“So . . .” Seth asked.
“He asked if he could take me out,” Claire said.
Seth smiled. Claire glanced at R.J.
“You know he’s bacon, right?” R.J. asked.
“So was this one for a long time,” Claire said with a laugh.
R.J. laughed.
“Where’s the book?” Claire asked.
Seth got up and went to his bedroom. When he opened his door, the cat scooted inside. Seth returned a moment later with Di’s Filofax. He set it on the table. There was a patch of white mildew on the corner of the black leather book. Otherwise it looked as good as new. Papers and documents were shoved into the binding until it bulged almost three inches wide. A thick rubber band precariously held everything together. Seth touched the band and it broke with a pop.
“We should wear gloves,” Seth said.
He grabbed a pair of gloves from the pile in the center of the table. R.J. scowled and tried to pull the glove over his big hand and shook his head. Claire got up and brought a new pair of kitchen gloves for him. He pulled on the kitchen gloves and Claire put on a pair of gloves left by Inspector Oscar Dekay.
“There’s a lot here,” Seth said. “How about if we split it into threes and go through it?”
“I’m ready!” R.J. said with a grin. He held up his bright-pink-gloved hands.
Smiling, Seth split up the contents of the Filofax, and they set to work.
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Twenty-Four
“Osteosarcoma,” Leslie said, as she approached.
Ava and her team were sitting in the cafeteria dining room, pretending to eat what passed for “lunch.” Longing for the safe comfort of her home, Maresol’s cooking, and her husband, Ava sipped her iced tea in silence. Sitting to Ava’s right, Nelson looked up at Leslie and scowled. From across the table, Fran shook her head. Bob was walking toward them carrying a tray of “food.” He stopped, passed the tray to Leslie, and returned to get another meal. Leslie sat down to Ava’s left.
“It’s not unlikely,” Nelson was the first to speak up. “Osteoscarcoma and Diamond-Blackfan go hand in hand.”
“Even with the bone marrow transplant?” Fran asked.
“It’s more likely with the bone-marrow transplant,” Nelson said. “That’s the thing. You can stay alive with blood transfusions. You can heal completely from bone-marrow transplant. And, you can also get osteosarcoma from the bone-marrow transplant. Most people don’t go for the bone marrow transplant because the risk is too high.”
“If we’re right then, and Seurat is guinea-pigging for the Pantelis . . .” Fran said.
“It’s kind of a suicide mission,” Ava said. “Not unlike this whole endeavor — get everyone riled up only to stay exactly where you are.”
“Speaking of that,” Bob said as he returned with a tray of food. “The Manhattan Prosecutor has said he will file in the murder cases of Delmer and Delilah Seurat.”
“That’s the thing,” Ava said. “Seurat had to know that this entire case would amount to nothing. He’s not getting out of prison. The whole thing — getting the bone-marrow transplant and all — is going to end in the painful death of Seurat. So why bother?”
“Maybe that’s what he wanted,” Fran said.
“To kill himself?” Ava asked. She thought about it for a moment and shrugged. “Maybe. Either way, we should probably report all of this to . . .” Ava’s voice shifted to a brutal imitation of a Russian accent, “ . . . Fearless Leader, Spam-a-licious.”
“Let’s lay the whole thing out,” Bob said.
Ava gave Bob an irritated and exhausted look.
“Humor me,” Bob said. “Let’s look at the whole picture.”
“I’d like to hear that,” a technician from the CBI said from another table.
Someone across the table asked, “What?”
The technician stood up.
“Hey, you guys, Ava and Bob’s team are going to go through this ‘What the fuck are we doing here’ case,” the technician said. “I know I’d like some answers. I’m going to listen in.”
Without asking, he waved his arm in the direction of the table where Ava and her team were sitting and pulled his chair over. Within minutes, everyone who’d been sitting in the cafeteria surrounded them. Ava looked at Bob, and he shook his head.
“I’m eating,” Bob said.
Ava scowled at him.
“Retired,” Bob said.
Ava smiled at his usual excuses. Shaking her head, she cleared her throat and stood up .
