Deadfall

by Linda Fairstein

  “No autopsy. No official inquiry,” Prescott said. “You’re right. Only this time it was an arrow straight to the heart, and not birdshot.”

  “That takes real skill,” I said, shaking my head. “Shooting someone with a bow and arrow, I mean. Texas again?”

  “No. This time, Montana.”

  “So of those six worshippers of the goddess Diana who started the weekend together, one didn’t even make it off the preserve, and Paul Battaglia raises the death toll to two. Slim odds—two bull’s-eyes out of six,” I said. “I hope the other four have invested in bulletproof vests.”

  THIRTY-FOUR

  “Put some clothes on, Alexandra,” Prescott said. “I’d like you to come with us.”

  “Let me call Mike,” I said, standing my ground.

  “There’ll be time for that later. Just get dressed.”

  “Where are we going? It’s the middle of the night.”

  “It’s okay, Alex,” Jimmy North said. “I’ll come with you.”

  “Where?”

  I had done a complete three-sixty in my bare feet, trying to figure out who knew what, and why I was the last to be told.

  “Livingston, Montana,” Prescott said.

  “When do the covered wagons pull out?” I said. “You must be kidding me.”

  “That’s where the game preserve is. Big Sky country.”

  “Take Jaxon Stern. He’s got more wild cowboy in him than I do.”

  “I’m taking you, Alexandra. There’s a Challenger waiting for us at Westchester County Airport. Wheels up as soon as we get there,” he said. “We should be at Mission Field in Livingston in five hours. You’re the one I need.”

  “A Challenger?” I said. “Really? You feds live the life. I have to go through hoops to get office permission to take Amtrak to DC.”

  “I’ll explain, but you have to get a move on.”

  “And now you need me, James? That’s rich,” I said. “There’s something about this that doesn’t smell right.”

  I crossed my arms and waited for more of an explanation.

  “The people we have to talk to are in Montana, Alexandra,” Prescott said. “I can’t cherry-pick among them from long distance. I can’t try to figure out in the next hour who might have something to tell us and then realize I had the wrong witness. We have a unique opportunity to get to the site before anyone finds out what we’re up to. By the beginning of the week, word will be on the street. Someone will leak it.”

  “You’re right about that. You ought to go. Especially since Amy Battaglia told you the DA was out there working on a case.”

  “Hear me out,” Prescott said. “TARU moved as fast as they could on Mrs. Battaglia’s phone. The calls and texts on her device from the night of the murder were what made that assignment so urgent. Then they put her device aside until yesterday afternoon—which is when they went back to see what else was in her messages and hit this news.”

  “Run with it, James.”

  “We’ve got the member who brought Battaglia there as a guest,” Prescott said, “willing to take us to Livingston on the private plane, get the hunting guide to talk to us, dig down and find names of all the members—as well as any connections to the Order of Saint Hubertus.”

  “No one will notice you touch down on the small-town tarmac in his jet?”

  “They come and go all the time—hunters, fly-fishermen, movie star ranch owners. That’s the preferred mode of transportation for this crowd.”

  “Who is he?” I asked. “Who’s Battaglia’s friend? Why didn’t you tell me that first?”

  “You come with me now and I’ll introduce you.”

  “Do not play games with me, Skeeter,” I said, wagging a finger at him. “I’ve known that side of you for a very long time, and I don’t like it.”

  I turned my back on the US attorney.

  “Just step out of my way, Detective Tinsley,” I said, “so I can sleep off this intrusion.”

  “Twenty-four hours and we’re back here, Alexandra,” Prescott said.

  I was eyeball to eyeball with Kate Tinsley, who didn’t budge.

  “What I’m about to tell you stays in this room,” Prescott said, talking to Tinsley and North, as well as to me. “The name of Battaglia’s host.”

  I gave Prescott the courtesy of facing him. I was pretty sure I knew everyone on the DA’s Rolodex, so curiosity got the better of me.

