The Boric Acid Murder (24 page)

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Authors: Camille Minichino

Tags: #Revere Beach (Mass.), #Police Procedural, #Mystery & Detective, #Boric acid, #General, #Boston (Mass.), #Lamerino; Gloria (Fictitious character), #Women Sleuths, #Fiction, #Women physicists, #Detective and mystery stories; American, #Massachusetts

BOOK: The Boric Acid Murder
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I WAS AT MY computer early on Thursday morning, determined to show up at Revere High School fully prepared for class, just as I’d always done in my days as a student. Whether out of fear of repercussion from my mother, or love of learning, or a little of both, I’d always done my homework.
Using a simple graphics package, I made a few rough sketches of the components we’d need for the waste pool. Full scale, the fuel pellets of uranium are about three-quarters of an inch in diameter, about five-eighths of an inch long. They’re inserted, one on top of the other, into twelve-foot-long, slender metal tubes, usually stainless steel. When filled, pressurized, and sealed, the tubes become known as fuel rods, which are then bundled together to make up the core. I’d leave it up to the students to scale down the sizes to fit our model.
While I worked, the Fiore case swam around in my head. E-mails to Italy, Prohibition, nuclear waste, false documents. On Monday night I’d dreamed the entire library had imploded, like the fuel pellet in a laser fusion target chamber, caving in on itself. A maelstrom of books whirled around the interior of the building, finally funneling down the lethal stairway. Thousands of hardcover biographies, paperback novels, oversize art books, atlases, and reference volumes tumbled headlong, knocking over the coat rack on their way to the basement.
I knew I had either too many clues or none at all.
And one more memory, a happy one, flitted among the murderous thoughts in my brain. Matt had stayed the night. He’d delivered my morning coffee with two mini-biscotti before going
home to change his clothes and report to work. Did I want to wake up that way every morning? Yes, was at the tip of my tongue.
I remembered the first time Matt and I met. Rose had set up the meeting, supposedly for purely business purposes. Rose had heard the Revere Police Department was looking for scientists who could help as expert witnesses and as technical consultants for a variety of criminal investigations.
“His name’s Matt Gennaro,” she’d said. “Wife died ten years ago. Her heart. No children. We’ve known him for years. Family was from Everett, but they’re all gone now, except for a sister on the Cape.”
“They have two thousand scientists down the street,” I’d said. “The Charger Street lab is overflowing with candidates for this job.”
Rose shook her head. “Not ones like you. The lab scientists have a vested interest when the crime takes place on their property or if it involves one of their own. You’re a godsend, coming in from out of town like this.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“Just come and meet this guy, Gloria,” Rose had said. “You don’t have to date him.”
I’d caved in to Rose’s prodding, warning her it might not work out.
And I’d warned Matt also. “I’ve never done anything like that before,” I’d told him at that first meeting. “What if I ruin your case?”
He’d smiled. “Don’t worry. It doesn’t hinge on you. We just want your expertise. We’ll prepare you for what questions to expect, and you answer truthfully.”
Another smile, no doubt meant to calm me, but in fact it charmed me.
I liked his kind eyes, his comfortable body. Since none of my uncles had weighed in at less than two hundred pounds or so, Matt looked just right to me. Not so fit that I couldn’t imagine myself resting my head on his chest.
AFTER MATT LEFT on Thursday morning, I was able to work until about eight o’clock before my apartment came alive with calls and a visit.
Rose was first, and frantic.
“Where do you think he is, Gloria?”
“Try not to worry about it, Rose. He’ll probably call you as soon as he has something.” I’d decided not to tell Rose about my guess, shared by Matt, that John had gone to Detroit. I understood Rose’s concern, but for my part, I felt John was safer in the Midwest. The murderer is in Revere, I told myself.
“Has
something? You mean you think John’s working on the case? I suppose that would be good, wouldn’t it?”
“It might be.”
“I thought about calling all his friends, but what would I say—
is my son the fugitive there?”
“Strictly speaking, he’s not a fugitive.” I was happy to eliminate at least one of my friend’s troubles. Matt had told me no one on the RPD seemed concerned about the missing John Galigani.
“Probably because of his parents,” he’d said. “They’re not worried about finding him if they want him.”
I’d carried the phone to the window, and now I noticed the hearse pulling into the delivery area at the back of the building. “Here comes another client,” I said to Rose, in an effort to get her talking about something she loved—the Galigani Mortuary business. “It’s pretty busy here these days.”
“It certainly is. Did you see the Indian woman, Mrs. Patira, in A? Frank had to paint that red dot on her forehead.”
