Likely To Die

by Linda Fairstein

  Could he be malingering and doing it as well as this? Or was I simply wasting my time talking to someone who would never make any sense, never be found competent in a court of law?

  “Why don’t you tell me what Charlie told you to do to the doctor? Why don’t we talk about that for a while? Charlie told me to ask you about that.”

  Pops smiled at me again when I spoke Charlie’s name. “Yeah, but I can’t hear him now. All’s I can tell you is how I’m sorry that the doctor isn’t feeling good today.”

  The three of us chased each other’s words around in circles for the next twenty minutes. We didn’t move Bailey from his senseless ramblings, and when he tired of us altogether he crossed his arms on the table and rested his head against them.

  Wallace stood and motioned me out of the room. Chapman and Peterson had been watching through the window and started back to the lieutenant’s office when they saw us leave. I was frustrated and annoyed and certain that nothing Bailey said would be of any use to us in building the case against him.

  “Going nowhere.”

  “This is not a scene to memorialize on tape, that’s for sure.”

  Mercer took off his jacket, rolled up his shirt sleeves, and announced that he’d go in and keep the conversation up until we made a decision about booking Pops and making the arrest official.

  “Let me make some calls to my office. See how Battaglia wants me to go on from here. Make sure Public Relations is ready for the blitz from the press. Give me half an hour on the phone.”

  The lieutenant got up from behind the desk. “Use this one. I’ll be out in the squad room.

  “You ready for a little more pressure, Alexandra?”

  “Shoot.”

  “Capital Defenders Office called. Steve Rubinstein. Heard on the news you have someone in custody and they want to represent him. Want to send someone up here to talk to him, make you cut off the questioning.”

  “Tell ‘em to call his brother, Charlie,” Chapman said.

  New York had reinstated the death penalty in 1996 and the intentional killing of a woman during an attempted rape would make the murderer a prime candidate for a lethal cocktail after his conviction. Battaglia had opposed the legislation and I guessed he would be relieved that Pops’s psychiatric condition might take him out of the running for such a result.

  I took the slip of paper with Rubinstein’s number on it from Peterson and added his name to the list of calls I needed to make.

  I sat at the desk and dialed Battaglia’s number. Rose answered, told me he was in the car on his way to deliver a speech to the Citizens Crime Commission. She patched me through.

  “Good work, Alex. Congratulate Peterson for me.”

  “I need your advice on this one, Paul. At the moment, everything we’ve got is circumstantial. Forget statements. Nothing he says makes very much sense.

  “It could be another day or so until we get the DNA match on the blood. I’m hoping that by then we’ll turn up some hard evidence, like something he took from Dogen’s office, or maybe even the weapon. I mean, they’re going through all the garbage receptacles and all the alleyways around the hospital. I’m reluctant to stand before a judge and ask to hold the guy with what we’ve got on the case at this point,” I said, outlining Bailey’s history to the District Attorney as I finished up my presentation.

  “He’s never been discharged from Rockland State?” Battaglia asked, referring to one of the psychiatric facilities of the New York prison system.

  “No. He absconded.”

  “Let’s do an end run, Alex. Skip the arrest and arraignment until you have all the evidence you want. Get him over to the psych ward at Bellevue and tell Rockland you want them to do a hearing on the escape charge. That way, he’s held in the prison section of the hospital, which buys you a little time to put the case together while he’s under police guard. We won’t lock him up for Dogen’s killing ‘til you tell me you’re ready.”

  “You’ll back me on it, boss?” I asked, knowing that my nemesis, Deputy Chief of the Trial Division Pat McKinney, would be second-guessing every decision I made on the case.

  “Absolutely. No point in sticking our necks out ‘til we have the results you need. Screw the Capital Defenders. He hasn’t asked for a lawyer yet and we haven’t charged him with murder. I’ll handle the media on this myself.”

  I hung up and dialed Mid-Manhattan Hospital. Maureen Forester had been admitted earlier this morning. The operator gave me her extension number and connected me to the room.

