Fatal Reaction

by Hartzmark, Gini

  Old man Takisawa’s shock at what Stephen had to say was so convincing that if I hadn’t known better, I might have thought it was genuine. Oh no, he assured us, there had obviously been some sort of miscommunication. With his poor command of English he had obviously misstated his company’s position.

  From there it was all downhill. By the end of the day we had hammered out an agreement in principle that was everything Stephen had wanted. Once it was signed, Azor Pharmaceuticals would gain a powerful ally, someone who could take ZK-501 to market and yet would leave him in charge of his own company. Better still, he would have money enough to see the project through to completion, to have a chance to meet his most ambitious goals.

  We sent the Takisawa people back to the Nikko in a celebratory mood. Once we closed the doors on their limos, Stephen and I sat down to go over the terms of the deal one last time. After I was sure nothing had been overlooked, I could begin drafting the text of the final, binding agreement that would be signed by Stephen and Takisawa before the Takisawa delegation returned to Japan—-the one I looked forward to jamming down Jim Cassidy’s and the other board members’ throats.

  Once we had finished, Stephen was expansive, practically euphoric. His earlier displeasure with me was completely forgotten, erased by delight in having gotten what he’d wanted. While there was no denying that I, too, was pleased about the deal, I found myself wishing I could let my irritation with Stephen go so easily.

  When everyone else left for dinner, I began work on the agreement. Frankly, I was grateful for the chance to miss yet another business dinner, especially this one. Mother had arranged for a night out at A1 Capone’s Steak House, an infinitely tacky beef-and-brew place on Kinzie that featured an animatronic show about Chicago’s gangster past, complete with a reenactment of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.

  Considering Stephen’s family connections, I told my mother that I thought the outing was in exceptionally bad taste.

  “Of course,” she’d replied cattily, “that’s why the Japanese will absolutely adore it.”

  I worked happily for hours, culling the relevant language from the various drafts of the proposal and the notes I had made during the course of the day. I hoped to have a solid draft before I left, which I planned on dropping at Stephen’s apartment on my way home. Judging from his mood I was pretty sure he’d try to get me to stay. I figured I’d cross that bridge when I came to it.

  I worked steadily, completely absorbed by the task at hand and oblivious to everything around me. When I finally looked up I was surprised to see it was nearly ten o’clock. I decided to stretch my legs and get a Diet Coke. It felt good to get up, but it felt even better to make progress. With all the ups and downs of the past few weeks it was hard to believe we could have a signed agreement in less than twenty-four hours. As I made my way to the lunchroom I told myself that Danny would have been proud.

  Standing in the neon glow of the coke machine I fished quarters from my pocket. A crashing noise and the sound of a pair of male voices startled me. The labs in this part of the building were dedicated to the ZK-501 project and all of those investigators were supposed to be enjoying their scenic trip into Chicago’s past. I stooped to retrieve my can of soda from the chute at the bottom of the machine and looked out into the hall. I hadn’t slept decently in days and I was nervous as a cat.

  I stepped out into the hall, but there was no one there, only a big hazardous-waste container, a dumpster on wheels, all by itself in the middle of the corridor. It was just the men from the biohazard company making their rounds, emptying the hundreds of biohazard containers, large and small, that were scattered throughout the building.

  As I popped open the top of my can two men emerged from Lou Remminger’s lab wheeling another, albeit slightly smaller container. Watching them in their orange coveralls reminded me of Danny’s apartment.

  For a moment no bells went off, no blinking lights, no loud cries of “Eureka!”, no shouts of “Kate is a genius!” But suddenly I knew what I should have known all along, what should have been obvious from the first day I’d come to work at Azor. If my mind hadn’t been so cluttered with thoughts about deals and drugs and dinner plans, it would have been glaringly, blindingly obvious.

  Quite simply, I looked at the hazardous-waste containers that could be found in practically every room of the building, and I knew exactly what Danny’s killer had done with the cassette tape and the bloodstained clothes that had been removed from his apartment.

  CHAPTER 28

  No doubt the men from the disposal company thought I was crazy when I started grilling them about their handling of the containers. I especially wanted to know how often the dumpsters were emptied and where the stuff that came out of them was taken. When I asked them if they ever looked to see what was inside the bins, they were certain I was out of my mind. They assured me there was no telling what was inside the containers— anything from radioactive materials to dog cadavers. Of course, I thought to myself, that was the inherent beauty of the thing.

  Mentally kicking myself for not having figured it out sooner, I went back to my office and immediately called Elliott Abelman. While he wasn’t prepared to start handing out hosannahs quite yet, he did agree that the idea made sense. He promised he’d try to get in touch with the biohazard company first thing in the morning.

  He also told me he’d just gotten off the phone with Joe Blades. Apparently Michael Childress’s car had turned up in a satellite lot at O’Hare airport. Whoever had left it there had taken the ticket from the lot with them so that there was no way of knowing when it had been parked there. Also, he assured me, I would be happy to know that in light of Michael Childress’s death the Chicago PD had agreed to reopen the investigation into the death of Danny Wohl.

