I tried to get the plate number of the SUV as Shipley and his crew sped off. I couldn’t see the first three figures, but I was pretty sure it ended in C78.
I checked my phone for messages but there were none, so I made my way back upstairs.
“Sorry to break away, Lee. Last thing we needed was Hal Shipley snooping around in here.”
The young medical examiner seemed to be wrapping up her work while Lee Petrie continued to take pictures of Wynan Wilson, who’d been turned onto his back.
“Amen to that,” Petrie said.
The exit wound was as large as I’d expected it to be, irregular in shape and bloody. In all likelihood, the bullet had exploded within the brain tissue and surrounding muscle as it passed through Wilson’s head.
“What do you think, Doc?” I asked. “The muzzle was directly against Wilson’s skin, wouldn’t you say? Jammed tight in there, wasn’t it?”
I had never seen this pathologist before. She seemed tentative and nervous when she answered me. “Probably so.”
There was no “probably” about it. Last thing I needed on this case was a neophyte practicing her art on a high-profile murder.
“It’s a hard-contact wound,” I said. “Perforating. You saw the searing, the abrasion ring, didn’t you? The autopsy’s going to show soot particles and unburnt powder.”
“Lay off, Mike,” Lee said. “The autopsy will tell her whatever it does.”
“You know anything about bullet size yet?” I asked, directing the question to the ME.
“Don’t mind him, Doc. He’s always impatient,” Lee said. “I dug the bullet out of the wall, Mike. Show it to you when I’m done. Thirty-eight caliber. Nothing special. Check the crap all over that pillow in the corner.”
“Gray matter? Whatever Wilson had left for a brain?”
“Nah. Killer probably held it over the gun to try to muffle the sound. Residue and stuff. The lab will get it. The brains and bone are on that pillow on the left side,” Lee said, pointing it out to me. “And all over the wall. The slug got glued to the plaster underneath some cranium fragments, that flap of skin you saw, and a lock of hair.”
“Lucky for the lady next door. Could have taken one behind the ear while she was heating up her teapot,” I said. “You want to talk about angle of yaw?”
The medical examiner looked like I had impaled her foot on the carpet with a sharp question.
“He’s testing you, Doc,” Lee said. “Mike’s not one of the world’s great feminists.”
“Everybody’s got to prove themselves, okay?”
“Angle of yaw, my ass. You’re playing with her.”
“No offense taken. I think I’m done,” she said.
“I’m really interested in the angle, Doc. No kidding. I mean, the shooter was right-handed, don’t you figure?”
“Probably so.”
“And the deceased was belly down, his head slightly to the side. So you’d have to be a contortionist to wedge the gun against the base of his skull just by—I don’t know—just by kneeling alongside the bed. Couldn’t do it and get this perfect result.”
“I can speculate all you’d like, Detective,” the pathologist said. “But I’d much prefer to have this conversation after I’ve done the postmortem.”
“You made a record of those marks on both sides of the gut, didn’t you?”
“Sure did,” she said, taking off her paper gown and vinyl gloves and closing her tool bag.
“Can we talk about them?”
“Day after tomorrow,” she said. “My place. You’ll be there for the autopsy?”
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” I said. “Have you got a car downstairs?”
“Yes.”
“My partner will walk you down,” Lee said, continuing to photograph Wynan Wilson from the least-flattering angles, his bottle of cheap liquor just out of reach when he needed it most.
“The van is outside,” she said. “Okay if I tell the men they can remove the body?”
“Fine with me,” Lee said.
We said our good nights and she was on her way.
“You think I need to do anything else here?” Lee asked. “Photos of the wall enough?”
“If I were you, I’d send some men back tomorrow to take down this four-foot square of plaster. We’re going front-page New York Post.”
“Don’t make me laugh,” Lee said. “Poor old fool gets offed by a greedy hooker. It’s nobody’s news.”
“More like Rubout for Randy Rev’s Cash Stash running on top of the fold. You watch. Mix Shipley into this and there’s going to be double trouble. Maybe triple.”
