The Body Mafia (7 page)

“I heard you.” I crossed my arms and looked at her defiantly. “Are you firing me?”

“Of course not!”

“Then would you please find the file for me? There are some things I need to look at,” I said calmly.

She stared at me for a long time before turning and leaving my office. She returned in less than two minutes with the file.

“Coop had it,” she said coldly. “Let me know what you need.”

I sat in my chair and let out a sigh. A part of me felt bad for how I’d just treated Naomi. We had come a long way in repairing our relationship, and I hoped it hadn’t been undone.

After grabbing four aspirin out of my purse and eating them like candy, I pulled the stack of papers out of the file, sorting them by date. Beginning to make a list of things to be done, I stopped long enough to make a pot of coffee. It would take me hours to refamiliarize myself with the case, and I needed to be alert. Making notes along the way, some of the things that hadn’t been followed up dawned on me, things that Coop had apparently overlooked. After reading the coroner’s report on all three murders, I called him immediately.

What hadn’t caught my attention before was that
the first victim, Daniel Huber, had been strangled—after his kidney and hand were removed. My question to the coroner was what his opinion on that was.

“You can live without a kidney, CeeCee. That wouldn’t necessarily have killed the guy right away, nor would cutting his hand off, which I believe was some form of torture. He would eventually have died from infection and internal bleeding if he wasn’t seen by a medical professional, but based on the timetables, he died right after they took his kidney.”

“So you determined he was still alive when they took it? How’d you do that?” I was furiously scribbling down notes.

“He had gouge marks on the palm of his right hand from his own fingernails, and had bitten the tip of his tongue off. That tells me his fists were clenched and he was in excruciating pain. Having his hand cut off would be instantaneous, but to have your kidney removed while you’re awake would take some time. I can only deduce that he lost consciousness at some point from the pain, but he suffered up until then, no doubt.”

“And the guy who had his liver taken?”

“Instant death. You can live with a partial liver, but not without any at all. He also showed signs of being conscious during the removal. He actually broke several of his teeth from his jaw being clenched so hard.”

“A partial liver?”

“Some living liver donors can give a partial liver. The liver will actually regenerate in both the donor and the recipient, but again, you can’t live without one—period.”

“Just like both kidneys?” I referred to the third victim.

“Just like both kidneys. And he was just as awake as the other two.”

I thanked the coroner and hung up. Then I reviewed my notes. Whoever took these organs didn’t want these men left alive. There would easily have been ways to take one kidney without killing the donor. Since it was assumed that whoever was performing the actual removal was medically educated, they could merely have knocked him out and sewn him back up. This led me to believe there were time constraints on the part of the killer or killers. They didn’t have time to screw around and restitch the victim. They took the organ, dumped the body on their way to wherever, and were done with it. Throwing my pen down, I leaned back in my chair and stretched before I began to type up my conversation with the coroner. In doing so, my thoughts kept drifting to Dr. Esposito and Dr. Schmidt. This new information told me that a trip back to Cleveland was in order. Dr. Schmidt had yet to be interviewed, and now was as good a time as any. Except there was one more phone call to make, and it had nothing to do with my case. It was a call I had been putting off.

“I’d like to speak to Supervising Agent Alan Keane, please,” I politely asked the FBI secretary who answered the phone.

“Who is calling?”

“CeeCee Gallagher.” I paused and swallowed. “Agent Michael Hagerman’s wife.” I noticed my hand was shaking.

“Just a moment, please.”

She kept me on hold for almost five minutes, which enabled me to change my nervousness to anger.

When the phone clicked back over, it was the secretary again.

“Ms. Gallagher, he’s in a meeting right now and asked me to get a number for you. He’ll call you back shortly.”

“He has my number, and you can go give him another message. Tell him if he doesn’t call my office within five minutes, I will call every news station in the country to inform them how the FBI covered up my husband’s murder.” I slammed the phone down and noticed I was still trembling.

Less than two minutes later, my phone rang. It was Alan Keane.

“CeeCee? I’m sorry. I was in a meeting. Did something happen?”

“No, nothing has happened, which is precisely the point. What the hell are you people doing to find out who killed my husband? No one has called me, and quite frankly, I’m pretty pissed about it.”

He breathed deeply into the phone. “I understand you’re upset, but believe me, we are working on it. We want to find these people just as much as you do.”

“I doubt that.”

“Regardless, we’ve been hitting several dead ends, and we’re trying to work around them. It’s not easy.”

“What type of bomb was used on the car? Was it wired to the ignition system?”

