Good news!
I popped over to Autozone on the way home and their OBD-II scanner wouldn't pick up anything either - just dead. They let me play with the scanner for a bit, so I jiggled some wires but no luck...
Once I got home, I tried to measure the voltage and resistance across the various terminals that Ray had specified and NOT even one pin was "live" - no voltage, infinite resistance... I was glad in a way that every pin was reading open - since I was confident that a connector was not in place somewhere along the harness.
I took off the cover under the steering column and lo and behold, right in front of me was a disonnected harness. The DLC3 connector is on an
8" (or thereabouts) short harness. The other end connects to the main harness. That connector was completely undone. I imagine the connector was left undone when some work had been done on the car - since you have to undo the connector to remove the plastic cover from the car.
I plugged it in, checked the pins, and the readings "almost" as Ray had specified. For me Pin #7 voltage did not go on/off, other pins checked out as described.
I popped back to autozone, had the guys recheck and their scanner worked fine and reported "No Codes Found".
So now I'm off to the emissions place tomorrow again. Hopefully they won't pull their "This repair has to be certified by an authorized shop card" on me.
Thank you all for your help!
Nirav
97 Corolla DX, 72k