Bitter Business

by Hartzmark, Gini

  Her office was small, crammed with books and periodicals. Even though it was only forty degrees out, an ancient air conditioner clanked in the window. Behind her on the wall hung diplomas and a framed photograph of two pretty blond girls hugging a Labrador retriever. Beside them was a large poster of gunshot wounds made by bullets of various calibers, illustrated with color photographs.

  “I’m the pathologist who performed the autopsies on Cecilia Dobson and Dagny Cavanaugh,” she said, after

  Blades introduced us. “As you know, when the toxicology reports came back both women had lethal levels of cyanide in their blood.”

  “Were the levels similar in both cases?” I asked.

  “They were slightly higher in the Dobson woman, but I’d say both cases were in the same range—very high.... Cyanide poisoning is actually quite difficult to detect on autopsy,” Dr. Gordon continued. “The signs are easy to miss. The blood that normally pools in the chest cavity after death is a very bright, cherry red in the case of death from cyanide poisoning. But you also see that same red color after a body has been refrigerated for more than a few hours. Unfortunately, last week we were very busy and both bodies were stored for some time before autopsy. You may also have heard about the scent of bitter almonds being present in the case of cyanide poisoning. The smell is much less pronounced in real life than it is in fiction, and indeed, not everyone can smell it. There’s usually only one person in any medical examiner’s office who’s good at picking up that smell. In our office that’s Dr. Margolick, but last week we had two cases going in the decomp room, and to be perfectly honest, it would be a miracle if anyone could smell anything else.” She clasped her hands on the desk in front of her like a schoolteacher. “So, Detective Blades tells me that you were present at the time of both deaths. That’s quite a coincidence.”

  “Not really. I’m the attorney for Superior Plating and Specialty Chemicals, the company where both women worked. I had a meeting with Dagny Cavanaugh the day that Cecilia Dobson died. The two of us were meeting in a conference room in another part of the plant. We went to pick up some figures from Dagny’s office. When we got there we found Cecilia on the floor.”

  “And she wasn’t breathing when you found her?”

  “No. I also checked for a pulse. There was none. Now, of course, I realize that she was probably already dead when I started CPR.”

  “Yes,” Dr. Gordon agreed matter-of-factly, “with the level of cyanide we found, I’d be surprised if death didn’t proceed very quickly. If she’d taken a lower dose, you’d see a much more gradual progression of dizziness, gasping for breath, headache, nausea, and vomiting. Then, when blood pressure dropped, there’d be a period when the victim would experience unconsciousness and convulsions. But at the level of concentration that we detected in both victims, I’d be surprised if either of the two women was conscious for more than a minute or two after being poisoned.”

  “Dagny Cavanaugh was alive when I got there,” I said, suddenly struck by the realization that if I’d gotten out of the car and gone looking for her a few minutes earlier, I might have found her... found her doing what? Taking poison?

  “There’s nothing you could have done,” Dr. Gordon assured me, as if reading my mind. “With the amount of cyanide that we found in her bloodstream, even if you’d immediately administered amyl nitrate—which is the first part of the antidote—I doubt you could have saved her.”

  “But that means she must have taken the poison right before I got there.”

  “Yes. That’s why I wanted to speak to you. I was wondering whether you noticed anything in the room. It was an office of some kind, I believe?”

  “It was her office—Dagny Cavanaugh’s.”

  “Did you notice anything unusual? Especially anything that might have struck you as being the same both times. A smell of some kind perhaps?”

  “No,” I said, trying hard to remember. “I honestly don’t recall anything out of the ordinary.” Except for the bodies on the floor, I thought to myself.

  “Was there anything to eat or drink visible in the room either time?”

  I thought before I answered. “No. But I can’t say that I would have noticed the first time. With Cecilia Dobson, it was all a blur. I was so focused on trying to resuscitate her. I also went to the hospital with her, so I didn’t have that much time to notice anything in the room. After Dagny died, I stayed at her office, but I honestly didn’t see anything other than what you’d expect.”