  I hung up the phone and tried to force myself to get back to work. Even if my theory about the bloody clothes was correct, it was likely to remain just that—a theory. I had no idea how many different companies, hospitals, and universities this particular biohazard company was contracted to, how many hundreds or thousands of dumpsters were emptied who knows where every week. The chances of being able to find the missing cassette among all that hazardous waste, even if we could find somebody willing to look, had to be close to zero.

  Somebody had been very clever. Somebody, even when he was improvising, had been able to cover his tracks very well. I felt discouraged and outwitted, and I didn’t much like it.

  And then it occurred to me. If Danny was killed by someone at Azor then whoever had used the biohazard disposal containers to dump the bloody evidence would have had to come back to the labs to do it. He’d be anxious to get rid of the evidence as soon as possible, which meant he’d most likely have come out to Azor on the Sunday that Danny had died. Why not? People came and went at all hours and the killer wouldn’t want to risk keeping the incriminating evidence any longer than was necessary. Besides, if he waited to bring it to work on Monday, there would only be more people around. All I had to do was look at the videotape from the security cameras in the lobby from that Sunday.

  I was so excited about this plan that I immediately went upstairs to talk to the security guard. To my dismay I found Paramilitary Bill on duty. He was sitting at the security console, frowning with great concentration at something he was reading. When I got closer, I saw that it was a computer printout of some kind.

  “How long do you keep the tapes from the security cameras?” I asked, pointing to the lenses mounted high up in the corners just below the ceiling.

  “That’s classified,” he replied promptly. I examined his face for some indication that he was kidding and found none.

  “I need to see the tape from two Sundays ago,” I continued, in no mood to put up with any psycho bullshit. “Where are they kept?”

  “I can’t show them to you without a direct order from my supervisor.”

  “And who is that?”

  “Mr. Goodnall.”

  “Is he working tonight?�
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  “No ma’am. He’s on days.”

  “Then who is his boss?”

  “Excuse me, ma’am, but I don’t rightly understand the question.” Apparently Bill was easily stumped.

  “Do you think it might be safe to say Dr. Azorini is Mr. Goodnall’s boss?” I continued, trying very hard not to lose my temper. Bill might be a borderline moron, but he was a card-carrying-militia-member kind of moron—not to mention armed.

  “Dr. Azorini is the president of the company,” replied Paramilitary Bill uncertainly.

  “Now, Bill, I don’t know if you listen to office gossip, but you’ve seen Dr. Azorini and me leaving together enough nights to have formed your own opinion about whether the stories that we are sleeping together are true. Dr. Azorini is downtown right now at a very important dinner for our Japanese guests. I have no problem calling him at the restaurant and having him get on the phone to give you permission to show me those tapes. But I’d think it would probably be safer in terms of career advancement if you just told me where the tapes are kept.”

  “In a closet in the back of the guards’ room,” he replied, apparently convinced.

  “Do you have a key?” I asked.

  “Right here,” he said, opening the cabinet underneath the desk to display a peg board hung with rows of keys, all neatly labeled.

  “Could you please see if you could find the tape from two Sundays ago for me?”

  “I’m not allowed to leave my post,” he ventured. Oh shit, I thought, here we go again.

  “What if I stay here while you go and look?” I offered sweetly. Bill thought that one over for a while and finally agreed.

  While I waited for Paramilitary Bill to fetch the tape, I watched the bank of video screens mounted in the console in front of me. Every thirty seconds the images changed, flicking from one set of empty corridors to another, covering the entire building every four minutes or so. I remembered what Elliott had once told me about the limits of video surveillance. While the presence of cameras may act as a deterrent and the tapes themselves provide evidence, their effectiveness in stopping crimes in progress is very limited. The simple truth is that no one can stand to watch nothing for very long. They’d done studies where they’d sent naked women running in front of the camera. The women had gone completely unnoticed by the guards whose brains had been blitzed out by the sheer boredom of monitoring the screens.

  “Did you say last Sunday or the Sunday before last?” Bill asked, reappearing a few minutes later.

  “The Sunday before,” I replied.

  “That’s what I thought you said.”

  “Did you find it?”

  “No, ma’am,” he said, scratching his skinhead haircut. “The box is right there on the shelf where it belongs, but it’s empty.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes ma’am. I looked real good.” Now that I’d gone through the trouble of exerting my authority he seemed afraid that he was in some kind of trouble.

  “Not to worry, Bill,” I reassured him. “It’s no big deal. If it’s not there, it’s not there.”

  “I think it’s a conspiracy,” confided Bill seriously. “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Someone’s been messing with the security data.”

  “Messing with it how?”

  “I’ve just finished printing up the swipe-card log for the day so it’s up-to-date for Harry, who’s scheduled to relieve me at midnight. But there’s something wrong with it.”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “You know how you have to use your swipe card to sign in and out of the building?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, everybody’s swipe card has a number assigned to it. Dr. Azorini, his number is 001, I guess because he’s the company’s number-one guy.” At this Bill laughed, amused by his own joke. “Then take me, my number is 214.”

