“You took from his wife!”
The man nodded.
“What the fuck is the matter with you, Frank? When I told you to take care of him, I didn’t mean his wife—I meant him!”
“That makes it all the more sweeter, Sal.” The man smiled. “Now he will definitely not make any more waves. With his wife gone, he’s got that kid to take care of. Now he knows not to fuck around.”
“How the fuck do you know he’s not gonna talk to the feds?”
“They just pulled his wife out of a pond. Unless he wants his kid raised in foster homes, he’ll keep his mouth shut.”
Sal had a frightening thought and grew quiet. Rubbing his temples, he couldn’t believe how out of hand this entire
situation had gotten. In a low, quiet voice, he asked the man, “Were you watching when they pulled her out of the pond?”
“Sure, Sal.”
“Was Hagerman’s wife there, too?”
“Well, yeah, Sal, but she’s not gonna figure—”
Sal stood up and got within inches of the man’s face. “You stupid motherfucker! He’s in pharmaceutical sales! Don’t you get it? He could lead her right to us! Don’t you watch TV? If a woman is murdered, they always look into the husband’s background first! Always!” Spit from Sal’s mouth was hitting the man in the face.
He backed up slightly. “I think you’re making too much of this, Sal. Even if she does connect him to the company, it stops there. There’s no way any of that can lead to us—you know that! I mean, the guy was stealing from us, for Christ’s sake! You wanted him out! Now he’s out!”
Sal walked over to the window and looked down at the street below. He was worried. He had done a lot of checking into Hagerman’s wife and he’d concluded that she was just as smart, if not smarter, than Hagerman himself. If anyone could put the pieces together, it would be her. Not to mention, Frank was getting to be more of a liability than an asset. He’d have to give some serious consideration to keeping Frank around.
“Do we still have our people on her?”
“I pulled them off weeks ago. My source said she’s more than crazy right now. He said he even expected her to get fired or quit.”
Sal was incredulous. “You did what? Did I tell you to pull them off? I want them back on her—pronto!”
“Of course, Sal.”
“You sure you covered everything?”
“Down to the penny. I really don’t believe she’ll even
be able to tie him to the company. I’ve got my source on it.”
“She gets within twenty feet from the front doors of the company, take her out! You got it?”
“I got it, Sal.”
While they were loading the body into the coroner’s van, a thought came to mind. Seeing Justin by the van doors, I flagged him over my way.
“You said the victim’s husband was in pharmaceutical sales?”
“Yeah, that’s right.” He looked confused.
The husband’s profession was entirely too close to the medical field. Keeping my fingers crossed, I was hoping this was the break we needed.
“Get your pen out and write this down,” I ordered, and waited for him to grab his pen and notebook out of his shirt pocket.
“Go back and talk to him some more. I want everything on him: his company’s name, how long he’s been there, his sales district, his annual salary, his financial records, investments, stocks, bonds, whether or not he’s fucking around on the side, and most importantly, I want the
exact
names of the companies and doctors he sells to.”
Justin was furiously scribbling down my list of questions. Looking at him more closely, I realized he wasn’t as young as I’d thought. He might even have been close to my age—in his thirties. I knew he had transferred several years ago from another department north of here and had made quite an impact when he worked uniform. He had been promoted to detective within five years, a very impressive feat. Average looking, he was only a few inches taller
than I was and had sandy blond hair and brown eyes. On his left hand I noticed a wedding band.
“Do you have any children, Justin?”
“Huh?” He looked up from his notebook and saw me nod at his ring. “Oh, uh, yeah, Sarge, we have a two-year-old son.”
“I’ll bet he keeps you busy.”
He smiled. “That he does!” He shook his notebook at me. “I’ll get right on this, Sergeant.”
“What’s his name?”
“Who?”
“The victim’s husband.”
“Oh, it’s Troy. Troy Cross.”
“Okay…and Justin, call me CeeCee, please.”
His face turned red as he nodded and walked away. He would go far in his career, as eager—and apparently, smart—as he was. People either make it or they don’t in this business. Justin Brown wouldn’t have to worry.
On the way to my car to drive back to the department, I was blindsided by Coop. He had a very large grin on his face.
