Find Virgil (A Novel of Revenge)

by Frank Freudberg

  The Virgil investigation began 20 days ago when an unknown person or persons poisoned seven hundred packs of Easy Lights cigarettes and shipped them to tobacco shops all over the United States. More than 300 died. Since then, at least 30 others have died in subsequent tampering incidents authorities believe were perpetrated by the original killer.

  As of noon today, 376 people have died and 41 remain hospitalized from injuries received when they smoked cigarettes laced with the residue of a sodium cyanide solution. Five people across the U.S. have been arrested in separate copycatting incidents, none fatal.

  “We have not yet had enough time to confirm whether or not the briefcase is indeed Virgil’s,” an FBI spokesman said. “The evidence has been transported to the FBI Lab in Washington where it is under intense scrutiny at this moment. The FBI has released an updated description and sketch of the man believed to be Virgil. If anyone wishes to provide the FBI with information regarding this investigation, they are urged to call 202–324–3000. Agents are standing by now. There is no question about it. We need the public’s help in apprehending Virgil, who has now reached the dubious status of the country’s most heinous serial murderer.”

  80

  FBI Headquarters

  In Lab One on the third floor of FBI headquarters, an FBI agent who specialized in locks used a steel tool to roll the reels of the lock on the eel-skin briefcase, feeling for the tumblers to click. He did not need the stethoscope in his tool kit. He knew as soon as he saw it that the three-reel lock would be easy to open.

  “Got it,” he said as he found the number on the last reel. A latex-covered index finger tested the two side latches. He looked up at Franklin, who loomed over his shoulder. “Want me to pop it?”

  “Go ahead. Slowly.”

  His gloved hands carefully released latches, thumbs in place to catch the tiny brass plates from springing back with the familiar snap. Franklin and various agents and technicians clustered around the table on which the briefcase sat.

  “Gee. How creative,” the lock-picking technician said. “The combo was one-zero-zero.”

  “At least it didn’t explode,” Franklin said.

  The lead technician looked at him with surprise. “Sir. We X-rayed it thoroughly before picking it up off of the detective’s desk in Harrisburg.”

  “Just a joke, Galton. Disregard it. What have we got?”

  Galton rose and another technician slid into the seat. With the aid of a large magnifying glass, he began looking through the briefcase, comparing items to images on 8x10 glossy photographs he had removed from a file folder.

  “I’m ninety-nine point nine nine nine certain it’s his,” the other technician said after a moment. He counted under his breath. “Fourteen packs of cigarettes, various brands. Four Aimsco Ultra-Thin half-cc twenty-eight-gauge syringes, one plastic jar of one hundred tablets of Vitamin C… but… wait,” he said, gently shaking the jar, “there seems to be a loose powder inside. I imagine we’ll be taking a close look at that.” He leaned farther into the open briefcase. “Three disposable Bic lighters and… Damn, sir! I think he may have blown it this time. I can see smudged prints all over the place. All over the place.”

  The men look at each other with tentative grins.

  “Are you sure?” Franklin asked.

  “Yes. I am. They’re everywhere in here. I don’t think he was expecting anyone to get hold of the briefcase. You know how meticulous he’s been.”

  Two agents high-fived each other.

  One of the agents leaned in over the technician’s shoulder to get a better look. Then he shrugged and said, “I got twenty bucks to anybody’s ten that says those prints index to one Loren D. Benedict.”

  Galton spent the next four hours taking apart the briefcase, molecule by molecule. As soon as he noted his initial impressions, he called Franklin, who had gone home for a few hours’ sleep. The Deputy Director was just stepping out of the shower when the telephone rang.

  “Good news and bad,” Galton said. “First, there’s no question about it, the briefcase is a bonanza. It’s definitely him, Oak, or someone using the identical batch of sodium cyanide, the stuff from Tellman Chemicals & Supplies in Baton Rouge. And in the briefcase, we found seven newspaper clippings stapled together. All but one of the articles were Virgil stories. But the bad news is the prints belong to Lester Jeeter.”

