“That’s crazy, man. Where are you gettin’ this shit from?” Briganti said with a hard sneer and a raised voice.
I was starting to rile him. Good. That’s what I was there for. I raised my voice to match his.
“Cut the bullshit, Briganti! We know you killed April and we know how you did it. You can either tell us your version of how it happened—”
“—and throw myself at the mercy of the court? FUCK YOU, RAVELLO! I’m innocent.”
“—or we can piece the rest of it together for ourselves. When we do, you’ll wish you had talked now. The scum of the earth we house at Rikers have their own code they live by. Baby murderers have a rough time of it over there. You’ll be praying dear old Tony Tramboli gets you out on bail before you’re found beaten to death in your cell with your underwear around you ankles.”
“I’m not going away for nothin’. I’m clean,” Briganti said with confidence.
But his concern, his fear, had shown through. He was beginning to falter.
“Beauty of it is this, Johnny. We don’t even need to nail you for the murder. We’ve got plenty to put you away on right now—manufacturing, sale, and distribution of synthetic street drugs for starters. The New York Press will do the rest, connecting you to Cassidy and your baby’s murder. The inmates will take it from there. While you rot there awaiting trial, you can learn all about the joys of forced sodomy. Hell, in a couple of months, you’ll be looking forward to being brutally beaten to death.”
I kept at him hard for the next forty-two minutes. Briganti could see I was right, but despite him cracking at points, he did not break. I finished the interrogation with the same mindset I had going into it. As a suspect in April Cassidy’s murder, Briganti had a lot going for him. He made his living torturing and killing. He had a knack for synthesizing drugs. Creating super-concentrated botulinum toxin would be easy for him.
My gut told me Doctor McGowan was right about these murders, that there was some medical basis to the crimes that went deeper than using Boxin to kill the victims. Why else would all three of the vics be missing the same body part, not to mention their unborn babies? Briganti’s medical research and training and love of violence made him an interesting suspect. He also had plenty of motives for wanting April and her baby dead. The case against Briganti as a serial killer, though, was weak. He had no known connections to Rakel Ingi or our first victim. And men like Briganti didn’t become serial killers; they killed for money, plain and simple, not the thrill of taking a life, though he obviously would have no problem doing so.
We gotta dig up a lot more on Briganti, I thought. Without more evidence, I’m going to be hard pressed to take him seriously as a suspect in our serial killings. But that will all change if we find a deeper medical underpinning to these crimes. It that case, Briganti will move front and center in our investigation.
We knew Briganti was manufacturing synthetic street drugs but we decided to let the scumbag go, knowing the FBI was keeping a close watch on him. If he was our man, he’d make a mistake soon—and we’d be there to pounce on him.
Chapter 43
The case I was working on now brought back all the worst memories of my mother’s death. Like a sharp-bladed stiletto, the case tore through my psyche, leaving a bloody trail behind it.
“Michelle, this one’s really having its way with me. Mothers and babies are dying savage deaths and we don’t have any idea why or when or where the killer may strike next. I feel helpless in stopping him,” I said with frustration.
“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Chris. You’re doing the best you can. Keep plugging away. Something will break in the case and you’ll nail this guy,” Michelle said as she snuggled her head into my chest and I wrapped my arms around her.
I leaned my head atop hers and replied, “Thanks. I know you’re right. But in the meantime, what do I do? This psycho could kill again at any time. It’s an endless nightmare for the families of the victims and for the officers investigating the crimes. Every time I see a new victim, I relive Ma’s death and I worry for you and the kids. I’m the one who moved us here, it would be my fault if any of you got hurt. If anything happened to you guys because of me, I don’t know what I’d do,” I said as I struggled to hold it together.
“Don’t worry about us, we’re fine. I’m a cop’s wife, remember?” Michelle said as she lifted her head and gazed into my eyes, holding my head in the palms of her hands. “I have a sixth sense about how to keep out of harm’s way, so it looks like you’re stuck with the three of us for good. No way around it, sweetie,” Michelle said with an impish grin.
“Hey, how’s Christine doing with that bully? “I haven’t heard you mention it lately,” I said with hope.
“Uh, yeah, her teacher is keeping more of an eye on it, and she’s doing a bit better,” Michelle said quietly.
“What? What’s going on?”
“Yesterday was the conference with the teacher…”
“The one I was supposed to be at too. Shit.”
“Don’t worry, honey. You’ve got a lot on your plate these days.”
“Still, I don’t like letting you guys down. Sorry.”
“You just take care of catching this killer. I’ve got the home front covered.”
I laughed as I drew my wife close to me. “We’ve pulled through worse than this. I just want to catch this guy before more innocent people die. I can feel his blood lust, Michelle. He’s going to kill again, very soon—unless I stop him first.”
Chapter 44
Carl Dietz leaned forward and peered through the microscope’s oculars with a furrowed brow. He looked down at countless human spermatozoa swimming feverishly in a Petri dish. Dietz was testing a new technique to separate the sperm carrying an X chromosome from those carrying a Y. The X chromosome was larger and heavier and when fused with an egg, created a female. Dietz was exploiting the size and weight differences between X and Y carrying sperm to make sex selection more predictable in couples seeking In Vitro Fertilization, also known as IVF. His success rate hovered around 75 percent, but with this latest technique, he hoped to improve that to 95 percent.