  “How do you feel?”

  “So far, so good. Even better since I heard you got your man. And thanks for the robe.”

  “Well, I understand there’s a solarium at the end of your hallway where all the ambulatory patients wander in and out. I figured if you’re the best-dressed girl in the crowd, you might attract some companions who’ll gossip with you.”

  “I take it you still want me to stay in here for a couple of days, then?”

  “Yeah. We don’t know what we’ve got yet. Mike thinks Pops may have had an accomplice when he attacked Dogen. Some of his cronies may have heard or seen something after the murder. We’d just like to play it safe if you don’t mind.”

  “Mind? This is a piece of cake. My first audition is at eleven-thirty. They’re bringing some interns by to have me describe my symptoms.”

  “Show-and-tell?”

  “No show, thank you very much. Just a history for the moment.”

  “Well, Sarah will be up to visit later. I’ll be in touch. Mercer and Mike send their love. ‘Bye.”

  I made some more calls, then opened Peterson’s door and checked what was going on in the squad room. Almost all of the men had gone back to the hospital to continue to canvass for evidence or witnesses. Wallace was still in the room with Bailey but making no progress.

  The lieutenant was reviewing the memo books of two of his men. “Battaglia’s got a great idea to keep us from jumping the gun on arraigning Bailey.” I explained the plan to lodge him in the prison psych ward on his old case and avoid a premature statement on the strengths of our case until the evidence was analyzed and asked Peterson to tell Chapman, Wallace, and the rest of the team.

  “I feel pretty useless here, Loo. It makes more sense for me to go down to my office and get some work done, don’t you think? If you need me for anything else, just call and I’ll come on back.”

  I gathered all of my paperwork and left the precinct, again by the rear exit. I grabbed a cab on Lexington Avenue and continued to read police reports as it plodded downtown through the busy traffic of a midday Friday. I arrived at the office as most of the assistants were breaking for lunch. Laura handed me my messages, offering to bring me something to eat on her way back from a round of errands. I placed my order for some tuna salad and a Diet Coke and settled in to return calls and check on the lawyers in the unit.

  The afternoon dragged for me. No word from anyone at the Squad, and Sarah was at the hospital keeping Maureen company. The usual trail of complainants in new cases dropped off as it always seemed to on Fridays after the lunch hour. And for those of my colleagues not on trial, it was a getaway time. If I wasn’t looking for them, they certainly weren’t looking for me.

  It was after four-thirty when Laura told me that Jordan Goodrich, my best friend from my first days at law school, was on the line.

  “Susan just called me. She knows you’re in the middle of a big case but wonders if you feel like joining us for a simple dinner at home with the kids tonight?”

  “Thanks, but I don’t think so. I’m whipped. I’m just going to make it an early night at home. Me and my Lean Cuisine.”

  “How about a drink first?”

  “I’d love it.”

  For the ten years that we had been out of school, Jordan and I had a tradition of meeting every couple of Fridays to catch up on each other’s lives. From a modest background and a small-town Georgia family, Jordan had worked his way through college and outsmarted m
ost of our law school classmates to a position on theLaw Review and a brilliant career. He and Susan had been my closest friends in Charlottesville and there were few experiences of my adult life that we had not weathered or celebrated together.

  I checked with Peterson before leaving the office to meet Jordan at our regular haunt, Bemelmans bar at the Carlyle. The lieutenant told me that Wallace and Ramirez would be taking Austin Bailey down to the Bellevue prison ward in a couple of hours and that Chapman and the rest of the team were still at the hospital. Chief McGraw planned to announce to the press crews that there had been a break in the Dogen case but not yet an arrest. That way they’d get Pops out of the precinct after the camera crews disappeared. I said I’d keep the beeper on ‘til I reached home, where I’d be for the rest of the evening.

  Jordan was waiting in a corner booth at the Carlyle, below the whimsical mural of the animals skating in Central Park. The piano player was in the middle of a Bachrach medley when I arrived and somehow wound up in an elaborate rendition of “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again” as I walked over to Jordan ’s table.

