Hell Gate (15 page)

“We do have the best team, don’t you think? We get to add Sarah, who’ll be back from maternity leave in another three weeks,” I said, referring to the unit’s deputy. “She’ll keep all the daily perverts under control. Can’t wait for that.”

“What’s Chapman up to?”

“Back at the morgue for more autopsies. They’re starting with the third woman—the one who jumped in after her brother. They’re going to see if he can ID the two Jane Does from last night as well. It would be good to know who they are, be able to find their families back home.”

The heavy door creaked open as I was crumpling my second coffee cup. I threw it in the trash can before glancing over my shoulder.

“Oh, no. What is it they do to keep vampires away?” I said to Nan, groaning as I saw Lem Howell in the doorway.

“Time for me to get back to my office,” Nan said.

“Not yet.” I hoped she could see the desperation in my look. “Sit right down, please.”

I didn’t want to be alone with Lem.

“Good morning, ladies,” he said, slicking back his pomaded hair and unbuttoning his overcoat.

“I’m about to get all the blood I’ve got left sucked out of me, Nan. Mr. Triplicate doesn’t seem to understand that he is unwelcome, unwanted, and unwise to disturb us at this particular moment.”

“Would you mind very much stepping out for a few minutes, Nan? Ms. Cooper seems to have forgotten her manners in dealing with an old friend.”

“Nan’s not going anywhere, Lem. C’mon. You have something to say, let’s get it done.”

Lem walked over behind my chair and put his hands on my shoulders, kneading them gently. “You shouldn’t start the New Year all stressed out, Alexandra. I just need to chat with you for a few minutes.”

Nan stood her ground and kept her poker face.

“What have I told you, Nan?” I asked. “Talented, tactile, and, oh, so transparent. That’s what you are, Lem.”

I swept his hands off my shoulders and stood up, walking to the end of the table.

“Maybe I taught you too well.”

“Anything you want to say, you say in front of Nan. We’re working together on this.”

“And by
this,
which case do you mean, Alexandra? Is Nan helping you out on Karim Griffin?” He knew full well we weren’t holed up together working on a cold-case serial rapist this morning.

“Well, if Karim’s time is what you want to discuss, I’m happy to talk deal.”

Lem had one hand in the pocket of his coat and the other across his chest inside his jacket, Napoleonic style. The Griffin case had taken a back burner in both our professional priorities.

“Don’t you wish real life was like a television show? The big case comes along and everything else stands still for the detective and prosecutor? Yesterday’s perps are suspended in time, the victims stop calling to ask for updates and orders of protection, new crimes don’t happen every day, and the piles on your desk simply disappear?” I was talking to Nan, mocking Lem’s advice in light of our second encounter last evening. “She and I are partners on everything, Lem. Tell us what you want.”

He took a few steps in my direction, then pulled out a chair and sat down. He had put Nan out of range of his eye contact, isolating me at the end of the room.

“What have you done with Salma Zunega, Alexandra?”

“What have
I
done with her?

“Where is she?”

I didn’t answer.

“I told you yesterday that I was meeting with her this morning. Now, it would be just like you to have spirited her out of her home before I had that opportunity.”

“I don’t know where Salma is, Lem. Truly, I don’t.”

He was focused on me like a laser beam. “Nobody else knew about our appointment. I trusted you, Alex.”

“With good reason. I’m sure your client knew about it. And I’m sure his father knew you were meeting with her too.”

Lem leaned in at me with one elbow on the table. “You had no business interfering with Salma.”

“She kept calling the cops yesterday. I was worried about her. Worried for her life. That used to be a good reason, Lem, when you were breaking me in to be a compassionate prosecutor.”

“She didn’t make those calls to nine-one-one.”

“Now, how would you know that? Your client wasn’t supposed to be in contact with her.”

“Ethan wasn’t in contact with her. I was. She talked to me.”

“You’re the one who told me she was crazy, Lem. Now, why would you believe her story if the nine-one-one tapes show in a black-and-white printout that the calls were made from her telephone? You can’t have it both ways. Is Salma crazy or is she credible?”

