The squad had a regular line-up area, which consisted of two separate rooms, connected by a ‘two-way mirror.“
Montvale and five stand-ins would be in the larger one, with a couple of detectives standing inside the door to monitor his behavior and make sure he didn’t say or do anything inappropriate. He would be allowed to pick his position one through six and each man would hold a large square sign depicting his number in front of his chest.
All the men would be able to see as they faced forward was a large glass mirror, reflecting the image of the array.
Mercer, each witness, and I would be in the small room on the other side of the glass. We would take the victims in one at a time, darken the room, step them up to the glass and ask them to look at the men, who could neither see nor hear them. From our side, the mirror functioned as a window. Each woman would examine the array and tell us whether or not she recognized anyone in the room, and if so, what number identified him.
I stepped inside to check out the assembled group of skells.
“Nice going. I hope none of these guys walk out of here when I’m leaving tonight. Wait a minute, Mercer.
Number three. Make him go to his locker and change out of his uniform pants and shoes, will you. It’s a dead giveaway.“
In typical fashion, one of the fillers was a cop from the Twentieth Precinct. But once the Legal Aid attorney saw the photograph of the line-ups, he would argue that detectives had placed him there on purpose, still in half of his uniform, to make the selection even easier for the women.
Mercer yelled into the open door of the other room.
“Yo, number three. You got jeans and sneakers in your locker?
The fashion director wants you out of those brogues and your nicely creased navy blue pants. Move it.“
“I tell you, he’s as frightening-looking as those other guys you got off the street.”
“They can’t all be as good-looking as I am, Cooper. You want to see Montvale?”
“Yeah. Might as well.”
We walked down the hallway, past the captain’s closed door, and stood in front of the small cell which held a single prisoner. William J. Montvale was sitting on the narrow wooden bench that ran across the back wall of the barred area. His arms were crossed, his legs were outstretched and apart, and his face broke into a wide smirk when he saw us approach.
“Is this my district attorney, Mr. Wallace? The one you been promisin‘ me? You’ll excuse me if I don’t stand, won’t you, ma’am, but I’m havin’ myself a very bad day.” I had my look and turned to walk away, as Montvale called to Mercer, “She’s better-looking than that fat pig who tried my case in Jersey, but I bet she’s no Marcia Clark. What d’ya think, Mr. Wallace?”
It was going to be a pleasure to send Montvale up on the river. stic In the background the phones were going like crazy.
So me cop who owed a favor had undoubtedly leaked gger news of the arrest to a reporter and calls were coming in r the faster than they could be answered. best “Can we get this thing underway?” Mercer asked one her of his teammates, who was coordinating the arrival of everyone we needed.
“I’d like to get these women out of here before the news trucks sit down at the door like vultures.”
“Ready to go. We’re just waiting for you to get Montvale in the room.”
Mercer left me and went back to pull the defendant out of his cell. His wrists were cuffed behind his back and Wallace had one of his own enormous hands wrapped around the rapist’s upper arm, leading him with a firm grip into the area with the five stand-ins. He was whispering in Montvale’s ear, telling him as I had heard him do so many times that if he moved one motherfucking muscle or did so much as cross his eyeballs after Mercer uncuffed him and while those women were looking through the window, he could expect to be sporting a new asshole before the end of the evening.
While I stood outside the room, Mercer offered Montvale his choice of numbers for the line-up. He selected the fourth position, and all of the other men switched the cardboard figures around at Wallace’s order and held them on their laps as they were asked to sit in a row of chairs. The instructions were that upon command, the group would rise to their feet, each man would approach the mirror one at a time and face it directly before turning his profile to the viewer, and then they would return to their chairs and be seated.
Wallace stationed two of his teammates in with the prisoner, took several Polaroid photographs of the array to use for the pretrial hearing, and called to his sergeant to bring us the woman who had been attacked earlier this morning. I waited for her in the hallway outside the captain’s office, then quietly introduced myself to her and explained the procedure that would follow.
“I’d like you to come into this room with me and Detective Wallace. Please don’t be scared, we’ll be right next to you. You’re going to look at six men through a glass window. You can see them and hear them, but they cannot see you, I promise. We’ll turn out the lights and I’ll ask you to take a good, close look. I’d prefer that you don’t say anything to us until after you’ve seen each of them up close. Then I’ll just ask you three or four questions, and it will be all over. It won’t even take two minutes. Are you okay?”
Mrs. Jeter appeared to be a few years older than I was. She was understandably tense and nodded in compliance as I went through the steps.
“Can’t my husband be with me?”
Mercer was gentle and reassuring.
“In a minute, ma’am, we’ll have you right back to him. But he’s a witness, too, so each of you has to do it separately. I’ll be right beside you. Nobody’s gonna hurt you.” She let us lead her into the small viewing space and I stood her near the window as Mercer switched off the lights. She gave a slight gasp: “Oh my, it’s so dark, and reached out to grab onto my hand as she peered into the glass. I let her hold it and rested my other arm on her orne shoulder to offer comfort. As the six rose to their feet and the first one walked esti toward the mirror, I could see Mrs. Jeter’s eyes scanning es as the row.