  “Timing is everything,” I said, laughing at the musical selection.

  George, who had waited on us for as many Fridays as the two of us had been coming there, appeared with my Dewar’s before I could unbutton and remove my coat. Jordan was halfway through his first Stoli martini as I kissed him on the cheek and settled onto the leather banquette beside him.

  I had barely gotten past the usual questions about Susan and the children when my beeper went off. I looked at the numbers and saw that it was Bill Schaeffer again, calling from the lab.

  “Great. Let me just call him back. Maybe I will join you guys for dinner. This’ll give me a second wind-it’s the news about the blood match I’ve been waiting for.”

  I had to go through the hotel lounge to get to the pay phone, weaving around small tables topped with drinks and baskets of homemade potato chips and surrounded by well-dressed patrons from the nearby art and antiques galleries.

  I dropped a quarter in the slot and dialed Schaeffer’s number. “Bill, it’s Alex. Got something for me already?”

  “Yeah, but you won’t like it. It’s not her blood.”

  “It’s what?” I said. I was incredulous. “Ithas to be Dogen’s blood.”

  “Well, it isn’t. I know they told you Bailey had no injuries but it’s entirely consistent with his blood type, Alex. I don’t have DNA results on him yet but I’m certain this is going to turn out to be his own blood. I don’t think the man you’re holding is the killer.”

  Calm down, I told myself as I tried to absorb the impact of Schaeffer’s information.

  I dialed the 17th and told Peterson the news. “I’m coming back over. Get me an EMS crew there immediately. I want somebody to examine Austin Bailey in my presence,now. We’ve wasted twenty-four hours on a false lead. Tell McGraw he should start leaking the fact that wedon’t have a suspect, for a change. And you’d better let Maureen know what’s going on before we do anything else. Somebody may still be on the loose in that hospital.”

  Jordan had ordered another round to congratulate me on the good news I had gone out to receive. “Save it for next time,” I snapped at him, grabbing at my things. “Sorry to run on you, but I’ve just been blindsided by a murderer.”

  I left him with his mouth hanging open, a setup of drinks on the table, and the bar tab. My head throbbed.

  14

  IT WAS CLOSE TO SEVEN O’CLOCK FRIDAY evening as I pounded up the staircase in the station house. The excitement that had animated the task force team members in the morning had dissipated. An aura of dejection was palpable.

  Jerry McCabe was talking on the phone behind a desk against the window. He put his hand over the mouthpiece and called out to me, “They’re in the room at the end of the hall with Bailey, Alex. Go ahead on in.”

  I left my coat and books in Peterson’s office and went down to the locker room. The lieutenant and Wallace were standing with their backs to me, a couple of other men were leaning against the wall, and Pops was sitting on the table stripped down to a filthy green pair of boxer shorts.

  A medic from the Emergency Medical Service was kneeling in front of Austin Bailey examining his left leg from the thigh down the calf to the sole of his foot.

  “Not a scratch,” he announced to the lieutenant as he stood up and pushed away from the table.

  Peterson introduced me to Juan Guerra, who had just finished a head-to-toe inspection of Austin Bailey. The prisoner was still atop the table, his chin resting against his bare chest, mumbling to himself as this small band of unhappy cops looked at him like a specimen in a public zoo.

  “Mercer, you got a copy of the Polaroid of Pops’s pants showing the bloodstains?” I asked.

  As Wallace removed a batch of photos from his jacket pocket, Bailey looked up at me and grinned. “I told you it’s paint, lady.”

  I passed the Polaroid to Guerra, pointing out to him the large areas of discoloration on the lower part of the left pants leg and explaining that there had been a substantial amount of blood on the right side and in his shoes as well.

  He nodded his head as he viewed the picture and spoke a single word: “Varicosities.”

  A chorus of “What?” echoed in the locker room.

  “I’m ready to throw the switch on the electric chair myself ‘cause of this bloodbath and you’re telling me this guy’s got varicose veins?” Wallace asked.

