Eye Sleuth (2 page)

“Here, sit. You're safe now,” Mike said. Safe? Really? What about the warning of danger? I didn’t say a word about the double trouble of death and that warning, I couldn’t. Mike turned to Allan, who'd followed us in. “Mr. Barnes, did you see what happened?”

Mike settled me on one of the chairs behind his central lobby station and waved over a guard, sending him to close the main doors and funnel the lunch crowd emptying out of the elevators to the side exit. Allan hovered, despite Mike’s attempts to persuade him to sit down at the other end of the station.

Finally, when I sat silently, not responding to him, Allan walked over to the other side of the security station, picked up the phone and made a call. Probably to let his boss know what was happening. I couldn’t bring myself to call my boss, Dr. Forrest, I couldn’t move, just sat.

By the time a police car and an ambulance had roared up to the curb outside, my stomach had stopped heaving but I was still in shock. Discreetly, I wiped the sweat off my face and a façade of stillness settled over me until a nonsense rhyme revved up in my mind. “One fine day in the middle of the night, two dead men got up to fight.” Giggles gathered in my gut and my shoulders started to shake. Mike was watching me from the corner of his eye––good security guards have excellent peripheral vision. Poor peripheral vision causes a lot of traffic accidents but Mike had never been in a traffic accident, not even a fender-bender. No way could I crack under Mike's gaze. Even though he was looking directly out at the activity on the street, I knew Mike had me clearly in his peripheral vision.

I banished the jingle. Settle down, focus. A woman had been shot in front of me. In broad daylight. Why had she been killed? Was this random violence or deliberate? A drive-by shooting? Then that last question, one I couldn’t avoid any longer: Were the shots meant for her or for me? Sweat beaded my face again at the last question. What the hell was going on? I’d been warned of danger and the messenger had been killed right in front of me. I started to feel frantic again. Call yourself a scientist? Act like one. Put emotion aside. Examine the facts objectively. My mental nagging helped. I forced myself to stop thinking about the murder and what the danger could be. I began to calm down and the cogs in my brain started to mesh. OK. First, try to analyze what happened. Start at the beginning. Who was this woman?

I was certain I didn't know her. Had she ever come to one of the college clinics? Much of my work, first as a student and later as an optometrist, has been at the Infants’ Clinic under the guidance of my mentor, Dr. Elliott Forrest, who was now my boss. Challenging though it is to give youngsters vision therapy, it’s so rewarding. Whether youngsters are having difficulty reading or are hyperactive, vision therapy makes a huge difference. I’ve never worked at any of the college’s adult clinics. Had this woman brought a youngster to the Infants’ Clinic? Of the patients I've treated there, I could recall only two Asian families but they were Chinese not Japanese. Perhaps the stranger had come with a neighbor to the clinic and I'd been intent on child and parent, not noticing the second adult with them?

Mike interrupted my thoughts. “Thought you'd like some water, Dr. Kamimura.”

I took the glass carefully because my hand was shaky. The cool liquid was calming as it trickled down my throat. It began to feel safe behind the solid protection of the chest-high counter with the reassuring presence of Mike and Allan close by.

Outside the building, officialdom had swung into full action. Two more police cars were angled in at the curb and a trio of police officers stood in strategic positions, watching passersby and occasionally checking on technicians who were busy with plastic evidence bags. A police photographer snapped picture after picture. He didn't look concerned that the subject of his photos was dead. Why would he? It's probably what he saw all the time in his line of business.

“Excuse me.”

It was one of the uniformed men from the street. He must have come in the side door because I hadn’t seen him until he was standing right next to me. Normally, my peripheral vision is excellent but it had to be constricted right now, tension does that. Quietly the policeman asked me to go with him to the station house for an interview. I must have looked blank because he added, “Thirteenth Precinct? East Twenty-first Street, between Third and Second Avenues, a few blocks away. Detective Riley will interview you and take a statement.”

Now I knew where he meant. I often saw groups of rookies walking to the subway from the station. Sure, an interview. That’s what happened if you saw a crime, the police want to talk to you. Good. I wanted to talk to the police. I looked over to where Allan sat and saw another policeman was talking to him. Allan nodded and the two walked out to one of the police cars. Time for me to go, too.

“I’ll be back as soon as I can, Mike.”

“I’ll let Dr. Forrest know when he comes in, Dr. Kamimura,” Mike said.

