Likely To Die

by Linda Fairstein

  “Well, what was the whistle-blowing about?”

  “Not sure, exactly. Some kind of ethical dilemma for her. It had something to do with Minuit, with the medical school, rather than the main hospital. She wanted to hold everyone to the standards she set for herself. That’s an extraordinary burden-some might say unreasonable.

  “There was a med student from the West Coast who applied for a neurosurgical residency with Gemma. Someone alerted her to the fact that he had lied on his application-phonied up his résumé or something like that. She booted him from the program even though a couple of her colleagues wanted him in. That kind of thing always ate at her.

  “They were all trying to shut her up over there whenever something like that occurred. None of them wanted her airing their dirty linen in public. Scares away patients and so on. But once she got up on her high horse, it was impossible to get her off.”

  The shrill noise of a beeper pierced the room. All four of us clutched at our waistbands, then looked at each other and laughed.

  “What did we do before these things were invented?” Babson asked. It was hers that had signaled and she picked up the phone to see why she had been paged.

  “Can we finish this up for now?” she asked. “I’ve got to get down to the emergency room. Second Avenue bus just went out of control and jumped the sidewalk. They’re bringing some of the pedestrians who were hit over here and want me to stand by in case I’m needed.”

  “I’d like to talk with you again, Dr. Babson, after we’ve seen Bill Dietrich.”

  “Of course. Just give me a call whenever I can be useful.”

  Babson was leading us to the door. “Can you tell us anything about her involvement with Dietrich? Personally, I mean?” I asked on our way out.

  “I’m just glad she ended it. I never trusted him, really. Just something sleazy about him, not vicious. But she was lonely, I think, and flattered by his attention. He pursued her quite avidly for a while. She didn’t talk about him much anymore. And they always seemed to be on opposite sides in her recent battles. He’s a real user. I can’t imagine what she ever saw in him, so I didn’t encourage her to bring up his name.”

  I rang for the elevator as Babson pushed open the exit door to walk down the back stairs to the ER. Mercer had one more question. “Ever go to a ball game with Dr. Dogen?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Was she a sports fan? Baseball? Football?”

  “Gemma was a superb athlete. She loved physical challenges. Running, kayaking, skiing. Kind of thing I don’t really make time for, though. I’ve never been to a ball game with her, no. And I don’t remember Gemma ever talking about one. The only reason I ever go is for the sake of the hot dogs at Yankee Stadium, once a year. I couldn’t tell you a thing about that part of her life. Sorry.”

  Babson was off down the staircase before the elevator doors opened to take us to the lobby. It was after five when we walked out of the hospital.

  “Where to?”

  “What would you think of a nice, home-cooked meal for a change?” Mercer asked.

  “I’m out, guys.”

  “No, no. Let’s pick up something from the supermarket. Mike and I’ll cook it. All you have to do is load the dishes in the dishwasher.”

  “Deal.”

  We were only a few blocks from my apartment. I waited in the car while they went into the grocery store and came out ten minutes later with shopping bags full of food.

  “Okay. We’re doing a Caesar salad, my mother’s recipe for chicken breasts with Dijon mustard sauce, and sautéed string beans.”

  “With garlic,” Mike added. “That a problem for your love life?” he asked.

  “He’s out of town, Mikey. Let’s go.”

  We parked on Third Avenue and walked to the apartment. In place of Zac’s leash on the table in my entryway was a bouquet of flowers and a note from David’s housekeeper, who had reclaimed my weekend companion for her master.

  Mike and Mercer set up shop in the kitchen while I changed into leggings and checked my answering machine. There was a message from Drew, who had tried me at the office with no success, a call from my mother reminding me not to forget my sister-in-law’s birthday, and a rambling message from Nina while stuck in a traffic jam on the Santa Monica Freeway.

  I watched my two chefs cut and chop and squeeze their ingredients into a meal. Mike’s blazer and Mercer’s suit jacket were laid on the living room sofa, ties in pockets. Their shirt sleeves were rolled up and Martha Reeves was singing to them. “We’re all prepped,” Mercer said. “Let’s have our dinner after the evening news, okay?”