I’d often tried to set Rose straight on this issue—I did not make regular visits to the decedents who rested temporarily on the first floor of my residence—but she clearly didn’t get it.
“Gosh, I missed the dot,” I said, but the subtlety was lost on Rose.
“There’s also a small red line on her scalp, that you can hardly see, but it signifies that she was a widow. And she’ll be buried facedown. Isn’t that interesting?”
I’d asked for this. “Fascinating.”
“She had a little boy, too, only eight years old. Very sad. They let him see her in the casket, and he lashed out at Robert, as if he’s the one that took his mother away. So Robert talked to him for a long time. He’s very good with kids. So is John …”
Oh-oh. “Are you coming in to work today?”
“I’m here.”
“You’re downstairs? Why didn’t you come up?”
“I thought you might still have company … you know, he sometimes drives an unmarked that’s unfamiliar to me.”
He
. We hung up on a laugh, and a date for a coffee break at ten o’clock.
MATT’S CALL WAS BRIEF, since we’d been apart only an hour or so. He’d agreed to have Berger and his temporary partner, Ian Parker, check into Councilman Byrne’s alibi.
“They’re not too happy about it, but they’ll do it. It won’t be a pleasant reception. Some of those guys Byrne hangs around with are the elders of Revere.”
“That doesn’t put them above the law.”
“Right.”
Another laugh-filled hang-up.
When I turned away from the window, I saw an envelope on the floor in front of my door. A large brown manila envelope had been slid under it during the two or three minutes I was on the phone with Matt.
I was correct in my guess that Tony Taruffi had acted quickly. A note was clipped to the envelope—a piece of pale blue stationery, with cramped handwriting.
Enclosed material you requested. Didn’t want to wake you. T
2
T-squared, for his initials. Tony probably thought it was the way to my heart, but I’d never liked cute uses of mathematical or scientific notation.
Once again I abandoned boron for Yolanda Fiore or, more correctly, for John Galigani. I pulled out a sheaf of eight-anda-half-by-eleven sheets—pages and pages of E-mails in a tiny font. Another collection of sheets clipped together contained
the Web-use statistics for the two weeks before Yolanda was fired. A gold mine. The end that justified the means—promis—ing Tony Taruffi I wouldn’t reveal his infidelity. It will come out soon enough, I told myself, and probably his wife already knew.
I flipped through, estimating fifty pages of E-mails, some with replies and replies to replies in italics. I wished I had Yolanda’s original E-mails instead of T
2
’s copies—I was sure she’d have highlighted the important parts. These copies were hard to read, with double and triple brackets before every line. And how do I know Tony gave me all of them? I wondered, but then settled down to plow through the small print.
The E-mails were addressed to cousins, aunts, uncles, and friends. Each time, Yolanda began by identifying herself—
I’m Yolanda Fiore, in Revere, Massachusetts, USA. I found you through the Internet and wonder if you can help me. In 1940, my grandfather, Sabatino Scotto, was involved in a crime …
The first replies covered a range, from no information, to a referral to another person, in another town—a Rapone, perhaps, or a DiGiglio. But after a week of searching, Yolanda met some Italian relatives.
Cousin Maria Ambrosio said she went through scrapbooks and photo albums to see if she could find a mention of Sabatino Scotto. MAYBE HE CHANGED HIS NAME, Yolanda wrote back. NO ONE ARRIVES IN OUR HOUSEHOLD DURING THE DATES YOU GIVE ME, came the answer.
As I read, I added branches to Rose’s genealogy tree. The oldest relative still alive in Italy was Celia Pallavo’s sister, Yolanda’s great-aunt on her mother’s side, Gia Pizzimenti. Gia was not well, it seemed, but mentally alert. She remembered the scandal and even offered to harbor Sabatino, God forgive her, but he never arrived. Gia’s message was sent through one of her grandchildren, whose English was admirable—
Cara Iolandina. My name Luisa. My grandma Gia was the sister of your grandma, Celia. Gia says they wait for Sabatino many weeks. He never come. Celia in America was broken heart, but she never give up. She keep writing to ask has he come, because he take her jewels. Supposed to bring them to us for paying, and she say he never cheat like that.
So Matt was right—Celia reported her jewelry stolen as a cover for her husband. I wondered how Yolanda felt when she learned her grandfather really did intend to skip bail.
By the time I finished reading the E-mails, I felt I’d read a Mario Puzo novel. I’d never read his fiction, but I’d seen the movie versions. I wondered if the stories in his books were as compelling as the tale I’d fleshed out through Yolanda Fiore’s E-mails. Maybe I’d check one out as soon as I had a library card.
