Fatal Reaction

Sarrek’s suspected victims and took the call, but we didn’t get there until eleven fifty-one. As soon as we walked in the door we figured we were looking at some kind of dispute between homosexual lovers.”
    “Why is that?” I asked, curious about what would lead him to draw that conclusion so quickly.
    “No motive besides sex produces that kind of overkill,” replied Blades matter-of-factly, “and no woman is strong enough to do that kind of damage to a man. Besides, there was no sign of forced entry, so it seemed likely that the deceased knew his assailant and let him into the apartment. From the blood trail it looked as though Mr. Wohl was on his feet when the attack started and despite sustaining severe injuries, he managed to stay on his feet for several minutes and put up a fight. That would explain not just the blood splatter, but the overturned furniture and the overall condition of the apartment.”
    “Did anybody hear anything?” Elliott asked.
    Blades shook his head. “A canvass of the neighbors turned up nothing. In that kind of building no one knows anybody else. Besides, the victim’s apartment was a corner unit on the top floor of the building. The only wall he shared with another unit was the bedroom and the struggle appeared to have been limited to the front of the apartment.”
    “What about the apartment below?” I demanded.
    “Out of town for the weekend. I’m not sure they would have been able to hear anything because the building is pretty solidly built.” Joe Blades consulted his notes again before continuing. “From the dishes in the sink and the condoms in the wastebasket it looked as though the deceased had recently had company. The condoms had been used two-ply, by the way.”
    “Why is that significant?” I asked, not meaning to sound naive.
    “The condoms had been used two at a time, doubled. It usually indicates that one of the partners had AIDS or was afraid of contracting the disease.”
    “Danny was HIV positive,” I said. “Whether he technically had AIDS is something you’d have to get from his doctor.”
    “Other than that, was he sick?”
    “No. But the anti-AIDS drugs he was taking were giving him a bad time with side effects.”
    “What kind of side effects?”
    “Nausea, weakness, muscle pain. About once every two weeks he’d just feel so crummy he wouldn’t be able to get out of bed and drag himself into the office. That’s why nobody thought anything of it when he didn’t show up to work on Monday morning. He’d just been on a grueling business trip to the Orient. Everyone at Azor just assumed that he wasn’t feeling well.”
    “It’s going to be up to the medical examiner to give us the time of death, but when we got there rigor was already starting to pass off in the upper extremities. By my guess he’d been dead at least twenty-four hours. He didn’t have a history of hemophilia or some other blood-clotting disorders that you know of, did he?”
    “No,” I replied, puzzled. “Why do you keep asking?”
    “When we arrived at the scene the body was lying facedown in the living room a few feet away from the telephone in a large pool of blood. From that position there were no visible wounds, but we figured that once the lab boys were finished and we rolled him over, we’d find the killer’s handiwork all over the victim’s face and chest.”
    “And did you?” I asked.
    “No,” replied Blades, removing his gold-rimmed glasses and slowly polishing them with the fat end of his tie. “When we turned him over there wasn’t a mark on him.”
     

CHAPTER 7
     
    “How is that possible given the condition of the apartment?” I demanded. “There was blood all over the walls and the furniture was turned over. You said yourself you found him lying facedown in a pool of blood. What you’re telling me now makes absolutely no sense.” Blades raised both his hands in the shrug universally understood to indicate that this was not his problem. “I’m not pretending it makes sense,” he countered. “I’m only telling you what I saw. When we rolled him over he was covered in blood all right. It was smeared all over his face, his hair was stiff with it, and his clothes were completely soaked. But there were no wounds of any kind that I could see and no other signs of injury or trauma. Certainly nothing like what we were expecting to see given the condition of the apartment.”
    “What about under his clothes?” I asked, mentally