“We’re waiting for one of the SAVI volunteers, Ms. Cooper,” Joe said, stripping his bloodied gloves off and dropping them in the hazardous-waste bin along with the syringe in his hand. He was the size of a fullback, a black man with skin as dark as Mercer’s, and not in the mood for Mike’s humor. “Get you in here as soon as we can. I’ve got one going up to X-ray and another for admission, just waiting on a room.”
“This may not have seemed urgent when the detectives first called,” I said, knowing that it might take half an hour for a sexual assault violence intervention program advocate to reach the ER, “but Tina’s in worse shape than we thought.”
I pulled the rag from my pocket, pinching it on a corner to hold it up. “The perp soaked this in something and knocked her out by putting it over her nose and mouth.”
“Nice save, Coop.” Mike stood and bent over the counter, sniffing at the rag. “What’s your guess, Joe? Ether of some kind? Not so noxious as that. Maybe chloroform?”
Joe didn’t want to come closer. “If that’s what it was, it’s enough to cause a fatal cardiac arrhythmia.”
“That baby’s going straight to the lab, Coop.”
“Tell the EMTs to bring her right in,” Joe said. “Let’s get your girl worked up.”
The three of us headed for the exit, past the waiting area filled with anxious family members and friends, down the driveway and onto the street. The driver had backed out of the bay to leave room for the next arrival and double-parked on Madison Avenue.
Jorge Vasquez was leaning against the side of the red-and-white ambulance. Mercer waved at him as we approached, telling him to move it in and unload the patient.
Vasquez shrugged his shoulders.
“Don’t give me that ‘not my job’ crap,” Mike said. “Roll it.”
“I’m empty, man,” Vasquez said, brushing his hands against each other like he was dusting off crumbs. “The broad took off.”
“Took off where?” I asked.
“RMA, Ms. Cooper. I can’t be holding nobody against her will.”
Tina Barr had refused medical attention, despite the ordeal she’d survived.
“Which way’d she go?”
“No sé,” Vasquez said. “She told me she never wanted the cops called in the first place. Jumped out the bus and said to tell you to leave her alone.”
THREE
“I still think we could have beat Tina to her apartment,” Mike said, several hours later, as he sat across the desk from me.
“To what end? For some reason, she never wanted any of us involved in the first place. It was the neighbor-not Tina-who called 911.”
“I don’t know. Should have scooped her up and made her a material witness till we figured out what happened.”
“No such thing as getting a material witness order unless there’s a pending prosecution,” I said, continuing to make notes on a legal pad, charting the chronology of a murder investigation we’d been working on for several months. “You know that.”
“Are you going to follow up with her now?”
“I’m giving Tina a day to settle down. By then she’ll realize the flashbacks and night sweats won’t go away by themselves. She might even welcome the chance to talk about it.”
We were in my office in the Sex Crimes Prosecution Unit on the eighth floor of Manhattan ’s Criminal Courthouse at nine-thirty on Wednesday morning. Mike had brought me a third cup of coffee and took the lid off after he set out his bagel on top of a file cabinet, using a manila folder as a place mat.
“How come Judge Moffett scheduled a hearing on the Griggs case? You don’t even have an arrest yet.”
We had been working on the rape-homicide of a nineteen-year-old-girl named Kayesha Avon that had taken place almost eight years earlier. The case had gone cold long ago, but the recent submission to the databank of the DNA profile of a man named Jamal Griggs and the near match that resulted had given Mike a reason to revive the investigation.
“Jamal Griggs doesn’t like the idea that we’re so interested in his family tree,” I said.
Jamal and his brother Wesley, known to us as the Weasel, had floated in and out of the criminal justice system for most of their adult lives. Despite Jamal’s homicide conviction as a teenager-or maybe because of it-he and Wesley had become part of the entourage that surrounded and sold drugs to the crews of late thug rappers such as Biggie Smalls and Tupac Shakur.
