by Lisa Gardner
Which, sadly, was true. My sister was every prison administrator’s nightmare: a highly intelligent, incredibly antisocial maximum-security inmate with nothing left to lose. She was already held in isolation, locked down twenty-three hours a day. With the sole exception of my one-hour monthly attendance, she didn’t care about visitation privileges. Ditto with phone privileges, access to prison programming or even the few luxuries she’d managed to scrape enough funds together to purchase from the prison canteen. Time and time again, Shana acted out like a bad toddler, and time and time again the prison staff responded with loss of privileges and removal of toys.
Shana didn’t care. She was angry, she was depressed and thus far, no amount of medication had made a difference. I would know, as I’m the one who’d prescribed her last three medical protocols.
My sister’s suicide attempt wasn’t a stain just on Superintendent McKinnon’s record but also on my own.
“Has she been taking her pills?” I asked now, the next logical question.
“We’ve been supervising both her ingestion of the medication as well as searching her cell for undigested capsules. We haven’t found anything, but that might just mean she’s one step ahead. You understand, Adeline, I’m going to have to keep Shana in medical for at least a week as it is. You know what that’s like.”
I nodded, getting the message. If prisons were rife with mental illness, then the medical ward was the epicenter of the madness, where the deeply disturbed prowled their locked-down medical cells while howling their particular brand of crazy for all the world to hear.
If my sister hadn’t wanted to kill herself before, a week in medical should do the trick.
“Is it the anniversary of her first murder victim?” I asked now. “Maria said some reporter’s been trying to contact Shana, asking all sorts of questions?”
In response, Superintendent McKinnon yanked open a drawer and pulled out a banded bunch of letters. “Name’s Charles Sgarzi. He first called my office six months ago. My staff informed him he should write to Shana directly with his request. I’m told she read the first few letters but never responded. Apparently, he got more serious after that.”
She handed over the batch of letters. I counted more than a dozen, arranged in order of the postmark date. It appeared that as of three months ago, the reporter had started writing at least once a week. The envelopes had all been opened, but given the security protocols, that didn’t mean anything.
“Same guy wrote all of these?”
“Yep.”
“What newspaper?”
“Not a paper. A blog. Digital reporting, I don’t know. They say newspapers are passé. Internet news will be the Pulitzer Prize–winning wave of the future. Of course, how do you line a litter box with that?”
“And Shana read every letter?”
“Only the first few. She’s refused them all since.”
“But you’ve read them?”
“The security team grew curious. Understand, your sister isn’t one of our more popular inmates.”
I nodded, knowing what she meant. Many inmates maintained very active social lives while behind bars. If you were a beautiful young woman, that certainly added to the appeal. Shana, on the other hand, was midforties, prison hardened and mean ugly. Most men probably assumed she was a lesbian. Given the sexual nature of her homicides, I didn’t believe she was, but then again, I’d never asked.
“When she started getting weekly mail,” the superintendent continued, “we became suspicious the letters might contain more than social content.”
I nodded again. My sister might not be pretty, but she did have a history of drug abuse, so I could understand the security team’s concern.
“If it’s code or contains some kind of hidden content . . .” The superintendent spread her hands. “It’s better than anything we’ve ever seen. My best guess, this reporter is obsessed with your sister. Which, after I ran a background report on him, makes some sense; he’s the cousin of Donnie Johnson.”
I startled, glancing up. Donnie Johnson had been twelve years old when Shana had strangled him with her bare hands before taking a knife to his face and upper body. Though only fourteen at the time of the murder, she’d been tried as an adult given the “heinous” nature of the crime. During her trial, she’d alleged that Donnie had tried to rape her. She’d only been defending herself. As for the removal of his ear, the mangling of his face, the long strips of skin she’d excised from his arms . . .
Remorse, she’d stated deadpan. Classic disfigurement to repent for her crime.
As the DA had pointed out, Donnie had been a pale, scrawny little boy, the kind of kid picked last during gym class. The odds of this frail ninety-pounder sexually assaulting the bigger, wiser, street-tough foster girl next door . . .
The jury had needed less than two days to deliberate my sister’s fate, and that was after the defense blocked any admission of my sister’s prior bad acts, including another episode with a knife and a boy that had occurred while she was institutionalized at the age of eleven.
My sister had been branded a monster in every major media outlet at the time. Given that she’d killed three more people, including two COs, while incarcerated, I don’t think the public’s perception had been wrong.
In her own words, she was Daddy. A born predator.
And I was Mom. And Mom was worse.
I couldn’t help myself. My thoughts drifted to glass vials and their floating dermal contents, tucked in a shoe box beneath my closet floor. What would Shana think to know that my life wasn’t quite as bland and lily-white as she thought? That she, Dad and I had something in common after all?
I pulled myself together, refocusing on the letters.
“What does he want?” I asked now.
“To ask her some questions.”
I held up the letters. “Did he?”
“No. He just keeps including information for her to contact him.”
