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‘If someone is administered Haloperidol without their knowledge, what does that suggest to you?’ asked Dreyer.

‘That someone wanted Frank Avellino under their control. They could have persuaded him to sign a power of attorney, say.’

A chill flooded through me. Dreyer was going somewhere with this that I hadn’t foreseen. I turned to an exhibit page in the prosecution bundle and looked at the document again. Dreyer had been working his way up to this, and Tyler opened the door a little wider to let him in. Dreyer directed the jury and the witness to the same page.

‘Detective, what is this document at Exhibit 228?’

‘This is a power of attorney, executed on September fifteenth. It grants his appointed representatives power over all Mr. Avellino’s property and affairs.’

‘And who are the named representatives for Mr. Avellino?’

Tyler spoke slowly and carefully as he said, ‘They are Mr. Hal Cohen, and Miss Alexandra Avellino.’

Frank Avellino

Journal Entry, September 15, 2018

I don’t know what to believe anymore. Either I’m going crazy or someone is trying to kill me.

In a way, I kind of hope someone has taken out a contract on my life. That’s preferable to me losing my mind. I can deal with a contract. Jimmy can take care of it.

I spoke to Jimmy this morning and he said I was paranoid. No one would dare put out a hit on me. And no crew would think of robbing me, not when I’m one of Jimmy’s old friends. That shit just doesn’t happen.

An old man slipping into my goddamn dotage. I was convinced he was wrong. I’d hired a private investigator who was keeping an eye out for anyone following me. Hal thought it was a waste of time and money, but it made me feel better. The PI was a big guy named Bedford and he told me I wouldn’t even see him. True enough, since he started two weeks ago, I hadn’t seen him so far. That didn’t help. I felt that maybe he wasn’t watching me at all – maybe he was at home in bed watching TV, thinking I was just another paranoid schmuck. But I knew it, I’d seen the biker watching me.

Then when I left the restaurant, I stood on the sidewalk and noticed my shoe was untied. I knelt down, and goddamn it, I must’ve been down there ten minutes and I couldn’t remember how to tie my shoe. I just knelt there on one knee, the laces in my hands, staring at my brown shoe until tears fell on the leather toecap.

I tucked the laces into the sides of the shoe and took a cab home.

10 p.m.

I wasn’t hungry tonight. Just made myself a sandwich.

The soup Sofia made yesterday was still in the fridge. The stew Alexandra sent over from the deli sat beside it. I made myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with a glass of milk and watched the news. Feeling better tonight. My head is clearer, for the first time in days.

Call from the PI service. I told them Bedford hadn’t been in touch with me by phone or text. No, I didn’t know where he was – he’d told me that I wouldn’t see him, for Christ sake. They are assigning a new operative in the morning.

Bedford is missing. There’s a police appeal for information on the news.

I’m in bed now. Can’t sleep. Headache that won’t quit.

And a bad feeling in my stomach. I called Alexandra, left a message. Called Sofia and she picked up, said she would come and see me tomorrow.

THIRTY-THREE

SHE

For all her preparations, both physical and psychological, nothing had prepared her for the feeling she experienced seeing Father’s bloodied corpse blown up on a large screen. She had kept no trophies from her kills. Nothing as a reminder of those moments of exquisite pleasure. Seeing the photographs gave her a warm feeling, low in her stomach, and sent her heart fluttering.

She could almost taste his flesh.

This was overwhelming. She tried to think of the song in her head; the rhythms of that song would dissipate the rush that was coursing through her system. She noticed then that her right hand was touching the table, her index finger working into the notches on the desk made by a thousand heavy, metal-edged folders. Abruptly, she took her hand away, placed it in her lap.

The day was going fine. As she had expected. Detective Tyler had exaggerated the effects of Haloperidol in his testimony. It was not a drug that caused people to become completely compliant; in some ways it had made Father more difficult – but he had signed that power of attorney. A few months

of poison in his food and poison in his ears would have turned him against her

sister. Then, she would have persuaded him to change his will, then let him slide away in a gentle overdose. The drug itself doesn’t kill, but enough will shut down the respiratory system, or cause heart failure in the process. No medical examiner or pathologist would look beyond respiratory failure or a cardiac arrest in a man of her father’s age.