Eye Sleuth (13 page)

What Dag didn’t say was that Lanny‘s coma still endured.

Sitting by Lanny’s side, I took her hand and gloomily scanned the tubes sprouting on all sides. The one-sided small talk I made felt right, even though Lanny didn’t show any sign she heard me. Chitchat exhausted, I sat and thought about what Detective Riley had said when I asked about the chances of catching the person who’d shot Mary Sakamoto.

“Do you know how many shootings we have in Manhattan and all we have to go on are the bullets? There are the times we don’t even find those. How are we supposed to connect anyone to a crime without the weapon?”

Seeing Lanny lying in that hospital bed finally brought a nagging thought to the surface. Lanny had been working on the conference with Dr Foikoitis and now both of them were in hospital beds. What was the connection? Someone who didn’t want the conference to be held? What did that have to do with me? Dag coughed and I saw I’d been there over ten minutes. Kissing Lanny, I left. Dag nodded obligingly when I reminded him to call if there was any change.

As usual, Mike was at the front desk when I arrived at the college. We’re supposed to show our passes every time we arrive. Whether he knows you or not, Mike has a random pattern for demanding I.D.

Mike’s use of titles was rare, even with department heads. Niceties completed, I headed for the stairs. The elevators were usually jammed. Gossip had it we’d be moving to a refurbished building somewhere close to Forty-second Street, probably off Fifth Avenue, convenient for commuters. When that day came, I might start taking the elevator, who knows how many floors up we’d be. My boss, Elliott Forrest, another confirmed stair user, was coming down as I started up and I stopped to tell him about the hit-and-run that had put Gus in the hospital.

“I’ll call Pat when I get back from this meeting,” he said, shaking his head in outrage, and started down the stairs then paused and called back.

“Yoko, Dr. Anders was asking for you. He seemed very anxious. So much is riding on his findings, for his career and for the future of this department. I hope there aren’t any problems. Anything you can tell me? Next to Anders, you’re the only one who truly knows what’s going on in that lab.”

“As far as I can tell, everything is on schedule. But you’re right, Matt Wahr mentioned something about Dr. Anders asking for an extension on funding. Everything I’ve seen says Dr. Anders is on track. His creations are really mind-bending, you know,” I said. I didn’t add that it was a mind-bending challenge trying to grasp the full implications of Dr. Anders’ work. I didn’t have any doubt that what Fred Anders was doing was revolutionary.

My boss waved cheerfully and hurried off and I headed straight to the small lab where Fred Anders was hunched over his workbench.

“Ah, Yoko. Interested in breakfast?” he asked, his British accent as precise as if he’d arrived from Cambridge this week, not thirty years ago.

“I’d love to another day,” I said.

Fred Anders was notorious for pulling all-nighters and from the wild look of his thick gray hair this was the morning after one. Brilliant and unassuming, he was widely admired in the field of behavioral optometry. Once I asked him why he left Cambridge.

“Absolutely had to work in New York,” he’d said. “American optometrists were making all the significant advances in the field of physiological optics. I read some amazing papers, like Elliott Forrest’s on the concept of lenses in vision therapy and one by Gus Forkiotis on the use of prisms and I was hooked.”

Fred had come to the U.S. and taken the postdoctoral training in behavioral optometry at SUNY to add to his Ph.D. in physics and had been at the college ever since. My class, like a lot of graduating classes, voted him Most Excellent Professor. Privately, we dubbed him a cool dude but the toughest professor. His doctoral classes in biochemistry, endocrinology and microbiology had waiting lists, even though he drilled students without mercy.

Today, he gave me a sharp glance then returned to his work.

“You look like death warmed over, what’s up?”

“Thanks for the confidence boost,” I said, before launching into a truncated version of the catastrophes of the past few days. I wound up with the sad story of what had happened to Gus. When I reached the end of the tale of woes, Fred put down the scalar microscope he was retooling and swiveled to face me.

“How bloody awful. I agree with your detective chappie that there’s a possible connection between the shooting death and the attacks. As for the brute or brutes who careened into Gus, that could be unrelated. What does the detective say about that?”

“If I don’t eat soon, I’ll be gnawing fingers, mine or those of anyone who’s close by,” and he waggled his fingers under my nose. “Here are my latest notes. I managed to do a fair bit last night. I apologize, there are some changes. Hope you can make sense of my scribble. You’re doing a splendid job so far.”

I flipped through the pages he gave me. It helped I knew the existing equipment but it was a struggle to keep up with the way Fred expanded the capabilities of the various pieces. Once he’d finished his current revisions, I hoped to have enough information to make sense of everything. Right now, even though I’d spent week after week on this work, it was an intricate jigsaw puzzle. Even with many pieces in place, the big picture was tantalizingly elusive. Now changes! I’d need to fill the flash drive and take it home with me to look over the work. Not the best security but the conference was coming up fast. I’d heard through the grapevine that a three-letter branch of the government was waiting in the wings for Fred to finish. I didn’t want to know if it was the CIA or the FBI. I knew Fred’s sole focus was vision therapy to help people. Mine, too. Trust the government to think of other uses––what they might be I didn’t want to consider. Tucking the latest pages of notes under my arm, I looked more carefully at what Fred Anders was tinkering with right then.

