Killer Heat (3 page)

“Objection, Your Honor,” Grassley said. “Most respectfully, I
don't think-”

“Save that nonsense for the jury. I'll say what I damn well
please when they're not here. I was practicing law back then, Gene.
You understand that when a stranger climbed through the window of
your home and held a knife or a gun against the body of-of your
mother or your sister or your wife, that woman, no matter how
saintly she might have been, couldn't go to court unless she could
prove she had struggled against her attacker, even when he
threatened to shoot or to stab her? There had to be independent proof of who this animal was? That the
testimony of every raped woman was deemed incompetent as a
matter of law?”

“Judge, my client-”

“All that changed, as you both know, in the mid-1970s, before
either one of you came to the bar. Yet I'm bound by those rules
today. How foolish is that?” Lamont asked, tapping his gavel
lightly against the copy of the penal law on his desk. “More than
thirty years have gone by, the legislature finally caught up with
reality, but I'm forced to make my rulings based on what the laws
were when this attack took place. And I must say that is really a
disgrace.”

I couldn't tell whether Alton Lamont was truly outraged or not,
as he placed his right hand over his heart and patted his chest
several times. But I knew this statement would read well on his
campaign materials when he stood for reelection in another
year.

“Ms. Cooper, does your witness realize that I have no choice but
to follow the old law?” He looked at the name in the indictment.
“Miss Hastings, is she set to go?”

“Yes, she is, Judge. She understands.” I didn't need to add that
she was terrified at the thought of being in a courtroom with her
rapist again. I didn't need to allow Floyd Warren to gloat with
pleasure at the prospect of subjecting this woman to the same
humiliating ordeal she had undergone a lifetime ago.

“Then we're good for tomorrow morning at eleven? That gives you
time to settle in with Ms. Hastings first thing.”

The judge knew that Kerry Hastings had flown in twice from her
home on the West Coast to meet with Mercer Wallace and me. The
first time, after so many years of silence had led her to assume
the case would never be solved, was to give her own saliva for the
DNA analysis of her clothing and bed linens. The second was for our
initial preparation for trial.

“That leaves just the rape shield issue, Judge,” I said.

Lamont cupped his hand to his ear again. “Didn't catch that,
Alex.”

As soon as I spoke, the five men in T-shirts had started to
cough. Fake, exaggerated coughs that were loud and disruptive. I
tried to ignore them.

“I said we need to address the question of the rape shield law,
Judge.”

The hacking noise made it impossible for Lamont to hear me. He
wiggled his finger at the captain-Louie Larsen-who was standing
near the last row of benches. Larsen began ambling to the well of
the courtroom.

I looked to see whether Floyd Warren was communicating with the
quintet of young men, but he never turned his head.

“Gene, Alex. Come up here to the bench.”

I walked forward while the two officers behind the defendant
closed in around Warren, anticipating that he might have had a way
to orchestrate the small commotion.

“You know these guys?” Lamont asked me.

“No, sir.”

“Grassley, they have anything to do with your client?”

“Don't look at me, Judge. They're sitting behind Alex. Thought
she imported some cheerleaders to buck her up.”

Louie Larsen took his place between Grassley and me. “Pablo
Posano.”

“What?” My head snapped around and I studied the faces of the
five young men. None of them looked familiar.

“You've gone white, Alex,” Judge Lamont said. “Who's Pablo
Posano? Is he here?”

“He was the leader of the Latin Princes until we put him away
this spring. He's in Attica, Judge. Posano's got to do all his time
in maximum security. He raped a twelve-year-old girl as part of an
initiation rite. I tried the case, Your Honor. Posano hates my
guts.”

The Princes were among the most dangerous drug gangs in the
city. For every member jailed or killed on the street, ten more
seemed to sign up the next day. Posano's posse had threatened the
trial judge and intimidated several of the witnesses, who
thereafter refused to testify in my case. I was as chilled as
though someone had held an icicle to my spine.

“How do you know they have anything to do with Posano?” I asked
Larsen.

I swiveled to take another look at the unwelcome spectators. I
had given Floyd Warren too much by reacting to the punks. He was
staring me down.

The kid in the second row stood up, the others behind him rising
as if on cue.

“It's on the back of their shirts.”

“What is?”

“Pablo Posano. That's what's printed there.”

“Stop!” Alton Lamont said, banging his gavel on his desktop.

The five gang members paid no attention.

Now I could see that the black letters on the front of each
yellow shirt spelled a single word: FREE. As they turned their
backs to Lamont to follow their leader out of the courtroom, the
judge got the message as clearly as I did. FREE PABLO POSANO.

