Truth in the Eyes
Dexter Hanlon was only ten years old when he came home from school one cold, snowy November afternoon and found his mother's lifeless body lying on the living room floor of their apartment. After several failed, desperate attempts to wake her, he phoned the police and reported her death. While the young boy waited beside his dead mother's body for the officers to arrive, he lovingly held her cold hand in his and cried.
Although devastated by his sole parent's death, Dexter could not help wondering exactly what had transpired in that living room earlier in the day. Had his mother screamed in fright or called out to someone for help?
Did she think of me before she died? he wondered. Or was her last thought about my father?
The boy looked down at his mother's auburn hair and creamy complexion and asked himself how anyone could have wanted to take the life of such a warm, loving and beautiful woman as Bernadette Hanlon.
"What kind of monster would do this to you?" the dutiful son sobbed as he studied his mother's motionless face.
If Father Skulnick was to be believed, then God had seen fit to take his mother's life. After all, he was supposedly all powerful. But how could he in his infinite wisdom be so cruel as to first take Bernadette's husband and then have someone murder her in the prime of her life?
"It is not up to us to question God's plan," the elderly Father Skulnick often preached from his pulpit. "The Good Lord often works in mysterious ways."
Who are we go second-guess God?
At only ten, he was hardly educated enough to play armchair quarterback to the Almighty.
Dexter's thoughts turned from his mother to the man who killed her. Who was he? What did he look like? Was he young, old or somewhere in between? Was he tall, short or of average height? Was he thin, fat or of middling weight? What was the color of his skin? His hair? His eyes? Only his mother knew the answers to these questions, and her lips were forever sealed.
After completing their investigation, the Boston police came to the conclusion that the thirty-two-year-old widow was murdered when she came home from work early and surprised a burglar, who then strangled the unsuspecting woman to prevent her from identifying him.
What other explanation could there be? Her husband (the usual suspect when a woman is killed) was already dead and there were no boyfriends in the picture. A crazed stalker? Bernadette was a beautiful woman, but there was no evidence to point to a frustrated, psychopathic would-be Romeo.
"We'll find the man who did this, son," the responding officer assured Dexter when the police arrived at the scene of the crime.
"How is it possible to find one man in a city the size of Boston?" the child asked. "There were no witnesses."
"Forensics."
It was a word that, at the time Dexter's mother was murdered, had not been a part of the average American's vocabulary, a time long before the advent of networks dedicated to television programs that featured crime scene investigators solving seemingly impossible murder cases. It was an era before murder became family entertainment.
Unfortunately, this particular crime scene yielded little in the way of physical evidence. All that was collected was a partial fingerprint on the mahogany jewelry box in the master bedroom, a print that the FBI could not match, and a strand of hair on the body that did not belong to the victim. Since DNA identification was a thing of the future, analysis of the hair was of no help to the investigators.
"I'm sorry, young man," the lead detective on the case apologized almost a year after the murder had occurred. "The case has gone cold. I'm afraid that our investigation hasn't turned up a single suspect. Our only hope of catching your mother's killer is if he commits another crime and we get a match on the partial fingerprint."
The detective left it at that. He did not have the heart to tell the grief-stricken little boy that even if a suspect was apprehended, there was only a slight chance the man would be convicted of murder on such flimsy evidence.
* * *
His mother's death had a profound effect on Dexter Hanlon. Besides the obvious fact that he had to grow up an orphan, taken in and raised by his mother's unwed sister, the young man developed a strong interest in law enforcement. He abandoned his earlier plans to be a newspaper reporter like his father and entered college to major in the emerging field of forensic science.
It was a subject that enthralled the student. Where previously he had associated science with the unpleasant task of dissecting dead frogs, Dexter was fascinated with analyzing hair, blood and fiber samples. He soon learned to piece together a crime scene as though completing a jigsaw puzzle. And his education did not end upon college graduation. It was an ongoing learning experience in an ever-expanding field, as science technology, computer technology and medical technology presented new ways of identifying suspects and proving their guilt to a jury in a court of law.
During the years following his obtaining a position with the Boston police, Dr. Dexter Hanlon so distinguished himself in his chosen field that he became one of the nation's foremost forensics experts. His professional opinion was frequently sought by police departments across the country and even, on occasion, the FBI.
Yet despite numerous technological advancements available to modern law enforcement agencies, there were still crimes where the perpetrator was extremely clever—or just plain lucky—and left no fingerprints, DNA or other physical evidence behind. Such cases frustrated police and prosecutors to no end.
"If we could only see what the poor victim saw before she was killed," one crime scene investigator declared as he angrily tossed a photocopy of his typed forensics report into the wire basket on his desk to be filed later.
"Then we forensics people would find ourselves out of a job," declared Dr. Hanlon, who had come to see his senior investigator on another matter.
The investigator was surprised by his superior's remarks. The esteemed forensic scientist was not known for having a sense of humor.
"But it's an interesting concept you've got there," Dexter continued to joke. "Maybe we could get a psychic to contact the victim and ask the dead woman's spirit to help identify her killer."
"No," the other man countered. "I'll just take a picture of the retina of her eye and see what the creep looked like."
At the time, both men enjoyed a good laugh over the investigator's ludicrous suggestion. However, later that evening, Dexter gave some serious thought to the matter. It was a long-held theory that images of what deceased people saw in their last moments of life were preserved on their retinas. If that were the case, the scientist mused, it just might be possible to capture those images, transfer them to a computer and then reproduce them on a medium that could be distributed to police officers and later shown to jury members at trial. The forensic scientist admitted that on the surface the idea seemed preposterous—something out of the mind of Ray Bradbury or Isaac Azimov—but then surely x-rays, ultrasounds and MRIs must have been deemed fantastical before they were actually put to use.