“My God, I see him it’s number four. That’s ogger the man who was in my apartment this morning, that’s;r the him.” Her hand squeezed mine as though they were being best crushed together by a steamroller. h her She was perfect. She knew exactly who she was looking for and didn’t even have to wait for the motley crew to parade in front of her one by one.
Wallace asked her to go through the rest of the process anyway, and to study each of the men as closely as possible.
She did, but kept repeating, “I don’t have to I know it’s him.”
As Mercer took her out the door on the far side of the room, so she wouldn’t intercept her husband or the women who had not yet viewed, she reached up and kissed him on his cheek, telling him how grateful she was that he had made the arrest so quickly.
“I’m a very lucky woman, I know that. And thank you.”
He turned and gave me a thumbs-up.
“The first hit is always the best. Nice and solid coming out of the box. We got him, Coop. Let’s keep going.”
I backed out of the room and motioned to the sergeant to send Mr. Jeter up to us. An old uniformed cop who looked as if he could count the minutes to retirement and had been assigned to man the telephones walked through the rear of the squad.
“You had a couple of calls since you got here, Miss Cooper. I didn’t know you was up here.”
“Remember what they were? Anything more pressing than this?”
“Nah. Kid from your office, Acciano, says he’s got good news for you a guilty verdict. He’ll leave the details on your voice mail. And Chapman, Homicide. Says he knows what Final Jeopardy is tonight something like that. Wants you to call him when you get home. He’ll be at his office till 1 A.M. Lots of reporters asking what you were doing. That kind of thing.”
“Fine. Just hold everything till we’re all done and I’ll look for you on my way out of here.”
Mr. Jeter marched toward me, thrust his hand out to shak
e mine as we said hello to each other. He was feeling very proud of himself for having been able to thwart the attack on his wife. I started to describe the line-up but he cut me off.
“I’ve done this before. Mugged getting off work the year before last. Had to go to three of these before they caught the right guy. Take me in and let ‘er rip.”
I re-entered the room where Mercer was already standing at the window and we repeated the scene.
“That’s the little bastard. Number four. Right, am I right? Did my wife get him, too?”
Detective Wallace tried to steer Jeter’s attention back to the full panel.
“We’d really like you to let each one of them come up here and-‘ ”Waste your time anyway you like, Wallace.“ He stood still in front of the window and let the six men go through the motions, but shook his head back and forth the whole time “It’s four. I just saw him this morning. I hope my wife wasn’t too shook up to do this. Am I right?”
“Thanks, Mr. Jeter. We’ll let you two back together now and Detective Wallace will explain all this mystery to you in about ten minutes. Then you can take Mrs. Jeter on home, okay?”
“Great. You give my regards to Mr. Battaglia, will you?
This is the third time in six years I had a case with his office. He does a fine job. Met him once at a community meeting “Stic very decent man.”
“He is, Mr. Jeter. I’ll say hello to him for you tomorrow. gge Thanks for your help here.” I held the door open for him, the ushered him out, and asked Mercer to get Katherine Fryer, nest the twenty-four-year-old illustrator I had interviewed in her my office the morning after Isabella was murdered. Only one week had passed since that day, but it seemed like months.
Mercer went up to the fourth floor, where Fryer had been asked to wait, and brought her down to the viewing area himself. I recalled her extraordinary composure so shortly after her attack that day, and now felt the tremor in her hand as she extended it to meet mine. I asked how she had been doing as I guided her inside and repeated the instructions.
As Mercer reached back for the light switch, he mouthed something to me, which I realized were the words: “Stand close.”
I moved in to Katherine’s side as she advanced to the window and ohce again was glad for his advice. As she poked her head forward, nose almost against the glass, her knees buckled and she would have collapsed to the floor had Wallace not grabbed her at the waist and held her up.
“Sorry, sorry. I can’t help it,” she murmured, trying to steady herself.
“He’s in there.”
We both tried to soothe her and calm her down, but Katherine Fryer did not want to look through that window again.
“I really need you to take one more look. We’re right here with you. Just tell us whether or not you see the man who attacked you last week, and the number he’s holding, please.”
With great reluctance, the young woman pulled herself up and braced her body with an arm on each of us. She stared ahead for several seconds, then turned and glared at me.
“The rapist is holding the number four. I’ll never forget that face. Now will you let me out of here?”
I nodded at Mercer, thanked Ms. Fryer, and stepped out for some air while the next two women were located and brought up, one at a time, in the same fashion. It was no surprise that each of the identifications were so positive.
The Jeters’ attack had occurred in their home only hours ago this very day. And unlike muggings on the street that take only two or three minutes to commit, the rapes that Montvale had committed kept him with his victims for extended periods of time. These women had been forced to experience him through every one of their five senses, and it was because of that lengthy, intimate exposure that I would be able to argue to the jury that these identifications should be more reliable than those made by victims of any other kind of crime.