Floyd Warren licked his front teeth and laughed. He could see
the fear in my eyes.

They didn't threaten me. They're way too smart for that." I
dropped the case folder on top of my desk.

“Why can't Lamont just boot their asses out?” Mercer Wallace
asked

They didn't do anything. Nothing except sound effects
that won't show on the record. By the time we figured it out they
were gone."

“And tomorrow?” Mercer was a first-grade detective assigned to
the NYPD's elite Special Victims Unit. He had painstakingly
reconstructed the case against Floyd Warren and wanted it to
proceed without complications.

“Lamont says he'll deal with it if they come back. It's a public
courtroom. He can tighten the security but you know he'll never
seal it.”

“More than that, I know you can't play with the Latin Princes,
Alex. To Posano, you're the face of evil. You're the one who put
him in jail, when he figured he had everyone else scared away. You
stood in front of him day after day, building your case and arguing
to the jury, dancing circles around his mouthpiece. It became way
too personal with him.”

“He's got years to get over it.”

“His crew is too vicious. They may not realize you've got some
tough innards beneath that pretty packaging. And some powerful
reinforcements covering your tail.”

I didn't question Mercer's warning. In the last year alone, the
Dominican gang leader had ordered the unsuccessful hit of a federal
judge who had presided over a drug case that sent three of his
lieutenants to jail and intimidated scores of witnesses from
appearing in a handful of related grand jury investigations.

“If harassing me is what they wanted, consider it done.” I sat
down in front of the air conditioner and lifted my hair to let the
cool air blow on the back of my neck. “What's the word on
Kerry?”

“The flight is on the ground in Chicago. Severe thunderstorms. I
don't think she'll land before ten tonight, but I'll pick her up
and take her to the hotel.”

Kerry Hastings was a twenty-two-year-old graduate student when
Floyd Warren broke into her Greenwich Village apartment and raped
her. The 1973 trial had been another assault-on her truthfulness,
on her integrity, on her spirit-and when the jury failed to agree
on a verdict, she retreated from her once pleasant life even
further. Mercer was one of the few people who had engendered her
trust, from the time of his first phone call, astounding her with
the news that she might achieve some measure of justice after all
these years.

“I'd still like to have her here at seven thirty in the morning.
I want to go over her testimony once more.”

“I have the feeling she'll be better rested than you.”

“I'm set. Who could imagine that this case would be easier for
me to try now than it was for my predecessor thirty-five years ago?
Easier for Kerry, too.”

“Chapman's here to suck a little more of that energy out of
you.”

“Where?”

“Down the hall in the conference room. Got someone with
him.”

I stood up, fanning myself with the manila folder that held
Pablo Posano's posttrial motions and his inmate number at the
maximum security prison where he was serving time. “I'll check it
out. You want to call Attica for me? See if we can get a list of
Posano's visitors and his phone log?”

“Sure.” Mercer reached for the file as I walked out of the
room.

The corridors emptied out earlier than usual during the hot
summer days. There were fewer trials as lawyers, judges, and
witnesses escaped the city on vacation. Government workers were
allowed to leave their offices on afternoons when temperatures,
threatening to overload the electrical power grids, climbed above
ninety-five degrees. It was six fifteen and the executive wing of
the trial division was quiet.

I pushed open the door and saw Mike sitting across the
conference table from a young woman who was talking to him. A
handful of snapshots were spread out in front of her, and Mike was
studying two of them as she spoke.

“Here she is,” he said. “Alexandra Cooper, I'd like you to meet
Janet Bristol.”

The most obvious thing about her when she looked up was the
redness and swelling around her eyes. I wasn't surprised. It was
rare for me to meet someone for the first time, professionally, who
had much to smile about.

“Janet showed up at the First this morning,” Mike said. “She saw
the squib in the Post. The one about the body.”

“I haven't had a chance to read the newspapers today.”

Mike handed me a story-three short paragraphs-buried deep in the
back of the news section of the tabloid. “MARITIME BATTERY ... AND
ASSAULT: TERMINAL. The naked remains of an unidentified woman were
found yesterday evening in the abandoned offices above the aging
ferry slip...”

“Janet's afraid the victim might be her sister. We may need you
on this, Coop.”

“Thank you for coming in. I know how difficult it must be for
you.”

“I doubt that you do.” Her comeback was fast and sharp.

“We're on our way to the medical examiner's office. Janet's
going to try to make an ID.”

Standing in front of the morgue's viewing window was one of the
most painful steps a family member was forced to endure in the
course of an investigation. Nothing could prepare Janet for the
condition of the face and body she was about to see.

“How can I help?”