For the next decade, Dr. Hanlon tried to capture images from the retinas of murder victims and medical school cadavers, using a wide variety of techniques, none of which yielded favorable results. He was about to give up on the idea when a renowned MIT professor contacted him.
"I've been working in the field of medical research for the past fifteen years, and I believe I can make a significant contribution to your project," Dr. Romy Gerhard informed him. "I've developed a computer program that has been able to interpret electrical impulses sent to the brain from various parts of the human body."
"Really? How did you manage that?"
"I created a device similar to an EEG that collects electrical messages sent to the brain. As you probably know, the retina contains a chemical called rhodopsin, which converts light into electrical impulses that travel along the retinal nerve fibers to the brain where they are interpreted. I'm confident that if we can find a way of artificially stimulating these dead nerve fibers so that they can transmit their final messages to my computer program, we might be able to 'see' what the victims saw at the moment of death."
With the combined efforts of the two dedicated researchers, a method of stimulating and interpreting the electrical impulses from a corpse's retinal nerve fibers was eventually discovered. The first practical test of their ground-breaking retinal scan was performed on the body of a twenty-three-year-old shooting victim. With Romy Gerhard's assistance, Dr. Hanlon was able to create and print out a photograph of the young woman's killer—as seen through her own eyes—that led to the arrest and eventual conviction of the shooter.
After the successful use of their revolutionary suspect identification technique, Dexter Hanlon and Romy Gerhard became the celebrities of both the medical and forensics worlds, the Crick and Watson of the twenty-first century. The resulting fame caused a dramatic change in Dr. Gerhard. After receiving invitations to appear on The Oprah Winfrey Show, Larry King Live, Nancy Grace and a Barbara Walters special, the former MIT science professor and medical researcher underwent a complete physical makeover. Gone were the drab English tweed skirts and blazers, sensible shoes, thick-lens glasses and lifeless brown hair pulled back in a severe hairstyle. When Romy appeared on the cover of Newsweek, she was a stunning blonde in a Dolce & Gabbana suit.
To those close to her, the transformation was akin to the Ugly Duckling becoming a swan or to a butterfly emerging from its pupal stage. To Dexter Hanlon, it was earth-shattering. A long-time bachelor who had lived a chaste, self-sacrificing existence centered on his work, he fell for his colleague like the proverbial ton of bricks. All the passion he had previously invested in his research was transferred to his now beautiful partner.
Unfortunately for the aging scientist, the younger woman did not return his affections. Unperturbed, he foolishly pressed his suit.
One evening, as Romy was leaving the research laboratory for the day, Dexter cornered her in a stairwell, far away from the prying eyes and eavesdropping ears of their assistants.
"My dear," he said anxiously, "I've been trying for some time to speak with you on a personal matter."
"I can't talk now, Dex. I have an appointment with a reporter," she lied, eager to escape his unwanted attentions.
"Romy, darling, I love you," he blurted out before she could get away.
Her shoulders slumped, and she turned and faced him.
"I'm sorry. I admire and respect you, but I don't love you."
"Maybe not now, but with time I'm sure you'll grow to care for me. You just have to give me a chance. Please, darling. I don't expect you to feel the same way I do, but I'll settle for whatever love you can give me."
Dexter cast aside his pride and would have gotten down on his knees and begged if such debasing groveling would have furthered his cause to win the heart of the woman he loved. But it would not have made any difference.
"I don't see you as anything but a friend and a colleague," Romy explained, hating to break his heart but not having any other choice.
"I'm not just a scientist," he whined. "I'm a man. I have a heart as well as a brain. Let me show you."
His passion clouding his judgment, Dexter moved forward to embrace her, believing his kiss might melt her resistance.
"Stay away from me!" Romy screamed, but her ardent suitor persisted.
When the terrified professor pulled away from her pursuer, she suddenly felt the ground disappear beneath her. Dexter reached out his hand to steady her, but he was too late to save Romy from falling to her death.
* * *
Just as their valuable scientific breakthrough had catapulted Dr. Hanlon and Dr. Gerhard into the limelight, Romy's tragic death put the couple on the pages of both the reputable news magazines and supermarket tabloids. Rumors of an illicit affair between the two Nobel Prize winners appeared on the pages of The National Tattler, topped by a story in the Globe claiming that Dexter was the grandson of a Nazi scientist who had been condemned at Nuremberg but later smuggled into the United States to help with the war on communism.
When police routinely examined the image taken from Romy Gerhard's retinal scan, they were shocked with what they saw and immediately arrested Dexter Hanlon for the murder of his research partner.
"I didn't kill her," the innocent man swore as the Boston police reluctantly took him into custody. "Her death was an accident. In fact, I tried to save her, but she fell."
"The picture tells us differently," the arresting officer declared.
When Dexter Hanlon saw an enlargement of the retinal scan that was entered into evidence against him during his murder trial, he had to agree.
Had he really looked so terrifying and menacing that tragic day on the stairwell? His half-crazed, lustful appearance in the photograph led Dr. Hanlon to question if the computer program Professor Gerhard developed had accurately interpreted the messages transmitted by Romy's retinal nerve fibers. Or was it possible that the victim's fear colored those messages? If the latter was the case, then Dexter had failed miserably in his life's work.
Like the fabled Victor Frankenstein, he had unwittingly created a monster that had come back to destroy him. For the remainder of his life, the unfortunate scientist would have the opportunity to regret his revolutionary discovery—a life spent behind prison bars for a murder he did not commit.
If someone did a retinal scan on Salem, it would reveal an empty box of Godiva chocolates.
