He would leave New York City the way he’d found it — with his best friend Claire laughing at him.
“Help!” the driver screamed. “Help! I need help! Someone help me!”
Still grinning, Seth’s body fell onto the concrete sidewalk.
Epilogue
Two months later
Seth stood at the window of a Pediatric Intensive Care Unit in Memphis, Tennessee, looking at two-and-a-half-year-old, Michael Panteli. The boy had no hair from the initial attempt to destroy his bone marrow. He was attached to machines. He laid in the arms of Panteli Jr.’s driver’s arms, his mother Alice Panteli. Alice was dressed head to toe in paper coverings designed to keep her son safe from infection.
“Hey!” Ava said as she came up behind him. “What are you doing?”
Seth turned to look at her.
“I can’t see him from the chair,” Seth said.
“No coffee for you,” Ava said.
“Why?” Seth asked.
She pointed to the chair. He pointed to the boy, and she pointed to the chair. His love of coffee won out. He sat down and groaned with the effort. She kissed his cheek and gave him the cup. He greedily drained the cup.
By some miracle, a pair of New York Mounted Police had heard Alice scream from where she’d been standing, just off Central Park. They were able to get Seth to the hospital. He was rushed into surgery, where he lost a whole lot of blood and the bit of his colon that he was sure he no longer needed. The hospital put out a call for blood donors. So many people showed up that they ended up having to turn people away. Claire was there within minutes of his arrival. She and his friends from the Bethune Towers had sat in vigil until Ava arrived that evening. Together, they’d willed Seth through the surgery. It was touch and go for a while, but Seth was recovering, albeit slowly.
At Ava’s request, Inspector Oscar Dekay gave her the bullet when the case was closed. Ava now wore it on a gold necklace around her neck. Seth thought it was a little macabre, but she was a forensic specialist, after all.
As soon as he was ready to travel, he’d come here to see how little Michael was doing. They’d given the doctors the formula Wilma had died giving Seth. The doctors had puzzled over the formula for a while. Ava’s had lab pitched in to analyze the formula. After much discussion, and more liability wavers, they had started the boy on the formula. Within days, he was strong enough to try the bone marrow transplant. He received a dose this special formula every day, and every day it helped him to survive.
“He’s adorable,” Ava said.
Seth smiled and nodded. Exhausted from the effort, he was glad he’d sat down. Hearing voices, he turned to see Maresol and Claire walking toward them. Ava greeted the older women fondly and updated them on how little Michael was doing. The women of his life ignored Seth completely, which was absolutely fine with him. He was asleep when Ava started wheeling him through the hospital.
“Where are we going?” Seth asked.
“We are due at a case conference,” Ava said.
“We?” Seth asked.
“You and me,” Ava said. “It came up kind of fast. We can video-conference here in the hospital.”
“Who are we talking to?” Seth asked.
“New York Forensics, my team,” Ava said. “You, Claire, me. R.J. from New York.”
“Same old crowd,” Seth said.
“Claire’s kept everyone at bay until now,” Ava said. “I have to tell you that Old Spammy is terrified of our Claire. He was very ‘yes, ma’am’, ‘no, ma’am’ after the first call.”
“He’s such an asshole,” Claire said. “He should be happy that we haven’t filed for him to be reprimanded for this whole bullshit.”
“We should do that,” Maresol said with a sniff.
“Sure, let’s make hell for Spammy when we get the time,” Seth said.
Claire, Maresol, and Ava laughed.
“What are we doing today?” Seth asked, making an effort to keep the whining to a minimum.
“We agreed that you were well enough to give your case formulation,” Ava said. “They plan on closing all the cases after that.”
Seth nodded. He’d been shot a number of times, but he was having a tough time recovering from this injury. He’d lingered in the hospital with one infection after another. His stamina was gone. Because the bullet had created a divot in his hip bone, it would be another month before he could walk without risking breaking his hip. Even worse, for the first time since he was four years old, he wasn’t capable of playing the piano for at least a month. Even now, he could only manage a half hour or so before succumbing to fatigue.
