Fatal Reaction (33 page)

While television may have given us the myth of the raging pursuit and the high-speed chase, I knew that the real business of solving murders was much more leisurely. After all, by the time the homicide cops show up, the bad guys are long gone. Not only that, but the victim sure as hell isn’t going anywhere.

The two detectives’ names were Rankin and Masterson. Rankin was the taller of the two, with a whippet build and a buzz haircut. He seemed to be acting as the primary investigator. They ignored me and immediately made a beeline for the uniformed officers who were busy questioning Borland. From what I could see, the protein chemist did not appear to be enjoying himself at all.

Elliott, having no doubt hit the worst of the rush-hour traffic, arrived a few minutes later. I was ridiculously glad to see him. He came up and put his arm around me, and I must admit, I clung to him.

“You’ve got to stop killing people, Kate,” he whispered into my hair. “I think the cops are beginning to catch on.” I made a face and pulled away from him. “So Michael Childress turned up dead. No wonder he missed his plane. Any chance of it being suicide?”

“If it is, he hid in the cold room before it was taped shut on Friday afternoon, broke the emergency release handle, took off all his clothes, and then lay down to make snow angels before he died.”

“You didn’t tell me he was naked.”

“I was saving the best for last.”

“Any chance he got locked in there by accident?”

“I guess it’s possible. No one would think to look for him because we all assumed he was on his way to Boston, but two different people checked the room before it was sealed up.”

“How do they keep track of people?”

“It’s a swipe-card system. You have to run your ID card through a magnetic card reader when you enter or exit the building. The information is automatically logged into the computer. Friday afternoon before they locked down the building, the security guards were supposed to make sure that every person who had entered the building that day had also exited.”

“Maybe they made a mistake.”

“Maybe they did,” I said. “Do you think there’s some connection with Danny Wohl’s death? I mean, you start poking around Michael Childress’s past, and two days later he turns up dead. That would be quite a coincidence.”

“You realize this means giving up Galloway to the cops.”

“I can’t.”

“Then I’m going to have to do it.”

“Blades is going to be pissed at me, isn’t he?”

“I’m assuming that right now Blades is the least of your worries. Why don’t you tell me what it is you want me to do?”

For the rest of the day Elliott ran interference with the police. Stephen’s assistant Rachel acted as his handmaiden, spending the day slipping discreetly in and out of the presentation room delivering whispered summonses. By this method the detectives were able to interview everyone who’d been involved in finding the body or who’d worked with Childress without attracting the attention of the Japanese.

I ended up spending almost two hours with the detectives, telling them not only what I knew about the discovery of the body, but about Azor in general and the rough outline of the deal with Takisawa. Throughout it all, they were not only courteous and professional but, I came to realize, very sharp. While their questioning of me was painless, it was so thorough that I felt physically drained when it was over.

I went upstairs to rejoin the group in the conference room and sent Stephen downstairs to take my place. He spent most of Michelle Goodwin’s presentation being questioned, which was not an entirely bad thing. I doubted that even under the best of circumstances Michelle was particularly good at the lectern, but today, struggling with Childress’s slides, she seemed painfully bad.

Things seemed to pick up somewhat after lunch, with Stephen moderating a question-and-answer session between Takisawa’s scientists and his own. I took the opportunity to slip away to look for Elliott. I found him alone in the modeling room, poring over a computer printout of Friday’s card swipes.

“Where are the cops?” I asked from the doorway. “Gone for now,” he replied, looking up with a smile. “You look tired.”

“I feel dead. Speaking of dead, where’s Childress?”

“They took him away hours ago. I spoke to Joe. He’s going to see what he can do about getting Julia Gordon to do the post. He says he figures she owes him after how Danny Wohl’s autopsy was handled.”

“What do the cops think?”

“They’re pros, which means they’re not saying. But I think it’s pretty obvious they’ve ruled out suicide. The emergency escape handle looks like it was deliberately tampered with. The cuts and bruises on his fingers and hands correspond to bloody fingerprints on the inside of the door where it looks like he tried to claw his way out.”