“I applied for a search warrant to get into the California database to see what it tells us about Wesley’s DNA, and must have struck a nerve. Jamal’s new counsel requested a chance to oppose my motion. I need you and Mattie Prinzer,” I said, referring to the forensic biologist who headed the lab at OCME, the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, “to make my case.”
“Jamal get himself a new suit? Last I knew he was a poster boy for the Legal Aid Society. How’s he paying for a lawyer?”
“I have the feeling we’re going to meet the new suit in the courtroom. He’s been dispatched from the City of Angels by the Weasel.”
“Amazing that Wesley made it out the ’hood,” Mike said. The thirty-two-year-old wannabe gangsta had moved from pushing crack cocaine on East Harlem street corners to producing records in Hollywood, while his baby brother was behind bars again for an armed robbery of a gas station in Queens. “I think a proper homecoming would be a sweet thing, Coop.”
“I’m a long way from blowing up balloons and mailing out save-the-date cards for the Weasel’s return to New York,” I said. “Would you give these lab reports to Laura, please, and ask her to make copies? I’ll have to turn them over to defense counsel if Moffett makes you two testify.”
Mike walked to the door and handed the case file to my secretary. He was wearing his trademark navy blazer with a pale blue button-down shirt and crisply pressed khakis. His dark good looks and irrepressible grin were an appealing combination, and his intelligence and experience made him a trusted partner-like Mercer-in the most difficult cases we’d handled together.
“You think maybe she knew him?”
“Did Kayesha Avon know Wesley Griggs?” I asked.
“No, no, no. I’m thinking about Tina Barr. Maybe she didn’t want to cooperate with us because she made the man beneath the mask. Or he actually took it off once he got inside the apartment. If she recognized the guy, could be she knows how dangerous it is for her and that’s why she fled the scene.”
I was studying Jamal Griggs’s presentence report, trying to get a sense of whether he had a favorite modus operandi. “Could be.”
“Don’t you think that puts her at greater risk now? Don’t you need to do something to safeguard her?”
“And what would that be, since she’s expressed herself so clearly? I can’t take her hostage if she’s so dead set against reporting this.”
“Did you ask for a detail to sit in front of Tina’s house?”
“The CO turned me down flat.”
“Use your juice, Coop. There’s a couple of dudes at headquarters who think you walk on bottled water. Call in a chit.”
“Yeah, and maybe you can forward my nomination to the Supreme Court in case there’s a vacancy. That would be an easier task than getting Commissioner Scully to sign off on a spare RMP for a victim who tied up enormous resources in the middle of the night and then took a hike with no explanation at all.”
There was a shortage of both manpower and radio motor patrol cars because of the spike in violent crimes charted since the summer.
“I didn’t know you could qualify for the Supremes if you were living in France. There must be some kind of jurisdictional requirement.”
I looked up from my notes and bit on the tip of my fountain pen, but I was unable to suppress a smile. “Michael Patrick Chapman. Is that what’s bugging you? Have you been working overtime on my love life? All you had to do was ask.”
One of the city’s most experienced homicide detectives turned scarlet from his brow to the point where his neck disappeared into his
shirt collar.
“No need to pry into that, blondie. You’re wearing it all over your puss. Be a shame to waste the latest Parisian fashions under long black judicial robes, if you ask me,” Mike said. “And that skirt you’re wearing is way too short for Judge Moffett. His defibrillator might zap into overtime.”
I looked down at the navy blue suit I’d bought on the Avenue Montaigne when I had last visited Luc Rouget, the Frenchman I’d been dating since early summer. Anything not to make eye contact with Mike.
“Make you a deal,” I said. “Let’s get through this Griggs motion today and we can catch up over dinner. I never meant to hold back anything from you or Mercer. Luc turned up in the middle of a killing spree and my personal life deservedly took a back seat.”
“You don’t owe me any explanation,” he said, shifting away from me. “Skip the talk tonight and just feed me, Coop. But you’ll have to take yourself out of that chic getup before cocktails. Too rich for my blood.”
