Likely to Die (30 page)

 My papers were spread out all over the dining-room table. Off to one corner I placed the Polaroid photo that I had asked Mercer to take of the marking made by Gemma’s blood on the floor of her office. Had it been intentionally drawn by the dying woman? I wondered, and was it a letter or part of a word? I pulled out a yellow pad and wrote beside it the initials of each of the people we had interviewed so far. I tried to compare the capital letters of their names to the incomplete squiggle that had seemed so clear to me that morning last week. Nothing seemed to match and I abandoned the exercise in favor of reviewing and organizing my interview notes.

 After I packed and got into bed shortly before midnight, I called Drew’s hotel in San Francisco and left a message on his automated mail system. I told him about my unexpected departure for London the next day and asked him to call whenever he got in so I could hear the warm sound of his voice and make plans to see him when I returned home.

 I set my alarm for seven and turned off the lights. I worried about Maureen and whether my idea had exposed her to any real danger. Then I tried to make sleep come by thinking of everything except murder. But the puzzle of Gemma Dogen and the way she died kept intruding as I lay awake late into the night.

 20

 LIKELY TO DIE. ANOTHER ONE.“

 “What do you mean?” I looked at the clock and saw that it was just a couple of minutes after 6A.M.

 “Sorry to wake you,” Chapman added, “but I figured you’d want to know as soon as I heard it. This one’s uptown, right outside of Columbia-Presbyterian. Really screws up our investigation.”

 I was halfway out of the bed already waiting for an explanation. “Because?”

 “It’s eerie. Could be our guy. Maybe Dogen’s death has nothing to do with Mid-Manhattan. Maybe some clown is after women in white uniforms, or striking out at each of the hospitals.”

 “Stop babbling and tell me what it is.”

 “The lieutenant just called, after he heard it from nightwatch. Up in the 3-4, another medical center surrounded by a war zone. Female resident finishes back-to-back shifts, walks out the door a little after midnight to go to her car. When she reaches it, she sees a tire is flat. Good Samaritan—and I’m using the term loosely—offers to help her change the tire. Bastard probably flattened it himself. Tells her he’s just got to go into his sister’s building across the street and get some tools. Says she can wait in the vestibule for him, to keep warm.

 “They cross the street—three eyewitnesses to that part. Say he’s polite, holds her elbow, tells her to watch out for traffic. Inside the lobby—it’s a tenement, five-story walk-up—he pulls a knife, apparently. Now, we got no witnesses, nada, nobody. We got a trusting young doctor wearing her white lab coat lying on the floor behind the staircase with eight stab wounds in her chest and abdomen, underwear removed, and skirt pulled up to expose the lower half of her body. But no evidence of a completed sexual assault—no semen, no pubic hair, no proof of a rape.

 “Soyou tell me, is it an attempt that got interrupted or is it just staged so the scumbag could steal her ten bucks and her beeper and let us think we’re looking for a rapist? Is it a coincidence or a second strike?”

 I had no answers for Mike. I was trying to envision the crime scene and thinking about the loss of another useful life.

 “Dead?”

 “Better off if she were. Very, very likely to die. Hooked up to life support with perfectly flat brain waves.”

 “You said there were witnesses?”

 “Just the people who saw the guy hanging around the hospital entrance, then talking to the doctor near her car. Male Hispanic, six-two or -three, wiry. Looked dirty, unkempt, possibly homeless, like a thousand other men within a stone’s throw of the medical center. Wearing a flannel shirt and green surgical pants. He wasn’t a professional rival of hers, I’ll tell you that much.”

 “Well, what do you think?” I knew it was a stupid question as soon as I asked it.

 “I think I don’t have a friggin‘ clue what to think. I don’t know whether this is just a bad fluke of timing or the work of some lunatic that we rousted out of the tunnels at Mid-Manhattan and sent up to Columbia-Presbyterian with a license to start over again in an even more fertile location.

 “I’m back to having no idea whether Gemma Dogen wasn’t raped because something interrupted the attempt, and because she struggled, like this kid last night. Or whether you’re right and Dogen’s killing was just staged to look like a sexual assault.”

 “How many women do you think are likely to die before we figure it out?”