“Any chance he died someplace else and his body was dumped in the freezer in order to astonish us when we opened the door?”

“It seems unlikely.”

“I don’t know,” I mused. “The whole thing is just too bizarre.”

“You know what puzzles me is this computer log. Granted, it’s difficult to decipher because there are so many different individual entries. With three-hundred-plus people working in this building, it’s amazing the number of times people come in and out. Still, I’ve gone through it item by item twice now and everybody’s accounted for. Childress arrived at eight fifty-six in the morning, and he swiped out at three thirty-two in the afternoon.”

“Does anybody remember seeing him leave?”

“No. But the guard who was doing duty at the security desk said that wasn’t necessarily unusual, especially if he didn’t have a briefcase or any other kind of bag that needed to be checked out.”

“What time was his flight to Boston supposed to leave?”

“Five-ten.”

“That’s cutting it close. I would have guessed he was the kind of guy who liked to get to the airport early. I know things were sort of crazy with the big breakthrough in the crystallography lab, but everyone was pretty well out of there by quarter to two. So I guess the question is, what was he doing between one forty-five and three thirty-two?”

“Well, for one thing he called my operative and told her all about his big discovery.”

“What time?”

“She doesn’t remember exactly, but she says she thinks somewhere around two.”

“Maybe there were other people he called as well.”

“The cops’ll subpoena the company’s phone records if they think it’s important.”

“Do you?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. But I’ll tell you a couple of things they’re definitely going to want to know.”

“What?”

He ticked them off on his fingers. “They’re going to want to know what happened to his car. It’s not in the lot and it’s not at his house. They found his plane ticket to Boston in the pocket of his pants, but so far his keys haven’t turned up. They’re also going to want to know what happened to his ID card. They looked everywhere for it, and it didn’t turn up.”

“Anything else?”

“Yeah. They’re going to want to know why he was naked.”

CHAPTER 26

Mother was unable to join us at the Everest Room for dinner that night. The Art Institute was having their quarterly trustees meeting. It had been scheduled months ago, and Mother had no choice—they were voting on the budget, and she had to go. As I drove downtown to the restaurant I could not remember a time, not even when I was a little girl, when I felt like I needed her more.

I told myself it was just lack of sleep. After all, I’d worked on cases, some of which had dragged on for months, that were so emotionally difficult they made finding a dead body in the freezer look like a harmless April Fools’ joke. Staying unruffled was what I got paid the big bucks for.

There was no denying I was irritated with myself. I’d had clients throw furniture, break down in tears, and start throwing punches—and I’d never taken any of it personally. After all, when you came right down to it, it was always the client’s ass that was on the line—not mine. But as much as I’d believed I would be able to keep our business and professional lives separate, I had to confess I was feeling not only furious with Stephen, but hurt as well.

Stephen hadn’t spoken to me since our argument that morning outside the cold room. Not one single word. At lunch he’d taken pains to ignore me and when I’d come to his office after we’d shoveled the Japanese into their limos and sent them on their way, he’d actually gotten up and closed the door in my face. This was petty, junior-high-school stuff, but after what I’d done for him—-coming to work on the Takisawa deal full time, trying to squeeze in work for my clients at night and on the weekend, putting myself into my mother’s debt in order to enlist her help on his behalf—I felt I deserved better.

On the passenger seat beside me was the folder with Mother’s explicit instructions regarding the night’s arrangements, including a copy of the contract with the restaurant spelling out the menu, and a seating chart she’d faxed over to Cheryl, who’d in turn faxed it out to Oak Brook for me. I was hoping the arrangements had all been carried out according to plan. Otherwise I was going to have to give Mother’s recipe for catharsis— chewing out the catering staff—a try.