“You want to count the cash here or at the property clerk’s office?” Lee asked.
“Wait till your partner gets back. Safer with three of us, especially since he doesn’t know me. I can count it again when I voucher it with the clerk.”
Lee was running through his mental checklist of tasks.
“You know what that asshole just did?” I said. “Shipley. I mean Hal Shipley, not the doc.”
“What?”
“He didn’t like being questioned about the murder, so he texted the mayor’s chief of staff. Thinks he can throw me off the case.”
“Who’s the chief of staff? You know the guy?”
“Nope. It’s not a guy. It’s that cop-hating broad who’s a pal of the mayor’s crackpot wife.”
The new mayor was despised by the rank and file of the department. He had campaigned with a priority plan to end the long-established stop-and-frisk policy that had saved countless lives and thwarted scores of violent crimes. And his first official decision was to order his counsel to settle a civil lawsuit by four perps who had rampaged through Times Square a decade earlier, assaulting half a dozen citizens, their conviction vacated because of a jailhouse confession by a psychopath codefendant. The settlement came at an outrageous cost to voters, even though smart money still favored the group’s guilt, and the mayor’s own appointed city lawyer—a Hal Shipley disciple—had declared no signs of any law enforcement wrongdoing.
“I know who you mean. Shitslinger. Ronnie Shitslinger.”
“You’re cracking me up, Lee. You’ll have Wynan laughing in a minute,” I said, snapping my finger. “Very close. It’s a name like that. It’s Ronnie Sonlinger.”
“Shitslinger is what she is, Mike. You know she lives with a convicted killer?”
“That’s been all over the papers. That and the fact that he constantly tweets nasty anti-cop sentiments. The commissioner won’t be backing this up. The broad should be fired.”
“Yeah, but then Mrs. Mayor won’t have anybody compatible to pass her time with.”
I bit my lip to stop from laughing out loud.
“I’m truthing you, Mike. She and Sonlinger spend their time together ragging on the cops who keep them safe.”
We were both scouring Wilson’s digs for any other signs of relevant evidence before closing off the apartment.
“He’s a one-term mayor,” I said. “Save your energy.”
“Clawed his way in this first time. Reporters said he won by a landslide, but the fact is nobody turned out to vote. Like, nobody at all. Sixty percent of twenty pathetic votes is still only, like, twelve votes. Nobody cared.”
“They seem to care now,” I said.
As unpopular as the mayor had been since taking office, his wife was viewed as an irrational nuisance.
“There’ll be a ruckus if she tries to dump you, Mike.”
“Commissioner Scully won’t have any of that, not that anybody would give a damn.”
Keith Scully and I had a long history together, most of it good.
“Shipley and this mayor go way back, don’t they? Shipley got Harlem to turn out for him,” Lee said as he packed up his camera equipment. “Alex hates him, too. The reverend, I mean.”
“She won’t talk about it.”
“Yeah, but I was there, Mike. I heard him.”
I looked up. “Shipley?”
“Yeah. It was her third big case. Third or fourth, in the courthouse across the street from her office.”
Paul Battaglia had assigned Coop to the pioneering Special Victims Unit of the DA’s office at a surprisingly early point in her career. Her predecessor had resigned abruptly, and he had come to rely on that rare combination of skill and compassion that hallmarked her career.
“Came to be, Battaglia wouldn’t let her walk through the crowd without a bodyguard,” Lee said. “Boy, did she fight that.”
“But she needed it, didn’t she?”
“Yeah, Alex needed it all right. Because Shipley brought himself—and probably bought himself, too—a whole posse of rabble-rousers. The perp on trial was one of his faithful, but he just happened to be a serial rapist. Best way to take the attention off the bad guy was to harass Alex Cooper. Day and night, on the street in front of the courthouse, even in the hallway of the building. It was just after Shipley’s Twainey Bowler fiasco.”
“The false accusation a decade ago?” I said. “I know he scorched Coop that time.”
