Fatal Reaction

by Hartzmark, Gini

  We had agreed on the most traditional American dinner we could think of—roast turkey with com-bread-and-sage stuffing and all the trimmings. Mother had arranged personally for a gargantuan bird to be delivered from a poultry farm downstate. It was so big that the kitchen staff had laughingly speculated that it must have been fed steroids. Mother’s cook, Mrs. Mason, had risen at dawn and spent the entire day dressing, stuffing, and basting the bird, which was now roasted to succulent perfection. She and the head caterer planned to carry it out on a tremendous pewter tray where it would be carved at table side with great ceremony.

  When Mother rang the bell signaling that the great moment had arrived, two white-gloved waiters swung open the French doors for the arrival of the turkey. I had never seen anything that large. Mrs. Mason, her ample bosom encased in a crisply starched uniform, looked triumphant. The caterer beamed from beneath the tower of his white toque.

  Whether it was because he was nervous, or merely unfamiliar with the house, as they were passing through the doorway he tripped. For a moment I thought he’d recovered himself, but the big bird was too unwieldy. In one terrible moment it all came tumbling to the ground— the caterer, his starched hat, and the steaming roast bird.

  My first reaction was to burst out laughing, but the horror of our Japanese guests at this terrible turn of events was so apparent that the temptation quickly passed. Instead I found myself turning instinctively to Mother. Without missing a beat she turned to the cook with a reassuring smile.

  “Mrs. Mason, once you’ve cleaned up that mess why don’t you just go right back into the kitchen and bring out that second turkey.” She said it so calmly and with such confidence, she almost had me believing there was another one.

  CHAPTER 24

  As soon as I got home I called Elliott Abelman. I didn’t care that it was after midnight. After we’d filled the limousines with tipsy Japanese I’d spent the ride back from Lake Forest reassuring Stephen about Childress’s absence, murmuring about missed planes and bad weather in Boston. What made it worse was that I hadn’t told him Tom’s story about Danny trying a bootleg experimental AIDS drug or what Elliott had learned about Childress’s seamy past. Now I felt consumed with guilt, terrified that in trying to shield Stephen from the anxiety during the Takisawa visit, I had actually set him up for an infinitely bigger shock.

  Elliott picked up the phone on the third ring. His voice was thick from sleep.

  “Are you okay?” he demanded immediately after I’d identified myself.

  “Michael Childress didn’t show up at the dinner tonight,” I reported miserably.

  “I thought he was supposed to be out of town this weekend. At least, that’s what he told my operative when he called her on Friday.”

  “He called her Friday?”

  “Yeah. He wanted to tell her about some big discovery he was on the verge of making. He told her she might want to hold off finishing the article for a couple of days so that she could take advantage of all the interest his work was going to generate.”

  I remembered what everyone had told me about Childress’s appetite for self-aggrandizement and was not surprised. “He was in Boston for some kind of conference, but he was supposed to be back in time for the dinner tonight,” I said.

  “Have you tried calling his house?”

  “No,” I replied, wondering if the pressure of the Takisawa visit was making me stupid.

  “Let me put you on hold for a minute and I’ll try calling him on my other line.”

  I waited through the dead air on the line, shifting the phone from one ear to the other in order to take off the Chanel earrings that I would never wear again.

  “No answer,” reported Elliott, coming back on the line. “Do you want me to send somebody over there?”

  “To do what?”

  “To check if his car is there, if the lights are on.”

  “No,” I replied, feeling ashamed for having jumped to conclusions. “For all we know he just missed his flight from Boston and is planning on catching an early plane to O’Hare in the morning.”

  “Do you know what flight he was supposed to take?”

  “No.”

  “Or where he was staying in Boston?”

  “No. I was just worried that one of your operatives might have done something or said something that spooked him.”

  “Listen, Kate. There’s no way he could have known we pulled his sheet. Besides, the woman who interviewed him really is a freelance journalist. The fact that he called her right before he left town only confirms that he believes she is what she says she is.”