“When she didn’t show up at my office at nine A.M., I sent my investigator to her building, Alexandra. The cops are crawling all over it. Now, why is that?”

I took a deep breath and glanced at Nan.

“Don’t be looking around for help. Where’s Salma?”

“One would have to think the congressman has more to gain by her disappearance than I do, Lem. He and some other guy who showed up last night claiming to be the father of her child. Ethan’s child, I thought she was. So you tell me what
you
know about it. You tell me what you and Salma discussed.”

Lem chuckled. “I’ll give you points for trying. You move the baby for safekeeping too?”

“What time was it you had your conversation with Salma?” I asked.

“Why is that important?”

“I just assumed you knew that her sister picked up the baby.”

“You’re playing with fire, Ms. Cooper,” Lem said, wagging a finger at me as he stood up. “Scorching, red-hot, blistering—”

“Temper, temper, Mr. Howell. There’s no jury here. What’s your problem?”

“Not my problem, Alex. It’s yours. Salma Zunega doesn’t have a sister.”

Mercer had just arrived at my office as Nan and I were moving our papers back in after Lem stormed out of the conference room.

“You opened the grand jury investigation, right?” I asked Nan, double-checking what she had told me she would do when I left her earlier to go to Battaglia’s office.

“We’re legal.” It was the grand jury—not prosecutors—that had the power to issue subpoenas for the production of evidence.

“Laura’s getting records from the phone company for Salma’s landline and cell,” I said to Mercer. “Better add the number of that woman you spoke with who claimed to be her sister. Lem Howell just hit us with the bombshell that she doesn’t have one.”

Mercer didn’t rattle easily, but the thought that he had been misled about the possible endangerment of a child’s life clearly upset him.

He checked his cell for the number he called yesterday to confirm what Salma had told him, then directed Laura to ready another subpoena to the phone company. “I’ll get my man over there to expedite these records. You’re going to fax the requests to him right away, okay? We’ll have what we need before the end of the day.”

Then he dialed the number and waited through ten rings that went unanswered.

“It’s ringing dead. I’ll call the lieutenant and put him onto Scully, Alex. You’d better tell Battaglia. We’ll have to do an AMBER Alert on the kid. There’s no luxury of waiting for Crime Scene to finish the search of her apartment.”

The rules were different for infants and children than for adults. The news bulletins and neon highway signs would broadcast the description and images of the child the minute we reported that we didn’t know her whereabouts. Whatever Ethan Leighton and Salma Zunega thought they had left of their private lives when they fought less than forty-eight hours ago would now be blasted all over the media.

“I don’t even know the baby’s name. There were no photos of her in the apartment last night,” I said. “Call the guys who are processing the place and get me the details before I go see Battaglia.”

Mercer reached Hal Sherman, who was supervising the Crime Scene Unit in 10A.

He told Hal what he needed and we waited for the callback.

“What did you do with the cell phone we recovered last night in her kitchen?” I asked.

“It’s at the lab.”

“Maybe she took photos of the kid,” I said.

“I’ll check that,” Nan said, stepping around to my phone.

Hal was back to Mercer in less than three minutes. He listened to the information and then passed it along to me. “Ana. She goes by Ana Zunega. Nineteen months old. So far, not a photograph in the apartment.”

“How can that be?”

“Hal got a scrip from the doorman. Baby’s Caucasian, like her mother. Hispanic, very white skin. Wavy dark brown hair. Brown eyes. Says she left yesterday with a woman who resembles Salma and seemed perfectly happy.”

“Brown hair, brown eyes, and no photograph. You can’t send out an AMBER Alert like that.”

“Start with Battaglia.”

“Would you please tell Rose I’m on the way over?” I said to Laura.

I walked across the hall slowly, sliding past Tim Spindlis’s office. It was just after noon and I would be lucky to catch him before he left for lunch. Rose motioned me right in, and I was pleased that he was alone.

“What now?”

“There’s been a terrible development in the Zunega matter, Paul. Lem Howell did one of his drop-ins this morning. He’s blaming me for making Salma vanish. I didn’t want to tell him what we discovered at her apartment last night before Scully’s ready to go public with something, but he—”

“Did he mention Tim?”

