The Cigarette Killer

by Claudia Hall Christian

  “This whole thing revolves around you?” Seth asked.

  “Oh no, O’Malley,” Ava said. “This whole thing revolves around you.”

  Seth laughed.

  “Love you, O’Malley,” Ava said.

  “Love you, Ava,” Seth said. “I’ll miss you.”

  “Yes,” Ava said. “Talk to you later.”

  Ava hung up the phone. For a moment, Seth looked at the ground. He took a breath and looked out at the orchestra.

  “Can I borrow your phone?” Seth asked the young violin player sitting near him. “Mine’s being monitored.”

  “Sure,” the young man said. “You want my actual phone or my burner?”

  “You have a burner?” Seth asked.

  “Can’t be too careful,” the young man said.

  Seth took out his wallet and gave the young man a couple hundred dollar bills. The young man gave him the phone and returned one of the hundreds. Seth nodded his thanks. He went out of the orchestra room and into the hallway. He placed a call to what he knew was R.J.’s throw-away phone.

  “I only have a minute,” Seth said. “And I need a big favor.”

  “What’s up?” R.J. asked.

  “The Cigarette Killer has reopened his case,” Seth said. “Filed the day after Big Daddy died.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” R.J. said. “Big Daddy did have something on him.”

  “Something in that envelope?” Seth nodded. “Probably.”

  R.J. emitted a slow whistle, similar to the one Seth had just blown.

  “I think Big Daddy knew something about the Cigarette Killer that kept that sick fuck quiet for all of these years,” Seth said.

  “I bet you’re right,” R.J. said. “What’d you need?”

  “Go and ask Bernice what Big Daddy could have known that might not be in the envelope,” Seth said. “Think about everything you know about the killing and ask Claire too. We’ve got to figure out what Big Daddy had on the Cigarette Killer.”

  “Sure,” R.J. said.

  “Can you tape everything she says?” Seth asked.

  “I’ll go get a recorder,” R.J. said. “Something not connected to the Internet.”

  “Good,” Seth said. “There’s cash . . .”

  “Shit, Seth, I know where you keep your cash,” R.J. said with a laugh. “I taught you that.”

  “Yes, you did,” Seth said.

  “Is that going to work?” R.J. asked.

  “Perfect. Make sure to tell Bernice that her life is in danger,” Seth said. “Mine, yours, and probably Claire’s.”

  “You’ll explain everything later?” R.J. asked.

  “I will,” Seth said. “I’ll be done in an hour and a half.”

  “Why don’t I come to get you?” R.J. asked.

  “That would be great,” Seth said. “See you soon.”

  Seth went back inside the orchestra room.

  “Okay,” Seth said. “Let’s see if we can get through this.”

  Forcing himself to shift gears, he nodded to the orchestra. The violins started the piece. A few minutes later, he joined in on the piano.

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  Seven

  “So,” Nelson said, as he walked into Ava’s room with a big bowl of microwave popcorn.

  As the team leader, Ava had been assigned to a room with a bed as well as a kind of ratty sitting room. She was sitting in her flannel pajamas on a ragged couch, reading a novel. A former Emergency Room doctor, Dr. Nelson Weeks, worked as her technology consultant. Ava moved over on the couch and he sat down next to her.

  Ava had just grabbed a handful of hot buttered popcorn when Leslie McClintock came into the room, wearing a flowery flannel night dress and a heavy bathrobe. Her shoulder-length blond hair was wet and curled in spirals. She had already taken out her contacts, so she was wearing thick glasses. She’d grown up longing to be normal in Los Alamos, New Mexico. Working for Ava was as close to normal as this beautiful and brilliant woman could get. Leslie was technically a “Lab Assistant II,” which meant that she had the freedom to do whatever made sense to her. She was a gap filler extraordinaire. She sat down on the other side of Ava.

  Fran Dekay brought a stack of warm wool blankets in and set them on the couch.

  “I brought them from home,” Fran said before leaving the room. “Nothing’s worse than these freezing cinderblock dorms. The chill gets in your bones.”

