and a white body shirt stretched tightly over a heavily muscled frame. Harris was dressed the same, but he was a slender man who moved slowly with the fluid-like grace of a dancer. His eyes were those of a shark: cold, without expression.
“I want a quick word with the guard,” said Harris. “You go on to the lab, but I want to see it before you disturb anything.”
When the doors opened, the guard, face red and puffy, rose from his desk to meet them. He looked first at Lundeman, and said nothing. Harris took him firmly by one arm and led him back to his desk as Sanderson followed Lundeman down the hall. The lab was cold when they entered, and the animals were quiet in their cages. There was an open door on the far side of the room, and the body of a man was sprawled there on his back, eyes staring upwards, mouth open.
“He looks surprised,” said Sanderson.
“Poor old Bauer,” said Lundeman. “He wasn’t much of a teacher, but he did some good research, and the students liked him.”
Sanderson looked into the fume hood. “He was working in here. Broken glass all over the place, but otherwise nothing. Does this mean anything to you, Doctor Lundeman?”
“No. Maybe he broke something poisonous. I’ll have to look up his contract to recall what he was working on.”
“He was working with SB4,” said Harris, who had entered the lab with stealth and was padding around the room behind them. He leaned over to look at the body, pulled down the dead man’s collar, peered closely at something and straightened up. “For your information, Doctor Lundeman, that’s a nerve gas.”
“Ah yes, now I recall it,” said Lundeman.
“The gas is stored in ampoules, like the one broken in this fume hood. There’s no other equipment or chemicals in there, no animal cages, nothing. Just a broken ampoule. Now, if the exhaust fan were on and the fume hood window pulled down even two-thirds closed, the gas from that broken ampoule should not have reached the room, yet it appears it did.”
“Bauer was killed by SB4, then. An accident due to poor technique.” A simple explanation would be best and most easily accepted by grant officers, hoped Lundeman.
“I don’t think so,” said Harris quickly, “and I don’t think it could be suicide either. There are bruises on the back of his neck, and pieces of glass on the floor by his head. He was forced into the hood, and the ampoule broken by his face. See the cuts near his right eye?”
Lundeman forced himself to look closely at Bauer’s staring face. The cuts were there, a tiny piece of glass glistening in one of them. “Are you suggesting murder?”
“I am,” said Harris, “and a sloppy job of it. Do you know of any reason someone might have to kill this man?”
“None at all. He was a quiet person who did his job and got along well with the students. He had a graduate student working with him, by the way. Where is he?”
“Len Dieter,” said Harris, looking at a small notebook he had scribbled in. “The guard remembers Bauer saying the student had called him from the lab, asking him to come in, but the guard hadn’t seen him all night. We’ll check this all out with the student later. It seems he wasn’t here when Bauer arrived, and the guard didn’t see anyone leave.”
“This Len Dieter still hasn’t arrived, even though he called Bauer to come in. I find that strange,” said Lundeman.
“Perhaps,” said Harris, “but we’ll check it out. Central office is sending someone, and he’ll be here by this evening. Maybe the student will turn up by that time. My people will look for him right away. In the meantime I’m ordering an autopsy, and the official cause of death will be heart failure. There’s no need to complicate things any further right now.”
“Certainly,” said Lundeman, “and I don’t want any stories about nerve gas accidents here, either.”
“Publicity will be kept to a minimum,” Harris assured him. “I’ll control that locally. We’ll need to talk with you again later. We have to move fast, particularly if there’s a security problem involved. For now, let’s get his body out of here. Sanderson, get the stretcher and bring a body bag.”
“Right,” said the big man, and he quickly left the room, elbowing his way past the guard who stood at the doorway, gazing at the body of Jacob Bauer. Harris seemed startled.
“How long have you been standing there?”
“Just for a minute. Can I go now? It’s two hours past the end of my shift, and my replacement is here.”
“Go ahead, but be quiet about all of this,” snapped Harris.
“Yes, sir,” said the man. He turned and shuffled out of the room. Harris looked at Lundeman, a question in his eyes.
“He’ll be okay,” said Lundeman. “He’s been with us a long time.”
The guard left the building and went home for breakfast, where he told his excited wife everything he had seen and heard that morning.
* * * * *
Irene Lundeman relaxed the morning away under the gentle, capable hands of Allen, her hairdresser. The salon was empty except for Allen, herself, and Allen’s partner Eric, who struck a bored, effeminate pose in a barber chair near the window. Allen played the affected hairdresser well, clucking over her like a mother hen, but as he washed her hair his hands strayed to her neck, shoulders and back, rubbing with just the right pressure and rhythm to give her a minute tingling and throbbing sensation between her legs.
“Something swept up, I think: symmetric and softly curling at the top to accentuate your height, and those gorgeous cheekbones. Curtis will not leave you alone today,” he promised.
“Curtis won’t even notice, Allen. He never does. You know I come here for myself.”
“I am your devoted servant, madam.”
“You’re so sweet to me, such a blessing in this dismal little town.”
Allen leaned her back in the chair, folded a towel around her head and kneaded softly. She tilted her chin up as his fingers worked, occasionally caressing her throat, and he felt rather than heard her breath quicken.
“Oh, you have such marvelous hands,” she moaned.
“Pooh,” he said teasing, then smiled as she whispered to him and reached up to touch his face.
“Don’t play the gay with me, Allen. We both know better.” She leaned back against him.
“Do you want us to be alone, dear?” he whispered.
“Yes,” she breathed. “Tell Eric to take a walk.”
Allen chuckled. “Eric, my lad,” he said brightly, “it’s a lovely morning, and business is slow. Why don’t you take a stroll in the park?”
Eric looked at them angrily, rolling his eyes. “Again? Why don’t we just buy a cot for the storage room, or put up a curtain so you can consult in private? Really, Allen, this is disgusting. I will be back in exactly twenty minutes, so make it quick.”
Eric
