Fatal Reaction

got along with everybody. But even though he never said much about it, I know he didn’t really care for Dave Borland,” replied Carl. “The two of them never got along.”
    “Why’s that?”
    “Part of it was just personality. Danny liked opera and art galleries. You’ve spent time with Borland. He’s an unrepentant barbarian. His idea of a good time is sitting around in his underwear drinking beer.”
    “There has to be more to it than that,” I protested. “There is. You must remember that EEOC suit we had last year.”
    “I remember. There was a technician in Borland’s lab who claimed that he had made unwanted sexual advances. It was settled as I recall.”
    “Yes, but not before Danny and Borland got into more than one screaming match. From what I gather there was never any question that Borland had behaved improperly—hell, he bragged about it. Borland announced to everyone when he hired her that he was going to have some fun with her. She couldn’t have been more than twenty-two or twenty-three—pretty, but not what I’d call spectacular.”
    “As I recall she initially went to Danny and complained that Borland was making off-color jokes, sexual references, and I believe the odd pat on the fanny.”
    “Borland’s that kind of guy.”
    “You can be that kind of guy at home, but not at work,” I said. “According to Danny, when the woman first came to him she had no intention of filing a lawsuit.”
    “She just wanted him to stop.”
    “That’s usually all anyone wants.”
    “Unfortunately, Borland either couldn’t or wouldn’t. He never understood why what he was doing was wrong. He used to brag that the girl had a secret crush on him and was making it all up.”
    “And so she sued,” I said. “As I recall, we ended up settling for three years’ salary. Stephen was furious.”
    “So was Danny. He thought Borland had behaved badly and it had cost the company a bunch of money, money that should have been spent on science.”
    “He was right.”
    “I know. But I’m just telling you. From that point on there was nothing but bad blood between them.”
     

CHAPTER 19
     
    As I left Carl Woodruff’s office I decided to make a trip downstairs to have a look at the reagent room where the PAF was stored. I found it without difficulty, a small win-dowless storage room behind a door marked “Reagent Supply.” The room was lined with shelves and crammed with boxes and bottles of all sizes. When I had expressed my surprise that a storeroom that held a substance as lethal as PAF was kept unlocked, Stephen had countered that Azor was a pharmaceutical company, not a kindergarten. Scanning the labels on the various bottles and jars that bulged from the shelves, I suspected almost everything in there could kill you.
    As I walked past the modeling room I saw Michael Childress through the plate-glass window. He was sitting on a high stool looking down the double barrel of a large microscope. Through the open door I could hear Mozart playing softly in the background. Childress looked for all the world like he belonged in one of the those sappy pharmaceutical industry ads.
    “Excuse me, Dr. Childress,” I said, on impulse.
    “Don’t bother me,” he said, without even so much as looking up to see who was speaking. I stayed where I was.
    “What the hell do you want?” he demanded, looking up from what he was doing.
    “I wanted to ask you a question.”
    “I don’t have time for your questions.”
    “This will take only a minute,” I replied, his rudeness making me determined.
    “I don’t have a minute,” he snapped, going back to whatever he was looking at under the scope.
    “As it happens, this is the only minute I have,” I replied icily, “so I’m afraid you’re going to have to stop what you’re doing.”
    “Who do you think you are?” He was really angry now, but then again, so was I.
    “I’m Kate Millholland,” I said. “I’m this company’s chief legal counsel and a member of the board of directors. That means I vote to approve your lab budget and decide whether or not to pay you your salary.”
    “What is your question?” he asked with the same mixture of hubris and hostility that I remembered all too well from my professors in law school.
    “I was wondering what you called Danny Wohl about at home the day after he returned from Japan.”
    “What?” At least I’d finally managed to get his attention. “You called him on the Sunday he came back from