“And he doesn’t admit that he’s the victim’s cousin. You found that out on your own.”
“Exactly.”
“So already, his motives are suspect.”
“I’d be suspicious,” Superintendent McKinnon agreed.
“Do you think Shana knows?”
The superintendent paused, regarded me anew.
“Why do you think she’d suspect a personal connection between the reporter and Donnie Johnson?”
I shrugged. “According to you, these letters upset Shana. Why? Just some reporter asking her to get in touch? You know Shana as well as I do. She’s bored, she’s clever, she’s highly manipulative. I guess I would’ve assumed that she’d find this kind of outreach . . . intriguing.”
“You ever talk to her about Donnie?” Superintendent McKinnon asked me.
“We’ve danced around it from time to time.” But maybe not as often as other topics, such as our family.
“She didn’t answer your questions.”
“That’s never been her style.”
“She doesn’t talk about him. Never has. In all her years here, the counselors and psychologists and social workers who’ve cycled through . . . Shana doesn’t talk about him. The boy she stabbed when she was eleven, I know about him. The ho, in her terms, she had to gut when she was first incarcerated at sixteen, I know about her. But the Johnson boy. She never goes there.”
I frowned, considering. Shana could be very explicit in her talk of violence. Fantasies about gutting this person, killing that person. There didn’t seem to be anything too shocking, too graphic, too offensive, for her to say. Then again, if you boiled all her words down, parsed them away . . . She babbled. She offered forth exactly the kind of violent chatter you’d expect of a multiple murderer. Homicidal white noise that drowned out the rest of the conversation and kept you from continuing.
I could tell you now that if I
asked Shana why she killed Donnie Johnson, she’d shrug and say because. Shana considered herself to be a superpredator, and superpredators didn’t apologize. Superpredators didn’t feel they owed their prey that much.
But it might be interesting to ask her why she didn’t talk about the boy. Or why she hadn’t responded to the journalist. Or perhaps even more interesting, why she had never mentioned any of the letters to me.
Thirty years later, what did she still have to hide?
“Can I take these?” I asked Superintendent McKinnon.
“Be my guest. Are you going to call the reporter?”
“I might.”
“And you’ll talk to Shana?”
“Would it be okay if I returned tomorrow?”
“Under the circumstances, yes.”
I nodded, picked up the batch of letters, my mind already racing ahead. But just as I went to stand, I felt, more than saw, the superintendent’s hesitation.
“Anything else?” I asked her.
“Maybe one last thing. Any chance you caught the morning’s paper?”
I shook my head. Given my own evening’s . . . activities, then the call from the prison, I hadn’t had the opportunity to catch up on current events.
Now Superintendent McKinnon slid the Boston Globe across the smooth surface of her desk, one finger tapping a headline in the lower right-hand corner, below the fold. A local woman had been murdered; I gathered that immediately from the headline. It wasn’t until my gaze skimmed down the next few paragraphs to the details of the crime, strips of skin, expertly removed . . .
I closed my eyes, feeling an unexpected shiver. But they couldn’t . . . I didn’t . . . I cut off the errant thought savagely. Now was not the time or place.
“If memory serves . . .” the superintendent began.
“You are correct,” I interrupted.
“If I could spot the similarities between this murder and your sister’s work, your father’s crimes, others will as well.”
“True.”
“Meaning things for you and your sister could get worse.”
“Oh yes,” I agreed, gaze still locked on the desk and not meeting the superintendent’s eyes at all. “Things are about to get much worse.”
Chapter 10
THE COAKLEY AND ASHTON FUNERAL HOME had been serving families in Greater Boston for more than seventy years. D.D. had visited the establishment, a graceful, white-painted Colonial, twice before. Once for the passing of a friend, and once to honor a fellow officer. On both occasions, she’d been struck by the powerful odors of fresh flowers and preserved flesh. It was probably not something a homicide detective should admit, but funeral parlors creeped her out.
Maybe she simply knew death too well, so to view it in this kind of carefully sanitized venue made it feel alien to her. Like meeting a long-lost lover who looked nothing like you remembered.
The funeral director, Daniel Coakley, was waiting for her arrival. An older gentleman with broad shoulders and a shock of thick white hair, he wore an impeccably tailored charcoal-gray suit and exuded the kind of calm demeanor meant to soothe distraught family members and encourage close confidence.
D.D. shook his offered hand, then followed him through the wood-paneled foyer, down the dark-red-carpeted hall to his office. In contrast to the somber, old-world feel of the rest of the place, Coakley’s office was surprisingly light and modern. Large windows overlooking a grassy common area, white painted built-in bookshelves, a natural-stained maple-wood desk topped with a discreet state-of-the-art laptop.
D.D. could almost feel herself start to breathe again, except, of course, for the ubiquitous floral arrangement that dominated the windowsill.
“Gladiolus,” she observed. “Is it just me, or do they appear in most funeral arrangements?”