I ARRIVED AT the high school only minutes before our three o’clock meeting. The all-black-clad students were busy with Erin, who was in a flowery peach sundress.
“Do you think we can enter this project in the science fair?” Jamel asked.
“I don’t see why not. Ms. Wong and I will have to discuss the rules.”
“Really? Cool.” This from Charlotte, with nods from Mi-Weh and David.
Charlotte, Revere High’s star clarinetist in the school band, and the one who inadvertently busted Tony Taruffi’s alibi, had an ingenious idea. “I still have all my Legos,” she said. “I think I can rig up a system for lowering and raising the assemblies in and out of the rack in the pool.”
More
reallys
and
cools.
I was happy teenagers weren’t above using the play systems of their youth, in spite of the forbidding outfits they assembled.
I’d brought a video disk produced at my Berkeley lab, so
they could see the life-size operations of a waste pool. A rich baritone voice came on, the spokesperson for an unidentified government agency: “Our Energy Department says only one of thousands of canisters that hold the waste will fail while it is still ‘juvenile,’ that is less than a thousand years old.”
The students didn’t miss a chance for ridicule. “That’s a long time to be adolescent,” Charlotte said.
I paused the disk at a close-up of the pool and the technicians, all in cumbersome white suits and head coverings. The robotlike figures used long poles to manipulate the fuel assemblies, the tops of which were several feet below the surface of the water.
“Do we have this straight? The waste is in the pools because we think if we bury it, radioactive atoms might get into the water table?” Mi-Weh asked.
“Right,” I said.
“So we have, like, tons of radioactive waste sitting above the ground where it can spill over or, like, anyone can fall in?”
“Sort of,” I said.
“Wow,” Jamel said, moving closer to the screen. He ran his pen down the display, showing how deep the pool was. He scratched his neatly shaved dark head. “I’ll bet you could put a body down there, and no one would find it for, like, fifty years.”
Fifty years. “I guess that seems like an eternity to you. More than three times your lifetime.”
The students and their twenty-something teacher laughed.
Fifty years. Fifty-five years.
I stood up abruptly. “Excuse me. I have an important errand I just remembered.”
What if a body had been buried not in a boric acid waste pool, but behind a building for fifty-five years?
That was the question I asked myself all the way to the police station.
MATT LEANED BACK in his old gray office chair. The aging springs and patched-up vinyl seat gave out sounds halfway between creaking and groaning.
“There are a lot of gaps here, Gloria.”
None that I could see. I’d laid it out for him, and in my mind it all fit. Yolanda Fiore, the reporter, doing what reporters do, investigates the disappearance of her grandfather. She determines that Sabatino Scotto never got to Italy. The young Brendan Byrne murdered him and buried him in the lot behind the library. Yolanda figured it out, and he had to kill her, too. And, of course, that was the reason Byrne had to stop the excavation for the library expansion, lest his crime be exposed.
“First, we can’t prove Scotto didn’t go to Italy. We only know the people Yolanda contacted denied seeing him there.” Not what I wanted to hear. I’d been so relieved to find Matt in his office, it hadn’t occurred to me that he’d dispute my theory of a double homicide, with the killings fifty-five years apart.
“It was a pretty exhaustive search of several families. The Pallavos, the Avallones—”
“OK, but they have every reason to lie, to preserve a family secret, and to hide their own crime.”
“Do you think harboring a fugitive is a crime in Italy?”
Matt laughed. “Maybe not.” He was not to be distracted very long, however. “Say Byrne did murder Scotto—and at this point I think you’re picking on him because he’s the only one we’ve been looking at who was an adult in 1940—if we
dug up a body, how would we know it was Scotto? Maybe it was a legitimate burial, like the Church is saying we’ll find there. What makes it a murder victim?”
“We use DNA.”
“Scotto’s DNA is not on file. Where would we get data to make the comparison?”
“We could match to Yolanda, and show it’s her family.”
“We just happen to think of trying to match to Yolanda?”
“No, she just happens to have determined that her grandfather didn’t go to Italy. So she’s suspicious when a body is dug up. And let’s not forget revenge. Byrne finally has a chance for justice.”
“In his mind.”
“Of course. She’s a Scotto, and at least one Scotto will pay, if not the right one.”
A nod, but not a concession. “OK for now. Let’s start down another track. Why would Byrne think anyone would point the finger at him?”
“Well, Byrne would be worried that we can make a match to Yolanda, and everyone knows he had motive to kill Scotto.”