  “A cup of coffee? A glass of water perhaps?”

  “I didn’t notice,” I replied, chafing with frustration. “Do you think that maybe the poison was in something she drank?”

  Dr. Gordon pursed her lips, raised her eyebrows, and let out a long sigh.

  “Frankly, Ms. Millholland, I don’t know what to think. The stomach contents of both women have been tested for cyanide. In both cases the tests came back negative. Detective Blades will tell you, when I do an autopsy I’m very thorough. I go over every inch of skin with a magnifying lens, and in both cases I found no cuts or abrasions and certainly nothing that even remotely resembled a needle puncture. I’ve got to be honest with you. I have two women who without a doubt died from a lethal level of cyanide in their bloodstreams. But I have absolutely no idea how that poison came to be in their bodies.”

  21

  I asked Joe Blades if he’d be able to drop me at the office. He asked if I’d mind if we made a stop on the way at Superior Plating and Specialty Chemicals. He explained that he had some questions he wanted to ask me about the way things were when Cecilia Dobson and Dagny Cavanaugh died. Besides, he added smoothly, Elliott Abelman was going to be there. Leave it to a homicide detective to play Cupid at a crime scene.

  The Superior Plating parking lot was empty save for the crime-lab van and a couple of Chevy Cavaliers, both identical to the one Blades was driving. We followed the sound of voices into the administrative wing of the building. Just outside the door of Dagny’s office a crime-lab technician was taking down the yellow police-line-do-not-cross tape, wadding it up in his hand as he yanked it from the door frame. Inside, it looked like a cop convention. Elliott Abelman stood in the middle of the room deep in conversation with a burly man with a salt-and-pepper mustache and dark eyes that looked like they’d seen it all.

  “What the hell do you expect?” complained the man.

  “No matter what we do, the physical evidence is going to be fucked up. Hell, this room wasn’t even sealed until after the second death, and even then the paramedics probably trampled anything that might have been of use to us. And if that wasn’t enough, I just finished talking to the janitor, who tells me that a cleaning crew went through here every night as usual until the Cavanaugh broad turned up dead.”

  “Well, they sure as hell didn’t do much,” someone else observed from across the room, a heavyset man in a crumpled raincoat who was examining something in his latex-gloved hand. “We’re still finding the Dobson woman’s prints all over everything today.”

  “So what’s the good word from the delectable Dr. Gordon?” demanded the plainclothesman with Elliott as he spotted Blades.

  “Nothing new. They both definitely died of cyanide poisoning, but nobody has idea one how it got into them.” In the bright light of the office Joe Blades looked, if anything, more exhausted than he had earlier that morning. His skin was so pale the freckles seemed to fairly leap off of it. “Kate Millholland,” he said, turning to acknowledge me, “I’d like you to meet Tyrone Hackner, the department’s ace physical-evidence expert and resident curmudgeon. Elliott Abelman you already know.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” Hackner grumbled, enfolding my hand briefly in his enormous paw. From Elliott I received a wink and a smile.

  “Miss Millholland is the witness I was telling you about. She’s the one who was present at the time of both deaths.”

  “Okay, young lady,” Hackner rumbled, “then what I want to hear from you is how the bodies were lying when
you saw them.”

  “They were both facedown, with their heads toward the desk—”

  “I know that. What I’m curious about is the angle.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Tyrone Hackner looked me over, no doubt assessing my flannel trousers and cashmere pullover for what he was about to ask.

  “Could you get down on the floor and show me the exact position in which Cecilia Dobson was lying?”

  “You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Elliott interjected quickly. Blades flashed him a look, but it passed so quickly I didn’t have time to decipher it.

  “That’s okay,” I replied. I was willing to do anything that might help. I walked toward the desk, gauging the distance, and then got down on the floor. “I think this is where she was lying.” I turned over on my stomach and arranged my arms and legs. “She was wearing a short skirt and it was hitched up over her left hip. Her underwear was showing.”

