Fatal Reaction

lights and flipping on equipment.
    At some point Lou Remminger appeared, though seeing her in a pressed white lab coat and understated makeup, I confess I barely recognized her.
    “I just came down to check to make sure everything was okay. I heard some pipes broke,” she explained. With all the rest of us running around like marines get- a ting ready for an inspection drill, there was something almost Zen-like in the chemist’s calm.
    “ There’s just a mess in the animal labs,” said Woodruff.
    “Did the modeling room stay dry?” Remminger asked.
    “Yes. None of the cables or the computer equipment got wet. Is everything all set to go in your lab?” inquired Woodruff.
    “Do you want to come up and check, Mom?”
    “No thank you,” he replied. “I’ll take your word for it.”
    Michelle emerged from the crystallography lab and joined us. I understood why Stephen had insisted on lab coats. Not only did they cover the worst of the scientists’ crimes against fashion, but they made everybody look like a grown-up.
    “Has anybody seen Childress?” Michelle asked anxiously. “He’s supposed to be making the crystallography presentation this morning. His slides are here, but I haven’t seen him.”
    “Has anybody tried calling his house?” Remminger inquired.
    “I think Carl said he tried him early this morning and all he got was the answering machine,” reported the crystallographer.
    “You don’t think this is all some kind of prima donna shit?” said Remminger. “It would be just like him to do something crazy like this just to draw attention to himself.”
    “Do you really think so?” inquired Michelle uncertainly, just as Dave Borland came barreling down the hall, long strips of silver duct tape trailing from his hands.
    “What is it?” I asked.
    Borland paused for a minute, as if struggling to catch his breath.
    “Michael Childress just turned up,” he announced finally.
    “Thank god,” I exclaimed.
    “Turned up?” asked Michelle Goodwin nervously. “What do you mean turned up?”
    “Turned up where?” demanded Remminger.
    “Come with me,” replied Borland.
     

CHAPTER 25
     
    Michael Childress lay on the floor of the cold room. His arms were folded peacefully across his chest. He was stark naked. He was also very definitely dead.
    “Somebody go get Stephen,” I commanded in the sharp voice of emergency. I whirled around to face Borland. “Did you touch anything?” I demanded.
    “I... oh... I don’t know.... I don’t think so....” stammered the protein chemist. His gruesome discovery had stripped him of all his usual bravura. “I must have, but only to make sure he was really dead.”
    “What else would he be, for Christ’s sake?” drawled Remminger, who seemed if not amused, then downright unaffected.
    “Why isn’t he wearing any clothes?” asked Michelle Goodwin in startled tones as she peered over my shoulder to get a better look at him.
    “What do you think those marks are on the floor?” inquired Remminger, ever the scientist.
    I hadn’t noticed them before. My eyes had been drawn to the bruising on his knees and his fingers. The digits were so bloody and raw, they looked like they’d been chewed by some kind of animal. But once she’d pointed them out I saw quite clearly what she was talking about. In the thin layer of frost that covered the metal floor of the cold room, on either side of the crystallographer’s body, were arcing marks—the kind we used to make as kids when we made angels in the snow.
    “Maybe he killed himself,” Michelle ventured uncertainly.
    It was as if we were all having separate conversations, everyone just saying the first thing that came to his mind, no one taking anything in or, for that matter, taking his eyes from Michael Childress’s naked corpse.
    “Are those his clothes there next to him?” I asked, looking at the disorderly pile of dark clothing.
    “What the hell is going on?” barked Stephen as he made his way down the hall toward us, with Carl Woodruff trailing close behind. “Everyone is supposed to be up in the lunchroom.”
    “It’s Childress,” I said, breaking away from the group and walking toward him. “It looks like he got locked in the freezer over the weekend.”
    “What? Is he okay?”
    “He’s dead,” I said.
    “He’s better than dead,” blurted Remminger. “He’s frozen like a Thanksgiving turkey.”
    The rest of us were momentarily struck mute by her inappropriate outburst.