Likely to Die (8 page)

 Wallace was one of the most thorough detectives I had ever worked with. His methodical mind would be certain to go over every object in the doctor’s office, looking for any paper, file, or book that had been moved or rifled through. He went on. “Maybe he was in there, starting to look for something to steal, when she showed up in the office. He panicked and what started as a robbery became a sexual assault.”

 “Yeah, but which came first, the rape or the stabbing?”

 McGraw was too stubborn to throw that question directly at me and too stupid to know that I wouldn’t be able to answer it, either. Most people liked to think that logically the forced sex act had occurred before Gemma Dogen’s firm, trim body had been shredded into ribbons of bloodied skin. But there is no logic in this world of murderers and madmen. I had seen just as many cases in which the attacker had become aroused by the frenzied act of killing and then committed the sexual assault as an afterthought.

 Chapman said, “Let’s wait and see what Kirschner finds. We’re all just guessing at this point.”

 McGraw was still looking for a motive. “Say it’s not one of these lunatics, for the sake of argument. Keep your eyes open for somebody who had a reason to do this. When you talk to her colleagues, see who benefits from getting her out of the way. Who replaces her as head of the department. Get hold of her will and see who gets the money. Don’t overlook the usual stuff here just ‘cause it’s in a hospital.”

 The men around the table were closing up their pads and getting ready to stand up for a stretch. They had heard what they had come in here for, and were ready to blow off McGraw in favor of food and a night’s rest. Despite what he had said on the news about closing this case quickly, they knew the greater likelihood was that there were going to be endless round-the-clock shifts of interviews and interrogations for weeks to come unless or until one of them got very lucky.

 I walked toward Lieutenant Peterson as I remembered to ask him about the eight men who had been in the holding pen when I entered the squad room. “What are they in here for, Loo?”

 “Jeez, Alex, those are some of the guys we found living in the hospital corridors. This was just on the first sweep of the Mid-Manhattan building today. I’m not talking about the tunnels or the psych wing or the grounds. A couple of ‘em were in empty patient rooms, and one was sleeping on a gurney in a hallway near a storage area. Ramirez’ll have to tell you exactly where they were. He’s got it all charted out. I got a couple of men talking to each one of ’em now.”

 “Are they sus—”

 “I don’t know if they’re suspects, or witnesses, or simply poor old souls without a roof over their heads, so don’t ask me. They were just somewhere they ain’t supposed to be, living in a hospital, so now they’re in the middle of a homicide investigation and I don’t know what to do with them myself.”

 We were both thinking the same thing. Each one of them was a potential lead in our case and the moment we let them out the door of the precinct we were not likely to find them again. I was treading on sensitive territory. If they were being kept here, in a holding pen, then any questioning of the men by detectives would be viewed by the courts as custodial interrogation. The police conduct would be considered coercive. The judge eventually assigned would criticize the length of time each man had been detained without legal counsel and examine the conditions under which he had been confined.

 It was obvious Peterson’s team could not ignore these Mid-Manhattan freeloaders, but we had to think of the legal ramifications. And we had to do it now. The value of any information we got from these individuals would be compromised by the manner in which we obtained it.

 I tried again. “What are you going to do with the men after they’re interviewed?”

 McGraw snapped at me as he picked up a telephone to dial out, almost inhaling his cigarette butt in his haste to open his mouth and respond. “They’re ourguests, Miss Cooper. Understand that? I’ve extended the hospitality of the precinct to them—for tonight and for as long as they want it. So before you write me up and snitch on me to your boss, take a good look around out there.”

 Peterson shrugged his shoulders as McGraw dropped the receiver and motioned for me to follow him to the archway that led into the main squad room. His booming voice continued to ring out. “The door to the pen is wide open. See it? These gentlemen are free to sleep on the bench or the floor. We’ve been feeding them better than they’ve eaten in years. Haven’t we, Scrubs?”

 A grizzled old man with no hair and dried scabs all over his forearms looked up at McGraw from his perch on the edge of a detective’s desk.

 “That one’s called Scrubs. Says he can’t remember his real name. Had nowhere to go when he was discharged from Stuyvesant Psych four and a half years ago, so he just made the hospital his home. His shopping cart is down by the precinct garage, full of green uniforms and God knows what else. He steals—make that ‘borrows’—surgical scrubs from the linen supply closets and sells them to other homeless guys without clothes.