  “See it all the time, especially with a lot of the homeless population who haven’t had any regular medical care.” Guerra kneeled in front of Bailey again and calmly asked him to extend both his legs. He picked up the older man’s feet one at a time and ran his hand over the skin, circling the area around the prominent bone that protruded from the inner aspect of each ankle. “He’s certainly got varicose veins. And when they burst, he could bleed to death right on the spot if you don’t control the puncture.”

  Pops was looking back and forth as everyone talked about him, scratching his midriff with one hand and nervously running his fingers over the desk with the other.

  I squatted and looked at Bailey’s ankles with the medic.

  “I know my grandmother had ‘em, Juan,” said Peterson, “but what the hell are varicose veins, anyway?”

  “Keep a watch, Lieutenant,” the young EMS worker told him, “they’re usually hereditary. Dilated or twisted veins, most often in the legs and thighs, develop a weakness.

  “The valves in the vein that circulate the blood back up to the heart, they can’t do the job. Could be old injuries from drug use or just-”

  Wallace pointed at the lines of old needle marks on Bailey’s arms and thighs. “Damn, he’s got more tracks than the B and O Railroad.”

  “But there’s not a new mark there that I can see. Not a scratch, not a scar, not a blemish, except for those dried-up old areas,” I said.

  Guerra continued. “Miss Cooper, I’ve seen ‘em spurt like an oil well. Heart keeps pumping, the vein opens up, and the blood’s got nowhere to go. Last week, my partner and I responded to a call on Thirty-sixth Street. Old guy’s shoes just filled up with blood and flooded over.

  “I put my finger right on the vein-that big one next to the ankle bone-applied pressure for a minute, and stopped it right up. Go to look at it half an hour later and there’s nothin‘ to see. Comes out of a hole the size of a pinprick. You either stop it pretty quick or the patient can bleed to death.”

  “Well, why the hell didn’t he just tell us it was hisown blood?” Mercer asked of no one in particular.

  Pops reached for my hand as I pulled away from the table. “Told you it was a bucket of paint. Told you I was sorry about hurting that lady.”

  It was clear that Bailey didn’t know which end was up and probably wasn’t even aware of what was staining his own clothes.

  “Let the guy get dressed,” I said, leaving the room. “When you deliver him to Bellevue, make sure they give him a complete physical.
He might as well get something for himself out of all this aggravation.”

  The squad room was quiet. Peterson and the others followed me inside while the pair of medics packed up their bags to leave.

  I fished through my pocketbook to dig out my Filofax and look up Chet Kirschner’s home telephone. The Chief Medical Examiner listened to me repeat Juan Guerra’s story about a burst varicose vein and assured me that it was a logical explanation to account for the blood that had made Pops Bailey such an outstanding suspect.

  When I hung up, I could hear Peterson talking to Bill Dietrich. He wanted the hospital administration to know as soon as possible that the murder had not been solved and the probability remained that staff and patients were still at risk.

  “Anybody checking on Maureen?” I asked.

  “Charles agreed to go along with the plan so he’s spending the evening with her.” Maureen’s husband had retired from the Police Department to run the investigations division of a major corporation. “Everything was smooth today. The men who went into her room to hook up her television service were actually our tech guys. They installed a microcamera and recorder behind a duct in the ceiling linked up to a monitor in their truck. They’re parked right behind Minuit Medical College. So she can get a good night’s sleep, Alex-she’s covered.”

  “You want to tell me what we do now?”

  “I vote we knock off for the night,” Wallace said. “We come in fresh tomorrow morning and begin right back over at the hospital. Underground and above-ground.

  “Start looking real close at Gemma Dogen. Once we focused on Pops, we were all thinking this was a random thing, he just hit on whoever was around. Now we got everyone telling us how aloof she was and how strong her dislikes were, gotta go back to thinking somebody was trying to get rid ofher in particular.”

  “I can’t believe we lost twenty-four hours on this red herring.”

  “Where’s Chapman?” Peterson asked, looking at his watch, already more than twelve hours into his working day.