Bitter Business

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