“Wow—that’s him all right.” Sal held the receiver to his ear, waiting to be connected to an Irene Jansen in Great Neck.
“Missed it the first time.”
“I would have, too,” Sal said. A voice cut over the line, and Sal went to work as Sean flipped more pages, taking his time, really studying each photograph. What else was in here?
And this, too, yielded results as another doctor’s photograph, this one a senior-level student, pricked his awareness. Jansen. Sean stared at the younger, happier version of the now pinched-looking man, reading the small type next to the photo, something some yearbook editor thought sounded jaunty. “A Nobel prize might lie ahead/But first this man will soon be wed.” And so he had been, that very June. He heard Sal thanking an Irene for her time, an obvious wrong turn.
“Here’s our Dr. Jansen,” Sean said to his partner, scooting the book to him.
“He sure looks different.”
“Yeah. Nicer.”
“Funny how people change,” said Sal.
“Wonder what made him so angry—his divorce?”
“Getting hold of his ex-wife would be nice.” Sal started to dial again. “I guess we can always ask the doc himself where his ex is.”
“Let’s keep trying to find her first on our own. I’d rather get to her before he has a chance to contact her.”
Sean went back to the yearbook, now scouring each message next to students’ names for a reference to a “Buck,” the name Julia had overheard the morning of the murder. The yearbook felt like a treasure trove now. His heart raced as he leafed through pages. Maybe the killer would reveal himself here?
But he found nothing more. No more familiar names. No “Buck.”
Finished with that task, he decided to try the NYU secretary again, to get more information on Richard Hill. But that call, like his first to NYU, yielded nothing. Maureen O’Donnell was out. He left a message and stood.
“I need to return a file to the lab.” Sean tapped the file Julia had given him. “And I’ll talk to Wilcox some more about our Dr. Richard Hill.”
“Need any help?” Sal covered the receiver.
“No, no.” He didn’t want Sal to come because he didn’t want to risk him asking about Brigitta. “You stay here in case the NYU gal calls back, okay?” He reached for his hat and coat before Sal could protest. Sean’s phone rang as he reached the doorway.
“Get that for me, will ya, buddy?”
***
Julia spent her lunch hour at her father’s bedside. It was a corporal act of mercy to visit the sick, but Julia felt as if the visit was as much for her own good as it was for her father’s. She needed to be away, away from the possibility of seeing Will again.
Julia’s mother sat, looking small, scared and tired, in a hard wooden chair by her father’s head. She had no book to read, no knitting, no sewing to occupy her time. Her job was waiting, and she’d applied herself to it with no distractions. Julia patted her arm.
That first night her father had been in the hospital, Julia had stood at the foot of the gurney in the emergency room and forced herself to speak, just the way she’d consciously moved muscles in her bad leg. His skin had been the same starched white shade as the pillows, but overlaid with a waxy sheen that couldn’t possibly mean anything good. And his chin had been covered with an unfamiliar stubble—her father prided himself on his appearance and shaved every day of his life, but he’d not shaved that day. Why hadn’t she noticed it that morning at breakfast? His eyes had been the only thing about him that had reassured her that evening. They had still glowed with mirth. And, in fact, he’d made a feeble attempt at a joke when she’d first seen him, something about not “having the heart” to get up.
He was on the road to recovery. Now Julia realized her job was just as much about comforting and supporting her mother as it was seeing to her father’s needs. The doctors were enthusiastically optimistic, so much so that even she, at her most skeptical, believed them. Her father just needed rest and continued care. If he cut back on smoking, working, and drinking, he should certainly be out of crisis for a long time to come.
Her mother, though—there was another story. Julia smiled at her, and her mother responded with a close-lipped nod. Mutti wouldn’t disturb Father with even a whisper because he’d complained of not getting enough sleep with the nurses coming and going, waking him up at all hours. Her mother’s vigil was a gift, a way of giving him rest.
Mutti is hopelessly in love with him. Still.
