At the Scene of the Crime (19 page)

Mark guided her to one of the wooden seats. “Can I get you anything?”

She shook her head. “You stay with me,” she said. “I be okay.”

“I’ll go get someone,” he said.

“No, no.” She wiped at her brow. “I need sit.” Glancing up, she pointed to a tumbler of water. “Please.”

He obliged.

She then waved toward a plastic container on the countertop. “Sit with me. Make some coffee.”

Mark picked up the cranberry red bowl. “This?”

She nodded. “You make coffee, sit with me a while. Help old lady feel better.”

“I don’t think so, Mrs. Petrizzo.”

“You no like my coffee?” The solid-steel was back in those watery eyes.

He hefted the container. “You’re a wily thing, aren’t you?” He took Mrs. Petrizzo by the elbow and brought her to her feet. “Let’s go.”

She fought, scratching at him, but her chicken arms were no match for Mark’s strength. “You no touch me. You leave me alone!” As they moved into the living room, her leg gave out and Mark tried to catch her before she fell. But just as he helped her right herself, she wrenched from his grip and clawed at the brass étagère. Her bony hand snatched at Angelo’s portrait, grabbing the rosary from its perch. Her fist tightened around the rosary
beans. Before he could react, she shoved it into her mouth and started to chomp.

“No!” Mark shouted for help and wrestled to pry open her jaw.

When the wily old lady grinned it was a pitiful sight—the string of beads hung from her lips, and bean meats oozed out the sides of her mouth. “I no go jail, you sum-a-bitch,” she said around clenched teeth. “I die first.” She smiled up at the ceiling. “I coming, Angelo!”

 

Less than thirty-six hours later, after enduring a futile stomach-pumping, Mrs. Petrizzo’s body was wheeled into the autopsy room where Claire waited with her scalpel. “Why would anyone choose such a painful way to go?” she asked as she made the first incision.

Mark sat nearby, watching Claire and Danny work. “She was surrounded by pain her whole life. First as her husband doled it out and then when she inflicted it. Maybe it’s all she knew.”

“By the way,” Claire said, as she poked through Mrs. Petrizzo’s skinny corpse, “all the other tox screenings came back positive for abrin.” Danny had already begun sawing the skull open and Claire looked over at him. “I’d love to understand this lady. What kind of screwed-up brain did she have?”

Mark stood, coming around to watch. The procedure didn’t bother him as much this time. “Best we can guess is that she learned the business of revenge from years of living with her husband.”

Claire didn’t look up. “And she used rosary beads to kill people. What a lunatic.”

“We got her to talk a little before she died. Once the poison started taking effect she was ready to confess. She claimed she wanted to cleanse her soul so she could get into heaven.”

Danny snorted a laugh. Claire shook her head.

Mark continued. “She and Angelo targeted the Gomezes to get their apartment. That was their first abrin killing. And it went perfectly. Smooth. Undetected. But then Angelo died, and Mrs. Petrizzo went a little nuts in the head.” Mark blew out a breath. “The thing is, she was hell-bent on
revenge for her husband’s death.”

“Even though he probably did die of natural causes when he wandered off,” Claire said, as she directed the running hose into the body. “No surprises here. I see the same hemorrhaging I did with the other victims. I’m just sorry I didn’t find those red seeds in Lisa, or Damon. We might’ve been able to save Brenda.”

“Oh, I didn’t tell you.” Mark said. “She managed to get Brenda to eat the seeds. Petrizzo told her they were candy. But the other victims drank their poison. We found abrin in the coffee. Looks like the old lady maintained a separate grinder for her special guests. She invited them in, made a pot of her brew, and a day or so later, they’re dead. Ties in with the fact that all the victims had carpet fibers from her apartment on their clothing.”

“Good work, detective.” Claire smiled. “But what made you look at her coffee?”

“She offered me some.”

Claire looked up. “Oh, no.”

“Don’t worry.” Now it was his turn to grin. “I knew better.”

“But how? Who would ever suspect a sweet little old lady? Especially one carrying a rosary around all the time.”

“I did.”

She blew out a heavy breath. “Thank God.”

“Speaking of which, or should I say ‘whom,’” Mark said, “according to Mrs. Petrizzo, God supposedly sanctioned this little killing spree.” He nodded toward the body on the table. “She kept ranting about how he guided her rosary and about sorrowful mysteries. You’re Catholic. Any idea what she meant?”

