The Kills

by Fairstein, Linda

  “Do you have DNA in any of those?”

  “In all of them, actually. Our own databank linked them to each other after the exhumation and examination.”

  “Has the profile been uploaded to Albany and CODIS?”

  The medical examiner’s local databank could match unsolved cases to each other because of evidence taken from a crime scene or victim’s body. The profile would be sent on to Albany, and a computer would scan the results against convicted offenders in the New York State databank, who were mandated, according to category of criminal offense, to submit blood or saliva samples for the profiling of their DNA. CODIS, the Combined DNA Identification System, was capable of linking unsolved cases in one jurisdiction to a burglar, rapist, or killer anywhere in the entire country.

  “Four months ago. We’re still waiting for a cold hit.”

  “But there’s no DNA in this case?”

  “Not on the body. I told Chapman to go back and swab the doorknobs and some of the surfaces the killer may have touched.”

  The technology of this science had become so sophisticated that a serologist could develop a genetic fingerprint from the mere sloughing off of skin cells onto most objects that had been handled during the crime, called touch evidence.

  “But you don’t think this is your senior citizen serial killer?”

  “Too many distinctions, Alex. The pillow was undoubtedly the weapon. That’s certainly a similarity. We’ll work it up for amylase,” Kirschner said, referring to an enzyme found in saliva that might tell us whether the fabric had been held over Ransome’s mouth to kill her.

  “You’re bothered by the fact there’s no sexual assault, I guess,” Mercer said. “What if he was interrupted? What if he meant to do that, but got distracted because, unlike the others, there really were so many possessions here that he ransacked the place. Maybe he thought someone heard noise and was coming to check on Queenie.”

  Kirschner removed a pipe from his rear pants pocket and raised it to his mouth.

  He tamped tobacco in, lit the match, and filled the tiny room with the welcome aroma of a sweet, smooth blend that temporarily masked the smell of death.

  “Possible, of course,” he said. “But all the other crime scenes were in such perfect order. Chapman left these here for you two to study. Look again. Take your time.”

  The eight-by-ten color crime scene shots of the Ransome apartment had been developed immediately and hand-delivered to Kirschner.

  “You’ve really got juice,” I said. “I’d be lucky to get these in a week.”

  “Don’t be jealous. It’s not a full set. I just get a few body shots to get me started.”

  There was McQueen Ransome, lying on her back on the bed. Her housecoat was pulled up to expose her genitals, with panties and what appeared to be thick support hose rolled up in a ball beside her. Her head was turned to the side, faded hazel eyes fixed in a vacant gaze.

  “Somebody sure wants to make the point about the sexual aspect of this,” Mercer said. “Nothing like this in the Park Plaza cases?”

  Kirschner shook his head. “No. Unless your killer read about the exhumations in the tabloids and decided to change his signature.”

  Queenie’s legs were spread apart, twisted slightly, with one knee bent beneath the other in what seemed to be almost an obscene pose.

  Next to the bed was a metal walker, and I remembered Mike telling me the woman had suffered a stroke several years ago.

  I strained to study her head and hands more closely.

  “Are those scratches on her face?”

  “Yes, Alex. By her own hand. Typical in asphyxia. She was trying to clear the airways of the obstruction, so she could breathe. Free her mouth from whatever was covering it. Probably the pillow.”

  “And the killer?” I asked.

  “Several of her nails are broken. We might get lucky and come up with something other than her own blood in the cuttings. He might have some marks on his face or hands, if she had the strength to swipe at him.”

  The six photographs Kirschner had were all of Queenie’s body, taken from every position in the room. I thought of the indignity of this kind of death, in which dozens of strangers had entered her home to catalog and ferret through her meager accumulation of possessions. A young medical examiner on duty and his assistant, cops in uniform to secure the scene, a crew from the Crime Scene Unit to take photographs and dust for fingerprints, and a team of detectives who would try to find a motive for this murder-and a killer.