I pulled up to One Financial Plaza, the gleaming home of the Mid-America Commodity Exchange, behind the Board of Trade Building on LaSalle Street. Ignoring the bemused expression of the valet at the sight of my car— this was Bentley and Testa Rossa territory—I handed over my keys and took the exterior escalator to the entrance of the building. Walking through the lobby to the bank of express elevators that would whisk me to the fortieth floor, I could not fault my mother’s judgment for choosing the Everest for dinner. Perched atop the city’s financial center, it not only commanded one of the most spectacular city views to be found outside a tourist observation deck, but the entire restaurant had been conceived of to please the palates—and egos—of powerful men.

The manager met me as I stepped off the elevator. One tuxedoed waiter took my coat while another offered me a glass of champagne from a silver tray with the chef’s compliments. The restaurant was elegant and masculine without being clubby. Crystal chandeliers, white damask tablecloths, and the stiff formality of the waiters were offset by the whimsical faux leopard-skin carpeting. The food, I knew from experience, was uniformly excellent— adventurous but seldom daring—like the financial high rollers who were the mainstay of their clientele.

Mother’s instructions had been carried out to the letter. A long table had been set up along the west side of the lower dining room commanding a prime view of the city lights spread out like a jeweled blanket beneath us. The table had been decorated with the orchids that had caused Cheryl so much grief, arranged in very tall bud vases so that they would seem to bloom above the heads of seated diners.

From my folder I pulled the stack of place cards the calligrapher had prepared and consulted the seating chart Mother had prepared for me. At first I thought she was playing some kind of elaborate joke—either that or she’d been drinking. According to her diagram, she had old man Takisawa sitting between Lou Remminger and Dave Borland. Hiroshi was at the far end of the table between Stephen and Childress. I quickly pulled the crystallographer’s place card and tore it up. Hiroshi would have to make do with Michelle instead.

I looked at my watch. The busboys were busy filling the Water glasses from silver pitchers. If everything was going according to schedule, Stephen and the contingent from Azor were already waiting in the lobby for the arrival of the limousines bringing the Takisawa people from the Nikko. There was no time to fiddle with the seating, so I I decided to trust my mother’s judgment. I had just laid down the last place card when the maitre d’ appeared at my elbow and discreetly whispered my mother’s favorite words: “Your guests have arrived, Madame.”

If Stephen thought the seating arrangements were peculiar, he said nothing to me; indeed, he said nothing at all to me that night. But by the time the salad course was served, all my reservations about Mother’s plan had been completely erased. Every time I glanced in his direction, the chairman of the Takisawa corporation was smiling. From time to time he even laughed out loud.

Things were rockier at my end of the table where Mother had relegated the bulk of the non-English speakers. All they could manage was a few polite inquiries about Dr. Childress’s health. After some discreet probing, it became obvious that Stephen had told them the crystallographer had suffered from acute appendicitis while attending a conference in Boston. In reply to their inquiries I said that the last I heard, the world-famous crystallographer was resting comfortably.

The waiter had just served the cheese course— accompanied by a truly wonderful twenty-year-old port— when the maitre d’ discreetly slipped me a note. It was a message from Elliott saying he would be waiting to pick me up downstairs at ten-fifteen.

I checked my watch, made my excuses to my dinner companions, and left my port with great regret. I thought about letting Stephen know I was leaving but thought better of it. After all, he wasn’t the only one who’d gone to junior high.

* * *

Elliott was already waiting for me when I got downstairs, sitting in his Jeep with the motor running. The exhaust from his engine made great billowing clouds of white smoke in the cold night air. The streets of the Loop were deserted. Stepping into the private detective’s car in my low-cut dress and high heels, I felt, for just a moment, like a character in a movie.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“The morgue,” he replied with a sly smile.

“Why the morgue?”

“Joe called me about an hour ago. Julia Gordon is giving your friend Dr. Childress his last physical. Blades thought you might like to see what develops firsthand.”

“Are you sure this is okay with Dr. Gordon?” I demanded, praying fervently that it was not. I’d already had enough dead bodies for one day. Besides, I’d never seen an autopsy and I wasn’t sure that I wanted to, especially not so soon after dinner.