Eye Sleuth (8 page)

The rest of our conversation was brief. I put down the phone slowly. It was official, Lanny was in a coma and it had endured through the night. I hadn’t cried when Lanny was hurt, but as I spooned out food for the cats, tears trickled down my cheeks. When I combed my hair, the mirror showed my face was calm but tear tracks reached down to my chin. Splashes of water erased them.

I’d run cold at the news from Lars and craved something hot. I dressed in a hurry then made my morning cup of miso from my favorite company, South River. It’s the only U.S. company handcrafting miso in Japan’s centuries-old tradition. Today’s had black soybeans, organic brown rice, sea veggies and koji culture. As I sipped the miso, I decided to eat at home. I debated the merits of instant oatmeal versus mochi, that tasty treat made from steaming then pounding rice into thick squares. Heated, a mochi square transforms into a tasty muffin-like treat with a crisp crust that’s meltingly delicious but impossible to eat in a hurry. Perfect for a leisurely morning. This was not going to be a leisurely morning.

Oatmeal won hands down and I raided my stash of those packets you cook in the microwave. Mom hadn’t believed in them, she’d given me a rice cooker when I moved to my own place, but Auntie Ai daringly gifted me a small microwave, telling mom it would be handy to warm leftovers. Mercifully, I wasn’t on duty at the Infants’ Clinic that morning. Just as well. I was on automatic pilot and the youngsters would have picked up on that and goofed off. At times it was tough enough to persuade them to do their vision therapy. Much as I liked the challenge of working with the youngsters, I really loved the intense, often solitary research. The three mornings I spent at the clinic made a perfect counterpoint to working at my desk the rest of the week and many an evening.

The phone rang. I checked the caller ID.

“Auntie Ai, how are you?” My mother’s sister was my only living relative since the death of my parents last year within weeks of each other, eighteen months into their happy retirement. A lethally swift heart attack killed my mother before the ambulance arrived. My father lost the will to live; he died weeks after learning he had cancer.

“How are you, Yoko? Lars called me with the terrible news about Lanny.”

“I’m fine, Auntie Ai,” I said. “Lanny’s condition is serious but she’s in good hands.” I decided not to mention I’d seen a woman shot to death on the street. Why pile trouble on top of tragedy?

“If my favorite behavioral optometrist tells me Lanny is in good hands, I believe her,” Auntie Ai said.

I smiled, remembering the time when no one in my family had heard about behavioral optometry. No one had been surprised when I decided to study optometry after high school. I’d tested high in science and math, practically a family tradition––Mom had run the science courses at St. Vincent’s, a major teaching hospital, Dad was a professor of physics at Hunter College. It was after I finished at SUNY and was a board-certified optometrist that I really surprised them.

“I’ve got some exciting news,” I told my parents after the graduation ceremony, when we were on our way to celebrate. “I’ve got a scholarship to stay on at college and study behavioral optometry.”

My parents looked dazed by the bombshell I’d dropped.

“Study what?” my father said. The pupils of his eyes dilated. I’d had six months as an intern at the clinic where youngsters had vision therapy and I’d learned that pupil dilation meant Dad felt really emotional. He had to be thinking, More tuition bills? She’s not getting a job?

“It’s a valuable health care, Mom,” I said. “It helps learning and behavior problems. You know I’ve been helping at one of the college clinics?” My parents nodded. “Kids of all ages come for therapy and I’ve seen how it helps their learning problems.”

“If your eyes aren’t teaming, you might have trouble learning to read, plus you wouldn’t have depth perception. Even astigmatism might lead to a learning problem.” I warmed to the subject. “With horizontal astigmatism, you might not see the horizontal part of the letter E or the edge of the stairs clearly. Vertical astigmatism could mean you don’t get a clear view of the vertical parts of letters.”

My parents considered this for a moment.

“How does this specialty help someone?” my dad asked.

“It works on the cause of the vision problem. Help the cause and help bring balance to the vision and you help a learning or behavior difficulty that’s triggered by the vision problem. Lenses are a big part of the therapy but the exercises are important.”

“Exercises?”

“There’s a lot. Some of the equipment is as simple as a pencil or beads on a string, some is sophisticated computer software. It depends on what therapy the visual analysis shows is needed. Look, I know this is a huge surprise but I’ve got the costs covered between a part-time job and financial aid.”

“Dr. Forrest––he helped start the Infants’ Clinic––told me I’ll be working at the clinic as part of the training. When I graduate, I’ll continue three mornings a week at the clinic. The rest of the time I’d do research into whatever project the department is working on.”

My parents considered what I’d said. Then Dad asked the inevitable question.

“Can you keep up your studies with a job, even if it is part-time?”

“The job’s a no-brainer. Lanny found it for me at the National Arts Club. After I finish the shifts, they’re in the evening, I can stay with her overnight and walk to college in the morning.”