  We went into the den and I served drinks as we waited for the six-thirty broadcast. Mike called Lieutenant Peterson to tell him the results of our two interviews and to learn what had gone on with the rest of the team. Detectives continued to plod through the corridors of the underground bomb shelter, talking to vagrants and searching for leads.

  He hung up the phone and looked at Mercer and me, “Peterson wants to know what your thoughts are at this point. I told him we haven’t even talked about it yet.”

  “It’s been gnawing at me all afternoon. What doI think? I’m convinced we’ve had it all wrong from the start. From the very first moment you guys got to the crime scene.”

  Mercer leaned forward, drink in hand, and nodded his head slowly up and down. He knew where I was headed.

  “I think you saw exactly what the killer wanted you to see. A sexual assault. A victim who died trying to fight off a rapist. A chance attack by a madman who happened to come across a woman all alone in her office in the middle of the night, random and opportunistic. And I think it’s all bullshit.”

  Mike muted the television and stared at me.

  “Gemma Dogen’s death was a murder, plain and simple,” I said. “Whoever did it staged it to look like a rape, to take us off course, have us looking for somebody who had no connection to Dogen. Like Pops. Like Can Man. The place is full of them.

  “Kill her. Take off her panties, lift up her skirt. Make ‘em think sex crime. I don’t think anybody tried to rape her. That’s probably the last thing whoever killed her wanted any part of-a sexual encounter with Dr. Dogen.”

  “Maybe I wanted you to work on the case with us so bad I didn’t even consider staging as a possibility that morning,” Mike responded.

  “Isn’t it logical? The killer leaves the body positioned to look like a rape-or a good attempt at one. But there’s no semen, no trace evidence in the wounds, not even a strand of an assailant’s pubic hair on her body. Sure, he could have been interrupted or scared off, but my bet is he didn’t even want to try to rape her.

  “The more we know about Dogen,” I told them, “the more I’ve got to think that somebody wanted her dead and had the good sense to plan this to throw us off track.”

  “They’re wasting their time squirreling around in the basement with the whackjobs. It’s gonna be somebody reallysane, like the guys we’ve been talking to in business suits and white lab coats,” Mike said.

  “Like Spector told you,” Mercer said, “these doctors are already paranoid ‘cause you’re on the case.”

  “That’s asinine. They’d be hard-pressed to find someone who respects the medical community as much as I do. The two men I’ve loved most in this world,” I responded, thinking of my father and of Adam, my late fiancé, “have been doctors-the most caring and devoted people I’ve ever known.”

  “Besides,” Mike added. “Nobody’s saying the killer’s a doctor. But the odds are pretty good that it’s someone who knew Dogen. Knew her habits, her hours. Knew that everyone would think her strong enough to fight back against a rapist and fit enough to try it even though he was armed.”

  “I think tomorrow’s another day for us at Mid-Manhattan,” Mercer suggested. “Who’s reaching out for the husband? Any idea?”

  “Yeah, the lieutenant said he called London this afternoon and broke it to him. Very cooperative, appropriately upset. Told Pet
erson it was like losing his oldest friend.”

  “I hope they’re gonna try to bring him over here to talk to us. There must be some light he can shed on her for us.”

  We argued our way in a friendly fashion through most of the news stories, disagreeing with each other about which of the witnesses we liked or disliked and what the order of our interviews should be throughout the week.

  Mike shushed us up when he saw the lead-in forJeopardy!

  Mercer called Maureen to check on her spirits at the top of the show since neither Mike nor I took the first round seriously. He passed the phone to each of us and she told me about her day.

  She’d had a visit from John DuPre on his neurological rounds. “He’s one of the guys who found Pops in the X-ray department, isn’t he? I was tempted to give in and let him do a physical on me. Don’t you think he’s fine, Alex? Quite a looker.”

  “I’ll let you know tomorrow. Mike wants us to reinterview him. We promised your husband there’d be no hands-on medical practice, Mo. Behave yourself.”