Her mother, Julia knew, had found it difficult to adjust to America at first. She’d hardly spoken any English when she’d first arrived and had regaled them all with stories of miscommunications with store clerks, doctors, neighbors, priests, and nuns. She’d come to America on a ship crammed with other women from Europe, French, German and even British brides whom the “doughboys” of the Great War had picked up. She was pregnant at the time of that journey, and Julia always suspected this was the reason for her parents’ marriage. But they’d lost that baby, a boy, and the next one, too, another boy, before having the three girls in quick succession.
She looked at her mother’s soft eyes, so lovingly focused on her husband as he slept. If something happened to him, Mutti would no longer be whole. And not just because he was the financial support of the family. No, Mutti would suffer through deprivation if it meant her beloved Howie could stay with her even a day longer.
Her parents were not outwardly affectionate except for kisses on the cheek, but the way they looked at each other communicated everything, from who should discipline the girls to when to go up to bed. Because language had been a barrier when they’d first met, they’d built their love on deeds and few words, on suppositions and speculation. They’d not disappointed each other.
Tell me what this is, Julia wanted to say. Tell me what it feels like to love like this. How does it start? Did you ever think of other men, Mutti, when you were getting ready to marry Father? Was there a young German lad whose heart you’d stolen? Did you ever think of him and the touch of his kiss? How did you turn from that to doing what was right?
Now wasn’t the time for that conversation. She had to think of her mother, whose effervescence had begun to fade years ago and was becoming as fragile as the lace collar around her floral housedress. Julia selfishly wanted it back. When she was younger, her mother’s laughter was like sunshine lighting up the house and, by extension, Julia’s own heart.
Julia remembered her days as a young girl as if she were Eve before the fall. Her mother singing and telling stories about her youth. During those years, she was proud of her foreignness. It had set her apart, made her special.
The three girls had always been best friends. They’d played together, shared toys, even shared a bedroom for a while until Beth got to move to a separate room when she’d turned ten.
Warm summer days had been spent in the shaded backyard, lolling on a blanket reading and eating peanuts or grapes or pieces of a donut stolen from the kitchen when Mutti wasn’t looking. School was at the convent school under the protective eye of the Sisters of St. Francis. Sunday dinners consisted of pot roast and potatoes—oh, Mutti always had to have her potatoes—and a bakery pie for dessert. Sunday evenings found them by the radio or around the piano, Beth and Helen playing the latest popular songs while Julia danced strange Isadora-Duncan-like movements with many scarves and a look of rapt seriousness on her face.
And now this. She looked at her father who breathed easily, then at her mother. She’d wanted to tell her about Will giving her the ring, ready to gauge her mother’s true reaction in the subtlest blink of an eye or flicker of a muscle. But her mother was still and silent, unwilling to disturb Father or leave the room.
“Mother,” Julia whispered at last. “Tell Father I was here and I love him. I have to get back to work.”
Her mother patted her on the arm and smiled but said nothing.
Julia would have to think it through on her own.
S
he hobbled back to her office, the long walk through corridors and staircases exhausting under the best of circumstances. But she was mentally tired as well. Maybe it had been a mistake to work at Hopkins after all. She’d met Will here and now she was….
“Miss Dell.”
She looked up and saw Sean Reilly standing in the hall outside her office, file folder in hand. Warmth cascaded from her head to her feet. “Julia,” she said. Was it a bad sign that he wasn’t calling her that?
“I know your name,” he teased, “and I think you know mine.”
She walked toward him, composed now, able to look him in the eye. “Is that my file?”
He tapped it on his chest. “It’s Dr. Jansen’s file.”
She frowned. “Shh…”
“Don’t worry. He’s not in. And your office mate appears to be on a coffee break.”
“Hmm…Linda’s not supposed to leave the phones unattended.” She stood in front of him, close enough to smell his aftershave. “Could I have the file now?”
His face crinkled into a smile. “Nope. Have to give something up first.”
