The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, Parts 1-5

 

by Roman Sympos

​

(Jump to Part 5 Here.)

 

 

Part 1

 

The bodies were found in the early morning hours of St. Valentine’s Day, in a fish shed on the wharf at Lane’s Cove. That’s in Lanesville, a neighborhood on the opposite side of Cape Ann from Gloucester harbor. The shed was part of a film set for a movie about a young woman from a fishing village who runs away at sixteen and becomes a famous actress. The movie starred a young woman from Lanesville who ran away at sixteen and became a famous actress. Her name was Gloria Vin, but she’d been christened Marianne Pomeroy just a few blocks away, at Sacred Heart Church, before the building was desanctified and turned into condos.

 

Her body was the first to be identified.

 

It'd been a hectic homecoming. Receptions, a banquet, a parade, a rally at the high school. "Stay in school!" said the glamorous, wealthy dropout. Red-carpet all the way.

 

The set was going to be dismantled and packed up in the morning.

 

Gloria and the other three victims, their faces bright red, looked fast asleep when the security guard opened the door around 1:00 am. The mercury had dipped to 12 degrees by then. Someone’s iPhone was playing “Shake It Off.”  Empty wine bottles and plastic cups littered the floor. There was an LED lantern next to the door and an unlit propane heater in the corner.

 

Fresh snow on the ground showed footprints, so the first officers on the scene made sure the EMTs avoided them. No one knew what to make of anything yet. It was best to treat the shed as a crime scene for now.

 

Peter Fallon and his partner, Victor Ulrich, arrived in an unmarked car. Fallon, a thirty-year veteran of the force, was a gray, wiry man with a cigarette hanging from his mouth. He wore an unbuttoned parka over a rumpled gray suit and looked like he’d rolled out of bed and got dressed lying on the floor. Ulrich, recently promoted to Detective Sergeant, was noticeably taller, with the build of a long-distance runner. He looked fresh, clean-shaven—could have come straight from a board meeting. They reminded Alan Ross, the security guard, of a mismatched pair of shoes.

 

He told them that Gloria and her three friends, along with her stepbrother, Stevie, arrived at his trailer around eight o’clock. They’d just come from a farewell dinner at the Beauport Hotel with Gloria’s family and wanted to party in the shed.

 

“Here?” asked Fallon, leaning over to look in. “At night? What is it, minus what?”

 

“They wanted to relive their Glory Days, reminisce,” said Ross. He shrugged. “Auld Lang Syne.”

 

Fallon shook his head.

 

“Yeah, I know,” said the watchman. “They told me they used to hang out in that old weighing shack over there.” He pointed across the cove. “Drink ‘til dawn. But it’s a public meeting room now and locked up tight.”

 

Ross didn’t see any harm—Gloria was the reason they were here, after all. “Although,” he added, blowing steam on his hands, “I’d rather the fuck be in LA.” And the star was used to having her way. Ross called Sylvie Conrad, the set manager, who okayed it.

 

The young people were quiet, kept their voices low, played some music. It was still playing when the stepbrother left. Ross noticed the motion sensor light coming on and saw him passing the window. That was around ten o’clock. Half an hour later Ross saw Stevie coming back. He was carrying a shopping bag. Snow was falling by then. A few more minutes went by before the stepbrother stuck his head in, said he was going home—early day tomorrow. Gloria and her friends would stay awhile. Oh, and they didn't want to be disturbed.

 

Around midnight, Ross glanced at his watch, then the thermometer outside the window. He was mildly concerned, but reluctant to crash the party. The music was still playing quietly, and Gloria had a hair-trigger temper that made her unpopular with support staff, especially on location shoots.

 

“She could make trouble for me,” said Ross, scratching his chin, “if she had a mind to.” He’d been working security for the studio for twenty-five years now, the last ten on film sets, and had never met a leading lady as difficult to work with as Gloria Vin. Fallon wondered if she’d already made trouble for Ross on some earlier occasion. 

 

Another hour went by and nothing changed except the temperature, which continued to drop. So Ross screwed up his courage and went back there to check on things.

 

#

 

Fallon and Ulrich examined the scene and waited for the ME to arrive. His preliminary guess, carbon monoxide poisoning. “The bright red faces,” he said. After a few more questions, the detectives drove to Rockport, where Stevie lived with his father and stepmother.

 

Rockport is the modestly upscale, picture postcard version of Gloucester tucked just north of it on the tip of Cape Ann. Alice Pomeroy and her second husband, Joe Mancuso, had moved there from Lanesville not long after Gloria Vin scored her first big hit with Maverick, a Netflix original. Gloria wanted to buy them a house in LA but they said no, they wanted to stay near their friends. That was five years ago.

 

Delivering the bad news was half the assignment. The other half was questioning Stevie. He wasn’t a person of interest, not so far. What happened at the shed looked like an accident—carbon monoxide poisoning from a faulty propane heater. The Medical Examiner said she’d know more in a day or two. Accident or not, Steven Mancuso was the last person to see the victims alive. The detectives didn’t even know their names, except for Marianne Pomeroy’s, let alone how to contact their next of kin.

 

The address turned out to be a shore-side contemporary overlooking Cathedral Rocks. As Ulrich drove up the carriageway the security lights came on, and by the time they reached the door Mr. Mancuso was standing there in his bathrobe. “Is he in trouble again?” he asked. Before the detectives could answer he added, “He’s asleep. We’re all asleep,” as though that would make them go away.

 

The living room was what you'd expect: high, beamed ceiling, sectionals the size of aircraft carriers, lots of dark wood, and, behind some partially drawn curtains, a wall of black glass that Ulrich assumed showed the ocean by day. He’d mistaken it at first for a giant flat-screen TV.

 

Fallon broke the bad news and, as the horror sank in, Ulrich pulled a travel pack of Kleenex from the side flap of his topcoat. He was the Good Cop. It came naturally and he made it a point to be ready when called on. Fallon, the Bad Cop, braced himself. This was the worst part, yes, but not the hardest. The hardest was managing the transition from the worst part to the next worst: the questioning.