  “Do you think there’s a chance he might have been arrested?” I asked. “Boston is his old stomping ground, after all. It would certainly explain why he might have missed his plane.”

  “As soon as we get off the phone I’ll see what I can find out from the Boston PD. While I’m at it, do you want me to check the hospitals?”

  “If you don’t mind.”

  “I’ll get right on it. I’ll call you if I find out anything. In the meantime you’d better get to bed. It’s late and I know you have a big day tomorrow.”

  “You’re right,” I sighed, and wished him good night. Then I hung up the phone and made my way to my bedroom. Elliott was right, I did have a big day tomorrow, but I still didn’t have any illusions about being able to sleep.

  I drove out to Oak Brook through the darkness, arriving with sunrise still more than an hour away. Commonwealth Edison had promised us electricity by six o’clock and I was there to make sure they delivered. Even more than we needed Michael Childress, we needed electricity. As a precaution I’d reserved a meeting room at the Nikko, and Stephen and I had packed up everything he needed to make his presentation in case there was a problem that prevented us from getting into the building. But I couldn’t imagine a worse way to impress a group of businessmen who came from a culture that prized organization and planning above almost everything else.

  When I pulled into the parking lot Stephen’s car was already there. I wondered whether he’d been there all night. He was pacing anxiously in front of the building wearing a parka over his business suit. The thermometer on the bank at the mall across the street said it was only two degrees.

  “Are they going to be ready in time?” I asked, once I’d gotten out of the car and crossed the parking lot. I was happy to see that the snowplow company had already been out. At least the lot was clean and freshly salted, and the sidewalk to the front door shoveled.

  “They keep telling me yes,” replied Stephen miserably. His stress level was clearly stratospheric. Suddenly I wished I’d stayed at home a little longer. “But they also said it looks like some of the water pipes might have burst in the basement, because it’s been so cold.”

  “I thought the main was turned off for just that reason.”

  “I know. But there’s an auxiliary line that goes into the animal labs that we couldn’t find a shutoff for. Carl said that when he called the water company about it, they told him it would be all right.”

  “How do you know it’s burst? Have you been inside the building?”

  “No. They won’t let anyone in until the power is back up. But come here and I’ll show you.”

  I followed Stephen around the side of the building, holding onto his arm so that I didn’t fall on the ice in the dark. My feet were freezing through the flimsy soles of my pumps and by the time we got to the loading dock, my ankles were numb from the cold. I wondered how long it would take once they turned the furnace back on before the building would be warm. The thought of Stephen being able to see his breath during his presentation filled me with dread.

  “Look at this,” said Stephen, pointing to an enormous puddle that came from underneath the door of the loading dock.

  “Whatever it is, we’re going to have to get in and clean it up. How much longer until we have lights?”

  Stephen looked at his watch. “They say forty minutes.”

  “Any chance we
could wait in the car?” I ventured.

  I took it as a good omen when the power came back on ten minutes early. Even though we still had to wait outside in the cold for the security system to reboot and the key card system that regulated entry to become operational, I didn’t mind. At least we had light. Next we’d have heat. And finally, God willing, we’d have Michael Childress.

  By the time we were able to get inside the building, quite a crowd had gathered: maintenance people who Stephen had ordered to report early to make sure the building was ready for the Japanese, investigators from the various labs throughout the building anxious to see how their experiments had fared through the blackout, and the scientists of the ZK-501 project steeling themselves for their ordeal with Takisawa.

  There was a long line and not a little jostling as people had to swipe their ID cards through the reader one by one. Once we were inside, Stephen, Carl, and I made a beeline for the basement. Sure enough, there was water everywhere. With an eye on the clock, Stephen rolled up his sleeves and supervised the cleanup personally. In the meantime, the rest of us followed Carl’s orders, scurrying around switching on lights and flipping on equipment.

