What sickened me was that a country like China literally executed their prisoners for the purpose of selling their organs. In 1999, China executed more than twelve hundred people for crimes ranging from assault to pig stealing, an average of forty people a week. On the night before the scheduled execution, blood samples were taken so their organs could find a match. The next day they were executed by one bullet in the head, so it minimized body-tissue damage. Throughout the 1990s, China executed more people than the rest of the world combined. China went so far as to have a standard price list for prisoners’ organs: $25,000 for livers, $20,000 for kidneys, and corneas and pancreases for $5,000 a pair. Now the kidney has become the golden organ for sale and can fetch $30,000 and up.
As I leaned back in my chair to stretch, my attention was drawn to the clock; two hours had passed since I began. Nonetheless, there was more. The market had taken on such a high-paying demand that some people resorted to murder to sell the organs. I read an article from a South African newspaper. In 2004, a nun at an orphanage reported that the children were consistently disappearing from the orphanage. What had actually transpired was that the children had all been kidnapped and killed for their organs. The nun blamed a nearby farmer and his son, but received so much pressure from the government to keep her mouth shut that she had to leave the country.
There were other stories of people merely walking down the street when someone walked up to them and killed them right there for their organs. I was amazed and repulsed at the same time. Here in America, you have to worry about someone attacking you for your car. In other countries, you have to worry about someone attacking you for your corneas. Considering the elements of my recent murders, it seemed as if the tide may have been shifting our way.
Most of the buying and selling took place in Third World countries: the Philippines, Nigeria, Uganda, and Vietnam, to name only a few. But the organs could come from anywhere.
I had decidedly had enough. As I went to click out of the Web site I was on, I accidentally hit the history button, which opened up an entire list of sites the computer had been on earlier. Feeling my pulse quicken, I read aloud the Web sites that Michael had visited months ago. Some, if not most, were the exact same ones I had read to night. He was researching the area of trafficking body parts as well. But why?
My thoughts drifted to the night I found him reading my file on the first murder, in his office. His excuse had been that he was bored and just wanted to take a look. A flood of memories came crashing through my head: of that night, all of the nights he’d acted strangely, the time he insisted I take the kids out of state, and lastly, his reaction when I’d told him I had contacted the doctors.
Michael had always kept a copy of his files at home so he wouldn’t have to cart them back and forth to Cleveland. Remembering this, I found my eyes drifting toward his filing cabinets.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Going through Michael’s files had never crossed my mind before. I had been so grief stricken over the last several months that going into his office was the last thing I had wanted to do. That changed to night. Feeling almost euphoric, I went to the metal cabinets. There were three total, each with three drawers. Starting at the top, I began flipping through the massive amount of files. One thing that could be said about Michael, he had always been organized; each file had been color-coded and labeled with the name of the investigation in bold black letters on top.
Evidently, this was going to take some time. One of the drawers had nothing but personal paperwork—our bank statements, the kids’ birth certificates and Social Security cards, and so forth. Nearing the last drawer of the last cabinet, I was interrupted by the phone. I wiped the sweat off my brow and quickly picked up the receiver on Michael’s desk.
“Hello?”
There was silence.
“Hello?”
I didn’t ask again, but listened carefully. There was no sound at all, as if the other end had been muted. Only when I saw my hand begin to tremble did I realize that the phone had rung in Michael’s office. It was a separate line, and there hadn’t been a call in there since the night Michael died. Confronting the obvious, I dropped the phone, went over to the large window of his office, and quickly closed the blinds. There was no other explanation other than that someone was watching me closely and knew I was in his office. The call also came in before I got to the last drawer, which led me to believe I was getting downright hot. The fear that spread through me was beginning to dissipate from the rising anger I felt.
I turned from the window, strode back over to the cabinet, and jerked the last file drawer. It was locked. None of the other drawers had been locked. My adrenaline at an all-time high, I went to Michael’s desk and violently looked for a key. Throwing papers, pens, staplers, and folders all over his office, I was determined to find one. My search proved fruitless. There wasn’t a key anywhere, but that wasn’t enough to prevent me from opening the drawer. I’d open it if I had to saw the goddamn thing in half.
Soaked with sweat and almost hysterical, I went into the garage and grabbed a large screwdriver, a hammer, and a crowbar. Back in Michael’s office, I tipped the cabinet onto its back. As heavy as it was, I had to use my entire body to do it. I worked on the drawer for forty-five minutes. I put the screwdriver into the lock and hammered with every ounce of muscle I had, which wasn’t much. When I finally disabled the lock, I had to stand on the crowbar and jump up and down to bend the steel bar that attached the lock to the drawer until it eventually snapped in half.
There were five files inside, red, and each about an inch thick, except for the last, which was about three inches thick. Spreading them on the floor in front of me, I looked at the labels on each one: “Iaccona,” “Filaci,” “Philippines,” “LifeTech Industries,” and the last one, “CeeCee’s Murders.”