“Didn’t you tell me …” Matt flipped through his small notebook, but I knew the gesture was for show, teasing me. “Let’s see, your interview with Dorothy Leonard. Here it is. The library expansion project is likely to go through anyway?”
“Yes, but with Yolanda out of the way, it’s less likely anyone will care about some bones that are dug up. As you pointed out, they could just say it might be Horatio Alger.”
“Who’s that?”
“I forget.”
Matt’s big grin and obvious approval of me, combined with the sight of my photograph on his desk, gave me a cozy feeling, inappropriate for the gravity of the matter at hand.
Matt refocused quickly. “You haven’t told me what ties Byrne to this crime, to make him worried enough to murder Yolanda.”
Finally, one I was ready for. “He threw the murder weapon into the grave and it has his fingerprints on it.”
“Hmmm.”
I folded my arms across my chest.
So there
. “And Byrne worked for the city government, so his prints are on file.”
“Hmmm. Then we wouldn’t need Yolanda at all would we? So why would getting rid of her end Byrne’s troubles?”
This time the
hmmm
was mine, and followed by a very soft “I don’t know.”
“What was that?”
“Let’s go have an early dinner. My treat.”
AT SEVEN O’CLOCK, having left Matt at the curb, I walked past Mrs. Patira in Parlor A and Mr. Rinaldo in Parlor B and climbed the stairs to my apartment. Matt had a meeting with a community service group and would be over later.
I plopped down on my glide rocker, too full of the chicken piccata special to concentrate. I made the mistake of reviewing all I’d done in the less than two weeks that I’d been back from my California vacation, which had been anything but restful. I picked up the Web-use sheets from Yolanda’s computer, and fell asleep.
I WAS JOLTED AWAKE by my ringing phone, in the middle of a strange dream no doubt prompted by Matt’s attack on my double homicide theory and my own circular reasoning. I couldn’t remember the details of the images, but I knew a spiral staircase was involved.
“Gloria, it’s John.” His voice seemed to come from my dream.
I rubbed my eyes and hoisted myself to a sitting position. John who? I almost asked, never one to make the transition from sleep to wakefulness very easily.
“Where are you?” I asked instead. “Your mother is worried sick …and that’s no way to greet you, is it? How are you?”
“I’m OK. I’m at a pay phone.”
“I don’t think anyone is taping this conversation, John.”
“Sorry. I’m in Detroit. You probably figured that out. I really
wanted to be at Yolanda’s funeral. I’d met her sister, Gabriella, once when she visited Yolanda in Revere. No one here knows the details of the murder investigation, that I’m—”
His voice cracked, almost imperceptibly, and I felt a catch in my throat. “I’m glad you went, John.”
“Really?”
“Really.” Speaking as your Aunt Gloria, of course, not as an adviser to the RPD, nor even as your mother’s best friend.
“Let me tell you, it has been very interesting. Yolanda’s grandmother, Sabatino’s wife, is still alive. Mrs. Pallavo. Ninety-five, but very sharp. Reads the newspaper every day, does the crossword puzzle.” Either John was adopting his mother’s habits, or he was building his case for a credible witness in Yolanda’s grandmother. “Mrs. Pallavo says Sabatino would never have disappeared like that. They had a plan all worked out. A way to get messages back and forth, everything. And she never heard from him.”
“And she sounded believable to you?”
“Yeah. I’m convinced that Sabatino Scotto never got to Italy. Not only that, but Yolanda grew up with this story. Her grandmother has been urging her for years to look into it. I’m sure that’s why she came to Revere, but maybe that’s even why Yolanda became a reporter in the first place. It’s as if she was meant to find the truth.”
And to die for it, I thought.
I gave John a few details of my own that corroborated his findings. I might also have misled him slightly, with a tiny exaggeration about how good our case was against the councilman. The coast is clear, was my message.
“Are you coming home soon?”
“Oh, and get this,” John said, skirting the issue of his truancy. “Here’s a small-world story that reporters love—after Sabatino disappeared, Celia became very ill from depression. Irving Leonard’s father was the doctor who treated her. She says he was very good to her, the only one who believed her, and she wanted to be remembered to him. I had to tell her he died ten years ago. I think he’s the only one in Revere that she
remembers. She’s blotted out the ones who turned against her, I guess.”
“This is all interesting, John. We can talk more when you get home.”
He laughed. “Yeah, OK. I get it. I’ll take an early flight tomorrow. Will you tell my mother? I didn’t want her to get all hysterical.”
“Too late.”
He laughed. “I know, I have a lot to make up to my parents.”
“They’ll just be happy to have you back. And it would really be better if you called yourself.”
“I’ll think about it. Thanks, Gloria.”