Mike got up. “Let's step out and I'll-”

“You can repeat what I said.” Janet Bristol reached into her
pocket for a tissue and blew her nose. “I know that's why we're
here.”

“Can you tell me why you think this might be your sister?”

Janet blotted her eyes and looked down at the photographs,
handing me one. “That's Amber about a year ago.”

I studied the image. The resemblance to Janet was striking.
Long, narrow faces, lightly freckled skin, and thin, tapered noses.
Everything was consistent with the shape and size of the woman we
had seen last night.

“We're not close, like I told Detective Chapman. But we had this
deal that we always went out together on our birthdays,” she said.
“Her birthday was the Sunday before last. She just turned
thirty-two.”

By this past Sunday, the woman decomposing behind the cast iron
façade of the old building had already been dead for more than
a week, if Mike and Dr. Magorski were right.

“When's the last time you spoke to Amber?”

Janet straightened up. “Christmas. I think it was right after
the holidays. I had gone home-to Idaho-to see the family. I called
her when I got back.”

“And not once during the last eight months?”

“I told you, we're different. We don't really get along.”

“Can you tell us something about her?” I sat down next to Janet
to look at the other photographs. I wanted to know what would lead
this woman to the conclusion that her sister had been the victim of
a murder, rather than that she simply chose to celebrate the event
with someone else.

“Amber is-well, she's quirky, like I told the detective. She
moved to New York about nine years ago, after college. Worked for a
temp agency. Wound up doing word processing at a law firm. That's
where she's been for the last five years. Masters and Martin.”

“One twenty Wall Street.” The offices of the small firm that
specialized in patent law placed Amber a short walk from where the
body was found. “And how long has it been since she showed up
there?”

Mike crossed his arms and sat on the windowsill. “She was let go
in July.”

“She quit,” Janet said defensively. “That's what the
receptionist told me.”

“Have you called her at home? Or gone to her apartment?”

“Her answering machine is full. It's not taking any more
messages. And her cell phone is shut off.”

“Are there neighbors?”

“She didn't have any friends in the building, really. I called
the super. He hasn't seen her since last week.”

“I've got the address, Coop. The East Nineties. You should know
they wanted her out of there.”

“Behind on the rent?”

“Nope. People didn't like the company she kept. If Janet
can-well, if she's able to make an ID,” Mike said, “we'll go
straight there.”

“Did you have a plan to meet on Amber's birthday?”

Janet shook her head. “I started calling on that Friday. Left a
few messages then that she didn't return. We go to the same place
every year. I just assumed she'd show up.”

“Where's that?”

“Dylan's Brazen Head. It's a pub on First Avenue, near her
apartment.”

I glanced at a photo of the two sisters together, both smiling
for the camera. Behind them was the mirrored wall of a bar, lined
with bottles of booze. The Brazen Head had been in business for
more than twenty years, a magnet for prep school kids from the
Upper East Side because of the affable owner's willingness to turn
a blind eye to underage drinkers. It was named for the oldest pub
in Dublin, which dated back-according to legend-eight hundred
years.

“Did you go?” I asked.

“Yes. I went early, at six, and waited there until ten
o'clock.”

“Tell Ms. Cooper why Amber picked Dylan's.”

Janet looked at me sideways before she answered. “Jim Dylan and
Amber-well, she's been, I guess you'd say, dating him for three
years.”

“What she means is that Jim Dylan has a wife and six kids, three
of 'em still at home in the nest,” Mike said. “So I wouldn't
exactly call it 'dating.' ”

“Did you ask Mr. Dylan about your sister?”

“He told me he hadn't seen her since May. Jim didn't want to
talk about it there. One of his sons was tending bar.”

“Is there anything else about your sister that you think puts
her in harm's way?”

“Like I told you,” Janet said again. “Amber's quirky. I'm afraid
this stuff might end up in the newspapers. I just want to protect
her if I can.”

“What do you mean?”

“My sister supplemented her income with another job, Ms.
Cooper,” Janet said, blowing her nose again. “She tried to talk me
into the same thing a couple of years ago, but I thought it was
disgusting. It broke my heart to think of what she was doing.”

“What kind of job?”

“A dating service.”

I wanted to find a tasteful way to get Janet where she was
going. “An escort?”

Mike lifted his blazer from the back of the chair, slipped his
finger under the collar, and draped it over his shoulder as he
stepped behind me.

“I told her how dangerous her lifestyle was, and nothing I said
could get her to stop.” Janet rested her head in her hands and
started crying again. “Doesn't matter what you called her, she
laughed it off like it was a compliment. An escort, a prostitute, a
whore, a hooker.”

Mike leaned over and whispered in my ear. "I'm thinking she's a
dead hooker now.