A long silence followed. He didn’t expect a question like that, nor did he want to answer it. The FBI was all about secrecy. Alan Keane cleared his throat before he finally spoke.

“Uh, no, it wasn’t wired to the ignition. Those
types of VBIEDs—I’m sorry, that’s what the FBI calls car bombs. They’re technically ‘vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices,’ VBIEDs. Anyway, those types of VBIEDs haven’t been used in a long time. Every once in a while, they’ll turn up, but they’re pretty rare. They’re extremely difficult to install and very easy to detect. With today’s cars—their security and computer systems—a bomb wired to an ignition can set off the car’s alarm or drain its electrical system. No, this bomb was placed under the fan belt and detonated when the car began to move.”

I felt ill. “You can’t track it anywhere?”

“Every hardware store in the country sells the stuff to make these. Normal fuel was used, but really not a significant amount. The bomb, in this case, was made to—” He stopped.

“Made to what?” My heart was pounding.

“Stun and burn.”

I set the phone down. The bile and familiar lump in my throat began to rise. The warm wetness that filled my eyes came swiftly. Hearing Alan Keane’s voice through the phone, I shook my head, wiped my eyes, and continued my conversation.

“CeeCee? CeeCee, are you there?”

“I’m here.”

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t know how else to say it. I shouldn’t have said it that way.”

“It’s okay. I want to know…Who were the people Michael was investigating? I know they were Mafia, but I want family names.”

“I can’t tell you that, CeeCee. You should understand why, but I can’t give you that information right now. Like I said earlier, we’ve hit a few dead ends,
but we’re slowly working our way around them.” He paused. “This is going to take some time.”

“I have to go. Thank you, Alan.”

Slamming the phone down, I was both outraged and devastated at the same time. This wasn’t right; something wasn’t right with their investigation. They knew goddamn well who had killed Michael. They had been close to making arrests in the investigation before Michael died. He had told me he would be wrapping things up in several weeks, so why was everything being held up now?

Knowing I wouldn’t get any answers today, I gathered my things and decided to leave for Cleveland early. As I picked up my briefcase, my eyes fell to the calendar that lay on my desk. The holidays were right around the corner. I hadn’t paid attention to the changes in weather or the festive lights going up on my neighbor’s homes. I had been living in my own distorted reality. We always celebrated Christmas and Thanksgiving in a big way at our house. Our yearly ritual of decorating the house right before Thanksgiving, picking out a Christmas tree, and making Christmas cookies would not come this year. This year, I would be totally alone, and it scared me to death.

I poked my head in Naomi’s office and told her where I was going and why. She still seemed a little miffed, but not to the extent that she’d been earlier. She even offered to go with me, but I declined.

During my drive, I called Dr. Schmidt’s office and requested an appointment with him. The secretary immediately informed me that she had been told to relay a message that Dr. Schmidt would not speak to
me unless he was in the presence of his attorney, and furthermore, that no interview would occur unless he was being charged with a crime.

Expecting the same treatment at Dr. Esposito’s office, I was not surprised when his plastic wife glared at me as soon as I walked in the door. The waiting room was full of patients, so she waited until I got to the receptionist’s window before banning me from the office.

“You are no longer welcome here, and you need to leave. Unless you have a search warrant or criminal charges against my husband, he doesn’t want to speak to you. If you don’t leave, I will be forced to contact the local police and have you removed,” she ordered.

“How long did you have to practice that little dissertation for you to remember it? Since you probably don’t even know the definition of words like
search warrant
or
criminal charges
, I assume you must have all that written down in front of you somewhere. On that note, I’ll leave. No need to contact the locals.” Smiling, I left the office.

Something had caused the turnaround from the doctors. Of course, they could’ve simply contacted their attorneys and explained my visit. Any attorney who had successfully passed the bar exam would tell them not to talk to me. I wouldn’t either, if I was them.

Since it was nearing the end of the day and I didn’t want to go home, I decided to sit in my car and wait for Dr. Esposito to leave again. Maybe this time I’d follow him somewhere that actually linked him to my case. However, when he did leave, I didn’t believe that his drive to the nearest hotel to meet a
twentysomething blonde would be the thing to do it. Not that his extramarital affair was against the law, but I snapped a few pictures anyway. They might have come in handy down the road if I had to turn his wife against him. If not, I could shove them in her face for the sheer thrill of it. After driving past Dr. Schmidt’s already-closed office, I headed home.