  “Any evidence of sexual assault?” Hackner asked Blades.

  “No. Not in either case,” Blades replied.

  The rough nap of the carpet pressed into my face. I smelled the acrid stench of old vomit. Once the police had sealed the room, no one must have been allowed in to clean. When all of this was over they’d probably have to replace the carpet.

  “Are you sure that’s the direction she was facing?” Hackner demanded.

  “Yes,” I replied. Elliott got down on his haunches and held out his hand to help me up. “Why is it so important?” I asked, brushing the lint from my sweater.

  “It’s not so much a question of where they ended up,” Blades answered, “but where they came from.” Tyrone Hackner was already out in the hall giving orders to the crime-lab techs. “From your initial statement it was clear that both women were trying to get to the desk when they collapsed—presumably to use the telephone to call for help. But up until now we’d all assumed that they’d come into the office from the hall. Assuming that Dr. Gordon is correct and only a very short time elapsed between the time the poison entered their bloodstreams and the moment they collapsed, it makes a big difference in narrowing down where they might have been poisoned. From what you just showed us, it looks like both women were coming out of the bathroom, not the hall.” Two evidence technicians appeared with their gear and went into the small bathroom at the end of the office opposite Dagny’s desk. I hadn’t noticed it before. From the open door I could see them methodically taking every item from inside the medicine chest above the sink and putting them, one by one, into individual glassine bags.

  “It’s too bad,” Elliott remarked. “From what Tyrone says, the bathroom is the one place the cleaning crew actually did anything. When they dusted for prints, the only ones they found were Dagny’s.”

  “So you think the poison was in the bathroom?” I demanded.

  “It’s as good a place as any to start looking,” Blades replied, stroking his beard. “Do you want to show Kate where the bulk chemicals are stored, Elliott?”

  “Sure,” said Elliott as his friend the detective tossed him a bunch of keys.

  “You don’t have to worry about touching anything,” said Blades as we went out the door. “We’re all done dusting for prints.”

  Elliott led me out the door and down the hall.

  “How was your grandmother’s birthday party?” he asked.

  “Very nice.”

  We walked through the reception room and through the doors that Eugene Cavanaugh had first taken me through on my tour of the plant. On the other side of the wall that separated the manufacturing floor from the administrative offices, Elliott stopped at what looked like the door to a broom closet. It was covered with the same crummy plastic paneling as the rest of the wall and had a cheap brass doorknob, the kind with a lock in the middle.

  “Anybody with either a screwdriver or half a brain could get into this thing,” he commented as he slid the key into the lock.

  “Any sign that somebody tried to break into it?”

  “None. They lifted a bunch of prints, but they haven’t ID’d them yet.”

  “In that case, I guess the question is who has the key?”

  “According to Joe, there were only four keys and the only people who had them were Cavanaughs—Jack, Philip, Eugene, and the deceased.”

  “You mean Dagny.”

  “Yes. Dagny had a key.”

  “Are any of them missing?”

  “Joe’s going to check on it.”

  Elliott turned the handle of the door and held it wide so that I could see inside. He switched on the light. The whole thing was about the size of a large coat closet, with dozens of brightly colored plastic containers, each clearly labeled poison in three languages.

  “The yellow ones are chromic acid, the blue ones are the sodium cyanide.” He pried the lid off one of the blue ones. It was filled with white granules that might have been sugar.

  “Do I have to stand back or anything?” I asked. “What if you breathe it in?”

  “You can’t. Not unless you mixed it with an acid and turned it into a gas. Like this it’s not dangerous. The security guard says the only reason he thinks they keep it locked up is so that somebody doesn’t accidentally mistake it for sugar.”

  “So how much of this would it take to kill someone?”

  “According to what Dr. Gordon told Joe, a quarter of a teaspoon, maybe less.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Have you seen enough?”