  “Chidra Persaud,” he said.

  “Chidra?” I said, repeating the first name. “That’s a woman’s name.”

  “Yes,” Prescott said. “Do you know her?”

  “I’ve never heard of her, never heard Battaglia mention her,” I said. “What’s she doing at a billionaire boys’ club?”

  “She seems to have been the only woman playing in the sandbox with the big boys.”

  “Who is she?” I asked.

  “One of India’s most successful young entrepreneurs,” Prescott said. “Raised there and educated at Oxford. Eight years ago, she created a start-up that makes high-end clothing gear for sportswomen—safari to kitesurfing. Her company’s called Tiger Tail.”

  “Very high-end indeed,” I said. “I’ve seen her khakis at Bergdorf’s and Barneys. Classy stuff, quite overpriced. How old is she?”

  “Forty-one,” he said. “Just a couple of years older than you are.”

  I hated to tip my hand, but now I was intrigued.

  “What’s her connection to Battaglia?”

  “I don’t have the entire picture yet,” Prescott said. “I just learned about her at ten o’clock last evening, when TARU found cross-calls with her number on Amy Battaglia’s phone.”

  “Where was she?” I asked.

  “She’s got a penthouse in Tribeca.”

  “So she lives here?”

  I was untying the knot on my robe. I was going along for the ride, despite my desire not to give in to Prescott’s tactics.

  “Chidra Persaud, according to the team, has two homes in India, a flat in London, a house on Nantucket, and a ranch in McLeod, Montana.”

  “Battaglia,” I said. “She must have told you something about him.”

  “Persaud told me she was introduced to him just recently,” Prescott said. “She wanted help with a business problem she was having.”

  “What kind of problem?”

  “Ask her yourself, Alexandra. I haven’t had time to download her information. Don’t hold us up.”

  Kate Tinsley stepped aside. I went into the bathroom to brush my teeth. Things were moving too fast for me now. I looked through the bag Vickee had packed for me and put on a pair of jeans and a navy-blue turtleneck sweater.

  I grabbed a handful of toiletries and my ID and reentered the living room.

  “Who’s coming with me?” I asked.

  “Fisher and Frist,” Prescott said. “You’ve met them.”

  “I want a cop. I want someone from the NYPD,” I said, pointing at Jimmy North.

  “City cops don’t have any jurisdiction there, Alexandra,” he said, motioning me to follow him.

  “Neither did Battaglia,” I said, knowing that he must have been stepping on the toes of the feds when he made the trip to Montana. “Neither do I.”

  “But you’re useful,” he said, trying to be humorous. “You knew Battaglia so well, and you’ve got a jump on the conservation piece of this, on the exotic-animal angle.”

  “We fly out now,” I said, “and come back when?”

  “I expect we can get this all done today.”

  I picked up a couple of bottles of water from the coffee table. Prescott turned to one of the agents behind him, asking him to pull the car up in front of the cottage.

  “Does Ms. Persaud hunt?” I asked, pulling on my jacket.

  “It’s in the blood, I think. Her gr
andfather was a guide for tiger hunts in India,” Prescott said. “Led Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip on one during their visit in the sixties, when they were the guests of the maharaja of Jaipur. Persaud’s father was also in that business, so she grew up with a rifle in her hands, my short Google search suggests.”

  I saw headlights go on at the bottom of the driveway.

  “I guess with tigers facing extinction at home, Ms. Persaud had nowhere to go but out west,” I said. “After all, our bison are bouncing back, I hear. And they’re bigger than tigers, so harder for her to miss.”

  “Keep your temper under wraps for twenty-four hours, if you can. Your tongue, too,” Prescott said. “Let’s see where she leads us.”

  “Am I warm, James? Were they shooting buffalo? Maybe Wyoming kangaroos crossed over the state line?”

  “Not even close, Alexandra.”

  “Clue me in,” I said, as the car pulled up to the door.

