Fatal Reaction

phone with the same result. Walking back to my bedroom I was filled with curiosity. I couldn’t help but wonder what had happened to Stephen. It wasn’t like him to be unreachable. I also could not imagine what was so urgent that Dr. Gordon was trying to track Stephen down after hours. In my experience, doctors seldom came chasing after you except with bad news.
     
    The next morning I tried Stephen again, to no avail. Instead I arrived at the Robert J. Stein Institute for Forensic Medicine a few minutes after eight o’clock. While a number of white news vans were parked haphazardly on the curb like so many beached whales, my arrival did not seem to stir their interest. A tall fence topped with cyclone wire had been erected around a portion of the parking lot where it abutted the loading dock. Beyond it could be glimpsed Stanley Sarrek’s infamous refrigerated trailer.
    I hadn’t been to the ME’s office since they’d moved into their new building. Once I was inside it struck me as a kind of Marriott for the dead. Even the dove-colored lab coats worn by the pathologists were of the same soothing shade of gray as the carpeting. In deference to the newly deceased, the temperature of the building was kept almost as low as that in Borland’s meat locker. But one thing all the new carpet and boring lithographs could not disguise was the stale stench of death that no amount of air freshener could mask.
    I consulted with the woman at the reception desk, a stately black woman whose hair had been swept up and arranged into a single coil, who directed me to Dr. Gordon’s office on the third floor. On my way several people raced past me, their looks of focused determination speaking volumes about the current crisis.
    Dr. Gordon’s door was open and I found her behind her desk, eyes closed, dictating into a small handheld recorder, the twin of the one I use. I knocked softly on the door frame. Her eyes shot open and her sagging shoulders snapped to attention as I announced myself.
    “Ms. Millholland,” she said, rising to her feet. “I’m so glad you received my message. Please come in. I’ve been getting into the office so early on account of this Sarrek business, I’ve missed seeing you at Starbucks.”
    Hyde Park, where both of us lived, is essentially a small place. Surrounded by the ghetto, it is ruled by a kind of siege mentality that fosters a small-town friendliness you wouldn’t normally expect in an inner-city neighborhood. For the last several months Julia Gordon and I had found ourselves on parallel schedules, running into each other as we stopped for coffee on the way to the office a couple of mornings a week. I was hoping this sense of neighborliness would help her to be forthcoming.
    Julia Gordon was a small woman in her late thirties with a loose cap of blond curls and the wide blue eyes of a China doll. On the credenza behind her desk sat a framed photograph of her two daughters, smiling girls who looked to be about four and six years old. Behind the photo hung a poster showing the characteristics of wounds made by unusual bullets illustrated with color photos. I wondered whether she brought her daughters with her on Take Your Daughter to Work Day or whether they visited the hematology lab with her husband.
    “I’m sure you’re wondering why I called,” she said, searching through the clutter on her desk for something. She shifted through the piles until her hand lit upon a file.
    “I’m actually surprised you even have the time,” I replied.
    “We are a bit stretched, I’ll give you that,” she said, smiling weakly. “The Sarrek case presents a tremendous challenge. The work of identifying his victims is especially painstaking, because so far the inside of the truck is the only crime scene we have. Even though we’re receiving a great deal of help from the FBI, it’s offset by the amount of coordination that must be managed among the various law enforcement agencies. Since it looks as though there’s a good chance the case will be tried in our jurisdiction, we’re anxious not to give up too much control over the investigation. Of course, dealing with the media has been a nightmare in and of itself. The day Sarrek was arrested I actually found a reporter hiding in my garage.”
    “They’re jackals,” I said in a simple statement of fact.
    “Unfortunately, cases like this have, an appeal, an entertainment value if you will, that somehow manages to transcend the enormity of the