  I thought ahead to the scores more who would pore over these photographs in the months to come. Colleagues of mine would study them as they worked up the case for trial, forensic consultants would enlarge them to look again for any kind of trace material or significant detail, and psychologists would struggle with them as they searched for an understanding of the murderer’s mind. Eventually, when Chapman and his team caught the man-and I needed, now, to believe that they would-a defense attorney would be entitled to a complete set of pictures, too, and even the killer himself could revisit the scene of his pathetic triumph in the privacy of his jail cell.

  “The person who did this wants you to think ‘sadistic sex murderer,’ Alex,” Kirschner said to me. “I suggest you broaden the search. Some other motive.”

  Mercer and I had handled cases in which the appearance of a rape had been staged. Once we’d recognized that fact we’d had to find another reason-the real reason-for the crime to have occurred. Here was an elderly woman, partially disabled, living on welfare in a Harlem tenement. Her death was not a matter of academic rivalry, professional jealousy, domestic rage, or a fancy jewel heist gone violent.

  “It’ll be interesting to see what the rest of the photos show,” said Mercer. “Everything within sight has been turned topsy-turvy.”

  On the side of the bed was a nightstand. The shallow bowl with the victim’s dental plate had been overturned. Both shelves had been emptied and their contents spilled on the floor. The edge of the dresser was in view, and each of the three drawers had been dumped out and spread across the floor.

  “Is she wearing any rings or bracelets?” I picked up another photo and looked again at McQueen Ransome’s wrinkled hands.

  “She wasn’t admitted with anything,” Kirschner said.

  Mercer checked the pictures taken from other angles and agreed there was not even a wedding band on her finger.

  “I’ll have to ask Mike whether she had any items of value in the apartment, but it sure doesn’t look like it, from these shots,” I said.

  “Dr. K, have you got a magnifying glass?” Mercer asked.

  Kirschner left the room for thirty seconds and returned with one.

  “Looks like we have some homework to do. She doesn’t seem to have much here except junk, but maybe some of her acquaintances know things about her background that can help us,” Mercer said.

  “What do you see?” I asked.

  “Ever hear of James Van Derzee?”

  Both Kirschner and I nodded. “Harlem Renaissance,” the medical examiner said. “One of the great African-American photographers.”

  “Look at that,” Mercer said, passing the magnifier over to me. “Check out the photograph over the headboard of the bed, the words at the bottom.”

  I picked up the glossy image that Mercer had been studying. The photo had been taken by a cop standing at the foot of the bed, so it provided a lengthwise view of the victim’s body. Directly above her head was a black-and-white portrait that hung on the wall. Only two-thirds of it was captured in the crime scene shot. The model’s head was out of range.

  In the lower right corner was an inscription, which I squinted to read: For Queenie-from her royal subject, James Van Derzee. 1938.

  “Now look up,” Mercer said.

  I didn’t need the magnifying glass to see the chilling irony. The exquisitely voluptuous nude body of the young McQueen Ransome was hanging above her corpse, which had been positioned to mimic an identical pose.

/>   9

  Mercer left me at my apartment at nine-thirty. I dropped my mail and files on the table in my entryway and fished Nancy Taggart’s home number out of my pocketbook.

  I had waited to call her, certain she would know about the disappearance of Dulles Tripping and his foster mother.

  “Ms. Taggart? It’s Alex Cooper.”

  “Yes?” It was more of a question than an acknowledgment.

  “I know that Judge Moffett asked his law secretary to call you about having Dulles in his chambers late tomorrow afternoon.”

  “She did.”

  “It’s not going to be a problem, is it?” I asked.

  Taggart hesitated. “I don’t expect so.”

  “Do you know where the boy is tonight?”

  “Look, Ms. Cooper. I don’t have to answer any of your questions. You know that.”

  “That’s certainly true. I just wanted to make sure you knew that the foster mother called me today, to-”

  Taggart snapped at me, “When? What did she want?”