“Scorched? He flat out tried to torpedo her. Made it personal, Mike. Real personal. Shouted ‘Jew bitch!’ every time she passed through the crowd.”
I was pissed off. I had known Coop then, but not well. I was sorry I hadn’t punched Shipley in the face fifteen minutes ago. Sorry I hadn’t shoved his fat face through the panes of glass in the vestibule window.
“Nobody spoke out, did they?”
“The only one with the balls to take the reverend on was Alex herself,” Lee said. “But Battaglia gagged her. Told her to take the high road.”
“Fuck the high road,” I said. “It’s usually a dead end.”
“So how come nobody takes Shipley on? Nobody ever calls him out?” Lee was marking each piece of evidence he had bagged so I could take it to the lab for analysis.
“They’re all cowards. Gutless wonders.”
“He’s on the steps of City Hall when the mayor gets sworn in. Think I’d be there if I hadn’t paid taxes in a decade? Think you’d be invited if you had invented some fake crime ten years back and made some poor law enforcement guy lose his job? And never apologize for or explain it, even a decade later? You and me, we’d be walking a beat in Coney Island. News jocks even use him now as a talking head.”
“Last thing I’d ever want to be.”
“Chris Matthews? He plays hardball with everybody else but treats Shipley like he’s the next pope. Joe Scarborough? Not shy about going after corrupt politicians, but Shipley’s got a permanent pass. Imus? Yeah, Imus has no use for him. He’s the only one.”
“When I walk into a room and hear Shipley’s voice on the tube, pontificating about justice, I just want to throw a tire iron at the screen.”
“Hold the thought. Your day will come. Rumor has it he’s getting his own TV show,” Lee said. “Like on one of those cable channels that don’t care if ratings are in the toilet.”
“He’s had his own show for years, hasn’t he?” I asked. “The Price Is Right. That’s Hal Shipley’s show. The price is always right for Hal to play.”
“Nobody takes him on, like I say.” Lee Petrie was just about ready to go.
“I think his luck is about to change, Lee. Coop has the fortitude to take him on. And it looks at the moment like all roads lead to Hal Shipley,” I said, thinking about the district attorney and his connections to the reverend. “Coop’ll thrive on this one. She’d like nothing better than to put his guilty ass behind bars.”
“What did Angela Wilson tell you? What did Shipley say? You’re gonna jail him for what?”
“Aiding and abetting a homicide, Lee. That’s where I’m going with this, before the feds ever get out of the starting blocks on their tax case,” I said. “We’re going to nail the fat fuck for murder.”
THIRTEEN
It was just before seven A.M. when I reached the lab. The ME had taken samples of blood, skin, and hair along with her to the morgue, so the routine testing and any forensic work she might order would get under way immediately.
I had stopped at the property clerk’s office to re-count the money that Lee Petrie, his partner, and I had been through once at Wilson’s apartment. Twenty-seven thousand large, all under the roach-infested sink. I got permission to take the bills with me to the lab instead of vouchering them and letting them sit on a shelf collecting dust, in case we might be lucky enough to get touch DNA off any of them.
I had the bullet that killed Wynan Wilson for the ballistics examiners. No spent shell—the shooter had been cool enough to pick up her debris. No gun yet, but that could be just a matter of time. I had toiletries that either Wilson or Keesh might have used, and kitchen utensils that might yield results about the most recent visitors. Saliva from the highball glasses in the sink could tell us whether the deceased had a drinking partner.
Once I’d signed off on everything, I walked outside to my car. It was a nippy fall morning. I started the engine and then checked my phone for messages.
Nothing from Lieutenant Peterson, so nobody at City Hall had dropped a dime on me. I was right about Shipley’s bluff.
And nothing from Coop.
She didn’t want to bother me at a crime scene and expose me to the ribbing of the other guys, who were comically ruthless at the news that Coop and I had hooked up. I didn’t need to jack her up, either, before her meeting with Battaglia about the computer mess created by Antonio Estevez and his bride.