 

That’s when the cold reality behind the detectives’ expressions of sympathy and concern became impossible to hide. Enough with the tears and fainting and wailing. We’re here to put your grief in a lockbox and get to what really matters. The questioning always made Fallon uneasy, even after he apologized for it.

 

Adding to the uneasiness this time around was Stevie’s quick recovery. His shock and grief seemed genuine, but his agitation disappeared the minute he started answering their questions. Fallon suspended judgment while Ulrich, leaving his pack of Kleenex on the coffee table, jotted down names and relationships:

 

Patricia Lafferty, Marianne's BFF in high school, Gloucester resident.

 

Michael Walker, Lafferty’s steady boyfriend back then, now living in Essex, next town over.

 

Christine Walker, Michael’s wife of two years.

 

“She was Christine Sobczynski in high school,” said Alice Pomeroy in a shaky voice. “They have a toddler at home.” She reached for another Kleenex.

 

“Can you spell that?” asked Ulrich.

 

Mrs. Pomeroy shook her head, tried to speak, took a deep breath. “But I have the Laffertys’ number, and Mike’s parents.”  She left to get her cell phone. The detectives looked at Stevie.

 

“Can’t help you there,” he said. “They were her friends, not mine. I was just tagging along.”

 

It had always been that way, he added, what with the three years’ difference in their ages.

 

The gap must have seemed light years wide, thought Fallon, when Marianne Pomeroy was starting high school and her stepbrother was a preadolescent. A precociously good-looking preadolescent, Fallon recalled. A dreamboat, as they used to say. Trim, muscular, curly black hair and dark eyes. Big for his age. Big now.

 

Was that what got him in trouble? Drinking, shoplifting, weed. Dropped out of school. Dropped out of Voc. Living with his dad and stepmom the last, what? Five years.

 

It started when Marianne Pomeroy disappeared ten years ago. Maybe she and Stevie were close and when she left he couldn’t keep it together. Maybe they were still close. His matter-of-factness under questioning seemed to contradict the idea, but it could be a way of controlling his emotions. That was something Fallon understood.

 

“Could we go over what you know?” he asked Stevie. “Start with dinner. Who was there?”

 

It was a party of nine: Marianne, Pat Lafferty, the Walkers, Stevie, his dad, his stepmom, and Mike Walker’s parents.

 

“They’re friends of mine,” interjected Alice Pomeroy, “from before I met Joe.”

 

“How about Christine’s parents?” asked Ulrich. “Were you friends with them?”

 

“Just her mom,” Alice said. "She was divorced. But just to say hello. We had nothing in common.”

 

When dinner ended Christine suggested they have drinks in the fish shed. Parents not invited.

 

“She reminded Marianne of how they’d sneak into the weighing shack after dark, through a hole in the foundation,” said Stevie. “Marianne said the set crew had already packed up the big propane heaters. I said I’d bring ours."

 

Fallon and Ulrich glanced at each other.

 

“The one that’s there now?” asked Fallon.

 

Stevie nodded.

 

“You mean the new one, I hope,” Joe said.

 

“I mean the only one,” said Stevie. “I threw out the old one, like you asked, remember?” When Joe didn’t reply, he turned back to Fallon, “Marianne was going to bring it home with her.”

​​

“You didn’t think to crack a window?” asked Ulrich. “Doesn’t it need ventilation? To prevent . . .”

 

“It’s for indoors,” said Stevie.  He sounded irritated, as though Ulrich was implying something. “It’s got an ODS.” Seeing their blank looks, he added, “An oxygen depletion sensor. Shuts off automatically if oxygen gets too low.”

 

"What was wrong with the old one?" asked Fallon. He was looking at Joe.

​

“Wasn’t burning properly," said Joe. When Fallon didn't respond, he added, "Set off the CO detector in the workshop. It was out of warranty, not worth repairing. So we got rid of it.”

 

Ulrich looked at his notes.

 

“You said, ‘bring it home.’ Was Gloria—I mean, Marianne—staying here?”

 

Joe spoke up. “She always does.”

 

Fallon was surprised.

 

“So this trip isn’t unusual?”

 

“Only the publicity,” said Joe. “She’s been home more than few times since she became Gloria Vin. Holidays, for instance.”

 

“And nobody recognized her?”

 

“She’d contact close friends, like the Walkers, and they’d get together here, or if they went out it’d be, like, for a stroll in the woods. She’d stay for a day or two, and then she’d be gone.”

 

Alice Pomeroy returned with the phone numbers and Fallon let Ulrich take them down before asking Stevie, “The security guy said you left around ten o'clock. Why?”

 

Stevie nodded. “I went out to get more wine, and then I went to bed.” He gave them the name of the liquor store.

 

“The security guy said you had to get up early.”

 

Stevie paused before answering. “I made that up. I could tell when I got back I wasn’t wanted. They were talking about stuff that wasn’t my business and broke it off when I walked in. Didn’t take me long to see I was a fifth wheel.” He stopped, surprised at what he’d said. “Huh. Literally the fifth.”

 

“How’d that make you feel?” asked Ulrich.

 

Stevie looked at him steadily for a few seconds. “I was used to it,” he said. “Like I said, when we were kids Marianne would let me tag along sometimes. But it always ended the same way.”

 

The rest of what Stevie Mancuso had to say matched Alan Ross’s account.

​

"You didn't feel any dizziness? Headaches?" asked Ulrich.

​

"No," said Stevie, "Not at all."

 

“Stay in town for a while, ok?” said Fallon. “We may need to get in touch with you.”

 

#

 

It was nearly dawn by the time they made the last of their grim rounds. They got a break on “Sobczynski” when the Walkers’ baby-sitter called Christine’s cell for the third time wondering where she was and Fallon picked up. Christine’s mother was her emergency contact.

 

Ulrich dropped Fallon off then drove himself home. Later that morning, after a couple hours of sleep, he’d drive them both to the station to begin going through the evidence gathered at the scene. City Hall was working on a statement by then and setting up a press conference for that afternoon. The Mayor expected to have something to announce. Fallon knew he’d have nothing to give him until the coroner’s office and forensics weighed in, and that wouldn’t be today.