“I should first say that we’ve had a couple of advantages,” Ava said. “The first is that O’Malley, uh, Seth, had already started working on the murders of Delmer and Delilah Seurat before we were sequestered. And, if you’ve met O’Malley, once he’s on the scent of a mystery, he doesn’t stop.”
“Can you repeat their names?” a woman’s voice came from the back. “I’d like to look up the case.”
“I’d love it if you said your names,” Ava said, trying a technique that always worked for Seth. “We’re a small team, but we interact with all of you all the time. It would be great to put a name to the face.”
“Jean,” the woman said. “FBI.”
“Nice to see your pretty face.” Ava smiled at the woman, and she blushed. “I can do better than repeat their names. Nelson?”
Ava nodded to Nelson, and he stood up.
“This is Dr. Nelson Weeks,” Ava said. “He’s posted a case formulation on the joint server. Would you like to go through it?”
Nelson nodded and gave the link to the file. When everyone had pulled up the file, Nelson continued.
“Delmer and Delilah Seurat were murdered in 1955,” Nelson said. “A file was opened for Delmer at the NYPD, but not much work went into it. In the heyday of the Savoy ballroom, an African-American young man was beaten to death. No one saw anything or heard anything. Seth O’Malley and Mitch Delgado even consulted on the case some twelve, thirteen years ago. It’s been one of those old cold cases they like to highlight on television.”
“What no one knew was that Delmer’s sister, Delilah, was murdered on the same day,” Nelson said. “Delilah was a dancing girl at the Savoy. She was killed in the same manner and dumped in a nearby parking lot. If she hadn’t been buried next to Delmer, no one would know anything about her.”
“Jethro, CBI,” a young man near the table said. “How did she end up next to Delmer?”
“According to the records, Delilah and her brother were buried by Big Daddy’s mother, Dinah,” Ava said.
“Who is ‘Big Daddy’?” a woman asked. “Lisa also from the FBI.”
Nelson nodded to Ava. She went through the death of Big Daddy and its connection to the Cigarette Killer’s appeal. She explained what she knew about Di’s envelope and that it had been turned over to New York Forensic Investigations. She asked Fran to stand up and go over the exhumation of Delmer and Delilah as well as the New York Forensics’ team’s findings.
“We’ve had no contact with O’Malley or his friends,” Ava said. “Everything we know about what they’re doing comes through New York Forensic Investigations.”
“And how does any of this relate to what we’re doing?” a man’s voice from the corner asked.
Ava looked over to see Federal Agent Lithus with his arms folded across his chest, standing on the edge of the circle. She nodded to him.
“That’s what we’ve been trying to figure out,” Ava said. “So far, we have three connections. The first is that New York Forensic Investigations has determined that, while Delmer and Delilah were badly beaten, their cause of death was not the beating. Their throats were slashed with a knife.”
“I came in to announce that the New York City Manhattan Prosecutor is filing against Seurat for the murders of Delilah and Delmer Seurat,” Federal Agent Lithus said, his anger palpable in his voice. Surprised by his anger, a few people shot sly looks at him. “Explain to us how he could have
murdered his own mother when he was four years old.”
“I can’t,” Ava said. She pressed her hand into her chest. “I’m sequestered. I only know what I’m told through third parties.”
She glanced at Fran, who stood.
“O’Malley found some witnesses,” Fran said. “New York City Forensics posted the transcripts of their depositions early this morning. They were there when it happened. O’Malley and his friends appear to have discovered the murder weapon. It was found in the building these women lived in.”
Fran sat back down.
“The New York City Manhattan Prosecutor is concerned that we will, and I quote, ‘screw up the evidence and a true monster will be released into world,’” Special Agent Lithus said.
“He can’t be!” Leslie and another woman said at the same time.
Leslie nodded to the woman.
“Sorry,” the woman said to Leslie. “Hi, I’m Nell O’Dell. Doctor. I supervise one of the CBI labs. We received the new samples of the defendant. I worked overnight to get them done.”
Leslie nodded to the woman.