 “You hungry, Scrubs?”

 “No, sir.”

 “Any of my boys feed you today?”

 “Yessir, Mr. Chief. Had me two sweet rolls and a pastrami sandwich. And five Coca-Colas.”

 “Tell the lady what else you did today.”

 “Watched television. Right in that room where you is. Saw cartoons, saw wrestling, saw a picture of the lady doctor what got killed over at my place.”

 “You know her?”

 “Never seen her ‘cept on television.”

 “Where do you want to go tonight, Scrubs?”

 I had the distinct feeling the poor old guy had been asked this question earlier in the day, before he was made to perform for me.

 “Happy to stay right here with you, long as you’ll keep me.”

 McGraw turned to eyeball me. “Tellthat to Paul Battaglia, will ya? I don’t want anybody thinking I’m rough riding over these nutjobs. I’m taking very good care of them until I know what we got here. Those are my orders.”

 I figured I’d better save the $64,000 question for Peterson. As McGraw stormed away from me, I looked over at the lieutenant and quietly asked, “What if any of them told you he wanted to walk out of here tonight. Are they free to leave?”

 Chapman brushed past me as one of the men handling the phones yelled out his name. “Let her take a couple of them back to her place for the night, Loo. She’s got a real soft spot for the old guys, don’t you, Coop? She won’t cook for them, but I guarantee they’ll be back here tomorrow with fine-looking new threads on, every one of them.”

 “You know I can’t let any of ‘em walk out the door, Alex. They obviously don’t like to stay in shelters, and none has a single family contact to give us. We’ll never see them again. We printed each guy—”

 “Youwhat? ”

 “Alex, they consented to it.”

 “This kind of ‘consent’ won’t hold up for ten seconds when we get to court. You know better than that. Heaven forbid any one of these men has anything to do with Dogen’s murder, we’ll lose all the evidence you get out of this.”

 “Actually, on a couple of the name checks we ran in the computer there are outstanding warrants for at least three of them. Minor stuff—jumping the turnstile, petit larceny, criminal trespass. Nothing to suggest violence but just enough to let us keep them in our care until we take them down to the courthouse to arraign them on the charges.”

 More complications. “So do you know if they’ve got lawyers on the pending cases?”

 “Easy, Alex. We didn’t run the name checks ‘til after we asked all the questions. I know you don’t like the way we’re running this aspect of it, but we really don’t have any choice under the circumstances.”

 I wasn’t going to resolve this tonight, but it would be first on my list to take up with Rod Squires in the morning. As Chief of the Trial Division, he had taken on McGraw more frequently, with more success, than any dozen of my colleagues combined.

 I packed my notepads back into the Redweld, walked over and sat on the chair next to Mercer’s desk while we both waited for Chapman to get off the phone.

 “What do you feel like eating?” I asked, since I was picking up the dinner tab.

 “I got a real craving for Chinese food tonight.”

 “Shun Lee Palace?”

 “Attagirl, Cooper. That’s the best.”

 Chapman replaced the receiver, said his goodnights, and joined us as we stood to walk out.

 “Could be the break we need. That was a psychic who called in. She saw the story about Gemma Dogen on the early news and has been getting vibrations all evening. Told me that if I could give her a few more details, she might divine the killer’s identity for us by morning.

 “Don’t screw up your puss at me like that, Blondie. How do you know it won’t work?”

 “What did you tell her?”

 “I told her to join the three of us for dinner and we’d discuss it with her.”

 “Mike, I really don’t feel like ending my night with—”

 “Relax, Cooper, don’t lose your sense of humor the first day. Where’re we going? I didn’t tell her the name of the restaurant and I didn’t tell her what time we’d be there. I just told her that if she was areal psychic, she’d show up. C’mon, Mercer, let’s get out of here.”

 7

 THE RESTAURANT ON FIFTY-FIFTH STREETwas nearly empty when the three of us walked in at eleven o’clock. Patrick Chu bowed his head in greeting and led us back past the bar and single row of tables to the large dining room area. Deep cobalt blue walls, hung with shadowboxes framing porcelain antique plates and scent bottles, created an atmosphere of luxe and style uncommon in Manhattan’s Chinese eateries.