 

The evidence at the scene was meager. No signs of a break-in or a disturbance of any kind. The victims were all in repose, lying in or on sleeping bags. There were two sash windows, both closed, and Alan Ross had found the door closed and latched. The latch was double-sided.

 

Stevie had the receipt for the wine. Ed’s Mini Mart confirmed his purchase, two bottles of cabernet, and the approximate time.

 

Aside from a few stray footprints from first responders, photos taken at the scene showed two sets of tracks, one presumably belonging to Stevie, the other to Alan Ross. Stevie’s were less visible due to the snow that had fallen between his final departure and Alan Ross’s trip to the shed. Ross’s were still clear, however, and his distinct tread marks were sharp. There’d been no wind that night.

 

The tale of the prints corroborated the two witness statements. Stevie’s footprints returned and left in a straight line. Ross’s went to the shed door, then emerged and wandered around while he called 911. The only anomaly was a patch of Stevie's footprints next to the door, on the hinged side. Fallon also wondered how many bottles of wine the young people had drunk.

 

They called Stevie in for further questioning. He stopped by after lunch.

 

“I stood outside, smoking,” he said, “before I left to get the wine.”

 

“Why not smoke on the way?” asked Ulrich.

 

“I wanted to enjoy the evening. It was really beautiful.” He paused. “Also, I don’t like to stink up my car.”

 

“What did you do with the butt?” asked Fallon. No butts had been found near the door or within flicking distance.

 

“I pinched it and pocketed it,” said Stevie. “I’m no litterbug.”

 

Fallon changed the subject.

 

“There were five empty wine bottles lying on the floor when the security guard opened the door. From what we learned at the liquor store, I’m assuming two of those were the ones you went out and bought?”

 

Stevie nodded.

 

“So three weren’t enough?”

 

Within the week the celebrity broadcasters and tabloids and influencers and Instagrammers were calling it “The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.”  Reporters from news agencies and papers of record, national and international, roamed the city hunting down anyone who’d known Gloria Vin personally. They packed the news conferences and fast-food joints and booked every two-star motel on the North Shore to capacity. Marianne Pomeroy’s mom and stepdad insisted that she be buried in Gloucester, not LA. But her body had yet to be released pending the completion of the autopsy and forensics reports.

 

The reports verified what seemed obvious from the start. The blood of all four victims showed lethal amounts of carbon monoxide, presumably from the propane heater. The burner nozzle and glass mesh screen were stained with soot from incomplete fuel combustion, a well-known cause of CO buildup. The irregular pattern of soot distribution suggested some kind of obstruction in the tip of the nozzle. The lab concluded that whatever it was had eventually burned away, but not until after the CO in the shed had passed the danger point.

 

 “The security guard told us he smelled gas when he opened the door,” said Terry Blalock, the forensics technician assigned to the case.

 

“So the flame went out but the gas kept coming?” asked Fallon. He and Ulrich had driven to the Danvers site of the Massachusetts State Police Crime Laboratory system to talk to Blalock in person.

 

She nodded. “That alone would have been enough to kill them. But we didn’t detect any propane in their blood samples. They were already dead from the CO.” 

 

The real mystery was why the oxygen depletion sensor hadn’t shut off the fuel supply before then. The unit was a brand new 10,000 BTU “Little Devil” portable propane heater. The ODS should have turned it off as the oxygen in the shed was burned up and replaced by carbon monoxide. Even a slight reduction would have been enough. To test it, Blalock had cleaned off the soot after photographing it first, then fitted the heater with a fresh propane canister and ignited it in a sealed reaction chamber.

 

“It burned with a blue flame,” she told the detectives, “indicating complete combustion, until the oxygen in the chamber was insufficient to keep it burning. The flame started turning yellow and flickering, just as if it were clogged. That’s when the ODS is supposed to kick in, and it did.”

 

“So are you saying the incomplete burn wasn’t caused by an obstruction?” Ulrich was confused. “Just poor ventilation?”

 

“No,” said Blalock. “As I said, the irregular soot pattern indicated an obstruction was the cause.”

 

“Aren’t there physical symptoms of CO poisoning, though?” asked Fallon. “Wouldn’t they know something was wrong?”

 

“They’d been drinking,” said Blalock. “Their blood alcohol levels tested high. That would have made the symptoms hard to recognize. They might even have passed out before feeling anything.”

 

The medical examiner estimated the victims had been dead for somewhere between one and three hours. The frigid temperatures would have slowed postmortem lividity—the settling of blood in the lower portions of the body—making the exact time of death hard to pinpoint. There were no signs the heater had been tampered with.

 

“It happens,” said Blalock. “That’s why you need a CO detector nearby, just to be safe.”

 

Based on the lab tests and the autopsies, and the fact that the propane heater was apparently in good working condition, the medical examiner’s conclusion was death by carbon monoxide poisoning, causes unknown.

 

The Mayor called another press conference. The reporters went away disappointed. They were waiting for their OJ moment. But they didn’t leave Gloucester, not yet. There was the funeral—no, funerals!

 

And the criminal case was still unresolved. Too many unanswered questions remained.

 

Stevie’s attitude raised several. Cooperative to a fault, sure, ready to offer information. But maybe too ready, with too much information. “ODS”? Who talks in acronyms? Experts. Fallon did some poking around and found out that before he dropped out of vocational school, Stevie took a class in HVAC. And getting accepted in the first place wouldn’t have been easy. Voc schools were now more competitive than most prep schools. So the kid had the intelligence to avoid dumb moves. And to improvise. The beautiful night? Pocketing the cigarette butt? C’mon. And the five of them went through three bottles of wine in an hour and a half and weren’t plastered enough, so they needed more?

 

Most of all, it was Stevie’s calm, placid delivery that bothered Fallon. Not a smirk, no, dead serious, but with that prepared feeling to it—no hesitation, as though he were saying, “Go ahead, try. You won’t trip me up.”

 

But what was the motive? Marianne Pomeroy had left her estate entirely to her mom, Alice Pomeroy, to distribute as she saw fit. Alice and her second husband, Joe Mancuso, had named each other as beneficiaries in their wills, with a third going the deceased spouse’s biological child, should he or she survive their parent. Stevie and Marianne would split whatever remained should both their parents predecease them. If Stevie’s aim was to get rich quick, he’d chosen the long way around. He should have started with his dad and settled for a smaller payoff. (Unless he needed a bigger one. Maybe he did. Look into it.) And Alice could change her will at any minute, especially now that she was obscenely wealthy.