  “They were hunting for sheep—”

  “Sheep? For Christ’s sakes,” I said, interrupting Prescott. “Cats and dogs will be next.”

  “Not domestic animals. Not that kind of sheep.”

  “Like that makes it better?” I asked.

  “Rocky Mountain bighorns,” Prescott said. “Chidra Persaud calls it the ultimate pursuit.”

  THIRTY-FIVE

  “Good morning. I’m Chidra Persaud.”

  The brown-skinned woman with luminous dark eyes and long straight hair got up from the leather seat—one of a dozen on the plane—to greet me when I boarded. She was dressed in a blazer and tan pants—from her own fashion line, I assumed. Her foundation and blush had been applied flawlessly.

  It was four A.M. when we boarded the sleek jet. I looked like I was a runaway from a psych facility—no makeup, snarled hair, sloppy clothes—stopped in my tracks by a cover girl from the latest issue of Town & Country.

  “Alex Cooper.”

  “Why don’t you sit across from me?” she said. “May I call you Alex?”

  “Sure.”

  “And call me Chidra,” she said. “Do you mind riding backwards?”

  The ivory leather cushions were so plush I didn’t think I’d notice which direction we were headed. “It’s business, Chidra. I’ll be wherever you want me to be.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “James, why don’t you sit there?”

  Persaud pointed at the other backward-facing seat across the way. It was such a narrow space that one could hardly call it an aisle.

  “Is it all right if the agents ride behind us, with my assistant?”

  “That’s fine,” Prescott said.

  We were three in the four front seats, and Persaud’s assistant—a young man—was in the grouping behind her back, with Fisher and Frist.

  The copilot stepped in from the cockpit to give the instructions to belt up and tell us the travel time. There was an attendant—a young Indian woman in traditional dress—who asked if we wanted coffee before takeoff. I wasn’t ready for my three cups of black joe quite yet.

  I had called Mike from the car, using James Prescott’s phone. He was as startled by the situation as I was, and didn’t like being excluded from the field trip.

  The copilot pulled up the steps and secured the cabin door. As soon as he did, the pilot steered the plane onto the short runway.

  “How long had you known Paul Battaglia?” I asked.

  Chidra put her finger to her lips, as though to shush me. “Let’s wait till we’re airborne. I can’t hear you over the sound of the engines.”

  She exuded confidence. Charm, too, but mostly she had a presence that suggested a woman who was supremely sure of herself.

  The plane lifted off—seemingly without effort. A few lights dotted the suburbs of northern Westchester and Connecticut as we banked and turned left over Long Island Sound, on our way across the middle of the country. But mostly, it was dark below and above us, whatever stars there were occluded by a gray haze.

  “You asked me something?” Persaud said, when we leveled off at altitude.

  “I’m interested in how long you knew Paul Battaglia, and how you met him.”

  “I’ve been aware of him for a very long time,” she said. “Through his work. Of course I’d shaken his hand at benefits and fund-raisers and the like, but he wouldn’t have remembered that.”

  It was a stock answer people gave all the time. I had expected better from her.

  “He actually had an eye for beautiful women, Chidra. I’m sure you would have caught his attention.”

  Now I was wondering about the fact that Battaglia hadn’t been wearing a wedding ring the night he was killed. Chidra Persaud was practically half the DA’s age—but she was entirely his type. She didn’t wear a wedding ring either.

  She readily accepted the compliment. “I didn’t meet him formally until six months ago, in the early spring,” she said. “Through my lawyer, actually. I believe he’s a former colleague of yours.”

  “Who would that be?”

  “Charles. Charles Swenson,” she said.

  “Good man,” Prescott said, accepting a glass of orange juice from the attendant.

  I didn’t know Swenson well. He’d been an early disciple of Paul Battaglia but left the office long before I’d joined the staff. He was a well-respected member of the white-collar-crime defense bar, who did most of his work in federal court.

  “Swenson helps you with your business dealings?” I asked.

