Fatal Reaction

asked, studying my shoes.
    “It is a relatively common phenomenon seen to some degree in close to seventy percent of deaths due to exposure to the cold. It can vary from the stage when the person is just beginning to undress to total nudity. The act of disrobing is thought to occur just before unconsciousness sets in. The reason, in theory, being that with sufficient lowering of the body temperature the blood vessels in the extremities dilate, giving a false feeling of warmth and causing the victim to undress. The fact that Dr. Childress took his clothes off and then apparently lay down and tried to make snow angels in the layer of frost on the cold-room floor is completely consistent with the kind of disorientation that he would experience prior to death from hypothermia. The injuries to his hands and feet and the bruising on his knees most likely occurred earlier.”
    “You mean before he went into the freezer?” asked Elliott.
    “No. When he was trying to claw his way out. The bruising on the heels of his hands and the underside of his wrists were probably made when he tried to summon help by pounding against the inside of the cold-room door, while the trauma to his fingers makes it look like he made repeated attempts to pry the door open.”
    I looked at Dr. Gordon and said nothing. I could not help but think these were things no one should ever have to know.
    “So then how did he get into the cold room in the first place?” asked Elliott finally. “Did he walk in on his own?”
    “Interesting you should ask. There are no signs of any other kind of trauma besides the ones we’ve just discussed, that is, there were no marks that would indicate he’d been knocked unconscious or in any way bound. However, if you look at the side of his upper thigh, you’ll notice something a little unusual.”
    Elliott walked over to the body and took a good look. I stayed where I was, willing to get the news secondhand.
    “It looks like a needle mark,” he observed.
    “Yes. It does.”
    “Funny place for one, though.”
    “I agree. What makes it even more interesting is that we’ve got the preliminary results back on the first round of our toxicology screen.”
    “Already?” demanded Elliott.
    “Believe me, strings have not only been pulled,” replied Dr. Gordon, “but they’ve been pulled hard. What’s interesting is that we’ve gotten a positive reading for opiates.”
    “So he was drugged before he was put in the freezer,” observed Elliott.
    “Tell them the best part, Doc,” urged Blades with something akin to glee.
    “Our toxicologist has identified the opiate as phenokynamine.”
    “I’ve never heard of it,” said Elliott.
    “That’s because it’s a veterinary tranquilizer,” replied Dr. Gordon. “It’s used only for animals.”
     

CHAPTER 27
     
    By the time I got up the next morning I was ready to do something I was actually good at. I was tired of all my fruitless speculation about who had killed Michael Childress and Danny Wohl. I was sick of wondering about what had become of Childress’s car and worrying about the impact on Tom Galloway’s career once the press got wind of his relationship with Danny Wohl. “Oh, it won’t be so bad,” Elliott had quipped. “It’ll be just like coming out on Oprah.”
    I never thought it would come to this, but after trying to find some kind of solution in the ever shifting investigation into what Joe Blades had come to refer to as the Azor murders, I was actually looking forward to sitting down and negotiating with Takisawa. When I arrived at Azor, the first thing I did was go to Stephen’s office. His greeting was so chilly that I decided not to mention my trip to the medical examiner’s office the night before. I figured he could wait and get the news from the Oak Brook police.
    In contrast, the Japanese appeared in exceptionally good spirits. I learned from Lou Remminger that after dinner Dave Borland had led a group of Takisawa scientists on an impromptu tour of Rush Street, during which he’d learned a thing or two about the Oriental appetite for debauchery. More important, he reported that the Japanese scientists were practically salivating at the prospect of the proposed joint venture.
    The exception appeared to be Chairman Takisawa. He remained silent and aloof during morning coffee and the level of nervous attentiveness on display from those around him seemed to bode no good. The day’s agenda called for another elaborately