The question for William Montvale’s jury would not be how these witnesses remembered what he looked like, but rather, how they could ever forget the face of the man who so tortured them. they t on stic 5 as Jger the est her While Mercer made arrangements to get each of the witnesses home, the sergeant paid the satisfied stand-ins and sent them off into the night. I asked one of the guys on the team to take sandwich and drink orders and we called out to the deli on the corner of Columbus for a delivery.
“No beer till after all the work is done, agreed?” I asked, as I laid out the cash, noting that it was after nine o’clock as we moved into the next phase of the arrest process. Some of the guys grumbled but everyone knew there were still a lot of loose ends to tie up before the end of the evening.
“I’m gonna go in and try to warm him up for you, Cooper.
The desk says your video man is downstairs. I told ‘em to send him here so he can start getting set up.“
”That’s good. I’ll get on the phone and work on the search warrant. You certain he was living at his mother’s place?“
“Yeah. That all had to be confirmed for Paroleto approve the move to New York. Doesn’t mean he hasn’t flopped somewhere else a couple of nights. But if you look through the fives,” Mercer went on, calling my attention to the police reports known as Detective Division 5s, ‘you can make a list of some of the items of clothing the women described and some of the jewelry he stole. Maybe even the knife.“
“It’ll be drawn up and signed, ready to go so you can be at his mother’s door at the crack of dawn.”
“When do we worry about DNA?”
“Nothing to worry about. At the arraignment, I ask the judge for a court order to draw a vial of Mr. Montvale’s blood. If there were ever a case with probable cause, this one is it. Got the best serologist in the country right in the ME’s office. They’ve got the blood from each of the victims already, to develop their typings to do the eliminations for the DNA results, and in a few weeks, that nail’ll also be in Montvale’s coffin.”
“I just want to place a few of these facts in front of him.
Might help us get him to talk nice to you, Coop.“
It took me almost forty-five minutes to work through the application for a warrant by telephone to one of the rookie prosecutors who was manning the late shift in ECAB. There was a form in the word processor which made the conversation pretty easy, but there were a lot of details in Mercer’s paperwork and I didn’t want the detectives to have to go back twice. If Montvale’s mother got smart, some of the things they weren’t authorized to grab on the first trip might disappear by the time they returned with an amended warrant. We faxed the completed documents back and forth several times while I corrected the points that would be sworn to before a judge.
Mercer waited patiently until I was satisfied with the finished product. Then he signaled me to join him in the sergeant’s office, where I started on my third or fourth cup of coffee, wide awake and tingling with the excitement of a good arrest and the rush of caffeine.
“Well, I’ve moved him along a little. When we glommed him in the bank, it was the usual ”I-don’t-know-what you-talking-about“ bullshit. Then I unrolled his birth certificate and the Parole letter and stuck it up in front of his nose just now, and he mumbled something about making a mistake and knocking on the Jeters’ door when he was really looking for his Uncle Louie’s apartment. Of course, he doesn’t have a fuckin‘ clue where his Uncle Louie lives. And I spent the last half-hour talking fingerprints, a little lecture about DNA, and then some yammer about everything the Jersey cops told me about his priors, and how similar they are to these cases.”
“Where’d that get you?”
“First he insisted that he was completely cured in that prison treatment center. Doesn’t do that kind of stuff anymore. Likes women now, understands them better.”
“The therapist hasn’t been born yet who can rehabilitate one of these predators. I once had a defendant who’d been treated in one of those programs tell me that if I broke the sstic word ”therapist“ into two words, it forms ”the rapist.“:s as How’s that for rehab
ilitation, huh?” gger Mercer went on, “He saved the best for the last.” r the Sergeant Barbero stuck his head in.
“You guys taking calls bes yet? These phones are wild.”
“Hold everything, Sarge. I want to see if he’ll talk to Cooper.”
“What’s the best?” I asked.
“After I laid it all out, I began to jerk his chain about how smart he was, you know, the ruse about Con Ed and talking his way into the apartment. Man, this guy is a sucker for having you tell him he’s smart.”
It was odd what worked with different suspects what approach would make them want to talk to you. The most unpleasant part of this process for me had always been sitting in these rooms, face to face with men who were capable of monstrous acts against other humans, and speaking to them civilly when the evidence of their guilt was overwhelming. Doing it, one hoped, to get even more information to use against them.
“I hit the button with Montvale. Enough times of complimenting him and he actually wanted to tell me how he I did it. Not the whole thing, he’s still not admitting the I in rapes. Says that till today he had never guessed wrong about which apartment he wanted to be in.”
I listened as Mercer went on.
“Getting past doormen is easy. He says you never have to wait more than an hour, even to get into the best buildings. Sooner or later, guy gets distracted by a couple of moving men, an argument with a porter or handyman, pain in the ass tenant who expects him to know what the temperature is today and what time it was when I went out to walk their dogs. None of that happens, the guy eventually has to leave his post to take a leak. That gets him in the front door and on his way upstairs.
”This is his favorite part. Montvale says his prime time is the middle of the day. He walks up and down the hallways, listening at the doors. If he hears the television, and the noise is a soap opera, it’s a pretty sure bet you got a woman home alone watching the tube. Sometimes she opens the door and it’s an old lady, so he’s not interested.
Final Jeopardy Page 29
