LOST TO THE WORLD

by Libby Sternberg

  “Murdering your pal Dr. Hill.”

  “I didn’t murder him!” Jansen visibly shook with rage but immediately calmed himself, closing his eyes and breathing slowly.

  “Okay, maybe you didn’t mean to murder him. Maybe you just got so riled up—like you are now talking about your science stuff—that you got into a fight. One thing leads to another, and bam, the fellow’s on the floor with a banged-in head. Is that how it happened? It would go easier for you that way. Everybody gets pushed a little too far sometimes. Maybe you were pushed over the edge. It’s understandable. We all have our moments. C’mon, doc, tell me the story.”

  Jansen remained still. Eventually he opened his eyes, and it was as if he’d not heard a word of what Sean had just said.

  “Determining what strain to use, which one will trigger the body’s antibodies without giving the inoculated the disease itself, it’s very difficult work. How to make that strain absolutely safe so that it will have virtually no chance of real infection. You can’t rush this work, you see. It could take years. Decades! If I’m angry about anything, it’s that!”

  Decades—while little ones suffered, while the likes of Julia lost part of their lives. What an arrogant S.O.B.

  Sean gritted his teeth and stared down at him. The man was a nutcase, in his opinion. Why wouldn’t he just give it up? Tell him what happened?

  “Science is what it’s all about, huh?” Sean said, prodding him now to keep his ire punched up. Maybe if the doc got mad enough, he would spill.

  Jansen didn’t catch the sneer in Sean’s voice and wholeheartedly agreed. “Yes. Yes. Science is what’s important. Looking into the very heart of life itself, seeing how organisms grow and die, what affects them, what changes them. It’s like…like…”

  “Playing God?”

  Jansen’s head shot up. His eyes narrowed, and his lips pressed together into thin angry lines. Sean stepped forward and leaned on the table.

  “Or maybe not God. God, after all, is merciful. Whereas you and your smartypants friends don’t give a shit about the suffering of little ones. Don’t care at all if another child is struck down tomorrow while you get jacked up over what you can discover if you get to take your time.” He spit out his words. “No, you’re not playing God. Just the opposite, in fact.”

  “How dare you…”

  Sean slammed his fist on the table. He was tired of this man, always bringing the conversation back to what he cared about and to hell with anything—and anyone—else. He’d let him go on too long, figuring he might spill something useful.

  “How dare I?” He leaned in even further until his face was inches away from Jansen’s. The man’s eyes now bulged, his forehead beaded sweat. Sean dropped his voice to a near whisper.

  “How dare you, Dr. Jansen. How dare you inject children with some witch’s brew of monkey brains and virus and god knows what else just so you could write numbers in a ledger.”

  Jansen wiped his face with his hand. “I didn’t…it wasn’t me…I didn’t run that…”

  “That’s when you met Dr. Hill, wasn’t it? As part of that experiment in 1935?”

  “It wasn’t what you think.”

  At last, an admission of sorts that he’d known and worked with Hill.

  “Then tell me what I should think.”

  “They were trying to help. They did have compassion. They thought it would work. They thought they had the answer, that they were going to save thousands, millions. They thought…”

  “—that you’d be heroes. Just like Dr .Salk is now, right?”

  “No, not like that. We thought…”

  “So you admit you were in it? Don’t matter if you do. I knew you were. Through your wife’s connections. That ain’t all I know. You took the papers on that experiment from Dr. Hill’s house and you gave them to your housekeeper to hold. You knew what they meant. Dr. Hill could expose you. He was out of the polio game, but you’re still in it, trying to make a name in it. Trying to get the world to see just what a great doc you are.”

  Jansen heaved a trembling sigh. Here, at last, Sean had found something that touched him. Jansen was tired, too, and Sean went in for the kill.

  “What—your wife kick you out because you weren’t big enough in the university? You think you had to prove something to her?

  “My marriage was over after that experiment. Irene and I…”

  “Her cousin was the one who got you in on it, right?” An educated guess.