 

Fallon and Ulrich were feeling the pressure, and not just from the media mullet-heads and fans of Gloria Vin—“The InVINcibles,” as they called themselves—who were baying for “justice.” The Mayor wanted it to go away. An outright declaration of accidental death from the ME’s office would do, thank you kindly, or second best, charges brought before the end of business. Today.

 

There was already speculation in the press that Stevie was “a person of interest.”

 

After a week’s investigation, Fallon felt sure Stevie Mancuso knew something. Maybe his father, too. He meant to find out what. Neither the father nor the son was a suspect, though, not yet. Fallon couldn’t think of a motive. Hell, what could motivate anyone, no matter how greedy or desperate for money, to kill all four of the victims? Did they have anything in common other than Marianne Pomeroy?

 

He didn’t know the wheels of justice were already in motion elsewhere. The day before Gloria Vin’s casket emerged from the front doors of Our Lady of Good Voyage on its way to Locust Grove Cemetery, the first civil suit for wrongful death in the St Valentine’s Day Massacre was filed in Essex County Superior Court.

 

Part 2

 

Hart stood staring out the window of his office, distracted by the smell of fresh-baked bread coming up the stairwell from the Italian bakery downstairs. He was holding a box of desk supplies, wondering what to put where. He’d gotten as far as the stapler and the pencil sharpener and had just walked over to a metal filing cabinet when the smell stopped him in his tracks.

 

Anyone who opened the door that said, in freshly painted letters, “Theo P. Hart, Private Investigator” and took one look at him might wonder, first, why a man his size would have signed a lease for an office this small, and second, where they should sit. If they had a third wonder it might be why he was staring out the window. Struck by his dimensions, they wouldn’t be surprised to learn it was because he liked to eat and the smell of cooking usually brought him to a sudden halt, whatever he happened to be doing at the time. He got himself unstuck by focusing on some challenging intellectual problem or conundrum. In this case, he’d found one outside his window, across Main Street.

 

A red-haired woman in a track suit was wheeling an old-fashioned perambulator up to the picture window of The Anchorage restaurant. She stopped and peered through the glass. Hart noticed the buggy was riding low—the suspension springs showed gaps between the coils. That was some big baby!

 

Just then the woman turned around and started jogging back the way she came, leaving the perambulator in place.

 

Hart threw his box to the floor and reached for his phone. He dialed 911 and looked back up just in time to see the door of the restaurant opening.

 

“I want to report . . .” he began, then stopped when he saw a man in a chef’s apron come out, walk to the perambulator, reach in, and pull out several large packages wrapped in brown paper. One had the shape of a giant ham.

 

“What is your emergency?” asked the voice.

 

Another man came out, also in an apron, to take charge of the perambulator.

 

“Never mind,” said Hart, and hung up. He’d no sooner pocketed the phone and reached down to retrieve the box than he heard the lulling sound of his ring tone, Die Moldau.

 

His home screen said it was Sam Tull. Sam was chief attorney and co-founder of NOSHLA, North Shore Legal Aid, a non-profit helping low-income people in the area defend themselves from criminal or civil charges.

 

“How’s it hangin’ bruh?” asked Sam.

 

Hart and Sam, along with Sam’s wife, Monica Spinozo, the main force behind the founding of NOSHLA, had met in high school and now worked together occasionally, Hart doing investigative work for their organization. This was the first time Sam had called him since Hart moved to Gloucester a week ago.

 

Not for the first time, Hart wished Sam didn’t feel the need to pepper his speech with Black English, as though his Harvard education were an embarrassment. Hart knew Sam had been raised in the ‘hood. No point reminding him.

 

“The blue one or the brown one?” asked Hart. He had one suit of each color: large and larger. The blue one was for when he was on a case, when he forgot to eat. The brown one was for when he was between cases, when he ate everything in sight. The blue one usually "hung" just right, the brown one loose. Today he was wearing the brown one.

 

There was a pause of incomprehension—or did Sam think Hart was teasing him?—before Sam plunged ahead.

 

The case wasn’t a pro-bono for someone in need, but a civil lawsuit with a large cash payout that NOSHLA was taking on to cover operating costs.

 

The client was a local building supply dealer named Maurice Calder. “Mo” for short.

 

“A brutha,” said Sam. “Owns ‘Building Blocks.’”

 

Hart was silent.

 

Sam gave him a prompt. “The hardware and building supplies chain?”

 

“You know I’m not DIY,” said Hart. “I hire people for that stuff.” He was lying. He never bothered to improve his home. He didn’t own one.

 

Calder had been named in a wrongful death suit brought by the family of Gloria Vin. The “Little Devil” propane heater found at the scene of her death had been bought at Building Blocks.

 

Hart gave a low whistle, or tried to. The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. “Carbon monoxide poisoning,” he said. “Accidental."

 

"CO, yes,” said Sam. “But not ‘accidental.’ ‘Causes unknown.’ The unit is apparently in working order, but I expect the plaintiffs will find something wrong with it.”

 

“So the criminal case is still open. No money in that direction.”

 

“Yeah,” said Sam. “They’re going after the manufacturer, of course, and the corporation that owns the manufacturer, the deep pockets for the big bucks. And the delivery services. Hoping for a settlement.”

 

“And Mo Calder is collateral damage, but he needs counsel.”

 

“Not quite. At first he was just a ‘t’ that needed crossing, but discovery has found some irregularities at his warehouse in Burlington."

 

"Irregularities?"

 

"The manufacturer, Delos, is one of those green companies, uses excelsior as packing material—you know, those long, thin wood shavings? More environmentally responsible. Anyway, the plaintiff’s attorneys learned from a warehouse employee that a rat got into one of the boxes, gnawed through the excelsior, then the plastic wrap around the heater. Built a nest, got wood shavings all over."

 

"So?"

