Chapter 23 #2
“According to the same medical file, Stefano should have a metal plate here after a car accident in his early twenties,” Dr. Cooper says.
“Again, there’s nothing. There is some remodeling present, if you look closely, particularly near the acromial facet, closer to the sternum, but that happened from a direct blow to the chest likely sustained during a physical fight and likely caused by a powerful punch or a blunt object. ”
“Wait, so what are you telling us right now, doctor?” Victor asks the obvious question, his brow furrowing with understandable concern.
Dr. Cooper sighs heavily, dismay darkly imprinted upon his face. “I’m telling you that I need to get Dr. Menendez in here to explain these glaring mistakes that led to the misidentification of this body.”
“So…” I whisper, afraid to say it myself.
“That’s not Stefano Petrucci,” Cooper says. “A DNA panel should’ve been requested. Therefore, I will absolutely write a letter and address it to Judge Hennessy, because what happened here is a reflection of my leadership, too, not just Dr. Menendez’s shoddy performance, dammit.”
He’s angry now. I can’t blame him. The Petruccis thought they buried one of their own.
By the time we leave the examiner’s office, and as the cool morning air fills my lungs again, the clarity returns. Sitting in the passenger seat of Victor’s car, watching our security detail get in the black SUV parked behind us before we take off, a tornado of thoughts ravages my mind.
“I can’t believe this,” I manage.
“I thought it was crazy. I was hoping, somehow, to be proven wrong, not proven right,” Victor confesses. “And I don’t know what to do with any of this.”
“For now, nothing,” I tell him. “Judge Hennessy will get Cooper’s letter. He’ll approve the exhumation order. And once we have all the facts, we’ll be able to investigate this further.”
Victor shakes his head. “I can’t wait that long. I don’t think we have that kind of time, but there’s something else we can do. Put your seatbelt on.”
Our next stop is at the 27th Precinct, where the bombing case was assigned. We’re greeted by an officer named Doyle, whom Victor knows well.
“When you called me, Victor, I thought you were crazy,” Doyle says.
We follow him through the station’s reception hall first, then through a narrow corridor with several doors, each marked as interview rooms. Doyle opens the third door to our right and motions for us to go in.
There’s a table in the middle with four chairs. A large mirror is mounted on the wall—most likely a double mirror, giving people in the room next door a clear view of the interrogations that usually happen here. The overhead light flickers once in a while.
I take a seat, my knees feeling weak. There’s already so much for me to process.
“The detective who was in charge of the bombing is coming downstairs in a minute,” Doyle says. “He was just as skeptical about this, mind you.”
“At this point, we’re no longer doubtful. The ME provided us with enough information to warrant an exhumation,” Victor replies.
Doyle shrugs, his brow pulled into a deep frown. “I’m sorry. I had no idea.”
“We’re not blaming anyone in particular. Not yet anyway. We’re just trying to figure out who died that night, who was there that night, and who might’ve made it out alive.”
“Alright, well, the two of you sit tight; he’ll be down shortly.” Doyle hesitates for a moment, gazing at Victor with curiosity. “Did you ever find that Lanny guy who robbed your truck?”
“Lanny led us here,” Victor replies.
It’s all Doyle needs to know.
About a minute later, Detective Ethan Reece comes into the room. He’s surprised to see me as I am to see him. “You were in charge of Stefano Petrucci’s case?”
“I was, yes,” he says, then looks at Victor. “Have we met?”
“Briefly on different occasions,” Victor replies and shakes Reece’s hand. “I’m an advisor for the Petrucci family.”
“A consigliere,” Reece says and smirks.
“A man who has the family’s best interests at heart.”
Reece nods and motions for Victor to sit next to me, while he takes the chair across the table so he can look at both of us. He brought a large case file with him, which he opens and places before us.
“I’m only doing this so you understand I have nothing to hide,” Reece says. “I did my job. I followed the evidence.”
“Detective, no one is doubting your proficiency as an investigator. On the contrary, we’re looking to help you.”
“How so?”
“You need to re-examine Stefano Petrucci’s case.”
Reece raises his eyebrows, his doubt clear. “Technically speaking, it’s still open. But it has gone cold in the absence of any viable leads. We’re nowhere closer to finding the bomber, and some of the trails we followed didn’t yield anything useful.”
“Perhaps you need to approach this from a different angle,” Victor says.
“Go on.”
“Stefano might still be alive,” I interject, carefully studying Reece’s reaction.