  At some point Lou Remminger appeared, though seeing her in a pressed white lab coat and understated makeup, I confess I barely recognized her.

  “I just came down to check to make sure everything was okay. I heard some pipes broke,” she explained. With all the rest of us running around like marines get- a ting ready for an inspection drill, there was something almost Zen-like in the chemist’s calm.

  “ There’s just a mess in the animal labs,” said Woodruff.

  “Did the modeling room stay dry?” Remminger asked.

  “Yes. None of the cables or the computer equipment got wet. Is everything all set to go in your lab?” inquired Woodruff.

  “Do you want to come up and check, Mom?”

  “No thank you,” he replied. “I’ll take your word for it.”

  Michelle emerged from the crystallography lab and joined us. I understood why Stephen had insisted on lab coats. Not only did they cover the worst of the scientists’ crimes against fashion, but they made everybody look like a grown-up.

  “Has anybody seen Childress?” Michelle asked anxiously. “He’s supposed to be making the crystallography presentation this morning. His slides are here, but I haven’t seen him.”

  “Has anybody tried calling his house?” Remminger inquired.

  “I think Carl said he tried him early this morning and all he got was the answering machine,” reported the crystallographer.

  “You don’t think this is all some kind of prima donna shit?” said Remminger. “It would be just like him to do something crazy like this just to draw attention to himself.”

  “Do you really think so?” inquired Michelle uncertainly, just as Dave Borland came barreling down the hall, long strips of silver duct tape trailing from his hands.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  Borland paused for a minute, as if struggling to catch his breath.

  “Michael Childress just turned up,” he announced finally.

  “Thank god,” I exclaimed.

  “Turned up?” asked Michelle Goodwin nervously. “What do you mean turned up?”

  “Turned up where?” demanded Remminger.

  “Come with me,” replied Borland.

  CHAPTER 25

  Michael Childress lay on the floor of the cold room. His arms were folded peacefully across his chest. He was stark naked. He was also very definitely dead.

  “Somebody go get Stephen,” I commanded in the sharp voice of emergency. I whirled around to face Borland. “Did you touch anything?” I demanded.

  “I... oh... I don’t know.... I don’t think so....” stammered the protein chemist. His gruesome discovery had stripped him of all his usual bravura. “I must have, but only to make sure he was really dead.”

  “What else would he be, for Christ’s sake?” drawled Remminger, who seemed if not amused, then downright unaffected.

  “Why isn’t he wearing any clothes?” asked Michelle Goodwin in startled tones as she peered over my shoulder to get a better look at him.

  “What do you think those marks are on the floor?” inquired Remminger, ever the scientist.

  I hadn’t noticed them before. My eyes had been drawn to the bruising on his knees and his fingers. The digits were so bloody and raw, they looked like they’d been chewed by some kind of animal. But once she’d pointed them out I saw quite clearly what she was talking about. In the thin layer of frost that covered the metal floor of the cold room, on either side of the crystallographer’s body, were arcing marks—the kind we used to make as kids when we made angels in the snow.

  “Maybe he killed himself,” Michelle ventured uncertainly.

  It was as if we were all having separate conversations, everyone just saying the first thing that came to his mind, no one taking anything in or, for that matter, taking his eyes from Michael Childress’s naked corpse.

  “Are those his clothes there next to him?” I asked, looking at the disorderly pile of dark clothing.

  “What the hell is going on?” barked Stephen as he made his way down the hall toward us, with Carl Woodruff trailing close behind. “Everyone is supposed to be up in the lunchroom.”

  “It’s Childress,” I said, breaking away from the group and walking toward him. “It looks like he got locked in the freezer over the weekend.”

  “What? Is he okay?”

  “He’s dead,” I said.

  “He’s better than dead,” blurted Remminger. “He’s frozen like a Thanksgiving turkey.”

