Fatal Reaction

reception wanting to know whether I had time to see him. I told her to go ahead and bring him on back, while I quickly consulted the mirror in my top drawer to make sure I didn’t have mustard on my chin.
    “Sorry to just barge in,” said Elliott a few minutes later as he appeared, grinning, in my doorway. He was wearing a blue blazer and khaki pants, radically casual attire for the suit-and-tie environs of Callahan Ross. If it weren’t for the bulge from the Browning automatic he wore holstered under his arm he could easily have been mistaken for a trust-fund brat dropping by to pick up his check. After six months of deliberate avoidance I found it dis-concerting to find Elliott suddenly, even casually, appearing at my office.
    When he stepped aside to let Cheryl usher in Joe Blades, I sprang to my feet. Blades was a homicide cop and a good friend of Elliott’s from his days in the state’s attorneys office when they had worked the gang crimes I unit together.
    “Detective Blades,” I said, extending my hand in greeting, “this is a very pleasant surprise.”
    Blades was young for homicide and looked nothing like you’d expect for a man who spent most of his working life gazing down upon the newly deceased. Indeed, with his beard and gold-rimmed glasses he had a vaguely professorial air. In point of fact he’d come to the police department from Princeton, of all places, during that brief season when the idea of recruiting for law enforcement from the Ivy League had come briefly into vogue. Unlike most of his cohorts who’d quickly fled the grim realities of the street for the safe haven of law school, Joe Blades had remained. He had found his calling.
    “Come on, make my day, Joe,” I said, folding my hands together on top of my desk once we’d all settled comfortably into our respective chairs. “Please tell me that you’ve been assigned to investigate Danny Wohl’s death.”
    “Right now no one’s been assigned to the case,” replied Blades. “But as it happens I was one of the detectives who took the unattended-death call, so I did work the scene. Elliott tells me your firm represents the company that Mr. Wohl worked for.”
    “Yes. I’m also one of the directors of the company.”
    “So you knew him quite well.”
    “Professionally, yes. We didn’t socialize much outside of the office.”
    Blades shot me a look that said he knew I didn’t have much of a life outside of the office. In the past Blades had tried his hand at playing Cupid between Elliott and me. For a brief flash of time I found myself wondering what Elliott had told him about what had almost happened between the two of us but immediately forced myself to focus on more pressing matters.
    “And I take it from what Elliott tells me,” he continued, “you and Dr. Azorini have questions about his death.”
    “Come on, Joe. You went to the scene. Of course we have questions. From the blood all over everything it seems pretty obvious that Danny didn’t die quietly in his sleep.”
    “So far the medical examiner hasn’t made any ruling as to cause of death.”
    “Has the autopsy been performed yet?”
    “No.”
    “Has it at least been scheduled?”
    “Not that I’m aware.”
    “So tell me, when are they going to get around to it? Once they find a name and a cause of death for Jane Doe Number Sixty-three?” I knew it didn’t make any sense to get sarcastic with a homicide cop, but the thought of what had happened to Danny passing unnoticed galled me.
    “I can’t answer that Kate,” he replied, not unkindly. “But I can tell you what we have so far.”
    Blades pulled a small spiral notebook from the inside pocket of his jacket. As he flipped it open I noticed that besides his scribbled notes there were several drawings of stick figures. It took me a second to realize these were representations of Danny’s body.
    “Mr. Wohl was discovered Monday morning at approximately ten-twenty by the building engineer, who’d let himself into the apartment to check that the heat was on. The weather had turned cold Sunday night and they were having trouble with the furnace in that part of the building. Dispatch took the call at ten thirty-four A.M., and a patrol unit responded immediately. They took one look inside the apartment and got on their radios requesting backups. It was called into homicide at ten thirty-six as a possible fatal stabbing. Art Wypiszinski and I were out interviewing family members of one of