“Rosary mysteries. Wow. I haven’t heard that in years.” Claire’s gaze swept to the ceiling. “There are five mysteries per rosary, one for each decade. She was talking about meditations.”

Mark shot her a quizzical look. “Meditations?”

“If I recall correctly, certain days of the week are devoted to certain meditations—you’re supposed to reflect on each of the mysteries in between
praying the decades. There are all sorts of different mysteries—Glorious, Joyful, Sorrowful. This lady was responsible for five deaths, right?”

“Yeah.”

She scratched at her chin with the back of her gloved hand. “Weird how that worked out. Five murders. Five sorrowful mysteries. It’s almost as if she planned them to match her holy meditations.”

Mark stared at the corpse’s wide open chest, watching as Claire removed the heart and placed it into a container to be weighed. He thought about the old woman’s cold-blooded devotion to her deadly rosary.

“Could be,” he said, “only this lady wasn’t sorry at all.”

THE JOGGING TRAIL IN SPEEDERS PARK WAS ONE OF THE
area’s favorites among early morning exercisers. Softly asphalted paths wound through mature elm and maple trees, around a pristine blue lake whose banks were lined with white quarry stones. Speeders Park was nothing if not scenic.

It wasn’t officially named “Speeders Park.” It was called that, rather than the name of some long-dead city father, on its entrance sign, because the street that bordered its western edge was Sallab Road. Sallab was a beautiful straight and level stretch traveled by drivers just off the nearby interstate. Used to highway speeds, people with a tendency to go fast couldn’t resist the wide and level road. The local police had given out reams of speeding tickets on that stretch of road for so many years it had become a notorious speed trap. It didn’t seem to slow anyone down, but it did provide a steady source of revenue for the county.

Former major league catcher Mitt Adams stayed in reasonably good physical condition by jogging every morning on the park’s mile-long running and bicycle path, the one passing closest to Sallab Road. Mitt had been retired from baseball for ten years. He’d been stocky and immovable behind home plate and many a runner trying to score had come out sore and bruised, whether safe or out. Now pushing fifty, Mitt was still stocky and strong, though a bit paunchier. And he was still not a man to be run over, on or off a baseball diamond.

Mitt was in a different kind of diamond business now. He was public relations director and representative of Diamond Square, a company that wholesaled jewelry and industrial diamonds. Being a celebrity front man
for the firm, he always wore a large diamond set in an eighteen-karat gold ring on his left hand. His World Series ring he wore on his right. He liked to watch the morning sunlight glint off both rings as he pumped his stocky arms while he jogged.

He wasn’t the only one who noticed this mesmerizing play of light.

Mitt had jogged most of his regular five miles and the former athlete was huffing hard when he rounded the slight grade beyond a stand of maples and began the stretch of path that paralleled Sallab Road. The killer watched from another copse of maple trees, less than a quarter of a mile ahead and toward the bend away from the road. When Mitt entered the trees, for a few seconds he’d be invisible from the road or from farther down the winding trail.

Here came Mitt, puffing like a miniature steam engine, legs and arms working like pistons, eyes squinted against the sun, perspiration pouring down his broad face from beneath a sweat band with his old team logo on it. The killer smiled. Mitt, team player to the last.

Sweat at the corners of Mitt’s eyes stung and obscured his vision. Seeing became even more difficult when he passed from bright sunlight into the shadows beneath the trees. His eyes didn’t have time to adjust as a dark form suddenly appeared before him.

Puzzled, Mitt huffed and puffed to a halt. The killer brandished a knife, and ordered Mitt to accompany him off the trail and into the trees. Mitt could hardly refuse.

As soon as they were in the shadows, Mitt barely saw an arm slash upward toward his midsection. Something long and sharp sliced like ice into Mitt, beneath his sternum, up, up into his heart. The pain was like an explosion, but brief.

Did I tag him? Mitt wondered inanely. Did I tag the bastard? He took three more steps, the third one when he was already dead, and crumpled to the ground a few feet off the path.

The killer glanced around, confident that he hadn’t been seen, then bent low and removed the diamond ring from the third finger of Mitt’s gnarled
left hand. Mitt had lost weight lately with his regular jogging and was in great shape for a dead man, so the ring slid off easily. The killer ignored the World Series ring.