I set the last file to the side and grabbed the Filaci file first. Michael had been investigating the Niccolo Filaci murder, something I had suspected long ago. Inside were photographs, tape transcripts, copies of airline tickets, a sketchy family biography and family tree, and copies of deeds to various properties. There were numerous typed reports by Michael, along with newspaper articles focusing on Leon Filaci, who, according to the family tree, was the boss. Photographs of Leon with his two sons, Joseph and Niccolo, were attached to the articles. The paperwork on Niccolo’s murder was placed in the back of the file, which told me Michael had been investigating the Filacis long before Niccolo was murdered. But there was nothing in the file that told me why.
Several unmarked folders in the file sat empty, the labels on top cut off. Michael knew I would never have looked through his files, so why would he have taken out key information? None of this made sense. The Iaccona file was similar, and again, empty files, with no reason for the investigation in the first place. The LifeTech Industries file was filled with their corporate earnings, employee information, distribution centers and surgical sites (including Quinn-Herstin Funeral Home), and a photograph showing the outside of the company building. Nothing substantial, other than that Michael was investigating them, which brought me to the file with my own name on it.
My growing trepidation of what awaited me inside the file became insurmountable, and with my thoughts in complete turmoil, I opened the folder.
Michael had copied my entire case file on every murder, down to the handwritten notes on scraps of paper. At the back of the file was a smaller folder marked “Confidential.” Expecting the folder to be empty, I was surprised to see three handwritten pages of notes, a typed transcript, and a microcassette tape. Each of the handwritten notes had dates and times, along with several sentences of what appeared to be threats against Michael, me, and the children. They were too scattered to understand directly. Common sense directed me to the cassette tape. I knew all the answers would be on it.
I always carried a microcassette recorder in my briefcase for interviews and interrogations. After retrieving it and sitting on the sofa in Michael’s office, I
put the tape in and pushed play. It began with voices in the background that couldn’t be understood, followed by a man coughing loudly. Next, loud scrapes, as if a chair was being pushed across a floor, came blaring through the small speaker. And finally a man began to speak clearly.
“You got everything ready?” one man said.
“Yeah, Sal, it’s in place” another man said, with a deep scratchy voice.
“Let’s hear it.”
“We’ve got one of two. The first is, she leaves the office every day at five, and usually gets home before he does, at least an hour. If we plant Tommy and Henry in the garage and wait for her, they could probably get her out the back door without being seen.” He coughed. “We’ll knock her out and bring her up here, make the tape like we planned, and mail it off to Hagerman. When we’re finished, we can always stick her under the construction site on Brushman Road. He’ll spend most of his time looking for her, so that’ll take the heat off. I’ve already got it tagged to the Filacis, so he’ll be on them heavy. If that doesn’t do it, we can start on the kids, too.”
“And the other?”
“The other is taking him out altogether. Hell with his wife and kids.”
“He’s a federal agent. That’ll bring a lot of heat.”
“I know, I know, but if he’s done, he’s done. We won’t have to worry about him anymore, period. I can take care of him just like I did Niccolo. I think that’s our best bet, Sal. I can tie that to the Filacis easy, as well.”
There was a long pause before Sal, who I assumed to be Salvatore Iaccona, boss of the Iaccona family, according to the file, made his choice.
“What are you planning, if it’s Hagerman?”
“Henry’s got it all ready to go. He said he can stick it under the fan belt in less than five minutes. So what’s it gonna be, Sal?”
“Give it two weeks, and then do the wife.”
The click on the tape told me the conversation was over. My hands were shaking so bad that I was having a hard time finding the stop button. Good thing, since the tape wasn’t over. A separate recording and another man’s voice, different from the ones in the first conversation, came over the tape. This time, introductions were made.
“Leon Filaci, this is Vincent Vicari.”
Several how-do-you-dos could be heard before what sounded like three men started their conversation.
“Sir, I’m very sorry to hear about Niccolo. They’ll pay, don’t worry.”
“Thank you, but they’re second to someone else, which is why you’re here. It’s Hagerman. He had something to do with Niccolo’s death, I just don’t know how. Not that it matters. I want him erased right off the fucking map.”
“He’s a federal agent. It could cause trouble,” the unnamed third man said.
A long pause followed before Leon Filaci disclosed his disdain for Michael and the Iacconas.
“I don’t give a fuck what kind of heat it brings. He’s already trying to take us down, for fuck’s sake! Tag it to the Iacconas. That’ll kill two birds with one stone. Salvatore Iaccona got Niccolo wrapped up with Hagerman in the first place, that greasy motherfucker! Vince? Who do you plan on bringing down for the job?”
“Tony Bertola. He’s done a couple jobs for me in New York and could easily tag it on the Iacconas. He’s retired NYPD. We put him on our payroll three years ago, and he hasn’t failed us yet.”
“How long?”
“Give me three weeks to get everything together.”
“I’m sorry, but I think you’re making a big mistake,” the unnamed man said quietly.
“Mistake or not, consider it done.”
The tape clicked and I pushed the stop button feeling so nauseous I actually ran to the bathroom to throw up, but nothing came. You can’t throw up what isn’t there, since I still hadn’t been eating much. Michael knew. He knew he was going to die, which explained his odd behavior the few weeks before his death. He was also worried about me; that’s why he’d wanted me to take the kids and leave.
