Legally Dead

by Edna Buchanan

  “The man swings again or tries to throw the dog off. That motion casts his blood onto the floor and the wall.

  “He moves this way,” Bill said, following the intruder’s path. “Trying to fight off the dog, he fumbles for his gun and tries to shoot him. He fires from his left. Surprising to miss at such close range. He must be right-handed. He’s not ambidextrous. Lucky dog.”

  After being shot at, Scout must have retreated, bolted out the front door and ran through the gate.

  “Good dog,” Venturi murmured.

  “So he’s a biter,” Danny said with a frown, “and he’s home playing with my kids, one of whom is also a biter.”

  He called Luz and told her not to let the children play too aggressively with Scout, who was asleep on Julee’s bed at the moment.

  “I’m gonna buy that dog a steak,” Venturi said.

  “He already ate.” Danny snapped his phone shut. “Arroz con pollo. He likes chicken and yellow rice.”

  Bill collected hairs from Scout’s bed and standards from the rugs to match to hairs and fiber found on the suspect’s clothes or in his truck, then dug the bullet out of the wall.

  He raised his eyebrows at the war room, then examined the floor safe. “These aren’t as secure as the ones built of concrete with round steel doors,” Bill said. “All he needed was a hammer and chisel to peel it back. Had to work at it, though. How’d he know it was here?”

  “Good question,” Venturi said. “That throw rug covered it. Maybe he found it by accident. Or was looking for my laptop and wouldn’t quit till he found it.”

  “Maybe,” Danny said, “he already knew where it was.”

  They swept the entire place for cameras and listening devices. None had been planted.

  Before Bill finished he wanted elimination fingerprints from anyone who’d lived there recently. He took Mike’s and Danny’s.

  “What if he runs the prints and finds Errol Flagg’s or Laura’s or Casey’s?” Venturi told Danny privately. “They all had arrest records. There’s never been a link between them and this house, or us.”

  “Trust Bill,” Danny said.

  “I don’t know who to trust anymore.”

  “Okay, okay. Don’t get paranoid. Bill knows nothing’s on the record.”

  “But like you always say, people make mistakes,” Venturi argued. “What if Bill hits the wrong computer key? Or his assistant finds the standards on his desk and decides to do him a favor by running them through the national database? If hits start coming back, questions will be raised.”

  “We’re not dealing with the police department. Bill works alone.” Danny rolled his eyes. “Mike, trust somebody, sometime. Trust me.”

  They secured the front door and padlocked the gate.

  Despite the hour, they went to Danny’s to wake Victoria.

  “So this is the big bad guard dog,” Bill said as Scout scrambled from Julee’s room to greet them, tail wagging.

  “I wish he could talk,” Venturi said.

  “Then you wouldn’t need me,” Bill said.

  Venturi rapped on the guest-room door. It took Vicki several minutes to answer.

  “Michael, what is it?” She squinted at him, dazed. “Is something wrong?”

  “No,” he said. “We just need you in the kitchen for a sec.”

  She borrowed a bathrobe from Luz and joined them, pulling the robe more tightly around her when she saw the stranger.

  “This is Bill,” Venturi said. “He needs to take your fingerprints and a DNA swab.”

  She blinked. “It’s the first time anybody ever asked me for that in the middle of the night.”

  Bill took her prints on the kitchen table.

  “Nice.” He studied his handiwork, as though admiring her loops, whorls, and swirls. He smiled. She smiled back.

  Then he took a swab from inside her mouth.

  “Vicki,” Venturi said, “do you know Sidney’s blood type?”

  She gasped, her hand flying to her throat, where it left smudgy prints. “Has something happened to him?”

  Danny rolled his eyes and turned to wink seductively at Luz, who was watching from the doorway. She was wearing one of his big Marine Corps T-shirts over her maternity pajama bottoms.

  “No, not at all,” Venturi assured Vicki. He explained.

  She gave a slight nod. “Of course I know. He’s A-positive, just like his sister. Remember, dear? Madison was A-positive.”