  “It would be awfully juvenile of me,” I said, “to tell you that I didn’t have to answer any of your questions, wouldn’t it? I assume you have the same concerns for Dulles’s well-being that I do.”

  There was silence. Taggart obviously wasn’t willing to concede that I was interested in anything but a prosecutorial victory.

  I tried again. “I don’t know the foster mother’s name,” I said, thinking that would reassure Taggart. “But she sounded frantic when she spoke with my assistant, telling us she was taking the boy to ‘a safer place.’”

  “I think she panicked for no good reason at all,” said the foundling hospital’s lawyer. “There’s nothing distinctive-looking about Andrew Tripping. I think this is much ado about nonsense.”

  “Is that what you’d like me to put on the record in the morning?”

  “I’d advise you not to bring this up with the judge until I get to court, Ms. Cooper. His secretary told me to come at four o’clock, after school. I intend for us to be there.”

  “But now you know Dulles won’t even be going to school.”

  “I have every reason to believe the foster mother-who is very reliable-will contact me first thing tomorrow and we can follow the plan that Judge Moffett wants.”

  “Look,” I said, trying to reassure the woman. “All you need to do is say the word and the police will help you find them. We can trace the phone call, we can work with the principal. I promise I won’t use that opportunity to talk to the boy. If there’s a chance he’s in more danger, then the police should be the ones-”

  “Don’t you think there’s been enough damage done with the police dragging the child’s father out of their apartment in handcuffs? In keeping the father on Rikers for more than a week? For splitting up the family? Let’s leave the police out of it this time,” Taggart said.

  “Then I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon, unless you need help from my assistant during the day.”

  I hung up the phone and walked into the kitchen, turning on the light to see just how bare the cupboard was. There was a delicious slab of a smooth p��t��, mousse de canard, in the refrigerator, left over from my weekend purchases. I scrounged for some crackers and a few cornichons for garnish, poured a Diet Coke, and headed to the den to try to unwind before my last review of the morning’s presentation.

  The phone rang before I sat down on the sofa. “I was about to give up on you,” Jake said. “Thought you’d be home early. I’ve already left three messages.”

  “I haven’t even been in the bedroom to pick them up. I’m just sitting down to dinner,” I said, describing my meal to him.

  “Doesn’t sound like enough to keep body and soul together. I’ll have to make up for that tomorrow night.”

  “What’s all the noise in the background?” I asked.

  “It’s the party at the British embassy I told you about. They’ve got all the Washington correspondents here, sort of an annual meet-the-press deal. Dinner and dancing, but it’s about to break up.”

  Who’s your date?is what I really wanted to ask Jake, but under our new arrangement, we were both free to spend time with other people if we were not available, since our jobs interfered with our personal lives so frequently. Instead, I told him I couldn’t wait to see him and tried to believe it when he whispered that he loved me into the telephone.

  I dialed my best friend and former college roommate, Nina Baum, who lived in California. “Great timing. You just got me coming in the door.”

  I could hear her four-year-old son screeching in delight at her arrival. “I’ll let you go. Call me over the weekend.”

  “You sound flat, Alex. What’s going on?”

  No one on earth knew me better than Nina. We had leaned on each other through every good time and bad in each other’s lives. I told her what had happened to my case, how depressing it was to see the photos of Queenie at the morgue, and how jealous I was to think of Jake at a party with someone else.

  “You’ve heard me on this subject, Alex.” Nina was not keen on Jake Tyler. She had adored Adam Nyman, the medical student I’d met during my law school days at Virginia. She had mourned with me when he had been killed in a car wreck on his way to our wedding on Martha’s Vineyard, and she had helped me throughout my slow emergence from the black hole into which I sunk after absorbing the news of Adam’s death.

  In the years since that tragedy, I had never let myself get as close to anyone as I had to Jake, only to find that my dearest friend, whom I trusted implicitly, thought he was too superficial and self-involved for me.