  I nodded. Elliott put the top back on the container, switched off the light, closed the door, and relocked it. We stood facing each other across the narrow and dimly lit hall, but there was no trace of the previous night’s electricity. Elliott’s features were stern—all business. Both of us were preoccupied with the riddle of the poison.

  “I assume they’re going to test all of the stuff they’re taking from the medicine chest,” I said. “Perhaps the poison was in some sort of medicine, eyedrops or a nasal spray. Might that not account for the fact that the stomach contents of both women had turned up negative for the poison? How long will it be before they have the results?”

  “My guess is a week or ten days. I’m sure Joe’ll do what he can to speed things up. You should see if Jack Cavanaugh has any juice he can use to pressure them into moving on this. But between you and me there’s only so much we’re going to be able to do. The way things are right now we’re in a catch-22 situation. So far the medical examiner’s office has pended both deaths and I know for a fact that won’t change until they’ve categorically ruled out the chance that both women were poisoned by accident. Unfortunately, as far as the Chicago Police Department is concerned, a pended case is not a murder. And if it’s not a murder, then it doesn’t go onto the homicide squad’s list of open files and Joe Blades doesn’t get taken out of the rotation to investigate it. It’s up to the primary detective to investigate pending cases on his own. Believe me, Joe’s a good cop and he’s going to work it as hard as he can. But tonight he’s going to report for his shift and the phone’s going to ring and it’s going to be a fresh murder. And after that it’s going to be a steady stream of shootings, stabbings, overdoses, and autoerotic strangulations.”

  “So what are you trying to tell me?” I asked, knowing the answer already.

  “I’m trying to tell you that the way things stand right now, unless we do something about it, this case is going to slip right through the cracks.”

  Declining a halfhearted invitation for lunch, I had Elliott drop me a few blocks from my office. Under the circumstances, I felt like I needed the walk to clear my head.

  It had been sunny when I’d gone for a run that morning, but that seemed like a lifetime ago. By now it had clouded over, and in the permanent shade of the office buildings on LaSalle Street there was a raw chill in the air. I shoved my hands deep into the pockets of my raincoat and pulled out the two cigars I’d bought for Daniel Babbage. I held them on my palm and looked at them for a minute. I closed my finge
rs tightly around them until I slam-dunked them into a filthy trash barrel on the comer of Monroe Street.

  Callahan Ross was in its usual state of Sunday somnolence. On Sundays even the biggest grinds could be counted upon to stay at home, since no partner worth impressing ever crossed the threshold unless in the throes of a particularly heated transaction. Which, of course, is what made Sunday my favorite day of the week for getting work done. I loved the feeling of having the entire firm to myself. So I was surprised in my journey down the dark and silent corridor to see the light on in Daniel Babbage’s office.

  I don’t know who I expected to see, but when I leaned into the open doorway to take a peek, it was Daniel’s secretary, Madeline, who spun around with a small shriek of surprise. She was dressed in a pantsuit of lavender polyester and her hair was varnished into the same tortured bouffant that had greeted Daniel every day at the office. The only difference was that today her stem features were blotched and puffy from crying.

  She had, she explained, been with him when he died. There had also been a sister who’d driven in from Naperville at his bedside as well. I usually try to steer clear of maudlin sentimentality, but I confess that I was glad to learn that Daniel, a self-proclaimed solitary in life, hadn’t spent his last hours alone.

  “How many years did you work for him?” I asked as she dabbed the comers of her eyes with a lacy handkerchief that she fished from somewhere within her ample bosom.

  “It’d be thirty years this June. I came to work for the firm in the typing pool straight out of high school. In those days the firm used to look for girls from smaller towns downstate—they thought we weren’t as coarse as the city girls, and would make better wife material. Back then, it was quite usual for a young lawyer to marry one of the secretaries. It was almost expected.

  “So I came up here from Savoy—that’s my hometown—and took a job with my friend Lucille. We lived in a ladies-only residence on Belmont, with no gentlemen visitors allowed beyond the front parlor. You girls have no idea how much the world has changed in the past thirty years.