 

"So forensics found evidence that something combustible was obstructing the nozzle of the gas jet. Plaintiffs are arguing it could have been excelsior, so they’re going after Delos for using it, and Mo’s tarred with the same brush for his 'neglected storage facilities.'"

 

“Gives them two targets: manufacturer and retailer. No, three, add delivery.”

 

“Four—don’t forget who owns Delos.”

 

Stamford Diversified. Their army of corporate lawyers were no doubt mobilizing on all fronts, taking aim at every fall guy within reach of their heavy artillery in order to deflect fire away from themselves for the death of Gloria Vin. It would be gratifying, thought Hart, to stick it to one of Donald Trump’s biggest campaign contributors. And the negative publicity? He could see the tabloid headlines: “Gloria Vin’s Executioners!”

 

Hart’s money was on Sam, who’d cut his corporate teeth with the best in Boston, Parker and Houk, before Monica talked him into fighting the good fight instead of the one with the most billable hours. It wasn’t as though he had to fell Goliath with a slingshot. All he had to do was protect Mo Calder’s interests.

 

#

 

“What was that all about?” asked Hart.

 

Sam didn’t respond for a moment.  Then, “You mean, ridin’ my ass?”

 

They were walking away from Mo Calder’s warehouse, Sam to his car, Hart to a waiting Uber SUV.  Sam’s Prius was too small for Hart to fit in. Most cars were, and he couldn’t afford a big one. So he usually took public transportation or hired someone to drive him wherever his job required. This time it had been to Burlington, to examine Mo’s “neglected storage facilities.”

 

“Well,” said Hart, “I wouldn’t go that far. He did seem a little . . .”

 

“A little!” Sam gave his door handle a violent pull. “‘What’s a nice boy like you doin’, talkin’ like a homie?’” His voice dripped sarcasm. “You see the tats under his shirt collar? He thinks they give him the right to call me out for . . .”  Sam left the sentence unfinished.

 

“For pretending to be something you’re not?” asked Hart. “What is it, ‘down’? Or ‘game? Is that the word?”

 

Sam shook his head, not in denial but exasperation.

 

Sam’s college bound older brother had died in the crossfire from two warring drug gangs when Sam was just a boy. He’d learned the patois to survive, and standard White English to thrive. The first was his native language, the second his passport to success. As a lawyer, Harvard educated no less, and by any measure a successful Black man in a White man’s world, he still felt like a pretender there, a stranger in a strange land, and never more in need of affirming his bona fides than when he encountered another successful Black sojourner like Mo Calder, owner and sole proprietor of the Building Blocks chain of retail stores.

 

Hart knew all this. “Maybe Mr. Calder just wants a lawyer who looks and sounds White,” he said. “Denzel Washington, not Johnnie Cochran."

 

“Who wouldn’t?” said Sam. Then he got in his car and drove away.

 

On his ride back to the office, Hart reviewed what they’d found out.

 

First of all, the warehouse was spotless. Not a sign of damage from vermin or deterioration.

 

Mo had taken a new Delos “Little Devil” off a shipping pallet and opened the box to show them how the unit was packaged. The heater and its paperwork were sealed by the manufacturer in a polyethylene bag and the bag then placed in the retail box and padded with excelsior. He took the heater out of the bag and showed them where the propane cannister would be screwed on, where the ignition button was, and how the gas nozzle had been obstructed, according to the forensics report.

 

“Look at this stuff,” he said, plucking up a tangle of long, thin shavings. “How much of that could have gotten in, and how long would it have lasted before burning up?”

 

Hart had to admit, not much, and not long.

 

Mo also showed them one of the gas canisters. “It’s the new model, burns twice as long. Three hours instead of one or two.”

 

Hart asked if what the plaintiff’s witness said about the rat’s nest was true. “Yes, it did happen,” Mo admitted, “about two months ago. And as soon as it did, I called in the exterminators and had the whole place inspected. They found nothing, not a single rodent or cockroach, but I had the place fumigated anyway, just to be sure. Haven't had a single incident since then.”

 

The serial number on Stevie’s heater showed it had passed through the Burlington warehouse, but after the fumigation.

 

“Is the guy who discovered the damage still working for you?” asked Sam.

 

“He quit the week before I was served.”

 

Probably working for Stamford now, thought Hart, at higher pay. One way to get around the prohibition on paying a witness for factual testimony.

 

#

 

At his office, Hart again read through Sam’s summary of the facts learned in discovery.

 

He thought Sam already had a good case. Would any jury buy the excelsior contamination theory? It seemed too far-fetched, especially since Mancuso bought his “Little Devil” after the warehouse was fumigated. Discovery revealed, however, that a few other incidents of contamination had been reported in units sold by other retailers, leading to lawsuits like this one. Apparently, opening the polyethylene bag while the unit was still in the box, surrounded by excelsior, could have introduced a shaving or two. No serious injuries or deaths, thanks to the ODS. Just “distress.” Mancuso had testified under oath that he couldn’t remember if the polyethylene bag his unit was packed in contained any shavings when he opened it, but he did notice some after he unpacked it. So Mo Calder wasn’t out of the woods yet.

 

But Hart’s job wasn’t to second-guess Sam. It was to find as many plausible alternative explanations for the death of Gloria Vin as possible, preferably explanations more likely than a technical malfunction.

 

That left only human error or deliberate intent to harm. Which explained why Steven Mancuso was “a person of interest,” not just to the police detectives handling the criminal case but to the defendants in the lawsuit against Mo Calder and to the public at large. He’d provided the “Little Devil” heater, a potential source of both CO and propane gas, and was the last person to see the victims alive. His movements that night gave him the opportunity, although exactly how remained to be worked out. And money was a possible motive, since he stood to benefit, eventually, from his step-sister’s death.

 

Who else, though?

 

It would have to be someone who knew about the party in the shed and had access to a source of carbon monoxide and propane. Someone with a motive.

 

He ran down the names of the people at the farewell dinner where the party was proposed: Marianne Pomeroy, Pat Lafferty, the Walkers—all victims. Stevie, Joe Mancuso, Alice Pomeroy, and Mike Walker’s parents. Hart immediately eliminated Mrs. Pomeroy and her two friends. He couldn’t imagine any of them conniving to murder their own flesh and blood, even if, like Alice, they stood to inherit a sizeable fortune, and Mr. and Mrs. Walker didn’t.