Her eyes widened. Did he expect another kiss—here, in the hall? She opened her mouth to protest at the same time hoping it was what he wanted.
“I need to know if you ever heard of a Dr. Richard Hill.”
She stood straighter. “That’s a very common name.”
“A virologist. Worked at NYU while Dr. Jansen was there.”
She shook her head. “The name doesn’t ring a bell.” She tried to remember if she’d seen it on research papers, journal articles, but her mind was blank. “I could ask Dr. Jansen.”
“No, I’d appreciate it if you don’t.”
She tilted her head to one side, studying him. He was clearly pleased to see her, his face a smile, his attitude flirtatious. And he was taking her into some kind of confidence.
“Why not?”
“I’ll tell you later, all right? Promise.” He smiled again. “Dr. Jansen’s family is from Detroit, you said. What about his wife?”
“He’s not married.”
“He was.” When she didn’t comment, he continued. “You didn’t know?”
“No, he never mentioned it.” It shouldn’t have surprised her. After all, Dr. Jansen, like all the researchers, was a private man. But she hadn’t noticed anything in his personnel file about being divorced, or children, if there were any. This discovery of a new secret just added to the suspicions.
Reading confusion on her face, Sean went on: “It wasn’t in his file. I got it from another source.”
She nodded, still troubled by her march toward judgment of Dr. Jansen. To add balance to the picture she’d painted of him, she offered Sean the information Mrs. Wilcox had passed along to them earlier.
“We had some news,” she said. “You remember how I told you that there was a problem with the polio vaccine in Detroit?” She emphasized the city’s name so that Sean would know she was ultimately talking about Jansen.
“Yeah. Might be sabotage, right?”
She shook her head. “Our Dr. Bodian went to the National Institutes to go over the problem with other scientists—”
“Dr. Bodian?”
“He’s a specialist. He’s now mainly interested in the pathology of neurological diseases.”
His smiled broadened. “You sound like a scientist yourself.”
She ignored him and continued. “It makes him particularly suited to investigating whether the monkeys at the Detroit plant had polio. He met with other doctors at the National Institutes of Health to go over the problem.”
“Did they?”
“No. Most of them didn’t, anyway. Mrs. Wilcox told us that Dr. Bodian looked at tissue slides and determined they had something else, some wild infection probably passed from monkey to monkey. The one monkey that had polio—they figured out the problem with the vaccine and have fixed it.”
Sean’s smiled dropped. “Fixed it how? How can they be sure kids won’t get sick, too?”
“They’ve tightened up the vaccine production process, put in place more safety checks.”
She guessed what he was thinking. He had two boys. If he knew the vaccine they’d get could cause polio instead of preventing it, it would be hard to take that chance.
“Look, the chances are so small of catching it from the vaccine,” she said.
“How do you know?”
“I…” Yes, how did she know? Because she believed in the doctors’ work? Because famous researchers were involved? Because she wanted to believe? “I think there’s risk in everything,” she said. “There’s risk in letting your children go swimming during the summer. They could catch it then. And how would you feel if you could have had them vaccinated but didn’t?”
He didn’t respond at first, and she wondered if she sounded too much like all the nurses and doctors who’d treated her. Too full of assurances that were nothing more than wishful thinking.
“Just because they fixed the problem doesn’t mean there wasn’t something fishy going on in Detroit,” he said at last. “When’s the last time your boss was out visiting family?”
“I’d have to check.” She already knew. She’d looked at her old calendar and been shocked to discover Dr. Jansen had been in Detroit in recent months. But to get into the plant, to do something that would bollix up the vaccine—as she’d thought of each step necessary, it seemed more and more outlandish.
Some noise down the hall made them both turn their heads. Linda was coming back to the office, talking to a secretary from another floor, sandwich wrapped in wax paper in her hands, her face turned toward the other woman in friendly conversation. Julia felt a pinch of betrayal. Linda rarely went to lunch with her.
