Fatal Reaction

For a minute Michelle looked as if she was about to say something, but instead, she heaved a great sob and broke into tears. Borland put his arm around her shoulder to comfort her, but she shrugged it off and made a dash for the ladies’ room.
    When Stephen got there, we all stepped away from the cold room door so he could get a good look.
    “What are we going to do?” demanded Carl, looking like a man who’s just dropped a winning lottery ticket through a subway grating. “We’ve got the Takisawa people due to arrive any minute.”
    “Lou, go make sure Michelle is okay,” ordered Stephen, as if waking from a dream. “Tell her she’ll have to make the crystallography presentation. Let’s just hope he left the slides he was going to use somewhere where we can find them.”
    “Michelle knows where the slides are,” I said, not believing the conversation was actually happening. “Somehow I don’t think that’s what Carl is worried about.” Stephen raised his hand to silence me. Then he turned to address the others.
    “You all go back upstairs to the conference room and don’t say a word about this to anybody. Kate and I will figure out the best way to handle this. I’ll be upstairs in a minute.”
    The scientists left reluctantly, still stunned by what had happened. I thought the chances of them keeping what they’d seen to themselves were somewhere between zero and none. I lost no time in sharing my assessment with Stephen.
    “I don’t think you appreciate the delicacy of the situation, Kate,” he snapped. “The whole company is hanging by a thread, and now... this!”
    “ ‘This,’ as you so aptly put it, is a matter for the police. There is no way around it.”
    “There has to be some other way to handle it,” protested Stephen.
    “There is no way to ‘handle’ it at all. This is one of those unambiguous situations. All we can do is call the police. I’ll try to explain the situation to them and see if I can get them to be discreet....”
    “I don’t think that calling the police is necessarily in our best interests under the circumstances,” said Stephen calmly, pushing the cold-room door shut and adding his fingerprints to whatever else the crime lab was going to find there.
    I knew what he was thinking and I couldn’t believe it. How could anyone so intelligent even contemplate something so stupid? Suddenly my stomach felt exactly the same way it did when as a kid I’d crest the top of the first big hill on the roller coaster.
    “We have to call the police and we have to call them now,” I said reasonably.
    Stephen stepped into the modeling room, picked up the telephone that hung on the wall, and punched in a number.
    “Hello, security? This is Dr. Azorini. I want you to station someone at the elevator and the stairs to the basement. We have to make sure no one comes down here. We’ve had an equipment problem over the weekend and I don’t want anyone coming down until we’re sure there hasn’t been a radiation leak.” He hung up the receiver and turned to me. “See? That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
    “Stephen Anthony Azorini,” I said sternly. “This is not some situation you can finesse your way around. There is a dead man lying on the floor of this freezer and if we don’t call the police, we will be committing a felony.”
    “Do you really want the Takisawa people to pull into the parking lot and have the first thing they see be a half-dozen squad cars parked out front with their lights flashing? Do you have any idea what is riding on this visit? Do you?”
    “What you’re proposing to do could land you in jail,” I countered. “If you’re so afraid of what the Japanese will think, then call them in their limos right now and tell them you’re still having trouble with the electricity out here and have the scientists make their presentations downtown.” '
    “That’s not acceptable.”
    “Neither is failure to report a death to the proper authorities.”
    “I didn’t say we weren’t going to report it. I’m just asking what it would hurt if we waited?”
    “It would be wrong,” I said, frustrated that he would let his desperation to make a deal with Takisawa cloud his judgment, “and it will hurt you. Cover this up now and I guarantee it’ll come back and bite you. You don’t think the cops will be able to tell that the door to the cold room has already been opened? Or that Borland touched the body, for Christ’s sake? Do you think it’s