He was getting to a place where he could only remember being healthy and vibrant. He felt old, really old, which made his ninety-year-old father laugh at him.
Of course, he had yet to return to Denver. Maresol promised to rehire the brutal-yet-effective physical therapist who had “helped” him when he was poisoned with First Responder’s toxin.
“This is your last week of moping around,” Maresol had threatened.
Ava and Claire had only laughed in agreement. Seth’s agent, James Schmidt, had convinced the movie companies that they were satisfied with the three movie scores Seth had created so far. They were “happy” to give him as much time as he needed to heal. Or that’s what they’d said on the card on the flowers they’d sent. Seth knew that if a year passed, they wouldn’t be so understanding.
Maresol opened the door to a small room, and Ava pushed Seth inside.
“R.J.!” Seth said.
R.J. was sitting in a chair facing a large computer monitor with a webcam on the top. His arm was in a sling due to the healing shoulder wound from where Panteli Jr.’s had shot him. The wound had healed, but his bones were not healing as quickly.
“Don’t get up,” R.J. said. “I just came to help you wrap this up.”
Seth held out his hand, and R.J. grabbed it. They grinned at each other. Ava took a seat next to Seth. Claire took one just behind R.J., and Maresol sat next to Ava.
They waited a minute, and the computer rang. Ava typed into the keyboard and the Internet call was connected. Ava’s team was sitting around a computer in Ava’s office in Denver.
“Seth!” they said in unison, and laughed.
Seth waved to them.
“This is my friend R.J.,” Seth said. “Claire, and you know Maresol.”
“Nice to meet you!” Bob said. “We’ve been amazed at your courage and tenacity Claire, R.J.”
“Yes, Bob,” Leslie said. “We were all impressed with tenacity.”
The team laughed, and Bob joined them.
“How is that arm, R.J.?” Bob asked.
“It’s coming along,” R.J. said. “Listen, when we get back, could my son come take a tour at your facility? He’s in college now and wants to do this kind of work.”
“R.J.! I’ve already arranged it,” Ava said.
“I know,” R.J. said to Ava. “I figured we should clear it with the old white man.”
Everyone laughed. R.J. grinned at himself. The Internet call rang. Ava clicked the button. The video box with Ava’s team in it shifted to the left, and a box opened with the New York Forensic Investigations team. Inspector Oscar Dekay sat surrounded by ten people in lab coats.
“Hey!” Ava waved.
The teams did a round of introductions. Everyone seemed so happy and light that Seth felt energized by their excitement. If Seth had been feeling better, he would have run this conference as he had thousands of others. Because he was still unwell, he had to rely on someone else to take his place. Oscar spoke first.
“In order to close this case, I wanted to coordinate with each of the teams,” Oscar said. “This gives us a chance to ask any questions, check all the boxes, and put these cases to bed.”
Everyone nodded in agreement.
“I have a list of questions from Ava’s team,” Oscar said. “We’ve shared our questions with them. We figure that O’Malley’s never shy about ask
ing questions . . .”
Seth grinned as the others laughed.
“So feel free to interrupt,” Oscar said. “For no other reason than it’s fresh in our minds, I’d like to start backwards — which is really is the first item in the Cigarette Killer timeline.”
“Fine with us,” Bob said from Ava’s lab.
Ava nodded.
“We’re talking about the murder of Delilah and Delmer Seurat in 1955,” Oscar said. “We have processed the entire envelope provided by Dinah and given to O’Malley by Bernice. We were able to get fingerprints and DNA from much of the information in the envelope. The envelope served to confirm what we supposed.
“Panteli Jr. had a child with Delilah Seurat in 1951. She was sixteen years old,” Oscar said. “Her child had a terrible anemia at birth which led to a variety of deformities that we see in the adult, Hamnet Seurat. Panteli Jr. was not much older than Delilah when his child was born. We have been told that Panteli Jr. loved Delilah and had planned to marry her until the child was born. We have not been able to confirm this.