  Fran also held the job description of “Lab Assistant III.” She was a hard worker, capable of big thinking. She was also the mothering force that kept the team together. She returned a moment later with a tray of chocolate chip cookies made with pre-made dough and the toaster oven in the break room.

  “Oh, I forgot,” Leslie said.

  She took out what looked like a spice bottle and gave it to Nelson. From her other pocket, she retrieved a bag of M & M candies and tossed them on the coffee table. Nelson gestured to the bottle.

  “For the popcorn,” Leslie said.

  “And we think these are what?” Nelson rotated the bowl of popcorn away from her.

  “My own special blend,” Leslie said.

  They gave a maniacal laugh in unison.

  “My cue.” Robert “Bloodstain Bob” Parrish came into the room

  He held up an unopened bottle of bourbon and closed the door. Ava got up to get glasses from the cabinet. Nelson sniffed at one of Leslie’s bottles. Shrugging, he added some to a piece of popcorn and popped it in his mouth. Nodding, he liberally used the bottle on the popcorn.

  “So?” Ava asked.

  She held up four scratched water glasses that easily could have been stolen from some motel. She gave a glass to everyone but Nelson, who didn’t drink. Bob gave Nelson a small can of premium French water. Nelson nodded his thanks. She gestured for Leslie to move over, and she sat down between Nelson and Leslie.

  She’d just turned twenty years old when she’d been given a placement as the head of a laboratory at the Denver Crime Lab by her corrupt father, State Attorney Aaron Alvin. He’d expected that this placement would keep her quiet and out of his hair. He’d never expected that she would thrive in the role. Her first hire was her FBI trainer, Bob Parrish. He came out of retirement to help her select overlooked, brilliant, out-of-the-box thinkers. When her father went to jail, she’d lost her job lab and was fired from the Denver Police Department. When no fewer than ten interim team leaders failed to handle this team, she was quietly hired back as a civilian. The magic restored, they were known nationally as one of the best forensic teams in the country.

  “What do you know?” Nelson asked.

  “About?” Ava asked.

  “The Cigarette Killer,” Nelson said. “Hamnet Seurat.”

  “We know all about the regular stuff,” Leslie said. “I mean, I went to the grown-ups conference on the case.”

  “‘Grown-ups’?” Nelson laughed.

  “Police, FBI,” Leslie said. She leaned toward Nelson. “You do know, young man, that we are part of a larger team.”

  They laughed.

  “I spent the day reviewing the evidence reports,” Fran said, when their laughter had died down. “Where everything came from, stuff like that. There’s a lot of forensic evidence, in general, but there are cases of forensic evidence from the burials they found after they had Seurat in custody.”

  “The ones he told Seth and Mitch about?” Ava asked.

  “Lots,” Fran mouthed.

  Fran sat down in the armchair and pulled a blanket over her lap.

  “Any DNA?” Ava asked.

  “It was more than 10 years ago,” Fran said. “But yes, there’s all kinds of DNA. Sperm from inside both women’s vaginas, sperm on one man’s anus, saliva, and basic stuff like fingerprints on the buttons, glasses, stuff like this. Seurat was not careful about leaving his biological evidence around.”

  “Remember, we can’t assume it’s Seurat,” Bob said.

  “What?” Fran asked.


  “We have to say ‘the unsub,’” Bob said, using the term “unsub” for Unknown Subject, created by a popular crime show about FBI profilers, “so as not to generate preconceived notions.”

  “Fine,” Fran said. “This unsub was sloppy to the point of slovenly.”

  “Better,” Bob said.

  Fran nodded in Bob’s direction.

  “The DNA team started sequencing two days ago,” Leslie said.

  “FBI or Denver Crime?” Ava asked.

  “FBI,” Leslie said. “Well, Fran and I haven’t started. That brings a question.”

  Everyone turned to look at her.

  “Are we using a current sample from Seurat or the one we have on record?” Leslie asked.

  “Why?” Bob asked the obvious question.

  “You know that my kindergarten teacher’s son is on the FBI’s DNA team, right?” Leslie asked. Everyone nodded. “He told me that the original sample is not the same as the current sample.”