It was dark by the time I pulled into my driveway. Seeing my own dark, looming house made me remember how it had once been. It made me remember how I couldn’t wait to get home. How when I’d walked through the door, my family barraged me with hugs and kisses. Michael would be cooking one of his specialty dishes in the kitchen, filling the house with wonderful aromas. Now it was cold and unfriendly, and I ached for those times.

I couldn’t bring myself to go in just yet, so I sat out on the front porch swing for a while. The air was cold. After living in Ohio most of my life, the smell in the air alone told me snow was coming. Not that it mattered; there wouldn’t be any skiing, sled-riding, or making snowmen this year, no sir.

As I prepared to light my millionth cigarette of the night, a very eerie and familiar feeling came over me. It was the feeling that someone was watching me. I put my lighter down, stood up, and walked to the end of the porch to see into the side yard. Nothing. As I walked to the other end, my eyes scanned the darkness and shadows but again saw nothing. Opting not to reclaim my seat on the swing, I stood and looked out at the street before me. Someone was out there—I’d have bet my life on it.

There had been times in the past when I chastised myself for being paranoid when this feeling came,
but after learning that my instincts had been right every time, I listened to them. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that it was either the Mafia or someone related to the homeless murders watching me.

I slowly backed up, and when I reached my front door, I turned around and went inside. If it was in fact the Mafia watching me right now, I was in serious trouble.

I couldn’t sleep and didn’t want to stay alone in my house tonight. On edge, I paced around my kitchen before deciding to leave. Less than forty-eight hours ago, I had contemplated suicide, and now I was standing in my own home terrified someone was going to kill me. As I grabbed the keys to my personal car, a thought stopped me in my tracks—the thought of a car bomb. My car had been there all day. I had used my department-issued SUV when I drove to Cleveland.

I dashed upstairs to my bathroom and grabbed my makeup mirror. Out of the downstairs closet came a roll of duct tape and a broom. After attaching the mirror to the end of the broom handle using the tape, I went into the garage and turned on the lights.

Even though I wasn’t experienced enough in explosives to know exactly what to look for, I knew enough that any black electrical tape, colored wires, or any type of clock or watch would be a major clue. Lying on my garage floor, I slowly slid the broom handle with the mirror under my car. Scouring every inch, I found myself soaked with sweat despite the rapidly falling temperatures outside. Once I was satisfied there were no bombs attached to the bottom
of my car, I thought about what Alan Keane had told me.

The bomb that killed Michael had been placed under the fan belt in the engine. I needed to look down in the engine from above, since I had already looked underneath. From what I could see, there was nothing but an engine—all was as it should be.

After slamming the hood down and tossing the broom to the side of the garage, I brushed myself off and got inside my car. My hand was slightly trembling as it turned the ignition. When I’d put the car in reverse and successfully backed onto the road, I let out a large burst of air. I hadn’t even realized I had been holding my breath. Laughing, my foot planted firmly on the brake, I was overcome by the recognition of how absurd my paranoia was. My laughing stopped when I noticed the fading black spot on the road, a spot that had been purposely ignored over the last several months.

Why in the hell would the mob watch me?
I thought. Michael was dead, so the threat was gone. There was no reason for them to watch me. Even if they had in the beginning, they would see that I had turned into nothing more than a washed-up drunk of a detective who was slowly working her way into a mental institution. No threat here.

Nonetheless, my earlier feeling had been real. So whoever was watching me had to be related to the homeless murders, not the mob. Relaxing drastically, I put my car in drive. I decided to continue to my original destination—a local bar.

As if driven by absolute will, I found myself sitting in the same bar where, not long ago, Michael and I had sat before making love for the first time. Remembering
that night was not a difficult task, truthfully. Every part of the night, down to the song playing on the jukebox, was as fresh in my mind as if it had just happened yesterday. I remembered our conversation, word for word. I remembered the clothes I wore, I remembered what Michael wore, I remembered what time we left, and lastly, I remembered when we made love.

Each of these memories came flooding through me, side by side with the glasses of vodka I was drinking. By the time the bartender yelled for the last call, I could barely stand up, let alone drive. But I did get into my car, doing my best to drive with only one eye, since closing the other brought my triple vision down to double.

Getting picked up by a member of my own department was the least of my worries. They would simply park my car and take me home. However, if a state highway patrolman came along, I would be looking at a full-blown arrest for DUI. Those guys didn’t practice professional courtesy, even to each other. Of course, there was always the possibility of crashing into someone, and hurting or maybe even killing them. This was a possibility I didn’t want to consider. Not that I could’ve dwelled on it for a lengthy amount of time anyway. About a mile from my house, I steered my car in the direction of what I thought was the road. Unfortunately, I chose the wrong side of my double image and wound up hitting a tree.