  He nodded. The sudden lump in his throat caught him by surprise.

  He told Vicki he’d have a cleaning crew at the house in the morning, along with the alarm company, a locksmith, and a repairman for the gate. Hopefully, home would be livable again by day’s end.

  Venturi planned to spend the night at his house in case anyone came back. But the place was trashed and he was exhausted. A lot had happened since his day began in Atlanta. He’d been relieved then, thinking he’d resolved his problems. Danny persuaded him to sleep in the pool cottage and get an early start in the morning. Luz gave him the key, then walked him to the Florida-room door.

  “Sidney didn’t do it,” Luz said softly.

  “Then who did?” he asked casually, wondering how much she knew. Did Danny tell her more than he let on? Did everybody in his life suffer from diarrhea of the mouth?

  Luz pursed her lips, eyes mysterious. He didn’t push it. He kissed her cheek and walked through the quiet yard to the cottage, Scout plodding behind him.

  Exhausted, he went right to asleep. His cell phone woke him at precisely 4:22 a.m.

  “His blood type is A-positive,” Bill said. “I’ll be back in touch.” He hung up before Mike could respond.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Danny responded to the news with a thumbs-up.

  “Too soon to celebrate,” Venturi warned. “It’s a common blood type.”

  Vicki was sunny and smiling at breakfast. “I think I was wrong,” she announced. “I believed it was Sidney. It looked like his work. But now I don’t think so.”

  Sidney himself had changed her mind. He had called during the night with another rant. When accused, he swore he was in New York and had been since his release from jail. He also swore that he’d suffered no recent dog bites.

  “What else would he say?” Venturi asked mildly.

  “To prove it,” she said, “he put total strangers on the phone to tell me where they were. They all said New York City, except for a man who was quarreling with his wife. He said he was in hell.”

  “Same thing,” Venturi said. “Maybe he was in New York. There are jet planes. Let’s ask his bondsman, his lawyer, and the prosecutor if he’s been around lately, and whether he’s sporting teeth marks on his right arm and ankle.”

  She agreed to make the calls while he dealt with the repairmen at his house.

  He was meeting with ADT personnel hired to upgrade his alarm system with lights, sensors, and surveillance cameras when she called. The lawyers and the bondsman said that to their knowledge, Sidney had not been out of town lately. The bondsman said he’d check for dog bites.

  Danny urged them to leave word for Sidney that Scout was foaming at the mouth and had been diagnosed with rabies.

  They gathered at Danny’s for a special event the following night. Luz checked the wall clock and pushed back her chair. “It’s time! It’s time!”

  Danny clutched his heart. You know how I panic when you say that.

  “TV time!” She laughed. “Okay?”

  “Thank God.” He sighed in fake relief.

  The tension-building tick, tick, tick of the 60 Minutes clock was already opening the show.

  “You taping this?” Venturi said.

  “Sure thing, it’s rolling,” Danny said.

  The blonde wore black and was televised with her face in shadow for her protection.

  “Guys with guns and badges knocked on my door in the middle of the night,” she said. “They scared the hell out of us, got us out of bed at two a.m. It was cold and pourin
g rain. My oldest boy wasn’t home, he was spending the night at a friend’s house in Clifton.

  “The marshal’s name was Venturi, Michael Venturi.”

  Venturi looked pained. It was worse than he thought. “I didn’t think they’d use my name.”

  “Nice work, bro,” Danny said, from the sofa beside Luz. “Prime time, national TV. Nothing like keeping a low profile.”

  “He said we had to leave immediately and could never come back to Jersey. I thought he was joking. I said, ‘What do you mean, never come back?’ He told me to pack some clothes and sent one of the others to pick up my boy. He said my husband, Angelo, had agreed to testify against Niccolo Sabbatino and his crew.