“What we have been able to confirm is that Panteli Jr. made Delilah’s life a living hell,” Oscar said. “According to our witnesses, he blamed her for the deformities in his child. She was forced to deal with her sick child on her own, which led her to seek help from her friend from Louisiana, one ‘Ethel’ with no known last name.
“Most of this you already know,” Oscar said. “After Seth was shot, we were able to interview the Panteli family. They provided some more details. Panteli Jr. was actually in the room when his child, four-year-old Hamnet Seurat, killed his girlfriend and the child’s mother. New York Social Services, such as it was in those days, gave the child to the Pantelis. Panteli Jr.’s mother put the child into a home.
“There are a few stories from the home,” Oscar said. “The child injured at least three nurses that we know of. We’ve tracked down a few of them. The stories are bleak. The child would use his illness to gain a person’s trust, which led to near-deadly injuries.
“Fast forward to today,” Oscar said. “The New York City Manhattan Prosecutor has reached a plea deal in the case of Delilah and Delmer Seurat. There is no question that Hamnet Seurat will spend the rest of his days in prison. This is what everyone wanted. With Panteli Jr. dead, there’s no one to fund the rest of this nonsense.”
Oscar stopped talking.
“That’s what we have,” Oscar said. “Do you have any questions?”
“Wilma?” Seth asked.
“I’m glad you asked about her,” Oscar said. “It seems that Panteli Jr. made her life a living hell. She has been in hiding. She went to Big Daddy’s funeral to get a chance to talk to you about her mother. But you played all day. She spoke to Sandy but doesn’t seem to have indicated that she wanted to speak with you.”
“Why was Panteli harassing her?” Seth asked.
“He thought she had a cure for Alice’s son,” Oscar said.
“While we’re on this topic, let’s talk about Panteli genetics,” said Nelson, from Ava’s lab. “Panteli Jr. and Delilah shared a father. We have no indication that Delilah either knew that Panteli was her father or ever received any benefit from it.”
“And Delmer?” R.J. asked.
“He was fathered by another man,” Nelson said.
“Panteli Sr. had a reputation as a rapist,” Oscar said.
“It’s likely that this is how Delilah was conceived,” Nelson said. “Recessive genes being what they are — that’s likely why their child had this rare disability. But get this. Panteli Jr. is the father of Michael Panteli.”
“In her deposition, Alice said that she’d been raped by her uncle when she was home from college,” Oscar said. “Panteli Jr. told her that he was drunk and that she looked like an ‘old girlfriend.’ When she fell pregnant, her father wouldn’t let her abort the child because there are so few heirs. They didn’t do the genetic testing until the child was born.”
“So sorry that man is dead,” Fran from Ava’s lab said.
There was a chorus of “That’s the truth” and “Hell, yeah” combined with the more-sedate head nods.
“Panteli Jr. was panicked about finding a remedy because the child was his son?” Claire asked when she had a chance.
“Correct,” Oscar said. He shrugged. “From what we gather, Delilah was the love of his life. He was trying to save Michael as a way of making it up to her.”
“Poor Wilma,” Seth said.
“Did you figure out what she gave you?” Oscar asked.
“It was the recipe Ethel used to help Hamnet Seurat,” Seth said. “Wilma wanted me to take it and deal with Panteli Jr. Her mother had told her that Panteli Jr. would kill her if he had the chance. She was trying not to give him the chance.”
“Poor Wilma,” Ava said.
“The funny thing is that the doctors made good use of Ethel’s remedy,” Seth said. “Her recipe had a mixture of plant sterols and other herbs. There’s a good chance that Ethel’s remedy will help the child make good use of his bone marrow transplant.”
“That, and a better donor,” Ava said.
Seth nodded.
“We tracked down the bone-marrow transplant,” Bob said. “It turns out that Panteli Jr. paid the medical director at the ADX a small fortune to take care of Seurat.”
“Alice said that she was the donor,” Seth said.
“That’s correct,” Nelson said.
“We don’t have a lot to report from our team,” Bob said. “Mostly because we have worked our asses off to confirm things that we already know. Leslie?”