“I’ll call Mercer. The three of us haven’t been out in more than a month. I’m buying.”
“What if it’s about kinky sex?” Mike asked, balling up his napkin and tossing it over my head into the garbage.
My turn to blush. “Kinky what?”
“Not you and the French guy, kid. Tina Barr. Maybe she was tied up ’cause she wanted to be. Could explain why she wouldn’t talk.”
We had seen it all, working sex crimes and homicide. Just when one of us thought there was nothing left to shock, along came a new way for two people to amuse themselves in the privacy of their homes.
“A long shot,” I said. “But always a possibility.”
“Think about it. Broad’s tied up and gagged-there’s evidence to support that-but tells you she wasn’t raped. Wouldn’t be anything to call the cops about if she consented.”
I slipped my heels off under the desk before Mike could comment on their style, and replaced them with a sturdier work shoe for our court appearance. “Maybe.”
“What do you know about chloroform?” Mike asked. “Pick up anything medically useful from your old man while you were growing up?”
“Wasn’t it the first anesthetic used for women in childbirth in the nineteenth century? Till the docs found out it was too toxic.”
“Well, it’s still around, and it caused three deaths, just in the north, in the last eighteen months,” Mike said.
New York County -the island of Manhattan -was split in half by the NYPD for the management of unnatural-death investigations. Mike’s office, the Manhattan North Homicide Squad, responded to everything from Fifty-ninth Street to the tip of Spuyten Duyvil, while its southern counterpart took the territory from midtown down to the Battery.
“You’re not talking serial killer again?”
“Nope,” Mike said, topping off his bagel with a handful of red licorice sticks. “It’s a phenomenon called SSD. Sudden sniffers’ death. Lieutenant Peterson’s been all over these cases lately, he told me yesterday. Easy to buy the ingredients on the Web. Chloroform’s a central nervous system depressant. If it doesn’t kill you, inhaling it for the high will at least leave you dizzy and tired, with a crushing headache.”
“So you think Tina OD’d accidentally, trying to get tuned up for some kind of sexual encounter?” I asked. “I don’t know, Mike. She claimed the guy tried to kill her.”
“So maybe he did, if you can believe her at this point.”
“It’s the ‘tried to’ that stops me short. He was in there for hours. He certainly had the opportunity.”
“She said she played dead, Coop. If her breathing was shallow enough, maybe the perp thought he had killed her. Could be why he ran out of the place the way he did.”
“It still doesn’t explain his disguise,” I said.
“I’m just saying you should call her. You’re the hand holder. You’re the one who’s supposed to be so good at bonding with your victims.”
Mercer and I liked working with survivors of sexual assault, helping them recover from the trauma they had experienced, in addition to bringing the criminal to justice. Mike was used to the cold finality of death investigations. No victims with ambivalence about their attackers, no quirky personalities to soothe and stroke. Dead bodies and crime scenes might hold puzzles for pathologists and detectives, but unlike their living counterparts, they never lied.
Laura stood in the doorway with the documents. “Mattie just called. She’s going to jump in a cab as soon as possible. Shall I tell her to go right to the courtroom?”
“Good idea, Laura. Thanks.”
The buzzer on my telephone console rang as its red light flashed insistently. Paul Battaglia, the district attorney of New York County for more than twenty years, had a hotline to each of his bureau chiefs. He didn’t like to wait for answers to questions handed him by reporters, politicians, rivals, and concerned citizens.
“Yes, Paul?”
“I need ten minutes of your time,” Battaglia said. “The mayor’s looking for where I stand on that legislative proposal we discussed.”
“I’ll be over as soon as I finish an argument I’ve got in front of Judge Moffett.”
“I need you right now, Alexandra. I’m already late for City Hall. I don’t expect you to keep the mayor waiting.”