“Actually, no. Tim’s name never came up in the conversation.”

Battaglia looked up from whatever memo he was reading and squinted at me. “You’re sure? How about mine?”

“Nothing, Boss. It’s about the child. We’ve got a bigger problem than Tim’s appointment.”

His nose was back in the memo. “Bigger than my reputation, Alex? Keep your eye on that ball.”

“Ethan Leighton’s girlfriend doesn’t have a sister, according to Lem. We don’t know who the woman is who took the child from her apartment yesterday. Scully’s going to have to issue an AMBER Alert before anyone’s ready to answer all the questions about the case that the press will ask.”

He picked his head up again. “Find the damn woman, then, will you? Get them cracking on getting the kid back.”

I walked the quiet corridor that led away from Battaglia’s office. It was lined with photographs of the grave and distinguished elected district attorneys—all men—who had held the position throughout the last two centuries. Until the 1970s, only six women had served on the staff of several hundred lawyers who labored for the political powerhouse. There were days like this when I wondered what was so desirable about butting up against the glass ceiling that traditionally capped the criminal court.

Laura was standing at the door to her cubicle as I crossed the hallway. “You’ve got Mike on line one.”

“Give him to Mercer,” I said. “I’m whipped.”

“Mercer ducked out to pick up sandwiches for you, and Nan’s back at her desk.”

I took the receiver from Laura’s hand. “I’ve had a miserable morning, Mike. I think I’d rather be at the morgue.”

“I haven’t exactly been picnicking, either, Coop. Listen, I’ve got—”

“Battaglia’s all over me. He wants to know why you can’t find Salma.”

“Be careful what you wish for, kid. She’s not missing anymore,” Mike said. “And she’s very dead.”

I sat in Laura’s chair and rubbed my eyes with my free hand. “Where is she?”

“At the bottom of a well, twelve feet down. Headfirst.”

“And the baby?”

“No, no, Coop. No sign of the little girl.”

“Thank God,” I said, beginning to process what he had just told me about Salma. “Hey, Mike? How far out of town did they find her? I mean, where’s the well?”

“Right here. Right close to home.”

“We’ve got wells in Manhattan?”

“It’s the first one I’ve seen. All dried up now, but it’s a well.”

My mind was racing visually up the streets and avenues of the city, lined cheek-to-jowl with brownstones, tenements, high-rise buildings, and housing projects.

“You’ve lost me, Mike. What kind of house had a well?”

“I guess if you owned a mansion, you had a well, Ms. Cooper. This one just happens to be at the mayor’s house,” Mike said. “I’d like to see Battaglia’s face when you tell him the body was found at Gracie Mansion.”

“Nice diversionary tactic you worked for us,” Mike said, as he opened the passenger door of Mercer’s car to help me out. “Keep your head down and walk as fast as you can on the paved path around the side of the house.”

“What tactic? What’s all the action on East End Avenue?”

East End was one of the shortest avenues in Manhattan, a mix of small, elegant town houses, two of the city’s finest private schools for girls, a quiet park, and some fancy apartments. It started at Seventy-ninth Street and ran just twelve blocks north. Mercer had driven as close as he could to the entrance—the rear door, actually—of Gracie Mansion, past the small guardhouse on Eighty-eighth Street that was a fixed post for an NYPD cop. It was just after three in the afternoon.

“Your pal Lem Howell let out the news that Salma went missing from her apartment last night and how worried the congressman is about her. The press hounds have staked out her building, which required Scully to send a few uniformed teams for crowd control.”

“Nobody’s noticed yet that right across the street we’re in the process of recovering her body.”

“You mean—?”

“She’s still in the well.”

There were dark clouds overhead and a raw chill in the air.

“But you’re sure it’s Salma?”

“Yeah.”

“How?”

I was trying to keep up with Mike as he walked off the path to the north of the handsome old building on the lawn that sloped away toward a long wrought-iron fence.

“We lowered Katie Cion down to take some photos. That’s one tough broad,” Mike said. “Good thing the department bought out all the Polaroid film on the market when they stopped producing it. I don’t know what CSU will do when they run out of it. The super across the street made the ID from one of those.”