  “Does that mean that every time you swipe your card the computer prints your number next to the time?” I offered.

  “That’s right. That’s right.”

  “So what’s been going on?”

  “Well, I think somebody’s been fiddling with the numbers.”

  “Fiddling how?” I demanded.

  “You know how Dr. Childress got found in the freezer yesterday. Well, his number was 321. I remember that because the cops wanted to see the whole log for last Friday— you know, the day they shut the building down—and they were looking for the time that number 321 swiped out, on account of it being Childress.”

  “Yes. That might turn out to be very important,” I said, realizing for the first time just how important. Whoever had killed Childress had had to make sure it looked like he had left the building, otherwise there would have been people looking high and low for him. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of this before.

  “But that’s why I think there’s somebody playing tricks on me,” continued Bill doggedly. “See here on the sheet for today, clear as day, ID number 321 logged in at seven-sixteen.”

  I looked at the sheet. Bill was right. It was there just as plain as day, ID number 321.

  “There must be some mistake,” I said.

  “That’s just what I was sitting here thinking when you came. But I’ll be darned if I can think of how they did it.”

  “Did number 321 log out yet today?” I asked, as a terrifying idea occurred to me.

  “No. I checked. That’s why I think it’s some kind of trick. There aren’t more than a dozen people left in the building this time of night, counting you and me, and most all of them’s up in the virology labs.”

  “And the building’s locked down for the night?” I asked him, trying to keep the urgency out of my voice. “The front door is the only way in or out?”

  “There’s the emergency exits in the basement, but there’s an alarm that goes off when you open one of them.”

  “Listen, Bill,” I said. “This could be serious. I want you to do something.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I want you to be sure to not let anybody leave the building until I tell you.”

  “I don’t think I get you....”

  “I’m going to go back to my office and make a phone call. In the meantime, I want you to make sure no one leaves the building.”

  “What am I supposed to tell them?” he protested.

  “Tell them it’s Dr. Azorini’s orders. It shouldn’t be for very long. Just until the police come.”

  “The police?” Bill demanded, alarm creeping into his voice. I was secretly amused to see his tough-guy act begin to evaporate at the merest hint of actual trouble.

  “It’s just a precaution. But first we’ve got to find out who’s been playing these tricks with Dr. Childress’s ID.”

  Quickly I made my way back to my office and rooted in the drawer for Detective Rankin’s card, the one he’d given me with his number on it. Whoever answered the phone informed me that Detective Rankin was unavailable. When I asked about Detective Masterson he told me that he was out on a call. Then I called Elliott and left a message with his answering service. I thought about what I had said to Paramilitary Bill about summoning the police, but now with the phone in my hand I found I had no one else to call. While I thought I had a good chance of being able to explain to one of the detectives assigned to investigate Childress’s murder my fears about his killer being in the building, the prospect of making the same point to the police dispatcher seemed hideously impractical.

  And yet there was someone in the building who had used Michael Childress’s ID to get into the building that morning. The only trouble was that I had no way of knowing who that person might be. Briefly, I considered setting off the fire alarm just to see who left the building, but I knew it was hooked up to a halon system that automatically dumped fire-retardant gas throughout the building. Halon puts out fires much more quickly than water does, but it is also much more expensive. Stephen complained that every false alarm cost him fifteen thousand dollars, but with so man
y valuable experiments underway in the building the halon system was essential.

  I figured it couldn’t hurt to take a walk through the building. Even though I had no way of knowing whether my suspicions were correct, my curiosity would not allow me to sit still.

  I took the service stairs to the basement and found myself wondering whether it was really true that the only way out of the building was through the front door even at this time of night. What about the men from the biohazard company? Surely they came in and out through the loading dock with their containers. How did they get in and out? And what about on Friday when everyone was frantically working to get the building ready for the electricity to be cut off? The door to the loading dock had been open most of the afternoon as tracks had come to pick up animals and the freezer unit was delivered. No doubt there would have been ample opportunity for someone to have slipped in or out unobserved. That, of course, was the trouble.

  The trouble also was that everyone who worked in this building was so wrapped up in his own little world, in his own submicroscopic sliver of the universe, that he was completely oblivious to what was actually going on around him.

  I took the shortcut past the mechanical room and the machine shop and turned the corner behind the animal labs. The animals, now all returned to their proper environment, scratched and snuffled in their darkened cages. As I passed by the cold rooms I couldn’t help but suppress a shudder. Both were now padlocked from the outside—a compromise Elliott had worked out with the police rather than sealing them off with crime-scene tape.

  Glancing down the hall I was surprised to see a pool of light spilling out of the aquarium window of the crystallography lab. I told myself not to be alarmed. No doubt Michelle had left the light on by mistake—either that or one of the cleaning people who’d gone through earlier had forgotten to turn it off. I’d seen Michelle talking to Stephen earlier as they’d waited for Borland and the others to join them for dinner.