My parents relaxed. My godmother Lanny was family. Long before I was born, our families had been close. Anything Lanny suggested would be fine. I thought about those good old days when I was a student and working four nights a week at the club. It felt light years ago though in reality less than a decade.

“Look at the time,” Auntie Ai’s words brought me back to the day with a bump “Don’t you need to leave for work?”

We said our goodbyes and I promised to visit her soon for some home cooking. I knew Lars would keep Auntie Ai updated about Lanny and I’d visit Lanny every chance I had, even though it was terrible to see her lying in a hospital bed.

I scraped up the last spoonful of oatmeal from the bowl and put it in the sink. As I got ready for work, I wondered gloomily what the next round of questioning by the police would bring. Perhaps Dr. Forrest was right, perhaps it was only routine. Chances were I might learn something from the interview. That encouraging thought stayed with me as I walked quickly to the college. I crossed the lobby full of energy, calling out a cheerful greeting to Mike, who waved, busy talking into his intercom. My good feeling evaporated when I saw Allan lurking in the hall outside my office. He snapped his cell phone shut when he saw me.

“The police are waiting in the staff room,” he said. “I’ve been interviewed again. Ridiculous waste of time. Strange man, sounds like a Harvard professor. As if I had anything to tell them the first time around.”

Rather than be dragged into a conversation with Allan, I headed back down the stairs to the staff room. Detective Riley was standing just inside the door.

Was this the man Allan said sounded like a Harvard professor? In contrast to Riley’s black windbreaker sporting the white New York Yankees logo over a casual red checkered shirt, open at the neck, and beige slacks––no jeans today––his partner wore an immaculate charcoal gray suit, crisp white shirt and carefully knotted pale gray silk tie. I took the chair opposite Detective Zeissing, who looked a year or two older than Riley.

“Detective Stevens isn’t your partner?” I asked.

“No. Detective Zeissing is my partner, but he was not available when you were at the station,” Riley said, amiably enough, then continued, “This interview is primarily to ask if you’ve remembered anything new,” and he clicked on the tape recorder. And for your partner to listen with a fresh ear.

“If I had remembered anything, you’d be the first to know,” I said and dutifully answered the questions, hoping my responses matched those I’d given the day of the murder. I honestly couldn’t remember much about the previous interview, only that I’d felt nauseous and irritated and had come away wondering if I was a prime suspect. Riley clicked off the tape recorder, signaling we were done. Before I could stand up, his partner spoke.

I was dumbfounded. 9/11 was years ago. The guy must have an eidetic memory, a complete recall of images. Did this man store facts as well? It would be fascinating to examine his vision system for more of an understanding of his abilities, that was the sort of sleuthing I did. When behavioral optometrists examine your eyes with an ophthalmoscope, they are looking at the retina, the lining at the back of the eye. The retina is made of the same tissue as the brain and it’s possible to evaluate how the person’s brain reacts by the way the retina reacts to the ophthalmoscope’s light. A sports team manager who knew the reactions of the players’ vision systems might open a baseball game with someone with quick reactions and use a player who takes time to warm up in a later innings.

Riley’s partner wasn’t wearing glasses and I was fairly sure he wasn’t wearing contacts. If the light is right, which it was, you can see the edge of the contact, which is positioned on the cornea, the transparent front part of the eye that covers the iris and pupil. The contact overlaps the white part of the eye––the schleral conjunctiva––on the temporal side, the side away from the nose. Hard lenses are rarely worn these days but if that had been the case, I might have been able to see the round edge of the contact in front of the cornea. No, my careful scan of Zeissing’s eyes didn’t reveal contacts. Riley didn’t look surprised at the factoid his partner had produced out of thin air and way off the subject but Zeissing wasn’t finished.

“You were most patient. You stood for hours in the dense and irritating smoke and you irrigated the eyes of first responders thoroughly and carefully.”

His words jolted me back to the time I’d gone down to Ground Zero to help. Heart-wrenching yet how could I stay away? Every Saturday and Sunday for the rest of September and much of October, I’d walked down to the gaping chasm where the Twin Towers had been. Once there, I irrigated the eyes of police and emergency workers with a basic saline solution. They stood patiently, sorrow in their eyes, words of thanks on their lips. Two hours in that thick, stinking smoke and I'd needed to treat my own eyes as well. My natural tears, which were plentiful, weren't enough.

“Thank you,” I said, fascinated by his precise speech pattern and the accuracy of his comment. Allan was right, the detective did sound like a professor. A smart one. Not many people, unless they were optometrists, would have realized I’d irrigated the eyes of the first responders. This man was beyond observant. If he was eidetic, it was possible he also had compulsive tendencies, one way of coping with the vast storehouse of his mind.