Sirens in the Night

by Bradley, Michael;

  “Was he in the office yesterday?”

  Haskell nodded. “Yes, he was. As a matter of fact, he was still here yesterday evening when I left. I believe he had a late client appointment.”

  “I’d like to get that client’s name, if I may. As well as a list of all of the clients Mr. Seymour was working with,” said Samantha.

  “I can certainly provide you with the client list, but I hope you understand that I cannot divulge information about what we are doing for our clients. I must ask that you respect the confidential nature of our work.”

  Samantha nodded in agreement. “I understand. If I need to know more information, I’ll approach the client for any additional details.”

  “Thank you,” said Haskell.

  Her next question, Samantha knew, needed to be asked with a certain level of delicacy. “I realize that this may sound inappropriate, but it needs to be asked. Were you aware of, or would you consider it possible that James Seymour might be having an affair?”

  Fredrick Haskell’s eyes opened wide as he gazed at the detective. He seemed taken aback by Samantha’s question, and momentarily hesitated to answer. “I’m assuming that you have a reason for asking such a question.”

  Nodding, Samantha replied, “There’s some indication that he wasn’t alone in his car when he died. I’m simply trying to cover all the options at this point.”

  Haskell remained silent for a moment, and then replied, “I see. To answer your question, it is always possible that James could’ve been having an affair. However, if you knew how dedicated he was to his wife and family, you’d find the possibility to be so remote that it borders on the impossible.”

  “Thank you. I appreciate your candidness. I won’t detain you any longer. If I may, I’d like to have a look around his office before I go, and I’d like to get that client list.”

  “I’ll assume that if I don’t allow you to see James’ office, you’ll simply return with a search warrant,” responded Haskell. “So I’ll have Jessica let you in, with the understanding that you don’t remove anything without first speaking to me. And that you do not extend your search into his files without an official warrant.”

  Samantha agreed, and then said, “Again, thank you.”

  Chapter Nine

  Thursday brought a torrential downpour into the Philadelphia area, making the morning’s commute dreadful. With her raincoat pulled tightly closed around her, Samantha dashed from the door of her townhouse into the waiting car. As Peter stepped on the accelerator, he gestured toward the Dunkin’ Doughnuts coffee sitting in a cup holder between the front seats. She picked up the cup, and moaned as she caught the aroma of the freshly ground coffee. She was about to ask about sugar packets when Peter’s hand flicked toward her with two sugar packets between his fingers. Samantha smiled. He was getting better, she thought.

  “I did some cross referencing on Hardwick’s patient list. A patient from the list was recently reported missing,” explained Peter. “There’s also been an uptick in Missing Persons reports over the past couple weeks. There might be more bodies out there that we don’t know about.”

  “Let’s hope not. Give me the details,” Samantha said as she sipped her coffee.

  “Just in the last two weeks alone, there’ve been five reports filed. Three men went missing, all last seen leaving a gym over on the south side,” explained Peter. “And a young woman was reported missing last week—name’s Jessica Sturgis. She was last seen jogging in Fairmount Park. That was four days ago. Her name was on Hardwick’s patient list.”

  Smiling, Samantha said, “Finally we’re getting somewhere. If we find the doctor, we’ll probably find the girl.”

  Peter nodded. “It could just be a coincidence.”

  “A highly improbable one.”

  “And then there’s the missing guys from the gym.”

  “Hmm, all from the same gym?” pondered Samantha. “Again, it seems too improbable. But how does it all fit together?”

  “You haven’t heard the best bit yet,” said Peter, smiling smugly. “Remember Robert Crosse, one of our first victims? He and his fiancé were patients of Dr. Hardwick. They were having trouble getting pregnant.”

  Samantha smiled. “Our first link. Good work.”

  As they inched down the street with the morning traffic, Samantha took a mental inventory of what they knew. The previous day had been a long one, and by the time she had met up with Peter at precinct headquarters, it was well past five. To her annoyance, the two FBI agents and the profiler had already established a presence in the open office space shared by the precinct detectives. She had always despised the way the feds would subtly take over an investigation under the guise of “providing assistance”. She had been certain that the two federal agents would have already criticized her handling of the case to her superiors, probably making shrewd references to the way she had left the latest crime scene without waiting for the agents’ arrival. “Fuck ‘em,” she thought. “This is my investigation.”

  Samantha detailed for them her search of James Seymour’s office, which had, for the most part, been a fruitless endeavor. She had found nothing to suggest anything other than loyalty to the law firm, and faithfulness to his wife and family. His office had been tidy and neat, almost to an obsessive-compulsive level. Jessica, the law firm’s receptionist, had confirmed that James Seymour was very conscientious about keeping his papers in order. Jessica had also been helpful, by providing not only the promised client list, but also the dates of the last contact that James had with each client.

  After the lengthy briefing with the FBI, Samantha, with the client list in hand, spent an hour correlating the names in order of most recent contact, and had found that James Seymour had only met with two clients on the day that he died. One was a Henry G. Faber, and the other was Calithea Panagakos. The latter name had been Seymour’s late evening appointment, and, Samantha thought, might be the last person to see James Seymour alive. Before picking up the phone, Samantha had glared at the trio from the FBI, who, deep in discussion, had been paying no attention to her. Certain that she wasn’t seen, Samantha placed a call to Ms. Panagakos, and arranged an appointment for Thursday morning.

