Sensing his urgency, Julia had added some of her own. “There might be an outbreak on the Eastern Shore,” she’d said. He’d reassured her that nothing he was doing would slow any doctors’ progress. If anything, he thought after excusing himself and leaving, Lowenstein’s death and subsequent gift might now be responsible for aiding the vaccine effort.
As luck would have it, Sal was looking for Sean anyway and came into the cafeteria as Sean was leaving it. They met at the door.
“Jansen was in but didn’t stay. Apparently, he left in a hurry. Not even his secretary knew he was in.” Sal gestured with his head back toward the cafeteria where Julia still sat. They hurried down hallways toward the door. “I tell ya, Sean, he’s getting ready to fly.”
Sean nodded. “I’ve got another lead. I think our victim left all his money to the Hopkins lab.”
“That’s not surprising.”
“To the polio research.”
“But he didn’t want nothing to do with that.”
They pushed through heavy doors to the street. Sun glinted off cars, and the air smelled of sulfur from factories and car exhaust. Spring was coming. Cool weather could tease them yet, but the relentless march to warmth and sunshine was on. It tugged at Sean for more than one reason. Mary wouldn’t be with him to enjoy it, to see the boys laughing as he took them fishing. And it meant polio season was beginning, adding to his now-relentless worry about the health of those he loved. He hoped that outbreak Julia mentioned was contained. He’d meant to ask her about the vaccine trials and the problems in Detroit—the city where Jansen hailed from—but that would be another conversation.
As they walked to the car, Sean remained so silent that Sal asked if everything was all right. Yeah, buddy, he wanted to say, except I’m screwing a broad I have no intention of tangling with, and she happens to be your sister. Instead, he said he was fighting a headache.
Sal started to make a joke about drinking too much beer on a Sunday night when both of them caught sight of a familiar face up ahead on the busy street.
Their prey at last—Jansen! He still wore his lab coat and was rushing down the sidewalk like a champion walker in a warm-up race. His elbows stood out and his white coat flapped in the breeze. Both Sean and Sal took off after the man.
“Jansen!” Sal called when they were within a few feet.
The doc didn’t turn around, but Sean saw him twitch as if his name had physically struck him on the nape of the neck. Without a glance backwards, Jansen increased his pace, taking longer strides and breaking into a trot. They ran after him, making their way through visitors to the hospital, nurses on their way into work, a few doctors talking so earnestly they didn’t move out of the way when the detectives approached. They were about to grab Jansen on the shoulder when he ducked into a doorway a janitor was leaving on the side of one of the Hopkins’ buildings.
The door slammed shut and Sal reached for its knob. Locked from the inside.
“Dammit!” Sean knocked on the door, but he knew it was no good. Sal went after the janitor, returning a few seconds later.
“Only way in is through the door we just left,” Sal said. “I shouldn’t have called to him.”
“Yeah, well.” Sean shrugged and turned. They knew Jansen was in the hospital now. “You stay here, cover the doors on this side. I’ll go back in to get him.”
“What about the other exits? This place is a castle!”
Sean smiled, struck him lightly on the shoulder to let him know everything was okay. “We do what we can. I’ll meet you here in a half hour. Watch the doors.”
Chapter Seventeen
SEAN QUICKLY MADE HIS WAY through other doors to the building Jansen had disappeared into. The doctor had made a poor choice. The ground floor of that building was a tight maze of narrow hallways, supply closets and, from the noise behind various doors, the monkey cages. He wouldn’t have had time to make his way up and out another exit. So, he’d take the coward’s approach and hide.
Sean rushed down hallways without making a sound, pushing open doors, listening, breathing low. No one was about in this part of the hospital right now. Cleaning workers must have been upstairs mopping hallways, and the monkeys were all right on their own.
At the end of the hall, Sean came to the door Jansen had ducked in.
A lavatory door faced him. Of course…
“Dr. Jansen I presume?” Sean quietly pushed open the door. Yup, there he was.
Jansen jumped from his position leaning against a far wall and went to the sinks, pretending that had been his intent all along.