FOUR
Rose Malone, Battaglia’s executive assistant and my trusted friend, waved me into his suite without buzzing the intercom. Her lack of a cheerful greeting let me know that the district attorney hadn’t started the day in a good mood.
“Do I have a position on this Halloween business, Alexandra?” Battaglia had called me in to discuss a legislative proposal about sex offenders that had become a controversial piece of the city council’s agenda. He started walking from his desk to the large conference table at the rear end of his office as soon as he saw me cross the threshold. “Did I make up my mind about what we’re going to say?”
“Not as of the last time we discussed it.”
“Sit down,” he said, his teeth gripping the long unlit cigar in the middle of his mouth. “What is it, just a few weeks until Halloween?”
“Yes.”
“I guess the mayor is trying to grandstand here. Show that his balls are bigger than mine. What’s he up to?”
“I read the proposal. Half a dozen states and a lot of local authorities have been trying to place restrictions on registered sex offenders for just that one night a year,” I said. “Some communities are requiring them to attend four-or five-hour educational programs on Halloween. In Virginia, they’ve all got to report to their parole officers between four and eight p.m., so they’re not at home to answer the door when kids come trick-or-treating. That’s the model the mayor wants to adopt in the city.”
“What do I think of it?” Battaglia asked. He was the consummate politician and had enough confidence in his senior staff to let us participate in important decisions, even though he had a long memory for mistakes.
“Pretty useless.”
He lifted his glasses off his nose and rested them on top of his forehead. “Sexual predators are one of the major concerns in law enforcement. You’ve got a holiday here that offers a tantalizing chance for these perverts to have unsupervised contact with kids. The youngsters knock on the door, ask for some candy, and God knows what can happen to them.”
“It’s one night a year, boss. If the legislature puts some teeth in the laws we’ve already got, then maybe the police could actually monitor the offenders they’re supposed to be tracking.”
Battaglia rarely removed the cigar when he spoke, just stretching the corners of his mouth around it without slurring any of his words. “And the advocate groups? Where do they come down on this?”
“Not impressed. Most children are victimized by people they know and trust, not by strangers. This draft doesn’t even distinguish between pedophiles and perps who committed crimes against adults. You won’t get any heat from victims’ groups if you don’t support the proposal. Press for enough m
oney to track the registered offenders 24/7. That’s where the real problem is.”
Battaglia got up and removed his suit jacket from the back of the chair. That would serve as a dismissal. I stood up to leave the room.
“How about the flip side?” he asked.
“What would that be?”
“Well, that Halloween presents another danger for kids. Offenders could be dressed in costumes, too. Abducting teens or children from the street, or knocking on doors in some kind of disguise.”
“I’ll tell you, Paul, we haven’t seen any problems on Halloween over the years. Late October hasn’t been high season for sex crimes.”
“You’re not hanging me out to dry in front of the press, Alex, are you?”
I assumed Battaglia was joking, and I laughed as I started for the door. “I wouldn’t think of doing that until my pension vests, Paul.”
“I’m not kidding. I smell a setup over at City Hall.”
I turned to face him, and he removed the cigar from his mouth. “This brouhaha last night, Alex. Some guy broke into a girl’s apartment dressed up like a fireman, right?” he said. “How come you didn’t call me about it?”
“Well, there isn’t actually a case, Paul,” I said. His displeasure was visible in his scowl. I had irked him by neglecting to inform him about a matter that I’d miscalculated in importance, but which must have a link to a player in his political world.
“Somebody at City Hall seems to think otherwise. It’s all to do with disguises and assaults, isn’t it?”
“I wish I could tell you what happened, but the victim hasn’t been cooperative with us.”
“Get on it, Alex. Bring her in. Find out what this is about.”
It hadn’t occurred to me while I pleaded with her in the drab hallway outside her basement sublet the night before that Tina Barr had any high-powered clout. I wanted to know who had gotten to Battaglia on her behalf-or on the part of her mysterious assailant, which worried me more.
Lethal Legacy Page 3
