Fatal Reaction

safekeeping of a rented freezer. Indeed, even before Childress had finished speaking, the other investigators had begun to slip away, leaving Michelle with her loquacious colleague and a floor full of crushed paper cups to be picked up.
    Suddenly Carl Woodruff appeared and grabbed me by the arm. “I need you,” he said. “It’s an emergency.”
    “What is it?”
    “I need a lawyer.”
    “What for?”
    “To threaten people, what else do you need a lawyer for?”
    I followed him at a trot down the hall toward the elevator. On our way up the fire stairs he explained that the company that had promised to rent us the diesel refrigeration unit had just called to say they had made a mistake and it was no longer available.
    “Just point me to a telephone and give me their number,” I announced. I was not about to have Michelle Goodwin’s triumph with the crystals undone by nondelivery of a large appliance.
    By three o’clock I was on the loading dock watching the truck back up in order to unload the promised freezer. I’d only had to threaten the dispatcher at the rental company with a lawsuit and dismemberment in order to get him to see things my way. The five hundred dollars extra I offered him helped, too.
    “Let’s just hope the damn thing works,” muttered Borland as we watched them load it on a dolly and push it down the hall. Borland and Michelle had both come to supervise the packing of the freezer and the preparation of the cold rooms.
    Borland had already turned the temperature way down in the cold room that had been filled with items that needed to be kept cold but were not considered temperature sensitive. The contents of the remaining cold room would then be shifted into the diesel unit, where the temperature could be maintained to within a tenth of a degree throughout the duration of the blackout. It took us close to an hour, scurrying back and forth between cold rooms, to accomplish the job. We all cursed Childress, who was no doubt savoring the day’s success over drinks in first class on his way to Boston while we humped Styrofoam boxes and bottles of reagents up and down the hall.
    When we were finally finished, Carl Woodruff produced two rolls of silver duct tape. “It’s that time,” he announced, handing one roll to Dave Borland and the other to Michelle Goodwin. Working quickly the two scientists sealed the door to the first cold room.
    “Are you sure it’s going to stay cold?” Michelle asked Borland when they were done.
    “Don’t worry,” he assured her kindly. “We lost power once at Baxter after a big electrical storm. All we did was tape the cold rooms shut and they only lost a degree a day, and it was summertime, too.”
    Woodruff looked at his watch. “Right on schedule,” he chirped. “Now let’s get the labs buttoned up so that we can blow this pop stand.”
     
    * * *
     
    Stephen and I were the last ones to leave the building, but before leaving we took one long last walk through the ZK-501 labs to make sure they had been left in parade condition. The investigators had been instructed to be in the building by seven A.M. on Monday in order to switch on all their equipment. If it had a display and could be turned on, Stephen wanted it on. His goal was to show off labs that glittered like Las Vegas to the Japanese.
    As we neared five o’clock a tremendous silence settled over the building. Most of the animals had been moved to other quarters for the weekend. The computers, the ventilation hoods, the special air handling systems had all been switched off. I sensed in Stephen a reluctance to leave, as if he was afraid that somehow he might not be coming back. I put it down to not wanting to give up control, especially on the eve of such an important site visit. He kept finding all sorts of reasons to linger: an oscillator that looked dusty, a piece of tape coming loose off the side of the X-ray generator, a garbage can that needed emptying.
    When we came to the diesel-powered refrigeration unit that we’d rented, I let him take his time. It was a walk-in freezer the size of a small shed, powered by a throaty motor that rumbled like a truck. Inside sat Azor’s precious ZKBP crystals. Stephen checked the padlock twice to confirm that it was secure and watched the gauges to make sure not only that the temperature was correct, but that there was enough fuel in the tank to keep it running through the weekend. In the end I had to literally take him by the hand and lead