 “Hey, Blondie, we’re all likely to die. It’s just the time and place of this one that’s so wretched. Six other guys from the squad are gonna jump all over this one. It’ll take us twice as long to sort the whole thing out and figure whether they’re related to each other. I’ll call you at the office as soon as I get some more details.”

 I went into the kitchen and turned on the coffee before I showered, wondering why Drew hadn’t called during the night. The clothes I had planned to travel in were laid out the night before, so I dressed in the navy cashmere sweater and matching slacks hoping that my blue-and-red quilted jacket would be warm enough for Britain’s early spring.

 The doorman helped me with my luggage to a cab, and I convinced myself that the extra hour at the office in the early morning would actually benefit me to organize my desk before the staff began to arrive.

 I couldn’t believe the phone was ringing at seven fifteen when I unlocked the door.

 “Alex? It’s Stan.”

 Westfall. One of the guys in the unit who was fine in the courtroom but difficult to deal with almost all the rest of the time.

 “I got a problem. Just tried you at home and when I got the machine, I figured I’d give you a shout at your office.” He sounded frantic.

 “What could possibly be wrong at this hour of the morning?” I’d already had one dose of dreadful news and doubted that anything Stan had to complain about would be in the same league.

 “My witness is gone, Alex. You know I’m on trial in front of Sudolsky, right? Well, I finished the direct case yesterday but she hasn’t been crossed yet. She’s the woman I brought back here from Pittsburgh to testify and—”

 “Who’s she been staying with?”

 “Well, that’s it. You were really busy, you know, with your murder investigation and I didn’t want to bother you. So I just went to Pat McKinney and got his permission to put her up in a hotel. I mean, a cheap one. Big Apple, over on West Forty-sixth.”

 “Great. You put a hooker in a hotel in midtown. With a bodyguard?”

 “No. Alex, she swore to me she’s not a hooker anymore. I really believed it.”

 It didn’t do any good to roll my eyes. Stan wouldn’t have gotten the point had he been standing right in front of me. He was more likely to be struck by lightning than ever meet anex -hooker.

 “And what happened? She got booted for bringing tricks into the room during the night while the taxpayers picked up the bill?”

 “Well, the manager caught her with a guy coming into the lobby around 2A.M. Knew she was with us, so he stopped them and kicked out the john but let her go up to the room. See, um, the manager’s the one who called me. Sometime after that she just left.”

 “Don’t panic yet. She’s probably out working, picking up a few extra bucks before she goes home to the burbs.”

 “Manager doesn’t think so. She’s gone. And what he’s pissed about is that she took everything in the room with her. It’s not the kind of place that has much in it that isn’t nailed down tight. But she walked out with the sheets, pillows, blankets, and towels.” Stan was krexing at full pitch. “She even took the Bible.”

 I laughed at his plight knowing McKinney would have his head. That would be the last witness we lodge at the Big Apple, one of the few Manhattan hotels the office could afford.

 “I don’t know whether to have the cops look for her or not. The jury’ll hate her when they hear it.”

 “Get out your copy of the Good Book, Stan. Give ‘em Proverbs. ’Who can find a virtuous woman?‘ Don’t try to change her stripes. Let her be what she is even if she’s still a hooker. If I remember correctly, you had a ton of medical evidence that corroborated the force in that case. Point out her vulnerability and let them see what a dirtball the defendant is.”

 “How do I find her? The arresting officer won’t be down in my office ‘til nine-thirty.”

 “Call Midtown South. Get some of the guys from the pussy posse before they sign out. Give them a description and check to see if they spotted her during their tour.” The guys who worked the pros detail didn’t go off duty until 8A.M. “And most of all, stop panicking. You’ll have to ask the judge for a few hours’ adjournment if she doesn’t surface this morning, but that’s not the end of the world. I don’t know how you get anything done when you’re so wired.”

 “Thanks, Alex. I’ll check with you later.”

 I worked on correspondence until Laura arrived, then dictated several letters to her that I wanted to get out before I returned on Monday. At nine-thirty, she reminded me that I had to go across the street to Judge Torres’s part for the sentencing in the case of the serial rapist that Gayle Marino had convicted three weeks earlier.