  “Yes. A distant cousin…”

  Jansen hung his head. “She was so excited. Thought it was a great opportunity.” He spoke with some bitterness. “I wasn’t so sure. But I had no other prospects at the moment. I was just out of school, just married. I started to believe her.”

  “Don’t give me that. You probably jumped at the chance. You with your shiny new degree and wanting to show the world how great you were. You probably couldn’t wait to get going. Don’t be laying it on her. When you gonna stand up like a man and take your lumps? You shot up those kids with poison!”

  Jansen didn’t respond at first, didn’t even look at him. When he did speak, it was so softly that Sean could barely hear him.

  “I was just a lowly technician. Just the fellow who gives the injections and records the data. I didn’t plan the experiment. I didn’t have anything to do with that. But they thought they were doing good. I thought so, too. I really thought…”

  He looked up, and in his eyes Sean saw the ghost of something. Not the ghosts of those hurt children. The ghost of what Jansen thought he could have been and never would have the chance to be.

  “I really thought we were enhancing the public good,” he whispered. “And that’s when I learned what a mistake it was to think that way. The road to hell…” He sucked in his lip, gathered his wits and spoke more strongly. “Pure science. That’s the only way to work. Focus on the science. Not the good. That comes from the science.”

  “Where were you when your wife’s cousin died?”

  Jansen’s head shot up again. “What?”

  “Some think he killed himself. Were you around?”

  “My god, man, you are insane. No, I wasn’t around. Nowhere near. Dr. Brodie died of a heart attack.” He sighed again, as if losing patience with Sean. “Call my wife. My ex-wife. She’ll tell you I hadn’t seen the family in years. She’s remarried now. Irene Peterson. Here, I’ll even give you her number….” He pulled a slip of paper and a pen from his pocket, wrote on it and pushed it toward Sean.

  “But if he were out of the picture, there’s one less fellow around who knew about your involvement.”

  “I told you, I was hardly involved at all.”

  “Then why not tell us about Dr. Hill earlier?”

  “I was honoring the dead!” Jansen stared at him wild-eyed. “I don’t expect you to understand. Dick was a good man, unfairly treated. Dick didn’t want people to know….”

  “Why’d he leave polio research if he was such a good man?”

  “Dick was troubled by the ’35 incident, even spoke of quitting research altogether. He was talked out of it by some doctors at NYU. But he was never really comfortable staying in. Then in ’37, his parents’ house and store burned down—his father was a chemist, a pharmacist, in upstate New York. It left them penniless. Just a month later, they died in a car accident.” Jansen swallowed. “And then his brother…” He looked up at Sean. “And other relatives, in Germany.”

  “Were you out to get him and his family?”

  Jansen barked out a laugh as if Sean were crazy.

  He tilted his head and stared at the detective. “Do you really think I’d go to the trouble of learning the arsonist’s trade, then find a way to place Hill’s family in harm’s way in automobile traffic…oh, and travel to Germany to dispatch his relatives there? Good God, man, if I were that diabolically smart…” He swallowed and turned serious. “No, it was a string of bad luck. Awful luck. But Dick didn’t see it that way. He saw it as…something more.�
�

  A horrible picture presented itself in Sean’s mind. Dr. Hill being stripped of every person he loved, even distant family. And in the case of his parents and brother, he would have felt partially responsible. He’d bought his parents the car. And he’d invited his brother to visit him.

  He thought he was being punished, Sean thought grimly.

  That was why his home had been filled with religious tracts about atonement, forgiveness, the Prodigal Son. Hill had felt like that, like a man gone astray and needing to be welcomed home, into the kingdom. God, Sean hoped he had been.

  “That’s why he abandoned polio research,” Jansen continued, calmer now, “even though his heart and soul was in it and he had a brilliant mind for it, too. He gave it up completely. As a penance. But he was constantly being pressed to return. What was worse, though, were those who thought he shouldn’t continue in research at all, thought his hands were so dirty he should go away somewhere and never be heard from again. But this was all he knew, all he really loved. When he left the university, I had no idea where he went, what happened to him….”

  “Until you ran into him here, as Lowenstein.”

  “Yes.”

  “But you didn’t tell us you knew who he was.”

  “I just told you why—I was honoring Dick’s wishes.”