“Are you hounding me?” He soaped his hands several times, rinsed them, soaped them again as if preparing for surgery.
Sean pushed his hat back on his forehead. “Are you avoiding me?”
After turning off the spigots, Jansen looked around. No clean towels. He scowled and shook his hands several times, the wrists flicking daintily, like a woman’s. “What do you want?”
“Who do you know in Georgia?”
“Nobody!”
“Isn’t that where the March of Dimes got started?”
“You mean Warm Springs? I have nothing to do with it. Couldn’t even locate it on a map.” Jansen crossed his arms over his chest and literally looked down his nose at Sean. “That’s a different arm entirely. The huckster arm, if you ask me, of the research. The world will rue the day we let public relations charlatans get involved with pure science.”
“Your housekeeper’s in Georgia.”
“So?”
“You send her there?”
“Absolutely not!” Jansen’s voice rang with righteous indignation. “If it will get you off my back, I’d pay to have her brought back.”
Sean took another tack, going back to the subject Jansen had just mentioned, one he seemed willing to talk about. “Why are you so angry with the folks in Georgia, the March of Dimes, Dr. Jansen?”
Jansen put his hand on his cheek, staring at Sean as if he were no brighter than one of the monkeys in the rooms nearby. “They’re rushing things, pushing too hard. They promised the world a vaccine, gave everything a sense of urgency. My god, they make people feel like they’re guilty as sin if they don’t contribute to the March of Dimes. Those poster children—it’s the height of exploitation!” He laughed. “Of course, Jonas doesn’t mind being exploited.”
“Jonas?”
“Salk.” He spat out the word. “On the cover of Time, on the radio. Surely you’ve seen it, heard him.”
“You thinking you deserve it, maybe?”
Jansen narrowed his eyes and spoke with venomous contempt. “Really, detective. One can believe a colleague is wrong and not be jealous.” He sighed with exasperation. “Jonas is working on a killed virus vaccine. It’s a quick and dirty way to get things going. But a live virus vaccine is the only kind that offers any kind of permanent immunity. Albert Sabin has it right but the whole crew at the Foundation—Basil O’Connor and his minions—want something now to show the poor folks in Ohio and Kansas and Idaho that their dimes amounted to something.”
When Sean looked blank, Jansen continued, his voice getting stronger and more sneering. “So they’ve made Salk into a celebrity! My god, they’ll be making a movie about him soon.”
Sean remembered Julia’s explanations of the different types of research and her comments on how temperamental the researchers could be. Could this be a strong enough motivation to kill? But Lowenstein wasn’t involved in the polio research. It didn’t fit.
“And you think your work, this Dr. Sabin’s work, is more important? It’s not getting the money?” he pursued.
“It’s not getting the attention or the…the…” He stopped. A smile curled up his lips and he laughed. “Oh, no. You’re completely wrong. You think that Dr. Lowenstein’s death had something to do with this scientific debate?”
“What were Dr. Lowenstein’s views on the subject?”
“He wasn’t involved in the polio research at all, man! Haven’
t you learned anything in all your skulking around?” Jansen moved forward as if to leave, but Sean spread his legs out and stood firm. Jansen wouldn’t get past him until he was ready to let him go.
“I asked you what Dr. Lowenstein’s opinions were.”
Jansen stopped, stared Sean in the eyes. Jansen’s own eyes were small and watery. He looked afraid. “Dr. Lowenstein scrupulously avoided the subject.”
“Why was that? The man worked in polio in New York. Why’d he abandon it?”
Jansen gritted his teeth and stared at the floor. “He probably saw where it was going and wanted to avoid the circus.” He looked up at Sean, and when he spoke his voice was low and bitter. “And he was right. It has become a circus. It’s not pure science any longer.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you knew Dr. Lowenstein in New York?”
Jansen’s face went white, his mouth dropped open and then closed again before he answered. “I did not know Dr. Lowenstein in New York,” he said slowly, enunciating the doctor’s name with particular care. “It’s a large state and the university was a large institution.”