  Thinking, no one said anything for a moment.

  “How did they take the samples?” Ava asked.

  “Blood, cheek,” Leslie said.

  Ava looked at Bob. Their eyes held while their minds worked. Nelson tapped on his laptop.

  “Bone,” Bob said and gestured to his hip.

  “Toenails, fingernails,” Ava said. “Most people think they don’t have DNA in them.”

  “He’s shaved his head,” Leslie said.

  “So, no hair,” Ava said.

  “There’s a thread at Reddit,” Nelson said, gesturing to his laptop. “He could easily know about DNA in fingernails.”

  “He clearly knew it was in hair,” Leslie said.

  “Let’s say Seurat had a bone-marrow transplant or has done something to adjust his DNA profile,” Bob said. “His blood and possibly his semen DNA would change but not these older, dead tissues. At least that’s the idea.”

  “We also should assume that, if he did have a bone-marrow transplant, he knows the donor,” Ava said.

  “He could get samples from that person,” Leslie said.

  “Would be as easy as, ‘Hey I need your nail clippings,’” Ava said. “We have to assume that he’s already in possession of those samples.”

  “How do we catch him?” Fran asked.

  “Hip-bone sample,” Bob said.

  “Figure out who gave him the bone marrow,” Ava said. “That’s assuming that he had a transplant.”

  Ava shrugged.

  “Anyone go over his medical record?”

  When no one said anything, Nelson raised his hand.

  “I’ll add it to my list,” Nelson said.

  “We’re going to be busy for a while,” Fran said. “Did I mention that there was a lot of forensic evidence?”

  “Enough to keep us running around,” Ava said.

  “And miss whatever is actually going on,” Fran said, with a nod. “True.”

  Processing their thoughts, they fell silent and ate their snacks.

  “I created a summary of the news articles, such as they are,” Nelson said. “If we want every article written, I’ll have to head downtown to look at the archives. Did you keep anything, Ava?”

  “Keep anything?” Ava asked.

  “Clippings? Notes? Pictures?” Nelson asked.

  Ava looked at the wall for a moment before nodding.

  “It was at my mother’s house,” Ava said. “I have no idea where it might be now. Storage?”

  Ava scowled. Her team gave her time to think.

  “I’ll call Dale,” Ava said, of her best friend Beth’s boyfriend, who’d become their handyman when Beth was killed. Ava pointed at Nelson. “He’s probably a good person to talk to. Beth used this case in her doctoral dissertation. She believed that something happened to Seurat when he was a teenager. Whatever it was, she believed it launched his psychopathy. Beth didn’t believe that psychopathology was genetic. She thought psychopathology was a solution to an internal existential crisis— you know, the perp is trying to ease something inside himself.”

  “Isn’t that called masturbation?” Nelson asked.

  They laughed. Ava smiled and ate some popcorn. They fell silent for a moment.

  “I think I have her dissertation,” Ava said. “I’ll ask Maresol to look. We probably have Beth’s notes and research or . . . whatever. Her parents live in this tiny place, so Dale has all of her stuff.”

  “Her stuff is at your house?” Nelson asked.

  Ava nodded. His face was so full of compassion that she could easily cry. She stuffed her feelings and moved on.

  “It’s a lot,” Ava said. “Do we think that’s everything?”

  “No,” Bob said. “That’s not everything.”

  Ava blinked at him. He held up the bottle, and they began to pass the liquor around.

  “What’s left?” Ava asked.

  “Profiling,” Bob said.

  “They went over the profile the FBI created for this killer at the conference,” Leslie said. “I mean, before he was caught. O’Malley kept really good records. Probably his piano training. He’s got lists of what they talked about in meetings. Those notes are indexed to a larger list of the traits of a potential killer. They were pretty close at least two years before they found Seurat.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” Bob said.

  The team looked up at him. Noticing that he was still standing and they were not, he grabbed a chair from the grubby kitchen table and pulled it over.

  “We need to figure out why this is happening now,” Bob said, and pointed down to the ground. “Why did he file now? Is it related to this ‘Big Daddy’s’ death? How does our Ava fit into all of this — or does she? It’s possible that none of this has anything to do with her or O’Malley. It’s always possible that he is using his filing for some other purpose.”