I put down the phone and smiled, as if I believed the story I’d given John.
I PICKED UP the printouts Tony had delivered, amused at the image of him, behaving like an overanxious defense attorney, determined to produce enough paperwork to keep me busy and off the track of talking to his wife or the police.
The computer security administration at the Charger Street lab had done a thorough vetting on Yolanda, tracking her Web use over two weeks. They’d been so successful that she was fired at the end of the period. I thought back to my occasional nonwork-related browsing—mainly to frivolous interactive science sites—at BUL in California, and wondered who’d been looking over my shoulders electronically.
I reviewed the list of Web sites Yolanda had visited, many of which I recognized from my search for information on Prohibition. I pulled down my locator menu and typed in the first unfamiliar URL.
The address brought me to an article about the recent surge of moonshine, especially in the southeastern part of the country. A group of history-minded citizens in West Virginia had filed a petition to erect a museum to commemorate the heyday of the wood alcohol business, in what they called the moonshine
capital of the world. The plan was to sell a safer version of hootch, billed as “boutique liquor.”
I tried to imagine what Brendan Byrne or Yolanda Fiore might think about celebrating a “business” that cost lives and the destruction of families.
Another URL listed local Web sites and links to the library project. I should have realized the expansion proposal would have its own site. Didn’t even every day-care center have one nowadays? I clicked through links that took me to the past, to the library’s history, landing on one labeled OBITUARIES. A dark, formal look-and-feel took over my screen. A black banner, with long-stemmed calla lilies along the length of the page. The year, 1985. The deceased, Irving Leonard.
Mr. Irving Leonard, 46, director of the Revere Public Library, died in a tragic accident at the library on Friday. Mr. Leonard was the beloved husband of Dorothy, and father of Sarah, 21. Private burial will be followed by a public commemoration at Revere City Hall on Tuesday, 2 p.m. Besides his wife and child, Mr. Leonard is survived by his father, the retired Dr. David Leonard. Donations may be sent in Dr. Leonard’s name to the National Library Fund, Washington, D.C.
The next page—if Web frames could be called pages—had the text of speeches and eulogies delivered at the City Hall service. I had no way of knowing which links Yolanda had searched, but I scanned all of them, as I felt she must have done. Eventually, I found a link I was sure Yolanda paused over—the text of a lengthy address by Brendan Byrne, an active Council member at the time. He’d peppered his testimony with anecdotes about his friend Irving.
No one worked harder than Irving. And, sadly, it was that devotion to duty that caused his untimely death. Imagine a guy with a lovely wife waiting at home working late on
a Friday night, with one last chore he doesn’t want to leave for his weekend staff. So he picks up a broken, old crate marked for cold storage and … well, that was Irving. Nothing was beneath him, he’d do anything to make the Revere Public Library, and all our lives, the better for his presence.
Another
aha
escaped my lips. But I had one more connection to make before the
aha
would survive the scrutiny of Sergeant Matt Gennaro.
I checked the clock on the wall above my desk. Not even ten-thirty. Still early enough to call Dorothy Leonard. This judgment by one who’d recently had a nap. I quickly flipped through the recent additions to my telephone and address book, and found her home number.
“No, it’s not too late, Gloria. What can I do for you?” Not an enthusiastic tone in her voice, but who could blame her? I’d uncovered her document scheme, and come very close to accusing her of murdering either her husband or Yolanda Fiore or both.
“I need to know if Yolanda Fiore called you during the two weeks or so before she was murdered.” I heard a grunting sound that said
oh-oh
. I hastened to reassure her. “I’m not still … investigating you, believe me. But this is very important. Did Yolanda have any questions for you about the circumstances of your husband’s death?”
A sigh, remembering. “She did, as a matter of fact.” I fought not to fill the silence that followed. Misleading the witness was not out of the question for me. Fortunately, not necessary as Dorothy continued. “She wanted to know something about that crate. Was it written anywhere what the crate was like. That it was old and broken and marked for storage, that kind of thing.”
“Was it?”
“Not that I recall. It was kind of a joke between Irving and his staff. The basement where they stored things was so cold,
they called it, well, cold storage. But no, it never appeared in any public record that I know of.”
“And you told Yolanda this?”
“Of course. I didn’t know how she’d found out about it, and she wouldn’t tell me even why she cared.”
I wasn’t surprised that the grieving Dorothy Leonard missed the slip by Councilman Byrne at her husband’s service, nor that police detectives wouldn’t be paying attention either. He was an elder of the city, after all, even then.
I was about to hang up when another question came to my mind, a nagging connection from my phone call with John.

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