and started to hang up when a voice, a man’s voice, came over the line.
“Are you talking to the detective again?”
She didn’t answer. The voice, so soft it sounded as if the caller was standing a foot away from the phone and whispering, continued, hard and low: “Do you think he believes a crip like you?”
LOST TO THE WORLD Page 8