 “Good to see you, Madame Prosecutor,” Patrick said, smiling as he handed us each a menu.

 “That’s better than last time,” Chapman remarked to Wallace. “Coop and I came in here a few weeks after the end of the Lascar case, when her face had been plastered all over the papers. I hear Patrick, the maître d‘, telling the owner that the ’famous prostitute‘ had just come in.”

 “My English much better now, Mister Mike. Never make that mistake again.”

 “Lucky you survived it once, Patrick. Prostitute—prosecutor—no big deal in my book. I don’t know which one ought to be more insulted by the mix-up.”

 We ordered our drinks and told Patrick the menus weren’t necessary. “Hot-and-sour soup, spring rolls, shrimp dumplings. A Peking duck, and a crispy sea bass,” said Chapman without missing a beat. “If I’m still hungry after that, we’ll add to that. Did I miss anything?”

 “I don’t know about you, Alex, but I guess that’s what I wanted for dinner,” Mercer said with a wink. “What’s the plan, Mike?”

 “I’ll be at the morgue first thing in the morning. Why don’t you pick Alex up at her office and bring her there around lunchtime? I’m sure Kirschner will go over his results with us then. I’m helping with the hospital personnel interviews in the afternoon, and maybe that’s a good time for you two to check out Dogen’s apartment.”

 I raised my idea of setting Maureen up to go in undercover as a patient. Both Chapman and Wallace jumped on it, but we all agreed that once we cleared it with Peterson it would be foolish to let anyone on the Mid-Manhattan staff know about our mole.

 Maureen Forester and I had worked on dozens of cases together. She was the daughter of one of the NYPD’s first black detectives, and her petite frame and pretty face belied the strength, speed, and tough spirit that made her such a fine cop. Battaglia had petitioned the Chief of Detectives four years ago to move her to his own unit—the District Attorney’s Office squad—so that she could work with us on sensitive investigations. Frequently, I was the beneficiary of her talent, and always of her loyal friendship.

 “How will we get her in?” Wallace asked.

 “David Mitchell.” My close friend and neighbor was one of the most prominent psychiatrists in the city. “I’ll call him in the morning. Migraines, double vision, memory lapses—he’s got the weight to get her in for a neurological observation the same day he asks for it.”

 “Does Mo know yet?”

 “I thought you’d call her, Mercer. I can’t imagine she’d ever object. Probably be thrilled to get away from the kids for a week and have some room service and breakfast in bed. Her husband will take it better coming from you than from me, don’t you think?”

 “Consider it done. You know that none of us’ll be able to visit with her, don’t you? We’ve all been made as investigators on this one.”

 “Of course. And if Charles doesn’t like the idea, we’ll get a detective to be her designated spouse and some friends like Sarah to hang out with her for a while. I think we should wire her up and install a hidden camera in the room just so someone from the tech unit can monitor it while she’s sleeping. There’s too many things creeping around there at night to leave her unobserved.”

 The dank and chilly March evening, combined with my fatigue, made it a perfect soup night. I sprinkled some noodles over the steaming bowl that the waiter set in front of me and told him to follow my Dewar’s with a Tsingtao. The warmth of the thick broth soothed me even as its piquant taste revived me.

 I spaced out of the conversation going on between the two detectives. Who in the world would be missing Gemma Dogen tonight, I wondered? I reminded myself of my own good fortune in the friends and family relationships I was able to count on to sustain me through the emotional intensity of my work. And I raised my glass in a silent toast to Mike and Mercer, who had become as close to me as any of my lifelong companions.

 I had met Mike Chapman almost ten years earlier, in my rookie stint as a prosecutor in Paul Battaglia’s office. My background of privilege and comfort had secured me a first-rate education at Wellesley College and the University of Virginia School of Law. But my parents had instilled in me as well a devotion to public service, which had attracted me to my job as an assistant district attorney. Serendipity—and Paul Battaglia’s unerring instincts—landed me in the newly created specialty of sex crimes prosecutions after my initial rotation through the Trial Division, in which general felony cases were investigated. The satisfaction of this work, the rich rewards of guiding victims through the process with better results than the criminal justice system had ever been able to offer, kept me in the office years longer than I had planned to stay.