  “You mean he doesn’t want to get off?” Fran asked.

  “Possibly,” Bob said. “We need to contact the authors of the books about him.”

  “On my list,” Nelson said.

  They fell silent. Bob let out a large breath.

  “I think we have to know what he’s doing before he does it,” Bob said. “Before it hits us in the head.”

  The team looked at Bob for a long moment.

  “You think this is going to blow up in our faces,” Ava said.

  “Just a feeling,” Bob said.

  Ava scowled.

  “How do we do get out in front of this?” Leslie asked. “Whatever this is.”

  “To start: we need to know about Ava and this case,” Bob said.

  Ava shot him a rueful look, and he shrugged.

  “Tell me I’m wrong,” Bob said.

  “You’re wrong,” Ava, Nelson, Leslie, and Fran said in unison.

  They laughed.

  “Any thought about headwear?” Leslie asked. “Power of mouse? Power of Moose? Squirrel, maybe?”

  No one said anything for a moment. As a forensic team, they wore hats to keep their hair from contaminating their experiments. Before Ava was fired, the team usually wore a hat which represented the mystical power of a force such as Mickey and Minnie Mouse, Buffalo Bill, Rocky and Bullwinkle, the Marlboro Man, Batman, or other strong, modern mythical creatures. Once chosen, the team wore hats to embody this mythical power. They hadn’t done it since Ava had returned as their leader.

  “Felix. You know, like Felix the cat?” Fran said, immediately.

  “Because we’re going to need every single one of our tricks,” Ava grinned at Fran.

  “Exactly,” Fran said.

  “I was thinking Batman,” Bob said.

  “We were summoned here by the police,” Leslie said.

  “What do you think?” Ava asked Leslie.

  “I always go with the power of the atom,” Leslie said.

  “Fair enough,” Ava said. “Nelson?”

  “Georges Seurat?” Nelson asked. They groaned. “Like the 19th century painter?”

  Laughing, they screamed
various words that meant “No.” Ava got up and went into the bedroom. After a moment, she returned.

  “Power of Grayskull,” Ava said. She held up grey knit caps. “I got these in case you agreed.”

  “Love it!” Bob said. “Everyone?”

  The team cheered. Ava threw each of them a cap, and they all put one on.

  “Cold here,” Leslie said, mildly. “This will be nice to have.”

  Ava nodded.

  “What’re you reading?” Nelson asked, gesturing to the book open against the table.

  “I don’t know,” Ava said. “Some mystery. Seth has shelves of them in the basement. I saw it and thought . . .”

  “Josephine Tey,” Bob said. “That’s an old one.”

  “Seth got hundreds of them from the guy who rented him a room in that apartment in New York City,” Ava said. “I figured . . .”

  “Very liberated that your Seth reads female authors,” Fran said.

  “Oh, Seth,” Ava said with a nod. “He loves all books, especially mysteries. His face lights up when he talks about them.”

  Ava nodded. Bob cleared his throat.

  “What?” Ava asked.

  Eight

  “To start: we need to know about Ava and this case,” Bob repeated what he’d said a moment ago.

  “I don’t know what that means,” Ava said.

  “What do you remember about this case?” Leslie asked.

  “What do I remember?” Ava asked. “About?”

  “Cigarette Killer,” Leslie said. “Or are we calling him ‘Hamnet’? ‘Seurat’? ‘Unsub’?”

  “Depends,” Ava said. “This is a big case. We have to be good about being clear that we are investigating the case, not this particular person.”

  “But we are investigating this particular person,” Nelson said.

  “We are doing three things,” Ava said. “We are reviewing the forensic evidence of murders perpetrated by person or persons the press labeled the Cigarette Killer.”

  “We’re investigating the prisoner Hamnet Seurat,” Fran said.

  “Deep search into every corner of his life,” Nelson said.

  “Very, very quietly,” Ava said. “The very fact of that search is known only to those of us protected by Grayskull.”

  The team nodded.

  “There is a third party called . . .” Ava said.