  “Try your damn case, will you?” Nina said. “You want to know what time Jake gets home tonight? Forget it. You want to know what whoever she is he settled for in your absence was wearing to the party? Trust me, you would never have bought the rag in the first place. You want to know how much she knows about you? If she isn’t sticking pins in a tall, blonde, mud-wrestling voodoo doll who thrives on competition by this time, she ought to go out and buy one immediately. Speak to you on Saturday. I’ve got to go feed Little Precious.”

  I laughed at Nina’s nickname for her son and put down the phone.

  When I finished my snack, I spread all the case papers out on my desk. I had outlined an opening statement, and now took half an hour to reduce it to an abbreviated list of bullet points. I smiled as I thought back to my first felony trial, when I’d stood before the jurors with a painstakingly detailed speech, written in essay form, of which I’d read every word. Midway through, the judge interrupted and wiggled his finger at me, asking me to approach. “Miss Cooper, this isn’t a book report. Put down those pages and talk to the people before you lose them.”

  I had learned to abandon the crutch of too many notes and simply sketch out the main points I needed to make. The advantage of vertical prosecution-of working a case from the moment of the first police report up to the verdict-was that we knew the facts cold and could proceed without any notes or outlines.

  In the morning I would spend one last hour with Paige Vallis, steadying her before her difficult day on the witness stand. I arranged all the questions I would ask her and made a list of the items I would ask the court to premark for identification, to avoid delay in the presence of the jury.

  By midnight I had undressed and turned out the light, but the adrenaline that fueled my courtroom rhythm made a good night’s sleep impossible. At six o’clock I got up and showered. Blow-drying my hair, I looked at my reflection in the mirror and wondered how long it would be before the dark circles that frequently took up residence beneath my eyes during a trial would reappear.

  I finished dressing and dabbed some perfume on my wrists and behind my ears. I called a car service and went down to the lobby to wait for the sedan to take me to the office, and I was at the coffee cart at the building entrance before seven-thirty.

  My car was still there, so the first call was to AAA, to tow it to my repair shop and replace the two tires. Then I settl
ed down to the business on my desk until Mercer arrived with Paige Vallis almost an hour later.

  I closed my door to give us more privacy. She didn’t need to go over the facts again. The events of March 6 were indelibly etched in her mind’s eye. I knew that if I questioned her about them now, it would heighten her state of nervousness, as well as take the emotional edge off the presentation she would make to the jury. Instead, we talked about what I thought the pace of the trial would be and when we might expect to go to verdict.

  “Andrew’s lawyer?” Paige asked.

  “Robelon. Peter Robelon. What about him?”

  “Do you have any better sense of what he’s going to do to me?”

  We had been over this countless times, and Paige didn’t like it better than any other witness. When the assailant in a sexual assault case was a stranger, the defense did not have to attack the victim. They could acknowledge that a vicious crime had occurred, and suggest that the woman was tragically mistaken in her identification of the defendant. Poor lighting, little opportunity to see his face clearly, and general hysteria were the traditional arguments against a reliable identification by a rape victim. All of that changed when DNA technology replaced the survivor’s visual memory as the means of confirming who her attacker had been.

  But it was terribly different when a woman was assaulted by someone known to her-a friend, a coworker, a lover, or an ex-boyfriend. More than 80 percent of sexual assaults occurred between people who knew each other, so identification was not the issue at trial. Yet these victims were far more likely to have their credibility attacked in the courtroom.

  Mercer was standing beside his witness, removing the lids on the cardboard coffee containers he had brought for each of us. “It’s like Alex has been telling you all along, Paige. Robelon can only go one way in this case. He can’t say it never happened and that you’re making this whole thing up. The presence of Tripping’s DNA makes that impossible.”

  “So it’s that I consented? That I’m lying about this, right?”

  I nodded my head.