  As he had explained during the FBI briefing the previous evening, Peter’s day had been spent at the Seymour residence in Society Hill. After breaking the news of her husband’s death, Peter waited patiently as the grieving widow sobbed uncontrollably. While answering Peter’s questions, the Seymours’s nineteen-year-old son, Matthew, tried to comfort his mother. “No, he hadn’t come home the night before.” “Yes, it was unusual for him not to call.” “No, he didn’t have any enemies.” “Yes, James had always been a good and loving husband and father.” The answers were all those that one would expect to hear from a Society Hill family. A perfect world, and a perfect family. Those in Society Hill didn’t air their dirty laundry in public, and especially not to the police. A quick search of James Seymour’s home office turned up little as well. It had, overall, been a fruitless day for both of them.

  When Samantha had arrived at home the previous night, she had been utterly exhausted, not just physically, but emotionally as well. She had pulled a bottle of Pinot Noir from the small wine rack in her kitchen and popped the cork. She had poured a generous amount of the ruby red wine into a wine glass and took it, along with the bottle, into her living room. Flopping down on her oversized beige sofa, she took a long sip from her glass. With seven dead bodies, all killed by the same method, it was turning into another serial killer investigation. But she was having difficulty wrapping her head around how the seven victims died. It just all seemed impossible. She had quietly sipped her wine while turning the case over and over in her head, and Samantha assumed that it was the exhaustion that eventually made her start to cry. She couldn’t help but see the gruesome images of the victims in her head every time she closed her eyes. What was worse was the way t
he new images intermixed with the image of another victim from two years ago.

  She could still see Peterson’s face, fresh from the academy by only three months. And she could still remember the message left by his killer, the crimson red letters forever burned into her memory. The rookie should never have been out there alone. But, in an overzealous moment, Samantha sent him straight into the hands of a horrific killer. The wine helped dull the guilt, but it never truly went away. It always lingered in the back of her mind; a wound that festered and oozed without ever healing. When midnight arrived, she had decided that she’d had enough wine, and she had gone to bed for another sleepless night.

  _______________

  As the rain pelted the windshield, Samantha watched the city pass by her. People dashed down the sidewalk holding umbrellas and wearing raincoats, doing their best to stay dry. She wondered if any of them realized what was out there in the city. Did they know a killer was at large? The newspapers had been cooperative by not publishing the more gory details, as well as keeping the rumblings of a possible serial killer to a minimum. Samantha knew that it wouldn’t last too much longer, especially if they didn’t start making progress soon.

  “What kind of name is Calithea?” asked Peter.

  “I’m not sure. She had an accent, but I couldn’t place it,” Samantha explained.

  “What are you expecting her to say?” inquired Peter.

  It was one of those inquiries from Peter that Samantha hated. She hated it because there was never a clear-cut answer to the rookie’s question. Over her five years of experience, Samantha had learned that you never should expect anything to come from any interview with a prospective witness. As his mentor, Samantha knew she should be educating him with insightful guidance from her years of experience as a detective. After all, that was why he was assigned to her—to learn from her. But she had little patience for his questions. She remembered her own time as a rookie detective under the tutelage of her old partner, Eddie Murdock. She smiled when she thought how Eddie would hang the questions he deemed to be stupid on the bulletin board near their desks for all to see. It had been humiliating at first, but it had helped her grow as a detective. She figured Peter should count himself lucky that he only had to deal with her curt responses.

  Samantha didn’t know what to expect from their forthcoming conversation with Calithea Panagakos, nor did she know what role, if any, the lady would play in the investigation. Samantha’s only concern was that Calithea was the last person, that the police were aware of, who had seen James Seymour alive.

  “I’m expecting her to say James Seymour was fine when she met with him on Tuesday evening,” Samantha replied tersely.

  Peter, who detected the tone in her voice, replied, “Sorry. Dumb question.”

  Samantha sighed loudly. “Yeah, dumb question.”

  The silence between them lasted five minutes as they made their way across the city. Samantha stared out the car window, watching the raindrops streak down the glass. She was feeling an overwhelming sense of frustration. Whoever was committing these murders was smart, very smart. Forensics had found close to nothing at any of the crime scenes. There was no connection between the victims that they had been able to find. For all Samantha knew, the person committing these crimes could be standing on the very next street corner. She sighed once again.

  Breaking the silence, Samantha said, “Sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you. I’m just feeling frustrated with this case. Too many dead bodies, and no idea how they died or who did it. We’re lucky the media has kept their coverage low-key, but that won’t last much longer.”

  _______________

  Calithea Panagakos lived in the penthouse suite at the top of a newly constructed fourteen-story luxury apartment complex in the Logan Square section of the city. Samantha had remembered reading about the new complex a few months ago in the Philadelphia Tribune, one of the city’s oldest newspapers. The property management firm who had built the complex had touted the long list of amenities, including a 24-hour concierge, top-of-the-line fitness center, a resident clubroom, bicycle storage, and even a rooftop deck. However, the list of amenities had not caused the rush of prospective renters that the management firm had hoped for. The last that Samantha had heard, only half of the apartments were currently occupied.