They had the evidence! Why the fuck didn’t they have the indictments ready within twenty-four hours of the tapes, and arrest them all? my head screamed. They had a perfectly recorded conspiracy to commit murder of a federal agent and had done nothing.
One of those two families had murdered my husband. Either Salvatore Iaccona changed his mind about me and went with Michael, or Tony Bertola got to him first.
Someone was going to pay, and they would pay with their life. A rage on a level that I had never known before rose up in me so quickly it was frightening. They killed my husband and planned to kill my children and me. I’d be damned straight to hell and back if I would let them get away with it. In my mind, the FBI had botched the investigation from the beginning, so they could no longer be trusted. From this point on, I would be on my own.
But the creeping question of what all of this had to do with my murder investigation kept coming up. Michael had obviously been onto something substantial, as far as my case went. But how did it involve the two families? Or did it?
The remainder of the night was spent listening to the tape over and over, making copies, looking at the files again, and thinking. Things were starting to become clearer now, the fogginess I had experienced over the last several months starting to fade. No one could argue about anger and hatred being two of the most volatile emotions in a human being, but one thing can be said: they’ll keep pushing you no matter what.
“Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” was not only a quote that I could identify with, but also one that I would live by for the rest of my life. Scorned I was, and these people were going to pay hell for it.
When the sun started to poke through the shadows in the early morning hours, I found myself wide awake. With many loose ends to tie up in the next couple of weeks and much preparation to do, time was running out.
“Have you found the mole yet, Alan?”
“We’re still working on that, but we’ve got a bigger problem.” Alan Keane dreaded telling his boss the bad news.
“I assume I should remain seated for this?”
Alan nodded. “Hagerman had files and tape recordings that we didn’t know about. She found them.”
The boss closed his eyes and groaned. “How in the hell did that happen? I thought we checked his office!” He shook his head. “Not that it matters now, but he wasn’t supposed to be copying any goddamn files anyway.”
“There was a locked file drawer. We didn’t think he had anything but family information in it. There really wasn’t an opportunity to get in there without her knowing, sir. She is a police officer, you know.”
The boss slammed his fist on his desk. “I know that! You know what this means, don’t you?”
“As far as I know, their bugs are still in place, along with ours. If we know…then they know.”
“Right! This now means we have to watch her 24-7 to make sure they don’t whack her! The Filacis and the Iacconas probably have their people on the way to her now.” He paused before asking the inevitable. “Does he know?”
“I’m afraid so, sir.”
“This wasn’t the way it was supposed to happen. She was only supposed to link LifeTech to them and be done with it.” The boss stood up. “Get our eyes on her, now. And for God’s sake, don’t let her out of our sight! If we lose her, and he finds out, you know what that means.”
Alan Keane nodded before leaving the office. His first stop was to his secretary. Looking out the window at the Lincoln Memorial, he wondered if this was the end of the road for his career. What his boss didn’t know was that his own plan was working. God forbid he was caught.
“Nancy, I need you to make an airline reservation for me. I need to leave to night for Cleveland, Ohio.”
Before Alan Keane went home to pack for his trip, he stopped at the nearest mailbox and dropped in the videotape. Its destination: Erie, Pennsylvania.
Most of my workday was spent organizing the homeless-murder file and making copies of
everything for my own use. Earlier, I had instructed Justin Brown to call Troy Cross and schedule him for another interview. The clock on the wall told me that he should be arriving any minute. Grabbing the large brown box I had taken from our storage area, I began putting all of my things that had been gathered into it.
“Moving out, are we?”
I looked up and saw Justin in my doorway. “More like winter cleaning. I accumulate so much junk, I can’t find my own name,” I lied, and smiled.
“Troy Cross is here. He’s in the interview room.”
“I’ll be there in just a sec. Oh, Justin? You want to sit in on it?”
“You sure? I mean, I’d love to…” His trademark redness returned.
“Go on and ask him if he wants a cup of coffee or something, and I’ll be there shortly.”
Justin and Troy Cross were sitting at the interview table discussing the weather when I walked in. Around thirty-five years old, Cross appeared extremely nervous and agitated. By the time I sat down and set my tape recorder on the table, he had shredded his Styrofoam cup into pieces.
“Excuse me, but are you going to tell me what this is about?” he asked defensively.
“Mr. Cross, I’m Sergeant Gallagher, and before we begin, I want to express my condolences to you for the loss of your wife.” I could certainly feel his pain. “I can assure you that the reason we’re here today is simply procedural, and you are by no means considered a suspect in this case.”
He began to relax, which was the point. Getting the “not a suspect” out and on the table first usually makes the rest of the interview go that much smoother. Essentially, I went through everything Justin already had, confirming his answers on tape, before I got down to Cross’s salary and savings account.
“Mr. Cross, you stated your salary is, on average, approximately seventy-five thousand dollars per year. Is that correct?”
The Body Mafia Page 10