Sean turned his attention back to Julia. “Any more threatening calls?” he asked, loud enough for the others to hear. He was making sure they didn’t think she was “tattling” on Dr. Jansen. Again, an act of kindness.
Before she could thank him, another figure appeared at the end of the hall walking fast. It was the detective’s partner, the shorter, skinnier man.
“Sean,” he called out, motioning him over. Sean nodded a farewell to Julia and joined Sal. Although he talked softly, she could hear what he was telling Sean.
“That call. It was from a hospital. I think we found Susan Schlager.”
***
“She’s in a small hospital in Fallston,” Sal said as they drove north of the city toward Harford County where the Susquehanna River divided Maryland from Pennsylvania. “In some kind of car accident near the dam. Busted up pretty bad.”
“You sure?” Sean asked. “About the accident, I mean?” Had she used that as an excuse when checking herself into the hospital or had someone found a wreck and gotten her help?
“Don’t know anything but what I told you, partner. She was checked in a day ago but it’s a slow-moving place and whoever took your first call didn’t check around much.”
“She gonna make it?”
Sal shrugged, slipping a cigarette into his mouth as he steered the car onto Belair Road, Route One. “Busted up bad,” he repeated. “They didn’t know who she was—had her in as Jane Doe. She didn’t have no identification on her. If we peg her as Susan, they’ll call the husband.”
They didn’t talk much as they traveled the hour out of town. A slow mudslide of feelings buried his good cheer at seeing Julia. He should have tried harder to find the Schlager woman. Maybe he could have found her before…
Before her husband beat her? Beat her and then let her have the car? Maybe. Maybe that’s why the fellow hadn’t seemed upset about her taking off, knowing the marks he’d left on her.
These dark thoughts were followed by more practical ones, deflating his mood all the more. It was now afternoon. By the time they got to the hospital, talked to Susan, found out what had happened to her, drove back into town…Jesus, he’d be lucky if he was home by eight that evening. Mrs. Buchanan…
….wasn’t there. Brig
itta was. Okay, that was good. Good to feel good about her.
***
It was impossible to tell if Susan Schlager had been beat up by her husband, by a car wreck, or by someone else out to do her harm. Her right arm and both legs were in casts, stretched by wires and pulleys into what looked to Sean like a modern version of the rack. Scratches and bruises covered her neck, arms and face. Her eyes were puffy and dark, making her face look contorted and painful.
A nurse showed them to her bed, and Sal closed the screen while Sean sat down next to the woman. The police had found her, the front end of the vehicle smashed tight into a tree. She was lucky to be alive.
“Only a few minutes,” the nurse said. “She can’t talk much.”
“Mrs. Schlager,” Sean whispered. “Susan.”
Her swollen eyes twitched as she struggled to open them. Finally, her right lid managed to lift a crack. She peered his way and groaned from the effort. He stood so she wouldn’t have to strain her eyes his way.
“I’m Detective Reilly. I spoke with you before. This is my partner, Sal Sabataso.” He gestured toward Sal who stood, holding his hat with both hands in front of him at the foot of the bed.
“Mrs. Schlager,” Sean repeated. “Did someone hurt you?” He decided to start from the premise that she’d been beaten before the accident. The beating, in fact, might have dulled her senses, leading to the accident.
Susan blinked her one good eye. Her cracked lips moved but nothing came out. Sean leaned forward to listen.
“Take your time, ma’am,” Sal offered.
She whispered something. Sean leaned further in. “Who was it? Do you know?”
She moved her head oh, so slowly forward, a faint nod. “She…” she murmured. “She…”
“The nurse?” Sal said, growing impatient and worried.
Sean grimaced, figuring it wasn’t the nurse. What other “she’s” were in Susan’s life?
“Your aunt?” Sean asked her. She moved her head slightly to the right. No. “Mrs. Wilcox?” Another slow painful half shake. “Linda?” No.
There was only one other “she” in Susan’s orbit.
“Julia Dell?”
LOST TO THE WORLD Page 21