“Seurat has osteosarcoma,” Nell said.
The crowd of scientists looked puzzled, confused, or frustrated. Someone even said, “What the hell?”
“Is it possible he doesn’t know?” Special Agent Lithus asked.
“It’s unlikely,” Nell said, while Leslie shook her head.
“What the . . .” Special Agent Lithus started.
“Give us a moment,” Bob said, asserting his male authority to get Special Agent Lithus to back down. “Ava, please continue.”
“We started to wonder why Seurat was doing this,” Ava said.
“And what the hell happened to his DNA!” Leslie said in such an exasperated voice that everyone laughed.
“We have a lot of theories but no real, definitive answers,” Ava said.
“How do we get those answers?” Special Agent Lithus asked.
“Someone would have to find Alanzo Panteli Jr.,” Ava said.
“Your husband was the last one to see him,” Special Agent Lithus said pointedly.
Ava opened her mouth to respond, but Nelson jumped to his feet and intervened.
“Panteli Jr. kidnapped and drugged O’Malley,” Nelson said. “O’Malley was handcuffed to a table when Panteli Jr. disappeared. I can show you the entire video of the event!”
“How about if we stick to our best guess why Seurat launched his appeal and what’s happening at this point?” Bob asked.
Bob shot Nelson a “settle down” look. Shaking his head, Nelson sat down. Bob gestured to Ava, and she stood up again.
“The short answer is that we believe that Panteli Jr. has an heir — either a child or a grandchild — who has Diamond-Blackfan anemia,” Ava said. She looked out at sea of confused faces. “It’s the same disease that Seurat had until he had what we believe to be a bone-marrow transfusion in the last year or possibly two years.”
“I knew it!” a woman in the back said. “Hot damn, I just knew it.”
Everyone started talking at once. Using her thumb and index finger, Ava blew a loud whistle. Everyone stopped talking and stared at her.
“There is nothing in Seurat’s medical files that indicates that he’s had a bone-marrow transplant,” Ava said. “It’s just the only thing that would explain the changes we see in him. Further, we haven’t tracked down how he received this bone-marrow transplant while in the ADX, but we believe it’s linked to his marriage in the last year or so to his paternal cousin. I should say that Seurat is Panteli Jr.’s child. This was confirmed by the new witnesses to Delilah Seurat’s murder. Delilah Seurat, the woman we were speaking of previously, is Seurat’s mother. She was beaten by Panteli Jr. and then killed by her child.”
“New York City Forensic Investigations are in possession of a knife which appears to have killed Delilah and Delmer Seurat in 1955,” Ava said. “The knife has Seurat’s old DNA and fingerprints on it. How did he manage to kill someone at the age of four? I have no idea.”
Special Agent Lithus took a breath to interrupt.
“I’m not done,” Ava said over his first words. He glared at her. “It’s our opinion that Panteli Jr. funded the bone-marrow transplant for Seurat so that he could see if it would work for this heir. Of course, we now know that Seurat had bone cancer from the transplant. In light of this news, Panteli Jr. created all of this chaos with the appeal and accusations of impropriety on O’Malley and Delgado’s part so that he could cover up what he was actually after.”
“Which is what?” Special Agent Lithus asked in a snide tone.
“He is looking for a way to heal — or at minimum, maintain the health of — this heir,” Ava said. When no one said anything, she continued. “We’d believed that Big Daddy’s death brought about the appeal. It turns out that the only connection with Big Daddy’s death is that, with Big Daddy gone, Panteli Jr. believed he could get access to the information he needs. He has, so far, been unable to obtain this information.”
Ava nodded and sat down. Her rear was on her chair for less than a second before she popped back up to standing.
“I will tell you that this artificial sequestering has greatly hampered our investigation,” Ava said. “If the powers that be weren’t so thrilled to prove that O’Malley had screwed up, we would likely have resolved all of this and gone home. Tell me — has anyone found any forensic evidence that gives any credence to the idea that the Cigarette Killer is anyone other than Hamnet Seurat?”