“So you admit you were there?”
“Of course I admit that. Is it a now crime to have attended New York University?”
Sean studied him. He was hiding something, all right, but what?
“I had nothing to do with Dr. Lowenstein’s death,” Jansen said. “Absolutely nothing. I wish the man were still alive! I had questions for him…about his research. I wanted answers. Now he’s gone.”
Yes, Jansen wanted answers to something. That’s why he’d gone to Lowenstein’s house and pawed around his lab.
“Look,” Jansen said, “I need to get back to my lab. If you continue to harass me, I’ll have the president of Hopkins complain to your superiors. Now get out of my way.”
Sean didn’t move. “Not until you tell me where Susan Schlager is.”
His eyes widened, but fear didn’t make them glow. Instead, it was bemusement, as if Sean were an idiot who’d made a mistake in front of a crowd.
“Probably nursing the wounds inflicted by that brutish husband of hers.”
“You know him?”
“I know that Susan Schlager never exhibited any clumsiness at the office yet had an amazing affinity for running into doors some weekends and sustaining bruises on her arms and legs.”
Sean swallowed, embarrassed not to have pursued this angle more forcefully. “Her coworkers didn’t say anything…”
“Her coworkers are girls who believe in fairy tale endings.”
Not Julia, Sean thought. Had she known? Damn. Why hadn’t he asked her?
Jansen stepped forward and this time, Sean moved aside.
***
“Brigitta would know somebody.” Sal sat on the edge of Sean’s desk. “She knows people at a dozen different lawyers’ offices. She could find out.”
They had come back to the office and recapped what they’d learned. Before returning, Sean had run upstairs to ask Julia and Linda a few more questions about Susan and any bruises the girl might have exhibited. Both women had become sullen and unresponsive. Yes, they’d noticed Susan sometimes had a bruise or two, once even a shiner. But she’d told them she’d fallen or run into something. They had believed her.
No, it was more accurate to say they wanted to believe her. Even Julia. Like Jansen said, they were girls with fairy tales.
Sal and Sean had talked through the possibilities on the way back to the station. If Stephen Schlager was a wife beater, maybe Susan was holed up at home, too embarrassed about the latest round of bumps and scratches to come in. Naw, they ruled that out. She would have called in sick. Of course, if her injuries were too devastating, she wouldn’t be telephoning anyone. But wouldn’t Schlager himself have done the calling then, to make sure his wife’s job wasn’t endangered? Instead, the man hadn’t seemed to care one way or the other.
They had calls into several Eastern Shore police departments, trying to find Susan’s mysterious “aunt,” but so far, no leads. Those were small towns over there, too, where everybody knew everyone else’s business. It was looking more and more like Susan Schlager didn’t have any aunt on the shore and had used that as a ruse to get away. But had she been running from something or to someone? Sal still favored the latter theory, thinking she and her boss might have been more than friends and met at hotels and the like for their two-timing.
“There’s no lover to meet now, though,” Sean had pointed out. “So where’d she go?”
One more thing to puzzle out. Sean wasn’t hopeful about Susan’s fate and felt a gnawing sense of guilt over it. He should have tried harder to find her. He’d been too distracted by the boys, by his thoughts of Mary, by Brigitta, and now…Julia. He had to get hold of himself. He was falling to pieces inside.
“I should call Patelson and Moore,” he told Sal, tapping a pencil on his desk. “My hunch is Lowenstein is the fellow who left all his money to the March of Dimes.”
“From what you’ve told me about him, Averill Patelson won’t be giving up that information,” Sal said. He leaned back and ran his hand over his face. “Brigitta might know someone in that office.”
Sean waited for Sal to say he’d call her, and when he didn’t, Sean realized Sal expected him to do the telephoning. He pushed his chair back as if about to run an errand.
“Go ahead and call your sister,” Sean said, pointing to the phone on Sal’s desk.
Sal smiled. “No, buddy. I’m sure she’d prefer to hear from you.”