  An alarm went off in Franklin’s brain. “Something’s wrong, Galton. Jeeter never opened the case. The police made that clear.”

  “Unless he opened it before he got caught, somehow.”

  “No. The police were definite about that. They saw him inside the dumpster before he got it out. We have to pick him up. Damn it. We had a material witness, and I released him! Hold on Galton.” Galton heard Franklin shout for his wife. “Lydia!” Louder. “Lydia!” A woman shouted back from somewhere far off. Then Franklin again. “Lydia! Call my office. Tell them it’s urgent and to pick up Jeeter in Harrisburg.” The far-off voice said something in reply. Franklin repeated himself. “Pick up Jeeter in Harrisburg. They’ll know. I’m on a call, tell them I’ll call them in five minutes.”

  “Okay, Galton. I had to get that rolling.”

  “Also, Oak, there’s a slight chance we may learn something about the water he used in mixing the cyanide solution. If he used tap water from a major municipal utility, there may be some markers. But don’t get your hopes up. Back to the sodium cyanide, it’s not likely someone else is using the Tellman batch. And there’s something else, I don’t know if it helps or not. A hair fragment.”

  “A hair fragment?”

  “Not human.”

  “Canine?”

  “Feline. The question is, when did it get in there? Are our evidence experts still up there in Harrisburg?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll call them, tell them I’m looking for any hint that a cat or cats have been in Jeeter’s residence or anywhere else he may have opened the case. Ask Jeeter if he has a cat or if cats come into his place.”

  “Where was the hair?”

  “Behind the built-in fanfold compartment in the side of the case. The little belt buckle thing was buckled closed. We unbuckled it and looked around.”

  Franklin thought. “How flat is the fanfold compartment when it’s empty and buckled closed?”

  “Like a file folder with nothing in it. Pretty flat.”

  “Tight enough that a junkie would figure there’s nothing in there worth taking the time to unbuckle a fastener for?”

  “Unless he’s a crack addict desperate for cash. He wouldn’t have cared how flat it was.”

  “Okay. You’ve made a case for him opening it. You know many drug addicts jonesing for the glass pipe who would take the time to re-buckle?”

  Galton thought about that then said, “Good point.”

  “I’d say then whatever you found behind there probably belongs to Virgil, not Jeeter. And I doubt anyone would think to plant anything that subtle. Too much of a long shot that we’d even find it.”

  “Okay, Oakley. The problem is, is I’m not sure what we could do with a garden-variety cat hair.”

  “I know. In the meantime, get some extreme close-up color photos of the hair made while we try to figure how if it can help us.”

  “That’s already being done.”

  “Galton? What was the subject of that other newspaper article?”

  “A sheet torn out of Adweek magazine listing a bunch of ad industry events taking place in Las Vegas. We’re working on that, too.”

  81

  Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

  Six FBI agents peeled out of the driveway at Bob Diner after getting word, relayed from Washington, about Jeeter. The message had been terse. Priority. Get to Lester Jeeter’s residence and take him into custody and seize the building.

  Harrisburg homicide’s day-work One-
Squad got the call from the FBI. The fire department arrived simultaneously in response to a report of smoke in the building.

  The officers discovered Lester Jeeter dead on his side, lying on the floor by the front door of what seemed to be his living room. A section of greasy rug under Jeeter’s head smoldered from a cigarette that had apparently fallen out of his mouth, sending acrid smoke throughout the rooms and out onto the street where someone had noticed and called it in.

  The fire department started an electrical generator and brought in a set of lights to illuminate the crime scene.

  “What a loser,” a Harrisburg homicide detective said to one of the FBI agents. The FBI agent gazed at Jeeter and shook his head. Cyanotic skin is tougher to determine by sight on the body of a black man than on a lighter-skinned person. But there wasn’t much question about it. Virgil had struck again.