“The flower signifies remembrance,” Coakley informed her. “So they are a popular choice for funerals. They also symbolize strength of character, honor and faithfulness, which can be equally relevant.”
D.D. nodded, then cleared her throat, unsure of where to begin. Coakley granted her an encouraging smile. She had a feeling he was accustomed to uncomfortable guests and awkward questions. It still didn’t help.
She started with the basics, establishing that Coakley and Ashton was a third-generation firm, with Daniel serving as both the funeral director and head embalmer. Turned out, embalmers had to attend mortuary school as well as complete a yearlong apprenticeship before earning their license. Good to know.
The business also included three full-time and five part-time employees who assisted with administrative duties, funeral preparations, might even fill in as pallbearers, that sort of thing. That grabbed D.D.’s attention.
“And these other staff members, how do you know them?” she asked, leaning forward. “What’s bringing them to the job?”
Coakley smiled wryly. “You mean, why would they want to work at a funeral home?”
D.D. remained unabashed. “Exactly.”
“My part-timers are older, retired community members. Many are at a phase of their lives where they’ve had a lot of experience with funerals, and I think easing the process for others appeals to them. They’re mostly older men, interestingly enough. And I have to say, the majority of our families find their presence comforting.”
“And the rest of your staff?”
“I have a secretary who has been with me for decades. I think she’d be the first to say when she showed up for the job interview, she was taken aback about working in a funeral home. But as she put it, answering a phone is answering a phone. Besides, the backroom embalming duties aside, we aren’t so different than any other business. We maintain company cars, we manage a company office.” He gestured around them. “We make payroll, we pay taxes. It’s a business, and most of my employees probably work for me for the same reason they would work anywhere else. It’s a good job, I treat them well and they feel valued.”
D.D. nodded, understanding his point, even if she didn’t completely agree. Coakley could say his company was a business like any other, and yet he dealt with death every single day. Most companies couldn’t say that. Many people wouldn’t be comfortable with that.
“Maybe you could walk me through the process,” D.D. said. “You get a call. A person has died. Then what?”
“The deceased is transported to our facility.”
“How?”
“A variety of means. We’re qualified to pick up remains at local hospitals. Or there are professional mortuary service companies who specialize in transport, especially over long distances. For example, the funeral may be in Boston but the deceased passed away in Florida. So the body must be transported from there to here, which is out of our driving range.”
D.D. made a note. Mortuary service companies. More people, employees comfortable with spending hours at a time in the company of a corpse. Maybe some of which even took the job precisely for that reason? “Then what?”
“I would meet with the family, determine their wishes for the funeral. Open casket, closed casket, cremation. Their choices, of course, impact the next significant step, the embalming process.”
“How do you prepare the body?” D.D. couldn’t help herself; she leaned forward, all ears and morbid curiosity.
Daniel Coakley smiled, but fainter this time. Clearly, he’d been asked the question before. No doubt at numerous cocktail parties by people who were equal parts fascinated and horrified.
“Essentially, the embalming process involves the transfusion of blood with embalming fluid. Several small incisions are made in major arteries. Then a formaldehyde solution is injected into the veins, pushing the blood out while replacing it with embalming fluid.”
“Do you prepare the body before you start the embalming process?” D.D. asked. “Say, wash it?”
“No. Embalming can be rather messy. Person
ally, I wait till the end. Then I bathe the entire body.”
“Are there any special cleaning solutions you favor? Trade products?” She was thinking of the clean crime scenes again. The almost impossibly clean bedrooms.
Coakley shrugged. “I use a basic antibacterial soap. Doesn’t harm the tissue, while being mild enough to use on your bare hands.”
D.D. made another quick notation. Antibacterial soap, such as traces of which the ME had found on the first victim’s torso. “And afterward?” she pressed. “I imagine the room must also be cleaned?”
“The process takes place on a stainless steel embalming table, very similar to what medical examiners use for autopsies. It includes its own drain, of course. Afterward, we hose down the stainless steel surface, then disinfect with bleach. It’s not that involved, which is helpful during those times when we’re particularly busy.”
D.D. pursed her lips, considering. In the middle of the night, she’d been fixated on the thought that their killer was most comfortable with the dead. And when she thought dead people, she thought funeral homes. Maybe an embalmer, someone with technical experience who’d trained with a scalpel as part of mortuary school. Not to mention, the killer’s skill with cleaning the crime scene made her wonder about special products that might be used by funeral homes to eliminate all traces of blood and bodily fluids. Interesting.
“May I ask a question?” Coakley spoke up suddenly.
“Sure.”
“Is this in regard to the Rose Killer case?”
“What?”
“The Rose Killer? To quote the front page of the Boston Herald, which maybe conscientious detectives never do.”
D.D. closed her eyes. But of course. Boston PD had been doing good to keep the details of the first murder away from the press. She should’ve known they’d never get so lucky twice.
“Do I want to know what the Herald said?” she asked, peering out through one eye. “Or rather, splashed in graphic detail across the entire front page?”