  “Bullshit. He was dead. You didn’t tell us because you couldn’t have anyone finding out you were involved in that 1935 disaster. You came to Hopkins a year ago, discovered who Lowenstein really was, and saw he was a changed man. But you weren’t. And you didn’t want him ratting you out, so you came up with a plan. Sure, you’re scared, but Hill is even more scared. So you blackmail him. Say you won’t tell if he just pays you to keep quiet. You get some extra cash at the same time you keep the lid on things, letting him think you could turn over that stone and let the ugly truth crawl out just like that.” Sean snapped his fingers, causing Jansen to jump a bit in his chair.

  “That’s absurd….”

  “You get a nice tidy sum every month until he decides to stop paying. What, did he tell you he wasn’t going to hide anymore? Is that what got you so angry that you smashed his head in? Or maybe he said a few bad words about that hero of yours, that Dr. Sabin….”

  “No! I didn’t hurt him. I didn’t…kill him. Oh, God.” Jansen’s voice shook. He ran his fingers through his hair. He looked as if he was struggling to control himself, to keep from showing his true feelings.

  “Look,” he said in a monotone, “I knew he was going to tell. He was getting old and tired. Tired of pretending to be someone he wasn’t. He felt particularly bad about pretending to be a Jew after…after everything that happened over there. People were always asking him if he lost family in the camps. It felt wrong to him….”

  “But you didn’t want him to say anything. Your game was up.”

  “Yes! I admit it—I didn’t want him to say anything. That doesn’t make me a murderer.” His voice turned to a whisper. “It just makes me a coward.”

  Jansen looked at his hands on the table before him. “I was respected. I was making headway. Albert Sabin himself complimented a paper I’d written. I couldn’t just throw all that away on the chance that someone would misunderstand my involvement. I begged Dick…I pleaded with him to wait. Just a little while longer. We were supposed to meet that morning to talk about it….I called to tell him I’d be late….”

  “But talk didn’t work. So you took action.”

  Jansen slowly shook his head. “No, no, no. I didn’t kill him. I didn’t do it.” He looked up at Sean, eyes frantic. “Don’t you understand? I wasn’t blackmailing him! Someone else was! Someone who’s been following me. I feel it. I know it. I’m the one in danger, you fool. That’s one of the reasons I want to leave Hopkins. One of the reasons I bought a gun.”

  ***

  “I think we should call Daddy.”

  “You’re a scaredycat. Scaredycat, scaredycat, can’t even kill a rat.” Robby shoved Danny’s shoulder and ran into the living room. But now he was the scaredycat. The woman whose name he couldn’t pronounce was sitting in the chair with her mouth half open and her eyes closed and she looked….

  …like his mommy when Daddy had taken him to the hospital to say goodbye…

  He started crying. Then he ran into the kitchen, pulled the chair to the wall, climbed up, and dialed his father’s number at work, the number Daddy had made them both memorize.

  ***

  Call Robby.

  Sean hurried from the room, crumpling the message paper in his hand, not stopping to tell the officer on duty where he was going or the clerk who’d brought the message why he was leaving. A message from Robby—that was bad, really bad. They never called him. They knew only to use the number in emergencies. He’d drilled them on that.

  He reached for the nearest phone, on someone’s desk near his, and dialed. Danny answered. Mrs. Lorenzo was sick, real sick. They couldn’t wake her up. And Robby had gone to fetch Dr. Spencer…

  “No, tell him not to do that, Danny. Has he left already? Can you still see him? Go after him, son. Tell him to come back!” Sean’s voice was as firm as he could make it while panic crawled up his throat imagining Robby wandering on the streets by their home, lost. “Listen very carefully, son. You tell Robby to stay put or I’ll get the belt on him. Do you understand? That’s good. Just stay put. I’ll be home in a few minutes. I’ll call Doctor Spencer.”

  “Daddy, is she going to die like Mommy?”

  Jesus Christ.

  “No, son. She’s just a little sick, that’s all. Just like you and Robby. You go talk to your brother now. Tell him what I said. I need to call the doctor.”

