Fatal Reaction

everything my eyes rested on tore at my heart.
    “Haven’t you seen enough?” I asked Stephen.
    “I just want to have a quick look at the bedroom,” he replied in a flat voice.
    I followed, not wanting to be left alone. I had been ready to leave thirty seconds after we’d arrived. I could not imagine what could possibly make him want to stay.
    Along the exposed brick of the hallway hung a series of monochromatic blue panels by a Dutch painter whose work Danny admired. I couldn’t remember his name, only that the piece was called A Moment After Sinking and that there was something special about the brushwork.
    The bedroom had apparently escaped the bloodletting. The room’s decor was considerably less restrained than the rest of the apartment. In the center was a wrought-iron bed draped in enough mosquito netting to protect a small expedition down the Nile. There were Mapplethorpes on the walls here, too, but they were the photographer’s graphically sexual work—not the sort you’d want your business associates to see. I turned my back on them.
    Danny’s desk, a large contemporary unit designed especially for a computer, with a pullout keyboard shelf, was near the window. Stephen came to a stop behind the ergonomically correct desk chair and stared forlornly at the black briefcase at his feet.
    “You might as well take it,” I advised him gently. “The police have already been through everything and I guarantee you won’t feel like coming back.”
    Reluctantly Stephen picked up the case and set it on top of the desk. With practiced hands he flipped open the latches and popped the lid. The inside was crammed with file folders and legal pads, all swarming with Danny’s tidy script. Satisfied, Stephen laid his large hands on top of the case and slammed it shut. In the silence of the apartment it sounded like a shot.
    I trailed Stephen into the large bathroom, which was decorated in Danny’s typical eye-catching style. A pedestal sink of white porcelain was set against a wall of exposed brick. The floor was a deep blue hand-glazed tile. A single white towel lay across the lip of the tub, and the toilet seat was up. Stephen reached up and pulled open the mirrored doors of the medicine cabinet above the sink. It was crammed with prescription vials of every description and a veritable arsenal of grooming supplies— bronzers, mousses, gels, and spritzes—even an eyelash curler. No wonder Danny had always looked better than I did.
    “What are you looking for?” I asked.
    “I don’t know. I’m just looking.” He paused and shook his head. “There’s something very wrong with all of this.”
    “What do you mean?” I demanded, feeling the dull ache of apprehension growing in the pit of my stomach.
    Stephen did not answer but instead began to make his way back into the living room. As I followed, I almost tripped over the telephone cord which lay across the entrance to the hall. The table on which the phone usually rested had been overturned in the struggle, scattering squares of notepaper like leaves across the bloodstained carpet.
    “What do you mean there’s something wrong?” I demanded again, and was immediately struck by the idiocy of my own question. There was blood on the ceiling. Of course there was something wrong.
    Stephen, who was making his way toward the kitchen, did not appear to have heard me. I went after him, trying hard to avoid the frieze of dried blood that marked the wall near the door. The kitchen was large and fitted out for the serious cook. A set of Calphalon pots hung from an oval rack above the Viking range. The counters were made of gray-black soapstone, silky to the touch, but porous and prone to scratches. The glass-fronted cabinets matched the bleached oak of the floors. Two bar stools were tucked beneath a narrow counter that served as a kind of kitchen desk. There were no signs of blood anywhere that I could see.
    Stephen lifted the linen shade that covered the window and was rewarded by a depressing view of the fire escape. Beside the sink were dishes from a hand-painted set that Danny had brought back from a vacation he’d taken in Tuscany. Brightly colored, they were stacked in a sleek chrome dish rack, waiting to be put away. On the counter off to one side stood a half-full glass of water. For some reason these domestic details unnerved me more than all the blood.
    “Can we please go now?” I found myself asking in a small, desperate voice.
    Stephen wheeled