the poison hit his respiratory system. . but then you didn’t want the details of what Hunsinger went through.”
“Only if they’re relevant. . damn relevant.”
“Relax, Ned. That’s the end of relevancy.”
“Where’d he get the DMSO? Anybody know?”
“Yeah. One of the other guys at the examiner’s office was familiar with it. Seems you can get it all over town. Most health-food stores.”
“I thought it was-”
“It is. But they can sell it as a solvent. Isn’t that a peculiar turn of fortune? I’ll bet the scientist who put DMSO together never thought it would be used to dissolve strychnine. Anyway, it carried the warning right on the label.” Ewing again quoted from his notes, “‘Sold for use as a solvent only. Caution. This product not federally approved for medication.’ And how about this: ‘Warning: May be unsafe. Not approved for human use.’”
Both were silent a moment, contemplating the irony of it all.
“Okay,” said Harris, “that’s how Hunsinger got the DMSO. It’ll be a good idea to check into how popular this stuff is with football players generally. But it leaves the bigger question: Where did he come up with the strychnine, and why?”
“We got an answer for the second question anyway. Our guys picked up some rodent bait last night in Hunsinger’s apartment. It was saturated with strychnine.”
“Rat bait! Wasn’t that its primary use before they took it off the market?”
“Yeah, it was effective as hell with rats. Apparently, Hunsinger didn’t favor a stick of dynamite when there was an atom bomb handy. I mean, why use a simple rat trap when you’ve got the Cadillac of poisons around?” He shook his head. “But it still doesn’t explain where he got it.”
“Yeah, well, okay. But I’ve got one more question before we start going off in all directions.” Harris drained the last of his coffee. “We got a very inventive killer who’s going to use DMSO as a delivery system for strychnine. Why doesn’t the perpetrator drain the shampoo bottle and pour in the mixture of DMSO with the poison?”
“The perp banks on Hunsinger’s compulsive nature. The Hun is going to reach for the second bottle from the left because that’s where the shampoo is. Always.”
“Okay, so the perp knows that Hunsinger’s a compulsive. But it wouldn’t be out of the ordinary for even a compulsive to glance at a label as he’s using something.”
“Except that Hunsinger had bad eyesight. He wore contacts.”
“Right. So the perp knows that Hunsinger is a compulsive and also that he has poor vision.”
“I get the impression that those two items were not exactly secrets to anyone who knew Hunsinger at all well.”
“Okay.” Harris appeared to have arrived at his final question. “Hunsinger, relying on his habit of always keeping things in their appointed place, automatically picks up the second container from the left. It feels just like his shampoo bottle. After all, the shampoo bottle is the same shape and size as the container of DMSO. He doesn’t read the label because he can’t make it out without his contact lenses. But the shampoo was a distinctive pink color and the DMSO is colorless. Why doesn’t he notice there’s no color?”
“Why doesn’t he notice there’s no color?” Ewing repeated thoughtfully. “Why doesn’t he notice there’s no color? Unless. . unless. .”
“Our first stop,” Harris announced, “Hunsinger’s eye doctor.”
“But first, we’d better give a call to Inspector Koznicki.”
“Walt? Why?”
“I think he’ll want to know that his old buddy Father Koesler is back in the homicide business.”
It took less than half an hour to drive to West Dearborn, where Thomas Glowacki’s office was located.
Yes, Dr. Glowacki, the late Hank Hunsinger’s ophthalmologist, was in. Did they have an appointment? Well, the doctor was very busy. Oh, the homicide department! Well, in that case, would they wait just a few minutes in the doctor’s private office?
Dr. Glowacki, tall, thin, with a full head of brownish hair flecked with gray, entered the office briskly. Harris noted the doctor wore bifocals. It gets to everyone, he mused.
“This is regarding Mr. Hunsinger?” The doctor looked appropriately concerned. “A pity. I read about it in this morning’s paper. A great pity.”
“We know you’re busy, Doctor,” said Ewing, “so we’ll try not to take up much of your time. We’ve got a few questions about Mr. Hunsinger’s sight-he was your patient, wasn’t he?”
“Oh, yes, for a great number of years. The receptionist-my wife-could tell you exactly how long.” Glowacki manifested great satisfaction that his wife was also his receptionist. It was anyone’s guess as to the source of his satisfaction: that husband and wife could function as a team; that wife was competent enough to keep his records; that he was saving a ton of money on her salary.
“That’s all right.” Ewing eschewed the history. “We’re more concerned with the condition of Mr. Hunsinger’s sight as it was just before he died.”
“Yes, yes. A most interesting case. A most rare case. Of course, he had astigmatism for many years-for most of his life. But it was correctable with lenses.”
“We were more concerned with his color perception.”
“Yes, I was just getting to that. Colorblind.”
The two officers could not suppress triumphant smiles. Suspicion confirmed.
“I am not referring to a color deficiency,” Glowacki continued. “I mean Mr. Hunsinger was colorblind, literally
Both shook their heads. They urged him to elaborate. This could prove most relevant.
“In general,” the doctor explained, “99.5 percent of women and 92 percent of men have normal vision with regard to color. Which means they can distinguish between all the colors of the spectrum. Now, among those relatively few people who have problems with color perception, there are three groups. I can tell you about them without becoming overly technical.”
The officers nodded. Ewing prepared to scribble notes.
“The largest number of people who have a color deficiency are called anomalous trichromats.” Glowacki glanced at Ewing’s pad and spelled the term. “They can see the same major color characteristics as people with completely normal vision. But they tend to have problems with tones that are close together in the color spectrum, like orange and pink.”
“How about white and pink?” Harris asked, thinking of the bottles of shampoo and DMSO.
“To the anomalous trichromat they would appear as exactly the same color.”
Again the officers smiled. That alone would have been sufficient to explain Hunsinger’s fatal error. But the doctor had indicated that the deceased’s color perception was much worse than that.
“The second group, called dichromats”-again Glowacki spelled-“have what’s called a red-green deficiency. That means they confuse colors like the red fruit and green leaves of the cherry tree. Their vision is unable to separate colors that occur at the same position on either side of the color spectrum-those with the same wavelengths. But, like the trichromats, these people are still able to see colors and distinguish among most of them.”
Glowacki paused. There were no questions or comments from the officers.
“You see,” he continued, “most people think that if a person such as those I’ve just described has any trouble at all identifying any colors, that the person is colorblind. Technically, that’s not true. Such people are color- deficient.
“The true colorblind person is called a monochromat.” He did not bother to spell. “The monochromat is unable to match one color with any other color. Everything, to the genuinely colorblind person, is either white, black, or gray.”
“Until now,” Harris commented, “I thought Hunsinger had done his apartment in Art Deco. Everything is white, black, or gray.”
Glowacki nodded vigorously. “I’ve never seen Mr. Hunsinger’s apartment, but I’m not surprised. Without assistance a colorblind person could not help making serious blunders in decorating an apartment. Even a color- deficient person probably would err. For a person like Mr. Hunsinger, it would make great good sense for his decorator to use black, white, and gray. That, after all, is exactly the way he saw life.”
“This question just occurred to me,” said Ewing. “Wouldn’t his colorblindness be a serious problem for him