He wiped clean the long folding knife he’d thought he might have to use to remove the diamond ring, placed it and the ring in his pocket, then jogged off into the bright sunlight beyond the trees.

Mitt had died almost immediately. The killer was glad there hadn’t been much blood. Things had gone swimmingly, if you weren’t Mitt.

 

In his office at police headquarters, Captain Wayne Loman sat back and looked across his desk at the two people he’d summoned to get him out of deep doo-doo. When a local celebrity like Mitt Adams was murdered, the pols and public expected—no, demanded—action followed by results. Loman knew the best way to accomplish both those things was sitting right there in front of him in the persons of Miles Dougherty and Catt Balone. Dougherty had long been top dog of CSI in a major city in Florida, home of wacko crime, and Balone had been his assistant. Florida also being the home of wacko politics, both had been forced from their jobs for political reasons. Now they were in private practice here in the Midwest with their own investigative agency, Dougherty and Balone. Loman wasn’t too proud to ask for help.

Catt, a tall, curvaceous woman with attractive if predatory features, stared at Loman with her cool green eyes. Miles Dougherty was her physical opposite, short, dumpy, balding, amiable looking. He had a pleasing smile that seemed always present. He was about forty-five to Catt’s thirty-five. Loman knew that when he was about twenty-five, Miles Dougherty had been a decorated Navy Seal.

“So whadya got?” Catt asked him, lounging in one of the two chairs angled toward the cluttered desk.

“Murder,” Loman said.

“Mitt Adams?” Miles asked, having kept up on the news.

Loman nodded.

“So whadya got?” Catt asked again. Same expression, feline observing mouse, speculating.

“As he did most mornings, starting about six-thirty, Mitt was jogging in Speeders Park. He was found by another jogger who noticed him lying off the path in the shadows and called nine-one-one on her cell phone. Mitt was stabbed to death by a knife with a long, thin blade, very sharp. His keys and a roll of bills were in a packet attached by a Velcro strap around his right ankle. The diamond ring he always wore was missing, but not his World Series ring.”

“A thief can fence a diamond ring without too much danger,” Miles said. “That World Series ring would arouse suspicion. Not too many fences would touch it.”

“A real fan might,” Catt said. She smiled, looking dangerously feline. “A Cubs fan.”

“What’s the ME say?” Miles asked. He kind of liked this, entering a case when the investigation was well under way. The first forty-eight hours had passed and the police had gotten nowhere. His smile was inward. Time for the real experts to show how it’s done.

Catt was staring at him. She knew what he was thinking. She always did. Sometimes she gave him the creeps.

“ . . . dead when he hit the ground,” Loman was saying.

“At least he didn’t suffer,” Catt said. Miles wondered if she was serious. Being stabbed in the heart was never a walk in the park. Or a jog. “For long, anyway,” she added.

“What’d your CSI people come up with?” Miles asked.

“Mitt was lying curled on his right side on the ground, right arm and leg bent beneath him. Minimal bleeding from the knife wounds, and from facial injuries sustained when he fell, indicated he was dead before he hit the ground. The weapon hasn’t been found. There were no discernable footprints in the area, which was on hard, grassy earth beneath some trees. There was some blood, though, and it appeared the killer stepped in it with the edge of one shoe. Probably didn’t even know he did it.”

“What kind of sole?” Catt asked.

“Smooth. No way to tell if it was composite or leather, with such a small sample. And there was no particulate matter in the blood other than what was indigenous to the scene.” Loman sighed. “I tell you, we’ve got nothing other than that the weapon was a long, thin-bladed knife.”

“And sharp,” Catt reminded him.

Miles wished she’d stop being sarcastic. But he knew she wouldn’t. This was the woman who’d raised her extended middle finger at a bossy police lieutenant at a murder scene while snapping on her white Latex glove.

“Might the person who discovered the body have stepped in the blood?” Miles asked.

“That would be a woman named Adelaide Clark, an emergency room nurse who jogs the trail in the park every morning before going in to work at Mercy Hospital. She says she never got closer than ten feet away from the body. She was pretty sure Mitt was dead. According to her statement, she backed away, trying not to disturb even the area around the body, before making her nine-one-one call. Records show the call came in at seven-twenty.”