 

Aside from Stevie, that left Joe Mancuso. Joe knew about the faulty propane heater and had a motive: he and his wife owned all their assets in common. But Alice told the police he’d been with her the whole night. She could be mistaken. He might have slipped out while she was asleep. At the very least, he could have been an accessory to some kind of swap-out of the bad heater for the good heater, with Stevie as the principal. How that could work without Joe killing his accomplice remained to be seen, and it would be hard to prove in any case without the broken unit. Stevie said he threw it away and the police had no grounds for a search warrant to look for it at his place of residence. By now it could be lying in any one of 208 active landfills used by Republic Services, the city’s garbage contractor. The largest of these, in Nevada, covered 2200 acres.

 

Alan Ross, the security guard who discovered the bodies, was at the scene when it happened and had access to the big propane heaters that had been crated for shipping the next day. Under questioning, he admitted he had a long-standing grudge against Gloria Vin, who’d almost gotten him fired several years ago for allegedly stealing a valuable bracelet from her trailer while they were shooting on location in the Florida Keys. It had turned up eventually, entirely by accident and just in time to save Ross’s job. He didn’t hesitate to affirm he still resented the accusation.

 

The outdoor heaters had been standing right next to the shed, but how Ross could have rigged one to feed poisonous gases into the victims’ lungs was hard to picture.

 

So, line them up:

 

Stevie? Opportunity, yes. Means, maybe. Both would need to be worked out. But what was the motive? There was no money immediately forthcoming unless he killed his father, too. Maybe he was playing the long game.

 

Joe? Motive immediate and huge. Means, iffy and indirect. Opportunity unclear.

 

Ross: Opportunity, yes. Motive, yes. Means, highly improbable.

 

Of the three, Stevie was clearly the best bet to deflect the plaintiffs’ attention away from Mo Calder.

 

Hart went back to the discovery document and skimmed past Sam’s summary until he got to Steven Mancuso’s deposition.

 

There was nothing new in the written account of his movements on the night of the incident. Asked what he used the propane heater for, he said to heat his workshop. “The garage is unheated,” he added. Why not relocate it in the house? he was asked. Too noisy, he replied. Asked what he did in his workshop, Stevie replied, “I invent things.” When asked what kind of things, he turned to his attorney and asked, “Do I have to answer that? I’m working on a patent.”  The question was withdrawn.

 

The question came up again in Joseph Mancuso’s deposition. Joe said nothing about inventions or patent applications. “He fixes stuff. Lawn mowers, snow blowers. Makes some money at it.”

 

“Not enough to live on his own?”

 

“He’s welcome to live with us, for nothing, but he does have some self-respect. He pays us rent, and I let him use the shop.”

 

“Does he fix propane heaters?”

 

“I don’t know. He couldn’t fix the one that broke.”

 

When Hart was finished, he typed “How does an indoor propane space heater work?” into his ChatGPT and started down the rabbit hole.

 

#

 

When she wasn’t working at her regular job as a forensics technician for the state crime lab, Terry Blalock testified as an expert witness in civil cases like the Gloria Vin lawsuit. Thus, she wasn’t surprised to get a call from one of the attorneys working the case, a guy named Sam Tull. Tull asked her to talk with the detective they’d hired to investigate the circumstances of Gloria Vin’s death. Blalock said she’d be happy to, as long as there was no conflict of interest. Sam gave her the detective’s address, in downtown Gloucester.

 

The address was an Italian bakery on Main Street. The woman behind the counter said to take the stairs to the second floor.

 

At the top of the stairs Blalock faced a dimly lit, windowless corridor leading to the back of the building. The first door on the right had the name “Theo P. Hart” written in fresh black letters and the word “Enter.”  On opening it, Blalock found herself in a cramped room with an overhead fan and two windows opening on Main Street. Between the windows was a metal storage shelf with books whose spines she couldn’t read, and a sickly geranium. A metal filing cabinet stood in the corner.

 

Across from her, behind a linoleum topped office desk, sat an enormous man in a baggy brown suit. He must have weighed three hundred pounds and, from the amount of him showing above the desk, Blalock judged he stood at least six and a half feet tall. The first thought that went through her head was, “Why would a man that size sign a lease on an office this small?”

 

On the desk sat a 10,000 BTU “Little Devil.”

 

The detective rose to greet her and began to sidle out from behind his desk. “You should sit here,” he said. “I’ll stand and watch.” He turned on his desk lamp.

 

Nearing the desk, Blalock could see that the detective’s face and hands were mottled in shades of brown and white, like a map of the world, which made it hard to determine his race or nationality. She tried to remember the word for this skin condition. It started with a “v.”

 

Hart began by asking Blalock to explain exactly how the “Little Devil” worked, step by step. The detective had set out a small collection of tools—a Philips and flat head screwdriver, pliers (regular and needle-nosed), and vice grips—to help things along.

 

This wasn’t what the forensics technician had expected.

 

“You’ve read my report,” she said.

 

“But I need you to show me,” said Hart.

 

Ten minutes into the tutorial, Hart interrupted Blalock to ask, “Where’s the solenoid?”

​

​

Part 3

​​

“That was a long time ago,” said Barbara Gillis, “and I wasn’t really ‘in’ with Marianne and her friends, y’know?"

 

Fallon didn’t know. What he remembered was talking to Gillis after she’d witnessed a liquor store holdup ten years ago. That was a month or two before Marianne Pomeroy left Gloucester for parts unknown, later to resurface in LA and on TV and movie screens world-wide as Gloria Vin. Pomeroy was noticeably pregnant when she left. What happened to the child she was carrying remained a mystery. Now Fallon was questioning anyone he knew who might have information about Marianne Pomeroy’s high school friends, and how Stevie Mancuso fit in, or didn’t.

 

He asked Gillis to meet him at The Squawking Gull, where the chatter from nearby tables could mask their conversation without making it hard to hear.

 

“But when we talked after the robbery,” said Fallon, “I had the impression that you knew Bo Lapinen pretty well, and Lapinen was Marianne Pomeroy’s steady boyfriend, wasn’t he?”