  “Angelo had just been sentenced to fifteen years for extortion. But the marshal said my husband was outta prison and in protective custody. Word was already on the street that he’d made a deal, and Nico had put a hit out on him and his family. Another marshal with a gun was standing on my front porch watching the street like they thought guys with guns would be there any minute. Venturi said we had to get out. He said everything would be all right. And that’s how it all started. He promised they’d take care of us. He said nothing would go wrong.”

  She fingered the crucifix on a chain around her neck. “But it did. Eventually, everything went wrong.”

  The reporter asked Celia Conte if she’d known her husband was considering an offer to testify against his longtime cohorts and join WITSEC, the federal witness protection program.

  “Never.” She shook her head vigorously. “I visited him the weekend before. He was depressed about going to prison but never said nothing about that. I was shocked when they came to my door. Nobody asked us.

  “Venturi said they’d give us new names and we’d be relocated. I was born in Passaic, New Jersey, lived there my whole life. My family, my friends all live there. He said we couldn’t even say good-bye.

  “They sent us to Portland. We were all homesick. My sons were upset about leaving the old neighborhood and changing their names. They didn’t know who they were anymore. The marshals said they’d put my furniture in storage and send it to us. It didn’t come for four months.

  “Angelo joined us after a while, but he had to keep flying back and forth to testify at the trials. He’d be away for weeks, sometimes months. One time he came back really scared and pissed off. He flew into Newark as usual and somebody sent to pick him up at the airport missed him at baggage claim and had him paged, under his real name!

  “He coulda got kilt right then and there. Everybody in that whole damn airport knew where he was.”

  “I had nothing to do with that,” Venturi muttered, shaking his head. “It was really stupid.”

  “They warned me not to call my mother. Or my brothers. Nobody was supposed to know where we were. Everybody called Angelo a rat, but he lived up to his end of the deal, did a good job. They convicted them all, and Nico got a life sentence. Angelo came back feeling proud. They got him a job and things were going good. But after a while a man named Dominic DelVecchio got murdered. It was on the news. Somehow Angelo knew he was in the Witness Protection Program, too. He called the marshals, a little worried, and asked, like what’s going on? He wanted to talk to Venturi. He was the only one Angelo trusted. They would speak in Italian, like old friends or family. But nobody would put him through to Venturi, they kept giving him the runaround. Kept saying don’t worry, don’t worry.”

  Her voice trembled and she began to weep.

  “Two days later, my Angelo was killed. Garrotted. I’ll never get over it. He was worried, he called the program for help, but nobody did nothing. I told the Portland homicide detective my husband was in WITSEC and gave him the contact number. But when the detectives trying to solve my husband’s murder called it, they were told nobody at WITSEC had ever heard of us. The detectives thought I was lying to them. I kept telling ’em to get ahold of Venturi. Finally somebody at WITSEC admitted he wasn’t there no more. When they finally did talk to the detectives they admitted Venturi was also the contact for DelVecchio.

  “What’s going on? Where is Venturi?” Her voice rose. “Is everybody he protected getting kilt? What is this? In the beginning they said we were safe, that they never lost a witness. In forty years nobody ever got kilt.”

  The interviewer gently guided Celia Conte through the last day of her husband’s life. It was their twentieth wedding anniversary. They planned a night out and had invited another couple, new neighbors, to join them. Celia had just stepped out of the shower, about to dress for the evening, when there was a knock at the door.

  She thought one of her boys had forgotten his key and answered the door without makeup, in a bathrobe, her hair in curlers.

  It was déjà vu. Men with badges and bad news.

  Crime-scene footage followed, then a brief interview with the lead homicide detective who described the case as “unique and very complex.” He appeared offended that this problem had been visited on his city and his department by a federal agency.

  “This case had nothing to do with Portland,” he complained. “Everything that led up to this homicide happened elsewhere, outside our jurisdiction. We didn’t even know the victim was in our city.” He did not sound optimistic about solving the case.

  Celia Conte said she and her sons were given a second set of new names and relocated to a strange city where, again, they know no one.

  “It’s easier for little kids to handle change,” she said. “They don’t know no better, but my boys are young men, with schools, sports teams, and girlfriends. It’s not fair.