Garden-variety domestic, I wrote to her in an e-mail. She’d get the irony in that once I told her the full story. It’s how law enforcement referred to O. J. Simpson’s murder of Nicole, until an incompetent judge and an overhyped media frenzy screwed the case up. Perp in flight, but you’ll like my idea to smoke her out.
I sent her a second e-mail. Assign a star to handle this one, will you? Someone who can withstand a little heat from the New York Times.
Coop would want this case for herself, but with Shipley tied up in the investigation—if not in the actual crime—she would recuse herself. I knew that. But I also knew that she would pull the strings from behind the scenes and that nothing would derail her from outing the truth about the reverend, even when political pressure fanned the flames.
The last e-mail was personal, to separate it from any discovery motions that would put our correspondence into play. Far-fetched, but after Estevez, worth doing.
Hey, Coop. Going home for a few hours’ sleep. The weekend will feel really good. So will you.
FOURTEEN
“Mike? It’s Catherine. Am I getting you at a bad time?”
I caught about three hours’ sleep before my cell phone buzzed. I sat up on the side of the bed to sound alive for the conversation.
“Not a problem. Coop gave the Wilson case to you?” I asked. “What does an adult say that sounds as good as ‘awesome!’? You are so gonna love what I’ve got—”
“I don’t know anything about the case. That’s not why I’m calling.”
“What’s up? What do you need?”
“I’m looking for Alex,” she said.
I checked my watch. It was almost noon. “She’s with big, bad Battaglia. Taking the weight for the Estevez leak. She wasn’t looking forward to the meet, but that’s what was looming when I left the shindig.”
“The DA didn’t get in until almost eleven. He called over for her to come see him right away,” Catherine said. “Laura hasn’t heard from her yet and the boss is steaming.”
I laughed. “You must be low broad on the totem pole. You’ve been assigned to ask me to look under the covers and see if she’s hiding in bed with me? Doing the deed with—?”
“I’m sorry, Mike. The last thing I want to do is intrude on your personal life. She’s not answering her phone, her texts, her e-mails. I figured you might be at her place and—”
“I’m home. Which is where I live, in case anybody in your public information office needs to know. The high-rent district gives me agita.
Grown men walking their Yorkies and cockapoos look at me like Stanley Kowalski just moved into the building.”
“You’ve got a mighty inferiority complex, Detective Chapman. I’ll have you over to our digs. We’ve got lots of manlier dogs there. You’d be the George Clooney of the black Lab–walking set,” Catherine said. “Now, would you mind trying to raise her up for me?”
“Sure. Sure thing, Catherine.”
I popped open my in-box to look for return messages from Coop. There were none. I pressed the button to dial her cell, which went straight to voice mail.
“Stop pouting, blondie. I don’t want to have to send out the Mounties for you. Call me.”
My apartment—the coffin, as I liked to call it—was smaller than Wynan Wilson’s. I walked past three days of dirty clothes hanging from the back of a chair into the bathroom.
I turned on the shower and stepped in. I like cool water—Coop calls it cold. It’s bracing and better for me than the tons of caffeine I ingest every day to restart my engines. Besides, I don’t have the patience to wait for it to get to its maximum lukewarm high temperature.
I wrapped a clean towel around my waist, grabbed my razor to go over my face, and picked up the phone. Nothing back from Coop.
I hit Catherine’s number and she answered instantly. “No sign of life,” I said. “We’ll just have to wait her out. What time did your party break up?”
“She didn’t leave the restaurant all that long after you did. And she was testy.”
“Welcome to my world,” I said. “I get testy from her in spades. What do you mean?”
“She was all excited about Tanner’s arrest. Like one of the guys said when she walked into Primola, first time she’d be able to sleep like a baby.”
“Could be that. Could be she got wrecked and just turned off her phone, let herself relax with Tanner in custody.”
“She didn’t drink all that much. She wasn’t wrecked.”
“You’re not telling me you’re worried, are you?” I asked.
“Not about Alex,” Catherine said. “I’m actually worried for her, Mike. Afraid her temper has gotten the better of her this time.”
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