 

Lapinen and his pal, Siddie Peterson, were trying to get someone to buy them beer outside the liquor store on Railroad Avenue and picked the wrong person. The man was on his way inside to empty the cash register. One thing led to another and Lapinen ended up behind the wheel of the perp’s Voyager, burning rubber. He struck and killed a seven-year-old girl and didn’t stop. Barbara Gillis, standing across the street when it happened, fingered Lapinen as the driver. Didn’t want to, but it wasn’t hard to make her talk. Next morning Lapinen’s body was discovered floating face down in Klondike Reservoir. Siddie was nearby. His account of events made no sense, Fallon recalled, and he ended up going to juvie.

 

Barbara shrugged. “I was Bo’s steady until Marianne got her claws in him. ‘Skanky Manky,’ we used to call her. No big secret that she was putting out. Everyone knew she was pregnant—I mean, even before she started to show. Too sick to come to school. Weird cravings when she did.”

 

“And Lapinen was the father?”

 

“He thought he was,” said Barbara. “At least that’s what he told me she told him.”

 

“You were still seeing each other?”

 

“We were still friends. Good friends, but just friends. That’s the kind of guy he was.”

 

Fallon knew what kind of guy Bo Lapinen was, from all the times he’d arrested him.

 

“Know what I told him?” Barabara asked. “‘How do you know?’ That got his attention. He was always a little dim that way. Kind of naive. ‘You don’t have to stay here,’ I tell him, ‘play house with Marianne Pomerory and raise a kid you can’t even be sure is yours. You’re sixteen, you can quit school, hit the road, make your fortune.’ Know what he said?”

 

She seemed eager to tell him. Fallon waited.

 

“He asked if I’d come with him.”

 

“But you didn’t.”

 

The light went out of her eyes. Fallon went back to what interested him most.

 

“If you weren’t in Marianne Pomeroy’s inner circle, can you name anyone who was?”

 

“Sure, the three friends she ate with the night before she was killed. Mike Walker, Pat Lafferty, and Chris Sobyczinski.”

 

Fallon was taking notes. He looked up and asked, “And no one else you can think of?”

 

Barbara shook her head and clasped her hands together. “They were that tight.”

 

“And how about her step-brother, Steven Mancuso?”

 

“I saw him hanging out with them a few times. But honestly? I think they tolerated him. I never saw them, you know, talking to him—or at least, starting a conversation with him. He’d stand there and they’d mostly ignore him. In fact,” she leaned forward, looking left and right at the other tables, “when Marianne and me were still on speaking terms—before she got to Bo—she’d make fun of Stevie if his name came up. Sometimes she’d mention him just to make fun of him, y’know? And she could be cruel. One time,” Barbara leaned in closer, “she made fun of his . . . .” She looked down at her lap with an expression of surprise, then back at Fallon. “Y’know?”

 

Fallon could guess, but she didn’t wait for an answer. “Said it looked like a crooked zucchini.” She was trying not to snicker.

 

“But how . . .?”

 

“Said she saw him . . . .” She moved a partially closed fist slowly up and down.

 

“And that didn’t bother him? Her talking about it with her friends?”

 

“I don’t think he knew she was. No, he couldn’t have. It was when he wasn’t hanging around.” She paused. “Could he?”

 

If he did, thought Fallon, why’d he keep hanging around? And why did Pomeroy let him?

 

When it was time to leave, Fallon thanked her for her time. Then something occurred to him, a point that needed clarifying.

 

“How did you know that Mike and Pat and Chris were having dinner with Gloria—I mean, Marianne—the night before she was killed? Did you read it somewhere?”

 

“Didn’t have to. I work at the Beauport restaurant. I’m a waitress there.”

 

For a second or two, Fallon couldn’t speak. “Did you wait their table?”

 

“No, but I could see them, from the other side of the room. Same old faces. But so’s mine. Old, I mean.” She sighed. “Should’ve taken Bo’s offer.”

 

“And end up dead like him?”

 

“Maybe his story would’ve had a different ending.”

​

Maybe Gloria Vin’s, too, thought Fallon. “You didn’t hear them, what they were talking about?”

 

“Like to help you,” said Barbara, “but nuh-uh.”

 

 #

​

Fallon finished smoking his cigarette before entering the station. He found Ulrich waiting for him. Must have survived a hectic morning. The man’s suitcoat was unbuttoned.

 

“Blalock has something for you. Something about magnets.”

 

Fallon called but Blalock didn’t pick up, so he left a message. Then he told his partner what he’d learned from Barbara Gillis.

 

Ulrich raised his eyebrows. “So, someone else who knew about the shed party.”

 

“Didn’t hear anything. Wasn’t her table.”

 

“She says. From what you’re telling me, she could have been holding a grudge against Gloria Vin for the last ten years. Stole the man she loved and he ends up a floater in Klondike before she can change her mind and run off with him.”

 

“Could be. But there was something else going on back then, something really ugly.”

 

“You mean the cock-teasing?”

 

“Is that what I mean?” asked Fallon.

 

Ulrich was too familiar with Fallon’s naivete in matters sexual to be surprised by his question.

 

“That’s what I’d call it,” Ulrich replied. “Picture it. He’s just at the age when his testosterone’s giving him a permanent hard on and he’s sharing the house—and I’m talking about a three-bedroom cape in Lanesville, not that three-story aquarium he’s living in now—he’s sharing the house with a future movie star just a few years older than him. She saw him jacking off?  How did that happen? He forgot to lock the bathroom door? She forgot where her bedroom was?”

 

Before Fallon could reply Ulrich added, “When I was his age, a deep sea submersible wasn’t safe enough.”

 

Fallon, uncomfortable, tried to change the subject. “And that busted. . .”

 

“We need to find out how they’ve been getting along on those visits home,” Ulrich continued. “Any signs of resentment, anger, on Stevie’s part? Maybe talk to Alice Pomeroy again or ask Joe Mancuso.”

 

Fallon nodded. “Good idea.” Then he thought a moment. “Or other friends Gloria may have reconnected with. Mancuso might be reluctant to drag his son further into the spotlight. Speaking of which, that faulty propane heater—I wonder if Stevie really threw it away?”