  The rest of us were momentarily struck mute by her inappropriate outburst. For a minute Michelle looked as if she was about to say something, but instead, she heaved a great sob and broke into tears. Borland put his arm around her shoulder to comfort her, but she shrugged it off and made a dash for the ladies’ room.

  When Stephen got there, we all stepped away from the cold room door so he could get a good look.

  “What are we going to do?” demanded Carl, looking like a man who’s just dropped a winning lottery ticket through a subway grating. “We’ve got the Takisawa people due to arrive any minute.”

  “Lou, go make sure Michelle is okay,” ordered Stephen, as if waking from a dream. “Tell her she’ll have to make the crystallography presentation. Let’s just hope he left the slides he was going to use somewhere where we can find them.”

  “Michelle knows where the slides are,” I said, not believing the conversation was actually happening. “Somehow I don’t think that’s what Carl is worried about.” Stephen raised his hand to silence me. Then he turned to address the others.

  “You all go back upstairs to the conference room and don’t say a word about this to anybody. Kate and I will figure out the best way to handle this. I’ll be upstairs in a minute.”

  The scientists left reluctantly, still stunned by what had happened. I thought the chances of them keeping what they’d seen to themselves were somewhere between zero and none. I lost no time in sharing my assessment with Stephen.

  “I don’t think you appreciate the delicacy of the situation, Kate,” he snapped. “The whole company is hanging by a thread, and now... this!”

  “ ‘This,’ as you so aptly put it, is a matter for the police. There is no way around it.”

  “There has to be some other way to handle it,” protested Stephen.

  “There is no way to ‘handle’ it at all. This is one of those unambiguous situations. All we can do is call the police. I’ll try to explain the situation to them and see if I can get them to be discreet....”

  “I don’t think that calling the police is necessarily in our best interests under the circumstances,” said Stephen calmly, pushing the cold-room door shut and adding his fingerprints to whatever else the crime lab was going to find there.

  I knew what he was thinking and I couldn’t believe it. How could anyone so intelligent even cont
emplate something so stupid? Suddenly my stomach felt exactly the same way it did when as a kid I’d crest the top of the first big hill on the roller coaster.

  “We have to call the police and we have to call them now,” I said reasonably.

  Stephen stepped into the modeling room, picked up the telephone that hung on the wall, and punched in a number.

  “Hello, security? This is Dr. Azorini. I want you to station someone at the elevator and the stairs to the basement. We have to make sure no one comes down here. We’ve had an equipment problem over the weekend and I don’t want anyone coming down until we’re sure there hasn’t been a radiation leak.” He hung up the receiver and turned to me. “See? That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

  “Stephen Anthony Azorini,” I said sternly. “This is not some situation you can finesse your way around. There is a dead man lying on the floor of this freezer and if we don’t call the police, we will be committing a felony.”

  “Do you really want the Takisawa people to pull into the parking lot and have the first thing they see be a half-dozen squad cars parked out front with their lights flashing? Do you have any idea what is riding on this visit? Do you?”

  “What you’re proposing to do could land you in jail,” I countered. “If you’re so afraid of what the Japanese will think, then call them in their limos right now and tell them you’re still having trouble with the electricity out here and have the scientists make their presentations downtown.” '

  “That’s not acceptable.”

  “Neither is failure to report a death to the proper authorities.”

  “I didn’t say we weren’t going to report it. I’m just asking what it would hurt if we waited?”

  “It would be wrong,” I said, frustrated that he would let his desperation to make a deal with Takisawa cloud his judgment, “and it will hurt you. Cover this up now and I guarantee it’ll come back and bite you. You don’t think the cops will be able to tell that the door to the cold room has already been opened? Or that Borland touched the body, for Christ’s sake? Do you think it’s all right for you to ask all of us to lie to the police? Even if we were all willing, how do you think you, Dave, Carl, Michelle, Lou, and I will keep our stories straight? The only way is to do the right thing and tell the truth.”