  “That’s what the program did to us, how it took care of us.” She dabbed frequently at her eyes with a handkerchief.

  “If my husband had refused to testify and done his time in prison, at least he’d be alive. He’da come home in a few years. We’d still be a family. The way they treated us…” She broke down.

  The interviewer went on to say that WITSEC’s budget could be in jeopardy. After relocating more than twenty thousand people, federal witnesses and their families, over more than thirty-five years, politicians were now questioning the program’s $55 million annual budget.

  Those in command at WITSEC had declined on-air comment because of the continuing investigation, she said in conclusion, but they did confirm that U.S. Marshal Michael Venturi had been fired. Venturi, she said, could not be reached for comment.

  “Ouch. She is not your friend,” Danny said.

  “Can’t blame her,” Venturi said. “Wish I could talk to her.”

  “That reporter?” Danny asked. “Wouldn’t mind talking to her, myself.” Luz jabbed him with her elbow.

  “No,” Venturi said. “Celia Conte. She met Angelo when she was a teenager. Was eighteen when they got married. None of this is her fault. What did she know?”

  “She knew at some point what he did for a living,” Vicki commented from her armchair.

  “This can’t be good,” Danny said grimly.

  Luz stood on tiptoe to kiss Venturi’s cheek as he left. Her dark eyes shimmered liquid in the dim light, as she whispered, “Have you talked to Keri?”

  “Left a message, she hasn’t called me back.”

  “I can’t reach her, either,” Luz murmured. “Her phone goes straight to service and another doctor on call returns her messages. I’m not due for a while, but it makes me nervous.” She patted her belly.

  “I’ll call you right away if I hear from her,” he said.

  Her expression was unsettling.

  Brian Ross went on the air with his own report the next night. He fit yet another piece into the puzzle—the third protected witness, Carmine Cuccinelli, killed in Mobile, Alabama. As in the other two cases, his contact in WITSEC had been Michael Venturi.

  Venturi, he said, was reportedly living in Miami, Florida.

  “Eh, goombah.” Danny pressed his palm to his forehead, eyes closed. “I now foresee…sound trucks rolling up to your gate.”

  When Venturi pulled u
p to the newly repaired gate an hour later, he saw a strange car, a late-model Audi, parked in his driveway, next to Vicki’s. Had it already begun?

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  He tucked his gun into the back of his belt and approached the front door cautiously.

  He heard laughter inside. Bill and Victoria, drinking wine.

  Bill wore a suit this time.

  “Oh, here he is now,” Victoria said, looking up as Venturi opened the door. “I’m glad you’re home, dear.”

  “Thought I’d stop by,” Bill told him. An eight-by-ten manila envelope lay on the coffee table beside his wineglass. “Probably should have called first.”

  The two men shook hands and retired to the war room.

  “Gotcha some results,” Bill said, after closing the door.

  “Did you tell her?” Venturi asked, ready to fly off the handle if he had.

  “Hell, no.” Bill took a seat. “We were just talking.” He looked around the room. “You didn’t waste any time putting this place back together. You’d never know anything happened.”

  His eyes focused on Venturi. “Sorry to hear your name on Sixty Minutes. The press can be a bitch. Saw that and decided to deliver the results in person instead of by phone.” Bill used a small Swiss Army knife on his key chain to slit open the still-sealed manila envelope. “The truck is a Ford. About forty-one thousand left the factory with those tires. Twelve thousand were blue. Eight hundred of ’em registered in South Florida. Of course, the truck could’ve been driven here from anywhere.

  “I knew your first priority was to either eliminate or identify a particular individual. So I called in a favor to get a hurry-up on the DNA.

  “Bottom line, the man who broke in here is in no way related to that fine woman out there.”

  The news hit Venturi like a sledgehammer. “You sure?”

  “DNA doesn’t lie.”

  “Damn.” He rocked back in his chair, mind racing. “I was counting on it being that rotten little punk.”