  “What’s a girl to do? The only news from the solarium today was from my next-door neighbor. Says her internist told her Gemma had a thing for younger men.”

  “How young? And did she name names?”

  “Well, the woman telling the story is eighty-two so anything in her book is young. Sorry, no names.”

  “Sarah’s coming up to see you tomorrow. Meanwhile, I’m being wined and dined by the other two musketeers.”

  “I’m jealous. Call me later.”

  By the time Trebek got to the highlight of the show, the legally blind linguist from Tampa was leading both other contestants by four thousand dollars. “Today’s Final Jeopardy category,” he announced, “is Art. We’ll be right back after a commercial break.”

  Mike yelled at the television screen. “How the hell can they ask a blind man a question about art? That’s a disgrace-it’s discrimination, it’s-”

  “It’s basically because you’re ignorant in that area, Detective Chapman,” I said, winking at Mercer and imitating the tone of a cross-examining attorney, “is it not?”

  “Five dollars, Coop. That’s my bet.”

  “Sorry once again, Chapman. House has a ten-dollar minimum. I’m willing to go to fifty on it with you. Get my money back.”

  Mercer was the referee as usual. “Ten dollars is the bet.”

  Trebek looked at the tense trio before him and revealed the answer. “Seventeenth-century Dutch portraitist famous for his miniature paintings of wealthy burghers, whose best-known work isThe Peace at Münster. ”

  While the theme music marked the time, Mike ranted at the ridiculous notion that any of the contestants would know the answer to such an obscure query.

  “No, I’m sorry, Mr. Kaiser,” Trebek told the first contestant. “Frans Hals is a good guess, but you’re a century off.”

  “You want me to tell you beforehe does so you know I’m for real?” I asked Chapman as the second contestant misfired with a try at Rembrandt.

  “See, Mercer? This is the kind of bullshit they teach at a Seven Sisters school. That’s why they’re all so arrogant when they get out of those places. Who is it, Blondie?”

  “Who is Gerard Terborch?” I said, complying with the basic rule by, putting my answer in the form of a question.

  Trebek was consoling the blind man, who didn’t have a clue and had left his Braille answer card completely blank.

  “I can’t believe how useless the stuff you learned in college is. It’s amazing you can hold down a job.”

  “I didn’t learn it there,” I said as Mercer waited for Trebek to confirm my answer before he turned off the television, pressed the CD changer to startRod Stewart in Concert, and led us back to the kitchen.

  “I know, I know. Your old man probably has one, right? That little painting of the guy with the bald head and the pipe in his mouth used to hang near the coat closet in the old house before they moved, right? My mother’s got Norman Rockwells she ripped off the cover of theSaturday Evening Post in 1952 still pinned to the wall in every room of the house, Mercer.

  “No point in my paying up, Coop. You could sell that little sucker-that Terborch-and support the three of us for the rest of our lives if you were a real sport. Let’s eat.”

  We carried the food to the dining-room table. I lit the candles and sat between my two friends, happy for the diversion the evening provided from the problems of the case.

  I pushed the anchovies to the side of the plate and lifted the first forkful to my mouth. I had forgotten about Gemma Dogen for almost half an hour until Stewart’s gravelly voice came on to remind me that the first cut is always the deepest. Cuts, blood, crime scene. I had forgotten to compare my list of initials to the stains on the office carpet.

  18

  THERE WAS A MESSAGE FROM ROSE MALONE on my voice mail when I got into the office at eight on Tuesday morning. “Alex, Mr. Battaglia called from his car. He’s got a meeting with the Police Commissioner at nine. Wants to see you as soon as he gets in after that. Wanted me to try and catch you before you go out to do interviews on your case.”

  C’mon, Rose, give me a hint. Good tidings or bad? Her tone was businesslike and I couldn’t make a guess.

  I spent the first hour at the word processor writing some disposition letters to witnesses whose cases had been resolved and responding to mail Battaglia had received about proposed changes in stalking legislation. Rod Squires came by to catch up on details of the investigation and tell me about his wife’s new job.