 I slipped into a seat in the front row of the large courtroom while Gayle was addressing the bench. Although the judge was well aware of Johnny Rovaro’s criminal history, Marino was carefully restating his record to support the heavy sentence she would be requesting. She reminded Torres that Rovaro had been convicted of a similar crime eight years earlier and even ran the prison clinic for sex offenders while he was upstate. When released on parole Rovaro had returned to his home in Brooklyn; a condition established by the board was his participation in a therapy program run by a treatment center in Greenwich Village.

 Three months after his release, the quiet neighborhood just blocks away from the center was the scene of a series of sexual assaults. First, the attack on a young Irish nanny who managed to secure the infant in her charge out of harm’s way before being overcome by the assailant. Then a housewife with armloads of groceries who was pushed into her town house as she struggled against the armed attacker. And finally, the ten-year-old child who was followed from school and forced into her building by the same man, who struck her in the face to subdue her during the commission of the crime.

 Gayle had tried an outstanding case, supporting her fragile witnesses through their moving testimony and shattering the alibi defense of the rapist’s witnesses—family and friends—with fine preparation and thorough cross-examination. Rovaro himself had been shaken by her dogged and persistent questions as she steadily destroyed his patchwork of lies and exposed his temper to the panel of jurors. Now she sat, resting his fate in the hands of one of the toughest judges in the system.

 Edwin Torres was ready to speak to Rovaro. He rose from his high-backed leather chair, stepped around behind it, and leaned his elbows against it. He looked first at the defendant’s wife and mother, who had been gesturing and cursing throughout Gayle’s statement to the court. Torres’s dark hair and strong features were outlined against the light paneling of the wooden wall that framed him and he glanced over at Gayle before he began to speak. In his eloquent fashion, the judge characterized the rapist’s conduct as he looked Rovaro squarely in the eyes. “The record speaks—or, perhaps, shouts—for itself,” referring to the acts proved in Marino’s case and summarizing them once again. “But what really carries you beyond the pale of civilization—beyond compassion, beyond humanity—is your attack on the child. You are the devil incarnate, for who but a devil could punch that child in the mouth, breaking her braces against her teeth before sodomizing her?” Torres asked. “For that act of savagery alone, there are societies where you would be impaled on a stake, to dance on tiptoes for hours in the Sahara sun.”

 Mickey Diamond was furiously taking notes behind me and leaned over to whisper, “Don’t you wish it wasn’t reversible error for you to say things like that in a summation? I don’t even have to make stuff up with him—he’s always so quotable.”

 I smiled as Torres went on, standing by his seat to pronounce the sentence of one hundred years for Rovaro, adding his final, personal seal on the record of the twice-paroled offender. “A collective pox on the parole board that ever sees fit to unleash this demon on our society again. I will rise from my moldy grave to visit it upon them myself.”

 He winked in my direction and then told the phalanx of court officers who stood behind the cuffed prisoner to put him back in the pens. As Rovaro walked out, his expression never changed, but when he reached the door that led from the courtroom to the cell, he turned and spit at the judge’s bench. The captain grabbed the collar of his shirt and pulled him out of the room. I walked into the well to congratulate Gayle on the outcome as one of the court officers came back to us to make sure she was okay.

 “Rovaro pees ice water,” he told us, shaking his head. “You should feel good about this one.”

 She did, and I waved to Torres, walking out of the part as Gayle wheeled her shopping cart full of exhibits down the hallway with me. With any luck, Gemma Dogen’s killer would be tried before a jurist like him. That is, if the killer were caught.

 “You just missed Drew Renaud’s call,” Laura greeted me several minutes later. “He said he was leaving his hotel room. Didn’t want to disturb you in the middle of the night. Said he’ll try you a little later so he can get you before you leave for London.

 “McKinney wants you, too. Wants to know what you’re going to do about the new case up near Columbia-Presbyterian and who’s going to sit on things while you’re out of town. And he’s also a bit riled up about something to do with Phil. Wouldn’t say what.”

 “Got it, Laura, thanks.”

 Both phone lines lighted up before I could reach my desk and I had the feeling it was going to be one of those wild days, as it always seemed to be when I had to go out of town.

 Through the intercom I heard Laura announce that Mercer was on the first line while a reporter from New York One was on the backup. “Kick the reporter over to the press office—I’m not talking to any of them. I’ll take Mercer.”