I managed a lukewarm smile of thanks and nodded at Mike as I followed the policeman who'd spoken to me. When he helped me into the second car, I cringed as I felt his hand on my head, protecting it as I slid onto the back seat. Bizarre, I'd watched that movement on TV and now the hand of the law was on my head.

At the police station, I saw Allan being shown into a room down the hall from where I was being taken. The man who followed me in to the small, sterile space was around my age, early thirties. He was tall and wiry and his wavy brown hair was overdue for a trim. Alert, deep-set brown eyes with ridiculously long lashes. His black sweater hugged wide, bony shoulders and his jeans were neatly pressed. Pressed jeans? Not my idea of how a police detective dressed but what did I know. This guy looked resourceful.

“Dan Riley,” he said and we shook hands. He clicked on the tape recorder and I spelled my name for him and caught myself checking his left hand, doing my own detecting. No wedding ring. No paleness or indentation where one might have been recently, though some guys don't wear wedding bands. My flippant thoughts shocked me. Was I in denial? No. I knew I’d witnessed death and I knew I’d had a warning of danger. My errant thoughts had to be my psyche helping my hormones settle, trying to divert me from the overload of stress. Luckily, Riley hadn’t a clue what I was thinking. He didn’t waste time with chitchat.

“Three mornings a week I work at the clinic where infants and children come for vision therapy. The rest of the time I do research.” Quiet, peaceful research. The work and the atmosphere suit me. Optometry is safe, guns aren’t part of the equipment.

“I’m working with Dr Anders, he’s developing new vision therapy equipment, prototypes. Right now I’m transferring his handwritten notes to the computer.” I shook my head, I was giving him information that really wasn’t useful. I focused on the important part of the work I was doing. “My priority is to prepare the material for a paper Dr. Anders will give at an international conference, so I’m comparing the prototypes with existing equipment.”

Riley nodded, apparently satisfied with my explanation and commented, almost an aside, “You’re not a secretary, so you must be editing as you go?”

“The woman came up to me right after I walked out of the building,” I explained. “I don't think I've ever seen her before. I didn't recognize her.” I swallowed a gulp that threatened to turn into a sob. Hell's bells, I don't cry in public. I felt panic rising in me again. I shuddered at the memory of what I’d witnessed.

“Are you all right?” Riley sounded concerned and I could tell from his eyes it was genuine because the x-ray stare was gone. The retina, the lining of the back of the eye, is made of the same tissue as the brain, so unless you’re an experienced liar, your eyes give a good indication of what you’re thinking.

“Yes,” I said, dragging myself back to the here and now. “Look, that woman who was shot, she warned me of danger and I’m worried. Can something be done, you know, to protect me?”

I stared at the detective. Was that it? He was dismissing my concern just like that? I grudgingly understood what he’d said, though it was no comfort. Riley carried on with his questions as if I hadn’t raised the question of danger.

“Her voice was low,” I said, “but it was clear. She said, ‘Ki o tsukenasai. Kiken-desu.’ That means, ‘This is a warning, there’s danger.’”

The door opened and a woman came in, nodding an unsmiling hello to Riley and scanning me quickly, a thorough, probing look. She was maybe ten years older than Riley, about his height, heavy in a zaftig way. She had on brown corduroys and an embroidered vest over a pale blue sweater.

“Detective Stevens has entered the interrogation room,” Riley said, recording the woman’s arrival.

“Sorry, court went long,” Stevens said. Her voice was gravel rough, a smoker’s voice, though police and firefighters aren’t allowed to smoke. Who knows what they do off duty.

Stevens sat down heavily, staring at me impassively. The pleasant smell of cinnamon wafted in my direction. Some believe cinnamon helps you stop smoking but it wasn’t enough for Stevens, she needed a prop. She pulled a pencil from a pocket and held it between her fingers, a safe substitute for a cigarette.

“Would you write down the Japanese words and what they mean in English?” Riley asked. He left the tape recorder on but slid a pad and pen across the table to me. Carefully, I wrote the Japanese then the English words, struck again by their significance.

“This is a warning, there’s danger,” Riley said thoughtfully. “You say you have no idea what she could’ve been warning you about or why she spoke in Japanese?”

“No, I….” I’d been about to say I didn’t speak much Japanese and someone brought up in Japan would know from my school-girl Japanese that I wasn’t born there but it didn’t seem relevant so I stopped. Riley was quick to question my pause.

I ignored the woman’s sniping and explained that flavor in speech, or lack of it, was a fact frequently criticized by language teachers. Dan Riley nodded as if he understood. He went on smoothly, fixing me with that penetrating look.