Last Dance, Last Chance

about every facet of her new job as Assistant Coordinator of Victim/Witness Assistance. Even though she was a woman and from the D.A.’s office—not the most welcome visitor in mostly male homicide units—Sharon knew the chief and a lieutenant in homicide in the Buffalo Police Department. She introduced herself there and then visited smaller departments around Erie County.
    “Then I went to the morgue. I told them I didn’t need to see an autopsy, but they showed me around the whole place. And then they walked me out the back, and into an autopsy. It was on a baby. I didn’t lose it. That was ‘the test,’ and I managed to pass.”
    At first, Sharon went only to the hospitals and the morgue to talk with relatives of homicide victims. Later, she went into the field with homicide detectives, starting with bombings in three Erie County cities. “I was watching TV and I saw a lieutenant I knew in Cheektowaga, and he was talking about the five victims. Then my phone rang. They were asking me, ‘How long will it take you to get out here?’ I wanted to say, ‘I don’t do bombings,’ but I didn’t. I was there in ten minutes. I had to walk a path as they were escorting me to the basement of the police department where all the agencies involved were meeting. I passed by agents who had plastic evidence bags with charred hands and fingers in them. That was literally my initiation by fire.”
    Everyone was in shock—from the deliveryman who delivered the exploding packages to the relatives to the detectives to the neighbors. Her new job had begun in earnest.
    Once again, Sharon had no staff, although she worked in the same offices with Chuck Craven and Pat Finnerty. At any given time, she was responsible for seventy-five homicide cases—not in solving them, but in serving as a hand-holder, comforter, court companion, adviser, explainer, shoulder to cry on, friend to those caught in the tragic circumstances of violent crime. Some people called her once a year, and some called once a week. Homicide cases never close until they are solved, but there are often long periods when detectives have no new information. It’s difficult for family members to understand that, and Sharon tried to explain to them that the victim they loved has not been forgotten.
    In 2001, the homicide rate in Buffalo went up 69 percent, and some months Sharon spent more time in the homicide unit than she did in her own home. Still, no case affected her as deeply as Debbie Pignataro’s.
     
    The Pignataro case was different from anything Sharon had handled before. She had a living victim—so far—but one who really didn’t want to know the truth.
    Sharon would never forget what Debbie looked like when she first saw her, even though weeks had passed since she was admitted to the hospital in critical condition.
    “She was totally paralyzed,” Sharon said. “At one point, I answered the phone for her because she couldn’t reach for it. I stuck it under her chin for her.
    “I was nervous,” she admitted. “I tried to explain to her why I was there, and that I could understand why it would be quite natural for her not to talk to someone from my office, but that my purpose was a little bit different. I wouldn’t be asking the same kind of questions that they did.”
    To Sharon’s relief, Debbie Pignataro was willing to talk to her. In fact, the two women quickly established a bond, cautious as it was. Listening to what Debbie had been through, and knowing what probably lay ahead for her, Sharon felt so sorry her. That touched Debbie, and for the first time, she allowed herself to talk about who might have given her poison. Carefully, she began to edge out of the safe place she had put herself in.
    It was going to take a lot of time.
    The two women were very different. Sharon had seen more of the ugly side of the world than most and had learned to deal with the cruelties of human against human. She had learned to look at a murdered body without flinching, and she was fiercely independent because she had to be. Debbie’s life had been as sheltered as it could be, considering that she was married to a serial adulterer. She had clung so tightly to her home, her marriage, and her belief that somehow she could make it right.
    Both women loved their children more than anything else in the world.
    When Sharon visited Debbie, she realized that “everything was always about Tony.” She had seen Debbie at her husband’s hearings after Sarah