  As soon as he hung up, he phoned Doc Spencer, got his answering service, and left a hurried message about an emergency at home. And then he left, no thought of Dr. Jansen or Dr. Lowenstein or Dr. Hill in his head. No instructions for the officer on duty about what to do with Dr. Jansen….

  ***

  “My goodness, such a fuss over nothing.” Brigitta blew her nose. Despite her words to the contrary, she looked pale and weak. When Sean had arrived home, she’d been asleep in the chair. Asleep, only asleep, he’d reassured Danny and Robby. Doctor Spencer had arrived within a quarter hour and was just now finishing his examination.

  “Can’t say I find anything out of the ordinary,” he said, a touch of irritation in his voice. He was wearing golfing pants. It was obviously his day off. He looked at Brigitta. “You’re married, Mrs. Lorenzo?”

  Oh shit. Even Doc Spencer was thinking….

  “Widowed.”

  “Sorry to hear.” Dr. Spencer closed his bag. “Must be a touch of the flu. Just like the boys.” He stood. Sean noticed that this time he didn’t offer any free medicine bottles. “I can write you a prescription…”

  “I’m sure if I rest I’ll be fine,” Brigitta said. She looked at Sean. “I’m sorry to be such a burden. I was supposed to be helping you.”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  Dr. Spencer moved to the door, put his hat on, and held out his hand to Sean. “She should rest. You might want to get her home.” He looked at Brigitta. “You have someone to take care of you?”

  “Um…my mother can stop by.”

  Doctor Spencer nodded. His hand on the door, he stopped. “How’s that investigation going? You find the culprit?”

  Sean’s thoughts raced a hundred miles a minute to the present. Yeah. He’d found the culprit…and had had to leave him to come home. “We have a suspect,” he said. “Hope to wrap it up soon.”

  After Dr. Spencer left, Brigitta donned her coat and Sean helped the boys find theirs. They were just scurrying to the car when the phone rang.

  “Go on along,” he said to them. “I’ll get it and be out in a sec.”

  He rushed to grab the ringing phone, still holding a toy Danny wanted to take in the car.

  “Sean?”

  “Sal, you’re back! Look, I’ll be right in. Had something of a f
amily problem.” He didn’t want to tell Sal about Brigitta not feeling well.

  “Sorry to hear that…” Sal sounded tired. He was practically whispering.

  “I’ll be in soon to fill you in and spell you. You should go home and rest.” Then he remembered the boys. What would he do with them? Call that Mrs. Creed? Why hadn’t he made those arrangements? He’d think of something.

  “Maybe you can go talk to Jansen some more. I got some good stuff…”

  “Jansen’s not here.”

  “What?” Sean straightened, his nerves on edge.

  “He walked.”

  Oh, no.

  “I left him with…”

  “He told the officer you said he was free to go.” Sal didn’t sound angry, just bushed.

  “Since when do you take a perp’s word for anything?”

  “Him being a doctor and all…” Sal said, yawning. “He’s a smooth talker.”

  Sean closed his eyes and shook his head. Would he have a job when he went in? Would he be sacked then and there?

  “Look, Sal, you didn’t have nothing to do with this. It’s all my fault. I’ll tell O’Brien.”

  “I appreciate that, buddy, but here’s how we’re gonna play this. You got called home on an emergency, so you better stay put or else it looks like you were shamming. I’ll talk to O’Brien and give him my New York report. I’ll be real good about it. I’ll tell him one of your boys was hurt and I called you from the train station and said I was on my way, but only problem was my cab got a flat so I didn’t make it in right away. I’ll tell him you didn’t think you needed to tell some greenhorn uniform that he shouldn’t let a suspect being questioned go. I’ll handle it.”

  “I don’t know…” Sean didn’t like Sal taking all the heat.

  “Listen, it’s best for both of us if I do. I’ll call you later. You take care of your boys.”

  ***

  Sal handled it as best he could. But late in the day, just as Sean was cleaning up after dinner with the boys, Sal called him from his home. O’Brien wanted to see him first thing Monday. Sean was off the Lowenstein murder. And he might want to check how his old uniforms fit.