  The homicide detective stooped close to Jeeter’s body and continued his inspection. “Can I ask you something?” he said to the FBI agent. “I mean how fucking stupid do you have to be to steal cigarettes from the guy who’s known all over the universe for poisoning them. You got to laugh. You really got to.”

  The FBI forensic experts who had taken the briefcase to the FBI Lab in Washington were ordered back to Harrisburg.

  Within minutes after landing, they would begin tearing the place apart.

  The experts found mostly what they expected. A lot of filth, and, right there on the kitchen counter, a pack of Montgomerys, the lot number of which indicated it had been distributed by Old Carolina Tobacco, Inc. to a retailer in Atlanta. The lot number matched that of another pack recovered from a previous CYCIG crime scene. Residue on the cigarette paper showed a water stain, as had other cigarettes recovered from earlier crime scenes. Occasionally, Virgil had gotten sloppy while injecting the cyanide solution, and the solution would leave its mark.

  The county coroner signed the custody form that officially turned the decedent’s body over to the FBI. The FBI’s experts were not ready yet to have Jeeter shipped to the morgue.

  The coroner took a last glance at the body and raised his hand to the others in a silent goodbye as he left the crumbling building Lester Jeeter had called home.

  82

  Asheville

  “Why go overboard? Why take any additional risk?” Pratt said to Valzmann, who sat across from him in the Executive Suite. Pratt took a scrap of paper from his pocket and looked at it. Genevieve’s handwriting. She had given it to him earlier when the market closed at four o’clock.

  Closing price, Old Carolina Tobacco, Inc.

  184 –1 1/4, Volume 4,940,000.

  Third most active stock

  He crumbled the paper and put it back in his pocket. He looked up at Valzmann.

  “Look,” Pratt said, raising his eyebrows to emphasize that it was all Easy Street from here on in. “You’ve already, in effect, buried him. There’s no need to do anything else. First they’ll find the cash in his apartment, with a nice chunk missing. Then with a little help, if necessary, they’ll get the idea to search his uncle’s mountain lodge. And the stink that will greet them when they open that canvas bag.” Pratt stopped speaking. His mouth parted into a white-toothed grin that burst into an ugly, raucous laugh. It took him some time to regain control of himself.

  Valzmann smiled and nodded in agreement. He had a sudden thought. “Mr. Pratt? What about the security violation copies Dallaness made? They’re live grenades.”

  “Dallaness!” Pratt said and laughed again. He rose and walked over to the telescope that stood trained on a particularly scenic crest of the Blue Ridge Mountains. “Mary Dallaness?” he said, squinting into the eyepiece. “That mouse. She’s nothing to worry about.”

  “Then why’d she make them in the first place?”

  “Who knows? Because Rhoads told her to.”

  Pratt walked over and slapped Valzmann on the back.

  Valzmann took his cue to leave and made it as far as Pratt’s door before the CEO called to him.

  “Hang on for a second,” Pratt said. “Come back in here. And close the door.”

  Valzmann liked the sound of this.

  Pratt took a seat on the gray leather sofa.

  “You gave me an idea, Valzmann. If you were Mary Dallaness and if you were Tommy Rhoads and if you had stolen some critically important documents from a bunch of ruthless bastards, who would you give them to for safekeeping?”

  “Exactly,” Valzmann said, closing his eyes, already considering how he’d handle it.

  “Wait.” Pratt worried about a possible complication. “If Rhoads had an accident now, instead of later as we’ve planned, how would that affect his role as fall guy for Benedict’s disappearance?”

  “I believe it would enhance it. He wouldn’t be available to complain to his new friends at Tenth and Pennsylvania.”

  Pratt’s countenance darkened. “Okay,” he said. Scenes from the movie he was directing played on the screen before his mind’s eye. He turned and pointed his long, tan finger in Valzmann’s face. “Listen carefully. Here’s what you do.”

