Fatal Reaction

scrambling to try and make what Blades was telling me fit in with what I imagined had taken place in Danny’s apartment. “Could the killer have removed Danny’s clothes and dressed him in something else to hide the wounds?”
    “Yeah,” replied Blades, “but why would he want to? Besides, if that had happened we’d have seen much less blood on his clothes. As it was they were so saturated you couldn’t even begin to guess the color of the fabric.”
    “Okay then,” I said, my frustration mounting. “You tell me. What happened to him?”
    “He bled to death.”
    “I’d say that was pretty obvious,” I snapped, losing patience. “What I want to know is how.”
    “The medical examiner is in charge of how. My job is to find out who.”
    “Come on, Joe,” urged Elliott. “You’ve looked at a lot of dead guys. You’re telling me you aren’t even willing to make a guess?”
    “I honestly don’t know,” replied Blades, shaking his head. “Vampires maybe? I’m serious, this is a strange one.”
    “Could his AIDS have had something to do with it, do you think?” I asked, unable to come up with anything else.
    “You’d have to ask a doctor, but I’ve got to tell you, there’s lots of ways that AIDS can kill you, but none of them is quick. I honestly wish I had something else to tell you, Kate. I’m not jerking your chain. But I’m afraid I came here to tell you that all we really can do now is wait for the autopsy results.”
    “But when will we get them?”
    “Right now the medical examiner’s office is being squeezed from every direction to identify Sarrek’s victims and homicide is stretched to the limit. I’ve been Pulled off regular duty and assigned to the task force investigating Sarrek. Everybody else is working double shifts trying to put together a case against this creep.”
    “And in the meantime what about Danny?” I demanded, suddenly feeling very angry.
    “Sony, Kate,” said Blades. “Word from above is ‘no unnecessary inquiries.’ The medical examiner’s got to say the death’s suspicious before anyone can take the next step. The way things are now it could mean my shield if I stepped out of line on this one.”
    “Just tell me one thing,” I said. “If the highway patrol had pulled Sarrek over in Texas as opposed to Illinois, how would you be working Danny Wohl’s death?”
    “As a probable homicide,” replied Blades with a rueful shake of his head. “Definitely a probable homicide, at least until I heard otherwise from the ME’s office.”
    “Then what about Elliott?” I asked, my gaze shifting from one man to the other. “Why couldn’t he start looking into things?”
    “Under the circumstances I’d be willing to give him access to any information we have,” said Blades.
    “Good,” I declared.
    Blades turned to Elliott. “I’d start by trying to find out who was with him in the apartment when he died. We lifted his address book and his bankbook. I’ll get you copies.”
    “What makes you think there was someone with him?” I asked sharply.
    “There were two sets of footprints,” answered the detective, “and only one of them matched the victim. One set corresponded to the dress shoes that Wohl was wearing when we found him. The other looks to have been made by a slightly smaller, narrower athletic shoe.”
    “Any chance the athletic shoes belonged to one of the people who found the body?” asked Elliott.
    Blades shook his head. “The building engineer never made it past the front door. He took one look at the blood, locked the door behind him, and hightailed it down to the management office on the first floor to call 911. He swears he didn’t open it back up until the uniforms arrived. Besides, it’s not only the footprints that point to someone else having been in the apartment at the time of Mr. Wohl’s death.”
    “What else is there?” I asked.
    “We found traces of dried blood in the cracks in the wood floor in the kitchen and blood in the trap in the sink. Also, the tape was missing from the answering machine. We turned the place upside down looking for it, but we never found it. Of course, there may be some other explanation for why it wasn’t there, but I’m willing to bet that whoever was in the apartment when Mr. Wohl died took it with him when he left.”
    “Why would he do that?” I asked even though deep down I already knew the answer.
    “For the same reason he stood in the kitchen after Mr. Wohl was dead