I sat for several moments, stunned. It took a few more moments for me to comprehend what had happened. How I would get out of it would take much longer. Normally, when a bad situation arose, Michael would be the first, and only, person I would call. Now
that he was gone, I didn’t know what to do. There was only one choice, and I had to do it quickly before another car came along. Coop.

Attempting his cell phone first, I wanted to avoid a late-night call to his house. He answered sleepily on the third ring, and I prayed the call hadn’t woken Naomi.

“Coop! It’s CeeCee.” I was elated he had answered.

“What is it?” he asked groggily.

“Listen to me, and don’t let Naomi know anything. I’ve had an accident, and I need you to come and pull me out of a ditch. I think my car is still drivable, if I can get it out.” I did my best not to slur my words.

“Why don’t you just call a tow truck?”

My silence was his answer.

“Oh, let me guess. Because you’re loaded out of your fucking mind, that’s why!”

“Coop! Please don’t let Naomi hear you.”

“She’s downstairs. She fell asleep watching TV. I ought to let your ass be picked up by the highway patrol. Maybe then you’ll get your shit together!”

I started to whine like a small child. “Coop, I know, I’m sorry! Please come down here and help me.”

“Where are you?”

“Halfway down Hanley Road, between Lexington Avenue and Middle Bellville Road. Bring your truck and a tow rope.”

“I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

Waiting and praying a state trooper wouldn’t drive by, I was thrilled to see Coop pull up less than ten minutes later. He had my car out of the ditch in no time. The front end wasn’t terribly mangled. The ditch caught most of my momentum before my car hit the tree, and most importantly, it was drivable.

“How the hell are you gonna make it home?” Coop asked.

“The crash sobered me up enough that I think I can make it one more mile.” I avoided his gaze.

“I’ll follow you.”

“What did you tell Naomi?”

“She was still asleep. If she’s awake when I get home and she asks, I’ll tell her you hit a deer or something.”

“Thanks, Coop,” I said softly, my head down.

When we arrived at my house, I said a silent prayer. Coop, who hadn’t bothered to pull in the driveway, poked his head out his window.

“You’ll be okay?”

I nodded.

“Get some sleep, CeeCee. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

Too embarrassed to say anything else, I gave him a slight wave before going inside and diving on my bed, clothes and all. Morning came quickly, along with a monstrous headache and a queasy stomach. It was when I walked in front of my bathroom mirror that the image looking back at me stopped me cold. To say I looked awful was the understatement of the year. It had been a long time since I’d taken a good close look at my appearance.

My eyes looked hollowed, probably from my protruding cheekbones. The dark circles under my eyes accentuated the pale, deathly white tone my skin had taken on. My teeth, which always had been gleaming white, had darkened from constantly drinking red wine. Even my hair, which had shone and looked healthy, now appeared dull and drab. I looked like I had aged twenty years. Staring at the mirror in disbelief, I began to sob. Naomi and Eric had been right
when they said it looked like I hadn’t eaten or slept in months. I cried for half an hour straight until I decided that would be it. Taking a handful of aspirin for breakfast, I knew it was time. It was time to live again—if not for me, then for my children.

After doing my best to make my appearance presentable, I made a series of phone calls. I made a hair appointment, a facial appointment, and an appointment with the dentist to get my teeth bleached. This weekend, I surmised, a shopping trip was in order, at least until I could gain some weight. Right now, my clothes hung on me as if they were on a hanger. And lastly, before leaving for work, I took a handful of vitamins.

Coop was waiting for me in my office when I arrived. He obviously wasn’t happy and nodded for me to shut the door when I walked in. I took a seat at my desk and braced myself.

“CeeCee, I know you don’t want to hear this, and I know you’ll want to bite my head off, but the bottom line is that you need some
serious
help. Evidently, the time off you took didn’t do the job.”

He paused, waiting for a response from me. Receiving none, he continued.

“We were all upset when Michael was killed, but he is gone, CeeCee! Eric told me that he took the girls permanently because of the state you’ve been in, and it shocked me. This isn’t you!” He stood up and began to walk around. “Ya know, I knew you were having a hard time, but I had no clue you had gotten this bad until last night, and I have to ask…Have you had any thoughts of hurting yourself? Did you purposely run into that tree last night?”