Men and women paying ten to twenty thousand for IVF wanted not just a healthy baby, but also the ability to choose the child’s sex. Dietz intended to give them that ability. Providing such predictability was unprecedented and would drive patients to his door and help fund his other work. With an ex-wife and three children to support and declining reimbursements from insurance companies for the traditional services he provided, Dietz needed another revenue stream. IVF/sex selection was that stream. It was a potential gold mine, and he intended to exploit it to its full economic advantage.
Monetary issues aside, IVF/sex selection held little interest for Dietz. The science was uninteresting and he was uncomfortable with the customer service that went along with it. Dietz was most interested in research that met two criteria; the science was complex and ever changing and there was as little human interaction as possible. His stem cell and cloning research fulfilled both criteria. The science was exquisite, complex, and advancing at a breakneck pace, and until recently, when he began harvesting his own stem cells, there had been no interaction with patients.
If he had his career to do over, he would have pursued research full time, leaving behind the vagaries and irrationality of patients all together. To be sure, research held its own frustrations, but the work was so much more satisfying to him. Delivering babies was such a crapshoot. He might spend his entire career caring for patients and offspring, who amounted to nothing in the grand scheme of things. As an OB, would he deliver a Picasso, an Einstein, or an Edison? Quite unlikely. In the lab, could he learn how to genetically engineer his creations and through cloning, recreate one of those brilliant minds? Yes, that was within his grasp. The last year’s experiments had demonstrated that.
“Carl Dietz the OB/GYN is nothing, a nobody,” the doctor said to himself. “Carl Dietz the scientist is important, someone colleagues r
ead about in medical texts and journals. Soon my name will be spoken with reverence and passion. I will forever change the course of medicine and science. Hell, I will alter mankind’s future!”
And he would do it one little sperm and egg at a time.
Chapter 45
I had spent the last hour at my home office in the attic, reading through the notes my partner e-mailed me on our second victim, the former Greenwich au pair, Rakel Ingi. It was fascinating reading. Kevin interviewed her coworkers at the diner and other au pairs she knew well. He spoke to contacts at the FBI, the Department of Immigration and Naturalization Services, and even Homeland Security. The last two departments worked as one since the tragedy of 9/11/01.
Rakel Ingi packed a lot into the five months she spent living in the United States. A law student dropout from the University of Iceland, by day Rakel cared for the Kimball’s two young children. She bathed and fed them, played with and read to them, and took them all around Greenwich on play dates. Once Mrs. Kimball arrived home from shopping, tennis lessons, and lunch dates, Rakel was done for the day and could do as she pleased. That often meant exploring New York City nightclubs with her friends.
Rakel’s au pair application said she “loves to explore and is eager to learn and try new things.” It was the understatement of the year. While club hopping, Rakel developed a fondness for Ecstasy and other synthetic street drugs. Brad Kimball found out about this and used it to blackmail her into having an affair with him. She quit two months after the affair began when she became pregnant with Kimball’s baby. At that point she began working as a waitress at the Heartland Diner in Hell’s Kitchen, an area in Manhattan just north and west of midtown that was home to aspiring actors, dancers, and musicians, some of whom were Rakel’s friends and let her stay with them.
According to Kevin, Rakel explored bisexual experiences with friends and strangers alike. She also took dance classes whenever she had the time and the money, which meant about once every two months. Like most girls her age, Rakel had studied ballet while growing up, though she now favored Jazz and Hip Hop.
All of this research raised some interesting questions. With her rampant drug use and wild partying, had she ever crossed paths with Johnny Briganti? The clubs she spent the most time at, according to her au pair friends, were Flanders in SOHO and Jade in the West Village. Both areas were infiltrated by Briganti’s synthetics. A meeting between the two was quite possible.
April Cassidy had taken the very same dance classes at the very same studios as Rakel. In fact, April had taught one of the classes Rakel had taken. Had the two become acquainted at some point? If they had, was there any sexual relationship between the two young women? Did that play a role in either of their deaths? Had Rakel or April ever met our first victim, Tracey Lin?
We needed answers to all of the questions as quickly as possible, before another young woman was mutilated and murdered. I touched base with Kennedy and confirmed he was talking to anyone and everyone to get us those answers. For all the controversy and squabbling, the FBI’s role in the investigation had not yet begun to interfere with or restrict our own. We both knew that good fortune wouldn’t last much longer.
I needed to get going, so I went downstairs. I ate a quick breakfast of Maple Brown Sugar Oatmeal and Orange Juice, and said hi and bye to Michelle and the kids amid their protests for me to stay. It killed me that we had such little time together these days, but what was I to do? I had a family to provide for and a killer to catch.
I hopped into my car and peeled out of the driveway, heading south. It was time to pay another visit to my favorite scumbag investment banker/con man.
We had a lot to talk about.