A wide smile lit up his tired face and he left in search of breakfast. Hurrying up the stairs, I headed for my office and was surprised to see Allan coming out of it.

“Hey,” he said breezily, “I thought I’d see if you were ready for a coffee break.”

“Way too early,” I said, irritated when he casually wandered in after me and stood watching as I dumped my armful of papers on the desk and settled down to work.

“Don’t you have something to do?” I said and bent my head over my notes. It was a relief when Allan sauntered to the door, the picture of a man of leisure. At least he hadn’t hit on me or suggest we have a drink after work.

“Huh,” I muttered as I shuffled through the latest batch of Dr. Anders’ notes. “That’s puzzling.”

Allan, just at the door, caught the words. “Want to run something by me?” he said eagerly.

The offer was hard to resist. I vented and Allan listened and even made a helpful comment about a technicality that had bothered me. Was Allan growing up or was I? Something he said gave me pause.

“What you’re working on with Dr. Anders is really important,” and he gave one of those nods that goes with a meaningful stare to indicate something crucial has been said.

“Back up, Allan. You can’t say I’m working with Dr. Anders, he’s the genius.”

“Don’t play modest, everyone knows you’re the only one who can translate his notes. That means you understand what he’s doing. Besides, you researched and co-authored the journal articles about most of the equipment he’s adapting.“

Allan left and I considered the implications of his remark. How was it that people managed to ferret out details of work supposedly under wraps? Who, I wondered, would be talking to Allan about confidential work? Other than me, of course, and I’d been careful to keep to general terms. Perhaps no one had leaked information, perhaps Allan had seen e-files when he was unscrambling problems on our computers. Technically, that would be either my computer or the two Fred Anders used, one in his office, another in his lab; like me, Fred used a flash drive to back-up everything, though the final interpretation was on my computer and the flash drive I used. Of course, other people, like the dean and my boss, Dr. Forrest, exchanged e-mails about the work as it progressed, but their e-mails were more overviews and comments on the schedule. It was puzzling and deserved serious consideration.

I promised myself that when I had time I’d go over the notes again. What, for instance, were the non-vision therapy uses for the equipment?

The phone rang. “The Infants’ Clinic started ten minutes ago, Yoko,” it was Dr. Forrest. “You’re on this morning, right?”

“Oops, be right with you,” and I hurried off, shelving thoughts of sleuthing.

The clinic was hectic, nothing unusual about that. Lunch was a virtuous salad from the corner cafe, rounded out by a Larabar with the intriguing name of Cashew Cookie. It consisted of cashews and dates. Mouth-watering, totally satisfying, even healthy.

In the afternoon, I settled into more work deciphering Fred Anders’ scrawl. The afternoon ground on until the sun went down and I was still not done. It was late enough, I needed some real food. On the way out, I stopped by Fred’s lab.

“I’m still working on that last batch of changes but I’ll finish it up tonight at home or tomorrow morning when I come in,” I said.

I decided to stop at the Elephant and Castle for a meal. The restaurant was deserted and I sat at a window table. A waiter took my order and while I waited, I pulled out my notebook. Before I left for work that morning, I’d scribbled down a timeline of events from Mary Sakamoto’s shooting and the attack on Lanny to the mugging-arson attempt on me and the hit-and-run on Gus. It was demoralizing to see it written down and possible reasons or connections didn’t jump out at me.

My food arrived, a welcome interruption, I was starving. Even a Larabar doesn’t last through an afternoon of hard work. I slathered ketchup on my turkey burger and fries and chewed thoughtfully, looking over the timeline again. The guy who’d attacked me in the hallway of my apartment building had taken a serious risk, someone could have come in at any moment. What motivated him? Was this the danger Mary Sakamoto had warned about or was the mugger just a psycho who couldn’t put a lid on his temper?

Optometrists take psychology courses, so I knew it might have been classic, post-offense behavior or sustained aggression. The city has a lot of people on the streets with that mindset. I could rationalize the attack on Lanny and myself as the work of psychos except for one disturbing fact, Mary Sakamoto’s warning about danger. Always I circled back to that.

Lars had assured me Lanny wasn’t involved in any of the various fractious factions at the National Arts Club but did he really know? Had Lanny been attacked over one of the problems at the National Arts Club? Where to start? Who poisoned the pigeons with Avitrol? Apparently that’s an illegal pesticide and its use raises all sorts of questions. Then there was the furor over trees in the park being axed.

I racked my brains for connections. A possible link between Lanny and Dr. Forkiotis might be the conference Lanny was trying to plan, that certainly did connect her to Dr. Forkiotis right now. But why would that have caused all the trouble? Perhaps psychotic anger had motivated the man who attacked Lanny and the hit-and-run could have been just that, a hit-and-run.

The media carried stories about tax evasion and grand larceny at the National Arts Club, although the ongoing litigation by members who say they were forced to vacate their apartments hadn’t been aired in public. Any one of these situations could have fueled the rage I’d seen on the face of Lanny’s attacker. But how were any of the troubles at the club connected to me? By the time I finished my meal and put the timeline in my pocket, I wondered if anything would ever become clear.