Ava looked around the crowd that had gathered. Every head was shaking no.
“If we had just trusted that O’Malley and Delgado had done nothing improper,” Ava had to suck in a breath to keep her outrage at bay, “we would not have wasted all of this time and money on the sequestering and likely have solved this in a day’s time. We are at our best when we work together as professionals.”
Ava sat down and crossed her arms over her chest. For a moment, no one said anything. A man cleared his throat near the edge of the group.
“I will say that, while I agree with Ms. O’Malley that the sequestering was excessive, we would have tested everything no matter what,” Special Agent Curtis said. “We would have never left something like this to chance. There are too many cases on the line. As for determining the larger context for Seurat’s appeal and all of this insanity — a murder done by a four-year-old, bone-marrow transplants, and all of that — we would have sorted this out a lot sooner without being tucked away.”
“I was trying to save her life!” Special Agent Lithus said.
“You didn’t know it was in danger until last night,” Special Agent Curtis said evenly. “For now, let’s finish our meals and get back to work. We need to wrap up what we’re doing. If Ms. O’Malley is correct, we have a long night ahead of us.”
The people who’d gathered around them began moving back to their own tables. Fuming, Ava hadn’t moved from her glaring silence. Special Agent Curtis put his hand on her shoulder, and she looked up.
“I need you to come with me,” Special Agent Curtis said.
“Not this time,” Ava said.
Special Agent Curtis crouched down.
“Seth has been shot,” Special Agent Curtis said.
“What?” Ava asked.
Every member of her team stared in their direction. Nelson stood up.
“A young woman has been killed,” Special Agent Curtis said. “Panteli Jr. seems to have taken Seth somewhere. They found a trail of what they think is O’Malley’s blood and then nothing.”
“Claire? R.J.?” Ava asked. “Bernice.”
“I only know what I’ve said,” Special Agent Curtis said. “I will tell you that the NYPD reached out to me because right now, Big Daddy’s entire crew are looking for Panteli Jr.’s blood. The NYPD are preparing for an all-out war that could shut down the entire city by nightfall.”
Unsure of what to say, Ava stood up and followed Special Agent Curtis out of the room.
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Twenty-Five
Seth’s skin began to crawl the moment he opened the Filofax. He had loved Di. Hell, he still loved Di. Sometimes, in his dreams, he could still hear her laughing in the other room with her friends. She was the first woman who taught him that women could be strong and soft at the same time. Rummaging through her calendar filled with dentist appointments and periods of her girls made her seem small.
In general, Seth never wondered about people’s private lives. He preferred to allow people to hold onto their own thoughts and experiences. This is why so many of the people he’d put in prison still liked him. He didn’t try to tell them that they were bad or evil. He didn’t tell them that their mothers were perverted or their fathers demonic. He didn’t bother with why people were what they were. Very simply, he was interested only in their actions.
They had committed a crime; he caught them. It was as simple as that.
This dissection of Di’s life seemed almost sacrilegious. He glanced at R.J. and Claire. They seemed truly fascinated with what they were viewing.
“Why don’t you go play, Seth?” Claire asked without looking up.
“I . . . uh . . .” Seth said.
“Keep us entertained while we do this,” R.J. said.
“I’ll go get Bernice,” Claire said.
Bernice walked into the room. Even drawn and tired, she still radiated the countenance of a queen.
“I’m here,” Bernice said.
Claire turned around to look at her.
“We’re going through Di’s Filofax,” Claire said.
Bernice visibly brightened.
“See,” Claire said. “Bernice can help.”
“I can get you some breakfast,” Seth said.
“That would be fine, Seth,” Bernice said. “Thank you. Digging into the head and life of a woman I so adored is exactly what I need today. Those were truly great times.”
Claire nodded her head at Seth. He got up and slid his portion of the Filofax toward Bernice. He brought her a cup of coffee and warmed up the last breakfast burrito. For good measure, he filled everyone’s coffee cups. Finally, Claire just pointed toward the baby grand piano sitting in the corner of the living room. He slunk away from the group.
The Cigarette Killer Page 20