Bitter Business

phone—a concession to the firm’s obsession with having partners constantly available—and dialed the Superior Plating number, but got their after-hours recording.
    Finally, not knowing what else to do, I got out of my car and went into the building to look for Dagny. The front door was open, but the reception desk was empty. I made my way through the deserted administrative wing toward Dagny’s office, passing no one. The door was closed. I knocked.
    “Dagny?” I called.
    There was no answer.
    Afraid that I’d hopelessly screwed up, I turned the handle and pushed the door open. I could not believe what I saw.
    Dagny Cavanaugh lay on the floor of her office— facedown.
     

11
     
    For a minute, maybe longer, I just stood there. It was all too much to absorb. Dagny Cavanaugh sprawled facedown on the carpet. Just like Cecilia Dobson.
    Then she moved.
    Her arms and legs jerked as if she were a rag doll being shaken by some invisible hand. Suddenly her limbs twitched in an uncoordinated spasm. Then, just as suddenly, they were still.
    Relief flooded through me. At least she was alive.
    I ran to her side, dropped to my knees, and rolled her onto her back, calling her name. She didn’t respond, but she didn’t look all that bad. Her cheeks were pink. Her skin was warm. There were flecks of white foam on her lips and her eyelids fluttered uncontrollably. I checked her throat for a pulse and found none. I watched her chest and put my hand above her mouth—but no air moved and as I put my face near hers the unmistakably sour smell of vomit mingled with her perfume.
    I shouted for help, but knew that no one would hear me. They’d all gone to the funeral. I willed myself to be calm. I had to call 911 before I began CPR.
    Suddenly Dagny’s arms shot out and she clutched me in an iron grip. Startled, I cried out. My heart was beating wildly. I looked at Dagny. Her face was convulsed in terrible pain, her mouth moving as if she were trying to speak. I bent closer in order to hear her.
    Without warning, her back arched up off the floor as if her body were being electrified by some internal agony. Her head jerked up violently, hitting mine and knocking me back onto my heels. From her mouth came a hideous, wordless roar that seemed to rise up out of her throat from some primitive source. It was a sound I shall never forget—a rasping, whooping cry like a rusty door being pulled from its hinges, like a desperately wounded animal giving voice to unspeakable torment.
    And then she fell silent, her body completely slack. Frantically, I bent over her and called her name. Her eyes were open but vacant. In them I searched desperately for some glimmer of the woman whom the night before I’d rejoiced in as a friend. Instead, all I saw was the face of a corpse. Blue eyes fixed under half lids in an expression of vague wonder, like a flustered schoolchild to whom the logic of a simple equation has just been revealed. It was the same look of sudden, silent comprehension that I had last seen on the face of Cecilia Dobson.
     
    I watched it all like a movie I had seen before—the tube down the throat, the IV drip, the same futile search for pulse, reflexes, respiration. I stood out of the way, an onlooker on these last pointless efforts. Sweat was pouring off my face and the thin silk of my blouse was as cold and wet as if I’d been caught in the rain.
    This time I did not go to the hospital. Despite their best efforts to convince me that I really should have a doctor look at the bump on my head, I explained as calmly and as firmly as I could that I would just stay right where I was and wait for the police.
    A pair of uniformed officers arrived just as they finished shoveling Dagny onto the gurney. They listened attentively as I explained about finding Cecilia Dobson dead in the same way in the same place three days before. I told them about all of the other employees being at St. Bernadette’s Cemetery for the funeral. With a shiver I acknowledged that that was where they’d find Dagny’s family.
    When I finished, one of the officers got on the radio while the other began stringing yellow police-line-do-not-cross tape across the doors. I found a folding chair that someone had left in the hallway outside Dagny’s door and sat down on it. At some point I began shaking as if from some terrible cold. The officers who had taken my statement had disappeared, but other people began arriving—a police photographer, a man in