His shock seems genuine enough. The way he shifts in his seat, clearly uncomfortable with the possibility. Confusion draws a deep, dark shadow over his eyes as he starts flipping through the file until he produces several crime scene photographs.
“We found personal items of Stefano’s near or on his body, including one of his monogramed cuff links, which was fused to his wrist when the explosion occurred,” Reece says. “According to the medical examiner’s office, they positively identified the body. What am I missing?”
“Turns out the forensic specialist in charge overlooked several important aspects while performing the autopsy,” Victor says.
“As we speak, there is a letter on its way to Judge Hennessy, signed by the chief medical examiner himself, stating that his colleague, Dr. Menendez, misidentified the body.”
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Reece gasps.
Victor nods. “Our thoughts exactly.”
“Wait, hold on. What got you on to this in the first place? I thought you buried your man. There was a funeral service, the whole nine yards.”
“As you’re aware, the Petruccis were recently targeted in a series of attacks,” Victor replies. “The kind of privileged information the assailants had access to could only have been provided by a handful of people, one of them, presumed dead.”
“Stefano Petrucci…”
“Yes. And the other individuals whom we’d otherwise suspect simply have no reason or backbone to do such a thing,” Victor adds. “I don’t know, perhaps a hunch drove me closer to this avenue, as well. But obviously, we weren’t wrong. Not entirely, anyway.”
“So you’re telling me the dead guy who got blown up in the middle of a nightclub wasn’t Stefano Petrucci.”
“The body you recovered definitely wasn’t his. We’re wondering about the other victims. There was collateral damage that night.”
Reece offers a slight nod and pulls out a list. “Yes. Six dead, but they were all identified and claimed by their next of kin. Two of your security detail, Landon Kane and Joseph Keller, were among them. The other four were a bartender who worked at the venue, a waitress, and two other patrons who were close enough to the bomb when it went off. There were also ten injured, some severely. Maimed for life, might I add.”
“Just awful,” I whisper.
Reece looks at me. “For all intents and purposes, we treated this as a mob hit. Someone else always gets hurt in these things, Mrs. Petrucci. And we were certain the intended target was Mr. Petrucci. According to the CCTV footage, he was at the center of it.”
“Do you have any footage from the blast site?” Victor asks.
“No. Just different angles. There wasn’t a camera pointed directly at that booth, I’m afraid.
We could see parts of the blast on the rest of the footage, but no direct view,” Reece says.
He takes a moment to think about it, flipping through the pages again.
“You know, I always wondered… I mean, I always suspected this was Mauro Mancuso’s doing, but I could never get close enough to prove it.
We were aware of the strife between your families, and there was plenty of street chatter for us to go on.
But never anything concrete. Merely circumstantial. ”
The more I think about all this, however, the less sense any of it makes.
In my mind, I go over the handful of memories I have of Stefano. Ours was a fling, no matter how badly I wanted it to be more. Whatever desire I had for this man died the moment I realized I would have to bring my baby into the world and raise him on my own.
To give him the love of both parents, because Michael deserves it.
Yet everything I thought I knew about Stefano, even the bad parts, seems to barely scratch the surface.
“There’s one thing I don’t understand,” I tell Detective Reece. “If the man who died isn’t Stefano Petrucci, who was he?”
Reece shrugs. “I suppose we’ll find out once the exhumation order comes through.
I’ll ask our captain to send a memo to Judge Hennessy, as well, to document this new discovery.
DNA testing should provide us with new information, assuming there’s matching data in CODIS.
Otherwise, we’ll need the chief medical examiner to do a second autopsy. ”
“Dr. Cooper will handle it himself, surely,” Victor says. “And I know he’ll bring in one of the country’s top forensic anthropologists to assist him. In fact, I’ll make sure of it.”
“Let me guess. Tennis buddy or cigar buddy?” I reply with a dry smile.
Victor winks. “Gym buddy, actually.”
“Of course.” I shift my focus to the kind Detective Reece. “Stefano was definitely at the nightclub, though, wasn’t he?”
“Yes. We’ve got him on CCTV plenty of times and wearing the same clothes. We do lose him in the back room for about five minutes. And the footage is quite grainy at that angle, mainly because of the poor lighting.”
“What’s in the back room?” Victor asks.
“A space designed for private dances. The girls would take their top-paying customers in there to do a lot more than what they did in public.”
“You’ve got Stefano Petrucci going into the back with one of the girls, right?”