  83

  New York

  At 9:45 p.m., with ample time for overnight editors to use the material in morning editions or early newscasts, the Dow Jones news service released two stories analyzing the financial impact of Virgil’s “public awareness campaign” on the tobacco industry and related business sectors.

  The market’s gut reaction when the news broke twenty-one days earlier had been negative speculation and wild selling by private shareholders and skittish institutional investors. That backlash had, over the following days, been counterbalanced by investors who thought the recent erosion of industry stock prices presented outstanding buying opportunities. Although prices continued to fall, rumors abounded that institutional investors were planning to buy huge blocks of stock in the immediate future.

  The Dow Jones stories were based on what staff reporters were able to sniff out from contacts at Wall Street’s brokerage firms.

  Since the Virgil story broke, the brokerage house analysts who covered the tobacco industry had been pressed into overdrive. They worked anxiously at terminals to be the first to forecast the correct direction of tobacco stock prices and beat competing investment firms who would offer similar investment advice to their customers. The analysts dug into just-released tobacco industry retail sales data looking for Virgil’s impact on company earnings, market trends, and insider transactions.

  The internal auditors at the Big Eight cigarette manufacturers worked overtime as well to tabulate retail sales reports and other data as it became available. Projections were in demand in the executive suites. Demographic experts from the Association of Tobacco Marketers were placed conspicuously in 250 retail sales locations throughout the U.S. to observe buying behavior, conduct exit interviews with cigarette customers, and distribute cigarette safety tip sheets, advising smokers how to search for telltale signs of package tampering.

  Publicly, Big Eight media spokespeople stated that not only had sales not decreased, they had increased as a result of kneejerk hoarding, a typical consumer buying behavior. Some people feared that cigarettes would be temporarily de-shelved until the tampering incidents could be controlled. Big Eight management was only vaguely concerned about the quirky drop in ten-day sales trends in the east and southeast. Sales were down 0.6 percent, something that had never happened in the fall. Cooler weather brought higher sales. Meteorological reports showed that temperatures had been lower than average so far for the season. Typically, sales rose 2 to 3 percent in comparable ten-day periods.

  The research division of the Gallup Organization, retained in secrecy by the ATM, worked to analyze reports calculating how many smokers, if any, had been inspired by Virgil’s behavior to try to quit smoking. The ATM found the early numbers unsettlingly high. Twenty-one percent of survey respondents said they intended to q
uit smoking within the next two weeks. Typically 18 percent of those responding said they intended to quit “now or in the near future,” when asked the week before New Year’s Eve.

  In confidential memorandums, the industry’s own experts determined that 8.9 percent of “serious” quitters never resumed smoking, and from that they computed a model of a permanent loss-of-revenue. The numbers got a grim reception in tobacco industry executive suites.

  And there was more bad news for the industry. The twelve-step programs at the heart of support groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous were reported to be exceptionally effective for motivated cigarette quitters.

  Sponsored by the National Respiratory Health Foundation, Smokers Anonymous meetings were launched in 325 locations across the United States.

  84

  Clipping from Monday’s New York Post:

  SIX ARRESTED IN “VIRGIL” SIT-IN AT R.J. REYNOLDS IN NEW YORK

  Crowds Jeer, Throw Bottles as Police Arrest Demonstrators

  85

  From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

  Man Described as Thin, Grey, Sickly

  Scalper at Three Rivers Sounds Virgil Alarm

  “The Guy’s Coughing Made Me Suspicious”

  86

  Tuesday, October 24

  Asheville

  It was Rhoads’s turn to wake Fallscroft. The pilot answered groggily.

  “Can I be at FBI Headquarters in D.C. by 6 a.m.?”

  “I imagine this is serious,” Fallscroft said.

  “Can I be there?”

  “If this is serious, sure.”

  “The FBI called. There’s been a significant development,” Rhoads said. “Virgil wants money. Meet you at the helipad in how long?”