“Sit down and I’ll talk to you.” I motioned toward
the chair, which he sat in. “First of all, Michael wasn’t killed, he was murdered. I know you don’t see much difference in the two, but I do.” I kept my voice cool and calm. “Secondly, you’re right, I definitely need help, and yes, I have had thoughts of hurting myself…even went so far as to take my revolver and hold it to my head while I sat on my kitchen floor for an hour. I had every intention of pulling the trigger, but I was so drunk, I passed out holding the gun.”

Coop’s face paled two shades at my confession. We had been friends for fifteen years, close friends, and this information upset him greatly. Before he could respond, I kept talking.

“However, I know this will be hard for you to believe, but after last night, I realized that life needs to go on. At the very least, for my kids. I looked in the mirror this morning and cried at what I saw.” I paused. “I don’t want to be that person anymore.”

Fighting back the tears I promised I would never shed again, I finished what I had to say.

“I miss him, Coop.”

When he rose from his seat to comfort me in a friendly embrace, I saw Coop’s own eyes were teary.

“I know you do, CeeCee. We all do.”

My no-crying-allowed proposition had lasted less than two hours. Coop held me while I cried again—with one difference. When I finished, I actually felt better, and even managed a genuine smile.

“So, you’re going to be fine, right?”

I nodded. “I think so…It’s not going to be easy, but at least I’m willing to try.”

“This may not be the right time, but how many times have you been to his grave?”

“I haven’t gone since the day they buried him. I can’t, I just can’t bring myself to go there yet.”

He nodded. “Why don’t we—”

He was interrupted by a loud knock on my door, followed by its opening. It was Naomi and she hadn’t come to join the conversation.

“Sorry to interrupt”—she looked at us both strangely—“but we’ve had another homicide.”

“She called you?”

“Yes, she wanted to know why we haven’t made any arrests in her husband’s murder.”

“Did you tell her?”

“I told her the truth—we’ve been running into dead ends.”

The man flipped his pen between his fingers. “They’re watching her, you know. They’re waiting to see if she makes a move.”

“I know that. We have our own people on it, at least for his sake…which brings me to him. We’re going to have to do something quickly, before he does.”

“Judas Priest, Alan! I don’t know what else to do! Do you? You’re the one that swore up and down she would crack this wide open for us, and all she’s doing is drinking herself to death and playing Russian roulette in her kitchen!” He threw his pen across the room.

Alan Keane hung his head down in defeat. “Just give her some more time…please. I really think she’ll come through for us.”

“You’d better be right.”

“Another homicide? Where?” I asked.

“North Lake Park, floating in the lake.”

Coop and I rode together, since Naomi had stayed back at the office to make some phone calls. All we knew was that the victim this time was female.

The usual suspects were on scene: the coroner, uniformed cops, and crime lab. The city street-department workers had seen the body floating when they arrived to repave one of the lots in the park. They weren’t excited about it; North Lake Park was another hot spot. A body turning up there was nothing new. This brought me to another conclusion that I shared with Coop.

“You realize, don’t you, that these bodies are being dumped in the absolute worst parts of town? Whoever is doing this dumps them there so the list of suspects becomes phenomenal.”

“You’re right.”

We went straight for the group of people standing on the shore of the lake, actually a large pond. Lying on a tarp on her back was our victim, thirty-four-year-old Alisha Cross. One of the crime-lab technicians told me they had her identified immediately because her driver’s license was found in her back pocket. She had only been in the water for a couple of hours, so the body wasn’t badly decomposed.

Like the other three, Alisha’s side was wide open, her liver taken. But what made Alisha different from the others was that she wasn’t homeless, nor was she a drug addict. In fact, she was a suburban house wife who lived on the exclusive south side of the city. Our new detective, Justin Brown, had spoken with her husband just a few minutes earlier.

“He said she left to go grocery shopping. She goes to the grocery store in the Appleseed Shopping
Complex every Tuesday. Hubby’s off his rocker, as you can imagine. They had a four-year-old that was in preschool at the time of the murder.”

“What does her husband do?” I asked.

“He’s a pharmaceutical salesman. Big bucks. She didn’t have to work.”

This threw a monkey wrench into the entire murder case, as far as a pattern went. But it did tell me one thing: this person, or people, was smart. Most businesses in the south district of the city don’t even have video security systems, since crime is so low in that area. It’s the wealthy part of the city, so the local thugs don’t go there; they feel and look out of place. Our suspects evidently knew this. Taking the victim from the south and dumping the body in the north end made our investigation a nightmare. These people were deliberately trying to throw us for a loop.