  “My company has lawyers in-house, Alex. Charles helps me when problems bubble up from time to time.”

  I didn’t like weasel words. I preferred straightforward responses.

  “Were there bubbles lately, or something more tangible than that?” I asked. “Did the matter involve my office?”

  “Yes, it was the reason Charles introduced me to Paul Battaglia.”

  “Legal problems, is that what you mean?”

  “Yes.”

  “Of what nature?” I asked.

  “As you would imagine, it’s quite difficult to manage all the aspects of an international business,” Persaud said. “Most of our clothing is made in India, where I own several factories.”

  “Based there because of the cheap labor?” I asked, taking a stab at her—which I knew was unnecessary the moment the words came out of my mouth. I’d had a short, intense lesson in the global fashion world working on Wolf Savage’s death. It might prove useful today, but I didn’t need to step on her already.

  “No, Alex,” Persaud said. “Because India is my home, where I started the company. Because I wanted to employ people in areas of my country where industry is scarce.”

  “It must be very hard to oversee things with all the travel you do,” Prescott said, unlatching the lock that held his seat in takeoff and landing position, swiveling it to face us.

  “That’s necessary, of course,” she said. “I’m the face of the company, which is—as you certainly know, Alex—rare for a woman at this level of enterprise.”

  “Very impressive,” I said. “And then, you take time off for pleasure, like these hunting trips.”

  “They relax me. I need some release from the intensity of my work, just as I assume you do,” Persaud said. “I grew up with a Holland & Holland as my closest friend.”

  She must have noticed my puzzlement. I didn’t know what Holland & Holland was.

  “The world’s best gunmaker,” she said. “By appointment to Her Majesty, the Queen, and many royals before her. The first accessory I remember owning—long before jewelry and fancy shoes—is a .375 H & H Magnum, but I’ll get to that.”

  “Go on,” I said.

  “We’re growing so fast—in Asia, on the Arabian Peninsula, in Europe, and here in America—that I’ve tried to staff up my executive wing so I can have men and women all over the world who are capable
of covering my back, capable of thinking for me, capable of earning my trust.”

  I had forty lawyers in my unit, who stood to profit only by doing justice. I understood the qualities Chidra Persaud was seeking in professional colleagues.

  “What legal problems have you encountered?”

  She waited for the attendant to lift our trays and set our places with china and silverware, in anticipation of the breakfast service, before she spoke.

  “The British have a very complicated tax structure,” Persaud said, “especially for a foreigner doing business there. Charles Swenson says we’ll come out of this fine, but it’s important you know that my company is being investigated there, in the UK.”

  “On tax issues?”

  “There’s an allegation of fraud, actually,” she said, adding two sugars to the coffee that had been placed in front of her. “Corporate tax fraud.”

  “Here, also?” I asked, glancing at James before speaking again to her. “I’m surprised you two haven’t met before.”

  “Charles Swenson has guided my hand for years, in all sorts of legal matters,” Persaud said, managing a smile at each of us. “None of them setting us on the wrong side of the law.”

  I started sipping my first cup of coffee as soon as it was set down on my tray.

  “I met with him seven or eight months ago, in New York, at the suggestion of my legal team in London, to make sure he knew what was going on.”

  “Tax matters,” I said, “would be something for James’s office to deal with.”

  “Oh, no,” Persaud said. “I’m not facing any charges, any investigations in this country. In fact, I wanted Charles to know that I thought Tiger Tail had been targeted by thieves—that we were losing vast amounts of product between our factories and the shipments that arrived in our foreign markets. That’s far more important to me than bogus tax issues.”

  “Ah, so you think you’ve been the victim of a crime,” I said, hoping my facetious tone wasn’t clear to her.

  “Precisely that, on a very large scale. The shippers we’ve been dealing with or some mob operation unloading our product at the docks, from container ships,” she said. “I can’t put my finger on where the problem is yet, but I’m sure trained investigators can help.”