“Fran and I have checked through all of the results — from our lab, the CBI, and the FBI,” Leslie said. “We found no evidence of tampering of any kind. We were able to connect Seurat’s change in DNA to the bone-marrow transplant. We found his original DNA in the older bone of his hip, thus connecting this new profile with his historic profile.”
“It’s clear that Hamnet Seurat kidnapped, tortured, and killed all of those people,” Nelson said. “There was no way he was ever going to get out of prison. Just not a chance. We agree with New York Forensics that this whole bullshit was to cover for Panteli Jr. trying to find this remedy for Michael.”
“Seth and Mitch have been cleared of all suspicion,” Fran said.
Leslie looked at Bob, who shook his head that he was not going to give her any news.
“Okay,” Leslie said. “Special Agent Lithus has been reprimanded. It’s been determined that he jumped the gun on the sequestering. This kind of appeal would have required that at least some of the evidence would have been retested. There’s no question about that. Especially with Seurat’s new DNA profile! Still, it was determined that Spammy’s ‘hysterics’ — and I’m quoting here — ‘cost a lot of money, time, and resources, not to mention besmirched the names of two fine investigators.’”
“The thing is that there were so many bodies with so much evidence,” Ava said. “We had to test only one case to know that Seurat was the Cigarette Killer. Nelson and the FBI lab worked on the gas station surveillance tape, like Seth suggested on that library video. You can now clearly see Seurat talking to our Victim 1. Seurat follows Victim One and Victim Two out of the gas station. It’s as clear as day. Just that would have been enough to quash the appeal. But Spammy had something to prove.”
“So what’d you do to Spammy, Seth?” Nelson asked.
“I’m not sure,” Seth said with a grin. “I may or may not be the originator of a certain nickname. It was either me or, more likely, Mitch.”
Everyone laughed.
“How’s my kitten?” Oscar asked.
“As far as I know, they are doing well,” Seth said. “There are two boys and two girls. Carl’s already picked a grey haired boy for his grandson. I figured you’d want a girl. The kittens are about two weeks old. Bernice is taking care of the kittens until we get back. You have just a few weeks before you can come to pick.”
“Good to know,” Osc
ar said.
“I’m heading home to Denver to finish healing,” Seth said. “You’ll have to check on your kitten with Claire and Bernice, but my guess is that already you know that.”
While his team shot him questioning looks, Inspector Oscar Dekay visibly blushed.
“When you’re well, the commissioner wants to have a celebration for all of us,” Oscar said. “Ava’s lab, too. We kept a monster behind bars. We don’t always get that kind of win. Let’s plan on making a weekend out of it.”
Seth waved goodbye. Ava chatted with her team before signing off. Even though the screens were dark, no one moved.
“Ready to go home?” Seth asked. “Coming with us, Claire?”
“Until you’re settled,” Claire said. “I just . . .”
A tear streaking down her face, Claire shook her head. To Seth’s surprise, Ava and R.J.’s eyes were welling with tears.
“I’m sorry about the suit pants,” Seth said, softly.
“I’m sorry you almost died,” Claire said.
“Me, too,” Seth said. “But at least I still have my teeth.”
Claire snorted at his joke. It took a moment or so before everyone got their emotions under control.
“Dinner or home?” Seth asked.
“Let’s go home,” Ava said.
“Let’s,” Seth said.
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Claudia Hall Christian
Claudia Hall Christian writes page-turning fiction that is bright, funny, and highly memorable. Her life “why” is to shine the light on the beauty and strength that lies within every human being regardless of their struggles in life. Her characters shake up the darkness as they use their own trauma to influence their world positively. Claudia’s highly entertaining work inspires readers to become their best selves. She calls her work great stories about good people caught in difficult time.
Claudia is the author of the Alex the Fey thriller series, the longest running serial fiction the Denver Cereal, the Seth and Ava Mysteries, as well as the Queen of Cool, Suffer a Witch, and the Case Book of Abee Normal, Paranormal Investigations (Dec 2017).
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