 

“What difference does it make? It’s long gone—trash dump or backyard grave or disassembled and scattered in the North Gloucester Woods. We got an ocean out there, too.”

 

“It might make a big difference if we’re trying to reconstruct the scene with Stevie in the leading role.”

 

“So you still think he’s good?”

 

“Better and better.”

 

“Me, too.”

 

Just then the phone rang. It was Blalock.

 

“I had an interesting tutorial this morning with a detective working for one of the defendants in the wrongful death suit,” she said.

 

Fallon put the phone on speaker so Ulrich could hear and replied, “Hope they paid you well.”

 

“I should have paid him,” said Blalock. She explained why.

 

The detective wanted a guided tour of the Little Devil space heater. When they got to how the propane got from the tank to the burner, she explained it was by means of a solenoid, a valve that opened or closed depending on the amount of electricity flowing through a wire coiled around it. The electric current created a magnetic field around the valve that pulled open a sliding plunger inside, letting gas flow through.

 

“It’s called induction,” said Blalock. “Stop the electrical current, the induced magnetic field vanishes, and a spring closes the plunger automatically, back to its resting state, shutting off the flow of gas.”

 

“What produces the electrical current?” asked Fallon.

 

“Something called a thermocouple. It generates electricity when the heater’s turned on and keeps it on until the heater’s turned off. Or if the unit tips over or the oxygen depletion sensor kicks in. A safety feature.”

 

“So what’s this got to do with the price of eggs?” asked Fallon.

 

“Let me guess,” said Ulrich. “If the current to the solenoid could be kept going after the oxygen depletion sensor cut it off, the valve would stay open even if the heater wasn’t burning any gas to heat the thermocouple. That would explain why the shed smelled of propane when Ross opened the door. The heater kept emitting it after the flame went out.”

 

“Yes!” said Blalock. She sounded like Ulrich had just scored the winning goal in hockey overtime. Fallon wondered if she had a thing for Victor.

 

“But how . . . ?” Fallon began to ask just as Ulrich said, “But why . . .”

 

They both stopped, and Fallon resumed. “But how would you provide the backup current? Are there places to attach a dry cell or something?”

 

“Be patient,” said Blalock. “One thing at a time.” She was enjoying this. “So I’m explaining what the solenoid does and the detective asks me to show him where it is. I point to the spot and he asks your question: could someone rig up some kind of backup circuit, attach wires to the solenoid valve to keep it open even if the power is cut off? I say no, look, it’s built into the burner assembly, under an aluminum housing. Aluminum? he asks. That’s not magnetic. Right, I say, but the plunger inside it is, because it’s ferrous, got iron in it. That’s why it’s pulled open by the induced magnetic field. And that’s when he says, ‘Magnets.’”

 

Blalock paused for dramatic effect. When no response was forthcoming, she plowed ahead.

 

“Don’t you get it?” she asked. “Don’t worry, I didn’t either. At first. He asked me if you could keep the valve open with a magnet attached to the aluminum housing. I said I didn’t know, but I’d find out. So I took the heater—his heater, we were in his office—back to the Danvers Lab where we have hand magnets for collecting bullet fragments and other metal debris at crime scenes. Just after lunch, I ran a couple of experiments. Even using a magnet with a low pull force, when I found just the right place, Voila! I could hear the plunger click open.”

 

“But aluminum isn’t magnetic, said Fallon. “How would the magnet stick to it?”

 

“Doesn’t need to. Duct tape can keep it in place. That’s how I attached the magnet before running the machine in the reaction chamber. I stopped the experiment when the temperature in the chamber went over a hundred degrees.”

 

“Why would it do that?” asked Fallon.

 

“The heater’s thermostat couldn’t adjust the gas flow through the solenoid valve because it was stuck open. Same reason the on-off switch won’t work or the ODS. And before you ask: you can still adjust the flow by turning the knob on the propane tank. Turn it as low as you want. All the way off if you need to.”

 

“But why would the flame go out with propane feeding it?” asked Ulrich. “Wouldn’t it just keep burning up all the propane in the tank until it ran out?”

 

“It might. Or it might go out as the available oxygen in the shed got used up, and the ODS couldn't turn off the gas flow because of the magnet.” Blalock paused. “Or someone could have turned it off and back on manually, without pushing the ignition button. All gas, no flame.

 

“But why turn it off and back on?” asked Ulrich.

 

“Dunno,” said Blalock.

 

“But there wasn’t any magnet attached to . . .” Fallon was getting frustrated.

 

“Removed after the fact but before Ross opened the door. A quick in and out, holding your breath, is all it would take.”

 

There was silence on both ends of the conversation for a few seconds.

 

Then Fallon said, “That explains the propane smell in the shed. But Gloria Vin and her friends didn’t die of propane asphyxiation. They died of CO poisoning.”

 

“And the soot patterns on the glass mesh suggested some kind of obstruction in the nozzle tip could have been the cause,” said Blalock.

 

“But it burned up, you said.”

 

“Or was placed there and later removed,” interjected Fallon.

 

“Exactly what the detective said. Before I left for the lab, he gave me a zip-lock of wood shavings used as packing material for the Little Devil. He asked me to test the heater with different amounts stuffed into the nozzle, beginning with just one. See if they produced any carbon monoxide.”

 

“And?”

 

“Yes, they did, but only trace amounts before the shavings burned up. Not enough to do any serious harm or trip the ODS. Oh, and the soot patterns they produced matched the photos of the original. And when I got to three strands, the unit wouldn’t light at all.”

 

“I’m trying to picture this,” said Ulrich. “Someone had to attach the magnet and place an obstruction in the gas nozzle that would produce sizeable amounts of carbon monoxide and leave this particular soot pattern on the glass mesh—same one as the excelsior shavings. Then turn the heater off . . .”

 

“Or wait until it went out for lack of oxygen,” said Blalock.

 

Ulrich nodded. “. . . then remove the obstruction and turn the gas back on with the magnet still in place but no flame, so the shed would fill with gas. And then come back and remove the magnet?”

 

“Yeah,” said Blalock. “Sounds crazy, doesn’t it?”

​

​

 

​