  His collegial drop-in was to camouflage the message that Patrick McKinney was up to his old backstabbing tricks. Rod had overheard Pat tell Battaglia that some of the detectives, who still thought Pops and Can Man were the likely culprits in Dogen’s death, felt I was persecuting the professional staff at Mid-Manhattan and Minuit.

  “Dammit. That’s probably why the boss wants to see me. If I’m making too many waves at the medical center, the board of directors-including Mrs. B.-will be looking for me to lay off. You think it’s time for me to go over to Stuyvesant Psych and get myself fitted for a straitjacket or will you defend me if I take a shot at McKinney?”

  “I have you covered, Alex. Just thought you should know that some things never change. Pat’s still out to get you.”

  Rod had watched out for me since my rookie days and I counted on his loyalty and support whenever I was too busy to look over my shoulder for slings and arrows.

  Laura wasn’t in yet so I answered the calls when the phone started to ring after nine. The third one was from Drew.

  “Good morning. And I do mean morning. It’s only six on this coast. Am I interrupting anything?”

  “Perfect timing. My supervisor just left and the customers haven’t started lining up yet.”

  “Well, I’ve just opened the curtains. I’m up at the peak of Stockton Street, looking out over the bay, and it’s glorious. Wanted to give one more shot at getting you out here this weekend-”

  “Can’t do it, Drew. I have no idea where this is going, but we’re smack in the middle of it.”

  “Will you hold some time for me over the weekend, then? I’ll take the red-eye back on Thursday night. Dinner Friday?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Pick the place. I’ll call you later, Alex.”

  I flipped the pages in my desk diary to check my schedule. No wonder my mood was improving so dramatically. Not only a new man but the beginning of a new month.

  Laura came in with a coffee cake she had baked the night before. “Have some of this,” she said, placing a slice in front of me. “I don’t know how you go all day without starting off with a good breakfast.

  “Patti called. She’s been in ECAB”-the Early Case Assessment Bureau through which all new arrests were channeled every day from 8A.M. to midnight. “She’s got a case you ought to know about so she’s on her way up here with the cop. And your dentist’s office called. Should I confirm your appointment for a cleaning next Mond
ay?”

  “Please. I’ll take care of Patti.”

  Chapman arrived minutes later accompanied by Mickey Diamond, who was making his daily sweep through the executive wing on his way to the press office. The tall, lean reporter with his silver hair and beat-up brown leather bomber jacket was a morning fixture. I tried to move him along on his way so I could find out what the new case involved before he did, and I was sure he sensed my brush-off and would be back to determine the reason for it.

  Patti Rinaldi, another senior member of the unit, rounded the corner just after Mickey left. She was smart and intense, slim and as tall as I am, with lots of dark, curly hair. She and police officer Kerrigan, whom I had never met before, came in while Chapman sat in the corner and perused the tabloids.

  “Two new cases came through so far today. The first was a date rape. No problem, I’ll put it in to the grand jury tomorrow. Very credible witness. She’s a grad student at NYU.

  “This one’s really weird and I thought you and the boss should know about it. The defendant’s name is Fred Werblin. Ever heard of him?”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “Should I?”

  Kerrigan was chuckling, clearly anxious to get his two cents in. He had a thick brogue and a friendly smile as he told me his news. “He’s a rabbi, Miss Cooper. Can you imagine that? A rabbi who sexually abused these women.”

  “Easy, Brian,” Chapman cautioned. “Miss Cooper’s Jewish.”

  “Oh, well,” he said a bit surprised. “I didn’t know that, did I? Couldn’t tell from the name, now, could I?”

  “ Ellis Island neutral,” Chapman shot back. “Didn’t leave the old country that way. Somebody just shortened it up when Grandpa got off the boat, right, Coop?”

  “Well, I didn’t mean anything by it,” Kerrigan said. “It’s just that-well, the papers made such a big fuss and all when that priest was convicted up in Rhode Island last week. Molesting those boys. Terrible thing for the Church. It just made me feel better to know it’s not only us that has this kind of problem. I didn’t mean to offend you now, Miss Cooper.”