Chapter 46
So cute and so young. This would be new, perhaps even virgin territory for him—if he went ahead with it. Right now he was just watching. Thinking. Standing there, hidden in plain sight, taking it all in. Camilla was her name. She was captivating, captivating and oh, so sweet. Five foot two inches tall, her perky, angular face rested on a delicate, ivory neck. Gently sloping shoulders capped the top of her petite, understated, hourglass body. A beige hospital uniform with vertical red stripes, ran down to soft white stockings and immaculate, alabaster shoes. Camilla made this a difficult job. She was innocent and naïve, not faking it like so many others he had known. She didn’t deserve the fate he was considering for her—though he continued to consider it just the same.
Camilla, the darling, little sixteen-year-old candy-striper at Sarah Spolhardin Nursing Home in White Plains, New York, was the daughter of Richard Stimpley, longtime British Ambassador to the United Nations, and Diana Stimpley, devoted wife and mother to the ambassador’s three beautiful daughters. Camilla wasn’t flashy. She didn’t attract attention or have an edge to her. Maybe that’s what drew him to her. It was certainly what troubled him about the whole matter. He knew he had to take this next step, had to be able to create clones out of adults and not rely all the time on stem cells from fetuses. The Giver knew how necessary this was, yet it troubled him just the same.
He had done his homework on Camilla and the rest of the Stimpley family. Three years earlier they moved from a quaint home in the mountainous countryside of North Devon, England. Now, they lived in a four-bedroom, white center hall colonial the British Government owned on Fox Meadow Road in Scarsdale. Camilla, an honor student, track and field, and lacrosse star, had settled into her new community well. She had a diverse, close-knit group of expatriate girlfriends, spent three days a week volunteering at the nursing home, and sang in the choir at the Scarsdale Congregational Church. There was no time for dating boys or for such mundane activities as hanging out at the mall with classmates. No, Camilla was above all that nonsense and being groomed by her father for an ambassadorship herself someday.
Taking Camilla Stimpley down was anything but a routine job. He’d have to be on top of his game this time to avoid being caught.
Ah, there she was feeding Mr. Abrahamson his chicken noodle soup again. Ever patient, she scooped it into his mouth time and again, never discouraged by how much dribbled down his stubbly, wrinkled old chin onto the beaten up, chipped wood table his hands rested on. It was too bad: there were so many like him in this decrepit, filthy old place. Glassy eyed, drooling, frail zombies kept alive out of guilt, or to serve as some relative’s zoo specimen, ready to provide amusement whenever the mood struck their sadist captor.
He should consider another profile all together. These octogenarians were ripe for the picking and would be missed by no one. Ah, but that was a matter to consider another time. Right now, he just had to focus. Focus—on—Camilla.
Here he was doing research as the pre-amble to taking her life, and she was killing him. One little act of kindness at a time. There she was, helping the rotund and disgusting Ms. Legalesi, just six weeks removed from hip surgery, shuffle her fat ass down the hallway with her walker. All the while she would smile as if she were an angel sent straight from heaven—which, of course, she was. Her long blond hair, as always, flowed in a ponytail down her back.
It was amazing to him that he could get away with taking such a leisurely, unobstructed look at her. Everyone, including Camilla, knew he was right there. But he had become such a fixture these last few weeks, just like the depressing light green walls whose paint was peeling all around him. Nobody ever acknowledged or even noticed him, and that was just fine with him.
“Hi, Gary, how are you today?” Camilla said as she breezed by him, a large, light-brown lunch tray slung across the front of her hips. “Is that a new haircut?” she said with her endearing British accent. “It looks nice.”
Ahh! his mind screamed as he stood in place, frozen with fear. Contact! He hadn’t expected that from her! She was supposed to be oblivious to him! Calming himself, he stared out of the corner of his eye at her striped backside as she disappeared down the long, narrow hallway. She was making this so hard on him! He had actually started to develop feelings—good feelings—for her.
Unusual emotions rumbled within him. Love, admiration, longing. One sensation rose up out of the cauldron of conflict within him. Doubt. Would he be able to follow through? Could he snuff out a life so pure, so full of promise? He wrung his hands and ground his teeth. Moist, dark brown eyes reflected his anguish, his pain—his fear.
For the first time in as long as he could remember, he didn’t know what he would do.
Chapter 47
On the way to Greenwich I decided to call Special Agent RJ King and fill him in on our latest developments. It was a good call to make for several reasons. The Feds would find out what we knew sooner or later; by sharing with King now, I hoped to build good will with the pompous, fat prick. Perhaps King would give Kennedy and I more latitude going forward if he knew we were keeping him up to date and in the loop. The other reason was jurisdictional. We had nothing solid on Kimball, just speculation and innuendo. It was a stretch for a NYC detective to arrest a Greenwich businessman, especially with such a paucity of evidence. My role as the lead investigator for the DMC offered some credibility in making the arrest, but it was still a risky proposition. I couldn’t afford to take any risk that would jeopardize the investigation or my job.
The Feds, though, were another story all together. Kimball’s schemes crossed state lines and included mail fraud, putting Kimball in the FBI’s cross hairs. When King heard everything we had on Kimball, he agreed. The FBI would arrest and detain him, while the investigation into his role in the serial murders continued.
Forbidden Birth Page 13