Dammit. No way out. Sean scooted back in and picked up the phone, dialing Brigitta’s office as Sal went downstairs to retrieve the day’s mail. When Sean asked for Brigitta Lorenzo’s desk, though, he was greeted by an awkward silence. “I’m sorry,” the receptionist said, “but she’s not here. I could let you speak to our office manager, Diane Rivers, but she’s out sick.” That was all right, Sean said, thanking her. Hmm, maybe Brigitta took the day off? Funny she didn’t mention it the other night. She’d even said she had a busy day on Monday. He looked for her home number and dialed that. On the third ring, she picked up, sounding drowsy.
“Brigitta? Are you all right? I tried you at your office.”
She cleared her throat. “Yes. Yes, I’m fine. Just took the day off. I have some vacation coming to me, you see, and decided to enjoy the weather.”
He explained what he needed, and without hesitation, she offered to help. “I was just talking with a secretary over there the other day,” she said. “I’d be happy to give her a call and see what I can find out. She’s quite the gossip so I’m sure she’ll know something.”
“Thanks, Brigitta.” An awkward silence. She was waiting for the intimate small talk, to be followed by a request to see her again. Crap. He should see her again, if for no other reason than to set things straight. “Uh, maybe when you call back we can make some plans. Or something.”
“That would be nice, Sean.” He heard the smile in her voice. “You could come over here for dinner. I’ll make you another good Italian meal.”
“Gee, that would be fine but the boys—they’d be a handful at a stranger’s place.” He didn’t want to take the boys with him on this mission. He didn’t want another meal. He just wanted out.
“Can’t you get a sitter?” Her voice sounded strained. Aw, shit.
“I’ll…I’ll see what I can do.”
“Why not stop by tonight, Sean?” She was tentative, afraid of being disappointed.
Dammit to hell.
“We’ll see.”
He got off the phone just as Sal came back up carrying some envelopes and a brown package.
“Special delivery.” He plopped it on Sean’s desk. It was from NYU—the yearbook the secretary there had promised. Sean ripped open the paper, revealing a brown leather-bound book with the year 1934 embossed in silvery letters. One page was bookmarked by a slip of paper. Sean flipped to it. There was a photograph of Myron Lowenstein, M.D., Ph.D., professor of pediatrics. Squar
ish face, so little hair he looked completely bald, drooping mouth, slim figure. Not the “Mike Lowe” they’d found on the Hopkins lab floor. He took out the slip of paper and read it.
“Dear Detective Reilly: Enclosed is the yearbook for 1934 which features a photograph of Dr. Myron Lowenstein. I asked several secretaries and doctors who were here during Dr. Lowenstein’s tenure if they knew what became of him. Several of them informed me that he traveled to Germany shortly after this photograph was taken with the intention of bringing some relatives back to the United States with him. He never returned and is believed to have perished in the war. He was officially declared dead in the state of New York in 1946. I hope this information is helpful. Please return this yearbook at your earliest convenience. We don’t have many from this year left and need the copies for our archives….”
Sal, who was reading over his shoulder, softly whistled. “So our doctor really is dead after all.”
Sean looked up at him. “Both of them.”
***
Several hours later, Sean got ready to leave. He’d spent the rest of the afternoon tracking people down by phone. He’d managed to get hold of Jansen’s housekeeper in Georgia, and if she’d been paid to leave town, she was an awfully good liar about it. Her story about a sick aunt rang true to him. He’d even heard a woman coughing up a storm in the background. He’d also confirmed that Jansen was registered for the conference Julia mentioned in California. If the guy was skipping town because of the murder, he was making a good show of it.
Both Sal and he made more calls about Susan, broadening their search to include beach towns in Delaware. Sal left early to talk with her neighbors some more and try to catch her husband again. Here was another case of a suspect not acting guilty. If Schlager had done something to his wife, he was awful casual about it. It was as if he really did believe she was off with some aunt. After Sal left, Sean had made some calls to hospitals again, describing Susan, asking if anyone had seen someone like her. No luck with those he reached.
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