“I see someone is smitten.”
I was clueless. “What are you talking about?”
“The new dickie. Justin. The guy is totally in love with you.”
“Oh for God’s sake, Coop! Where the hell do you come up with this crap?”
“Don’t tell me you don’t notice him following you around like a lost puppy.” He laughed. “And every time you talk to him, his face gets beet red. Probably gets a hard-on, too.”
“That’s enough.” I shook my head. “He’s a kid.”
“He’s older than us.”
“What? He couldn’t be.”
“Yup, he’s thirty-eight or nine, around there. I know, he’s got that baby face that makes him look like he’s still in his twenties, but I saw his driver’s license with my own eyes.”
“Huh. Certainly doesn’t look it. And to answer your question, no, I have not noticed him following me around.” I got in my car, not wanting to continue this conversation.
“Well, I have, and so has everyone else.”
“Lovely.”
The rest of the day was spent in my office finishing the Alisha Cross homicide paperwork. Justin Brown came in my office about half an hour before it was time to go home. Astonishingly, he had already obtained the information on Troy Cross.
His information brought no significant leads. Troy Cross didn’t screw around, didn’t have any investments or stocks, and only sold to lower-end doctors on Cleveland’s east side. There was one discrepancy that caught my interest.
“How much does he make a year?” I asked.
“Seventy-five thousand.”
“And how much money is in his savings account?”
“Two hundred thirty-one thousand, six hundred forty-seven dollars, exactly.”
That didn’t make sense. “Did you happen to ask him where the hell that money came from?”
Justin looked uncomfortable. “I was going to, but I wanted to wait and discuss it with you first. I thought maybe we could use it to our advantage later.”
Smart move on his part. I took the thick file on all of the murders and handed it to Justin.
“Take this home, study it, and familiarize yourself
with everything. I’ll fill you in on some of it now, so pay attention. I think you’re going to do well in Major Crimes.”
His face lit up as if I’d told him he’d just been elected sheriff. He started rifling through the file as I briefly went into my findings about LifeTech Industries, the two doctors, and my theory.
“You really think those doctors have something to do with the murders?” he asked.
“There’s no factual evidence that connects them, but let’s just say I’ve got a feeling that they are. I still plan on keeping an eye on both.”
Justin got up to leave. “Sergeant, um, CeeCee…Thanks. I won’t let you down, I promise.” His face turned red again.
I couldn’t help but laugh. “I’m not worried, Justin. Have fun.”
Justin’s response to receiving the file made me remember my own early days in Major Crimes—how eager I was, putting everything else aside, including my family, to do the best job I could. How I wished I could go back in time.
As soon as I got home, I turned on my computer. There were several topics of interest that needed to be researched. I hadn’t had time, or the will, until now. The computer was in Michael’s office, a place I had rarely ventured into, let alone touched. His things were just as he had left them the night he was murdered, down to the empty, chipped, purple ceramic coffee cup sitting on his desk. Doing my best to ignore the surroundings, I pushed a stack of papers away and began my research.
Organ donors and trafficking in body parts was my first priority. Looking at the pages and pages of
Web sites, I was dumbfounded. There were hundreds of stories, articles, and medical journals written on the subjects. As I read through some of them, I found myself focusing mainly on the area of trafficking in body parts—a multimillion-dollar black market. There were thousands of people that did nothing but run illegal organs for a living. They were referred to as the “Body Mafia.”
The demand was monstrous. Over three hundred thousand people worldwide receive organ transplants. Almost triple that number of people actually need a transplant, therefore generating a black market that spreads across the globe. According to my research, the badly proposed 1984 National Organ Transplant Act set the black market into motion. The act makes it a felony to buy or sell human organs for purposes of transplantation, and essentially set the price on organs at zero. Most people won’t give something for nothing—even when they’re dead. Had the act not been put in place and the families of the deceased been compensated for the organ donation, the number of registered donors would go through the roof. As it stands now, less than twenty-one percent of Americans are registered organ donors. If the number grew to ninety percent or more, the supply would meet the demand, and the black market would be wiped out.
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.
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.