Last Dance, Last Chance

(normal) level of arsenic was 4 micrograms per liter. In June, when Anthony began to sleep over often in the family home and eat with them, it increased to 6.4 micrograms per liter. However, in July, when Anthony moved in completely and took over as the cook, it jumped to 18.9 micrograms per liter.
    From all they had learned in their intense research into arsenic, they could deduce that Debbie had initially been suffering from chronic arsenic poisoning, ingesting small doses at a time since sometime in June. Certainly she was nauseated all the time, but she hadn’t lost feeling in her extremities or developed the staggering walk until early August.
    Just before August 10—when she was hospitalized in critical condition—damage to her hair showed arsenic present at 81.5 micrograms per liter! As Sedita pointed out, this was sixteen times her original baseline figure. Human blood didn’t leap from 4 to 81.5 micrograms per liter of arsenic without a good reason. There was only one conclusion: Debbie had been poisoned both chronically and acutely.
    There was something diabolical and coldly plotted in that picture. They looked at their records of Tony Pignataro’s probation to see what was happening with him in July. They knew that he’d asked permission to go to Florida to work with his brothers in the fast food business in the early summer—and been denied. They also knew that Debbie had gone into the hospital on July 21, stayed for four days, shown significant improvement, and gone home on July 25—home to her husband’s cooking.
    When acutely ill patients go to the hospital, improve fairly rapidly, and then have a relapse when they return home, an analytical mind sees the correlation. Something in Debbie’s home was making her sick.
    While talking to the various physicians who had treated Debbie, Frank Sedita learned that Anthony had not simply ignored his wife’s condition. Although he certainly had no bedside manner with her and he hadn’t talked with her about the funny taste in her mouth and her constant vomiting, he had sought a surgical remedy for her condition.
    On August 2, Anthony had called Dr. Michael Rade and said that his analysis of Debbie’s biliary scan (a CAT scan to find the source of her digestive problems) proved to him that Debbie had a nonfunctioning gallbladder. Anthony then practically demanded that Dr. Rade operate on her immediately. Rade didn’t agree with Anthony’s diagnosis and refused to operate.
    “If she’d had that surgery in the weakened condition she was in,” Sedita suggested, “she probably wouldn’t have survived. And even on autopsy, it’s not likely that they would have found any arsenic in her system—it’s not a usual test they do. But that plan didn’t work—if it was a plan on Pignataro’s part.”
    Sedita, Finnerty, and Craven had known for a long time that they were dealing with a very calculating mind. All of their scenarios came full circle—back to Anthony Pignataro. Because Debbie’s poisoning was both chronic and acute, Sedita would have ammunition to rebut what he fully expected Anthony’s defense would be—that Debbie herself had taken arsenic in a long, slow suicide plan.
    It didn’t make sense that she would have taken lots of little doses, then taken some big gulps, and then gone back to the small amounts. They had all learned how painful arsenic poisoning was. Who would ever choose to die that way—with agonizing symptoms—over a period of months?
    Anthony’s other prime suspect was Dan Smith, but any defense attorney would have a very difficult time if he tried to accuse the gentle young widower of poisoning Pignataro’s wife so he could get revenge on the man who had killed his wife. Even if Dan was that kind of man, he had been living many states away from western New York.
    No, they were dealing with someone who was perfectly willing to plan ahead and wait and watch while his (or her) target withered away and died. Who—other than her husband—might have a reason to want Debbie Pignataro dead? She was a sweet woman obviously devoted to her home and her family, and she didn’t have any enemies—not unless one of Anthony’s girlfriends wanted him enough to kill his wife to get him.
    Frank Sedita went over the motivation that Anthony might have. Again, any wish to have Debbie dead all seemed to come back to him. Debbie had a $100,000 life insurance policy, and her husband was the beneficiary. It wasn’t a huge amount of