  Stepping out of the elevator on the nineteenth floor, Samantha could still smell the faint odor of freshly laid carpet. There were only two apartments on the top floor, both serving as the most luxurious of all of the apartments in the building. The double doors of the two apartments were placed across from each other in the large foyer, with the doors to the left of the elevator being framed on either side with a potted fern. The ferns amused Samantha, as they represented the stereotypical city apartment dweller’s attempt at landscaping. The two detectives knocked on the doors to the right of the elevator and waited patiently for a response. Samantha glanced at her watch. They were only five minutes late, which surprised her considering the amount of rush hour traffic they had wrestled with on the way over.

  When the door was opened, the two detectives were greeted by what Samantha could only describe as beauty incarnate. The woman appeared to be in her mid-thirties, with long, voluminous black hair, which flowed from atop her head like water cascading downward to form a waterfall on her shoulders. The complexion of her oval face was utterly flawless, without a single freckle, wrinkle, or blemish. Her pert nose was exquisitely shaped and the lips were a deep red, and framed a smile filled with blazing white teeth. Below the narrow chin came an impeccable neck, and a valley of cleavage formed between a pair of ideally shaped breasts. Samantha noticed a perfectly shaped body with curves and proportions that would have taken a thousand artists to sculpt with such perfection. The pale blue dress the woman was wearing clung so flawlessly to each and every supple contour that Samantha was left wondering if it had been painted over her flesh. When she looked back up at the woman’s eyes, Samantha found a set of startlingly crystal blue eyes, which were as frigid as ice.

  Before Samantha could speak, Peter said, “Ms. Calithea Panagakos? I’m Detective Peter Thornton. I believe you’re expecting me.”

  “Yes,” Calithea replied, and then looked toward Samantha, awaiting an introduction.

  “I’m Detective Samantha Ballard. We spoke on the phone yesterday afternoon.”

  Stepping aside, Calithea ushered the two detectives into the apartment. “Please, come in.”

  The living room of the apartment was sparsely furnished with a generously sized beige leather sofa, two matching lounge chairs, and a pair of brass lamp stands. A dark wood coffee table with a glass top sat in between the sofa and chairs. At the far end of the room was a plate glass floor-to-ceiling window, which looked out across the courtyard below. The sound of their footsteps on the hardwood floor echoed throughout the large space.

  “Please excuse the lack of furniture. I’m afraid my apartment must look terribly empty, and quite unwelcoming at the moment,” said Calithea, as she gestured the two detectives toward the sofa. “My sisters and I have only just returned to the city, and some of our new furniture has yet to arrive.”

  Smiling, Peter replied, “Even the emptiest of rooms is made welcoming with just your smile.” The tone of his voice sounded different, almost whimsical.

  Samantha’s head jerked around to glare at her partner, and then back to observe Calithea Panagakos, whose cheeks had taken on a mild pink hue.

  “You’re too kind. Can I offer either of you some coffee?” the woman asked.

  Samantha began to speak. “No, if we—”

  Peter interrupted by saying, “No, Ms. Panagakos. We wouldn’t dream of inconveniencing you.”

  “It’s not an inconvenience. And please, call me Calithea.”

  Samantha scowled at her partner as he fancifully said, “Calithea is such a pretty name.”

  Smiling, Calithea explained
, “It’s Greek, meaning beautiful goddess. My sisters and I originally came from Greece. We’ve been here in this country for . . . well, let’s just say it’s longer than I can remember.”

  “Yes, I noticed your accent. It’s so exotic,” remarked Peter.

  Samantha, who was still trying to wrap her head around what was going on, spoke up. “Look, I’m sure this all very interesting, but I don’t want to waste any more of your time than I have to. We had a few questions about your relationship with James Seymour.”

  The Greek woman turned her attention to Samantha, and replied, “Of course. What would you like to know?”

  “You had an appointment with Mr. Seymour on Tuesday evening. Is that true?” Samantha inquired.

  Calithea nodded. “Yes. We met for about an hour at his office.”

  “If it isn’t too personal, could you tell us the nature of your business with Mr. Seymour?” requested Samantha.

  “He was working on a small legal matter for me. An old family legacy left by some of my ancestors. You could call it an inheritance, if you like. James was finalizing the legal details. As a matter of fact, he’d completed his work on Tuesday afternoon and provided me with the results that evening,” came the reply.

  Samantha asked, “Did he seem nervous or upset about anything?”

  Shaking her head Calithea responded, “No. He seemed very much himself. He was happy to have wrapped up his work for me, and didn’t appear to be concerned about anything.”

  Before Samantha could answer, Peter said, “I don’t think we need to bother you with any more questions.”

  Looking at her partner with a frown, Samantha stated, “I do have one or two more questions to ask.”

  “Please, ask whatever questions you have. I’m happy to help,” directed Calithea.