Entombed (14 page)

"What was he looking
for?"

I was trying to brief
Battaglia on the latest developments in the Upshaw case before he
called in the media to give them news of our innovative John Doe
strategy. As usual, he was asking questions to which I did not yet have
answers. The computer forensics cops would have been livid if any of us
at the scene tried to open the files.

"I don't know. We have
to get him back in, boss. He never mentioned anything about the
computer. I didn't think to ask him about it at the time."

Battaglia scowled and
kept reading the remarks that Brenda had outlined for him. "How come
it's only the house press?"

He liked it better
when all the major networks covered his releases. This one would just
be attended by the stringers assigned to the courthouse from each of
the daily newspapers and the crime reporters from the local TV
stations. "Short notice. Brenda didn't contact them until this morning."

The district attorney
walked to the conference table at the far end of the room. He didn't
need to tell me the rules again, but he always liked to do it. "I'll
give them the story and take questions. If I need you to fill in any
blanks, I'll just look over at you and you'll know you can answer. Tell
Rose to let them in." He seated himself in a high-backed green leather
chair, behind which a blowup of the rapist's sketch was propped against
a bookshelf.

I stepped out to his
executive assistant's desk and gave her the nod. Mercer followed me
back in to flank Battaglia at the head of the table. The twelve
journalists filed in and greeted the district attorney while cameramen
set up tripods behind the old wooden chairs.

He read stiffly from
the papers in front of him. "Good afternoon to all of you. What we've
decided to undertake here is a bold new initiative-one more major step
in our battle against sexual assault.

"This will be a joint
effort on the part of prosecutors, police, and scientists to use both
the latest technology and an innovative legal strategy to indict the
Silk Stocking Rapist-as you people think you've so cleverly named
him-on the basis of his DNA profile. We are going to stop the clock on
the statute of limitations that would sooner or later allow him to
escape the consequences of his crimes. Whenever we find him, he will
have his day in court.

"This effort is smart,
it's creative, it's proactive," Battaglia said. He pointed over his
head at the artist's sketch. "But we need your help in capturing this
predator. Then we'll make sure he never walks among us again. Thank
you."

"Have you done this
before, Mr. B?" the CBS newswoman called out.

"Twice. Very quietly.
Now it's going to be business as usual when these monsters think they
can beat us just because the legislature's too lazy to take a few
minutes to eliminate the statute of limitations."

"Is this about
sticking it to Albany then, Mr. District Attorney?"

"Those statutes were
designed to protect against the dangers of faulty memories and lost
witnesses. They're anachronisms," Battaglia said, a smile drawing
slowly across his face. "Like the legislators themselves. Talk about
faulty memories. Those last remarks were off the record, right?"

"When are you gonna
catch this guy?" Mickey Diamond asked.

"The commissioner has
stepped up his efforts and we've brought in some outside eyes to help
review the situation. I'd expect that-"

"Outside? From where?"

"I'm not going to
comment on that. Whose side are you on anyway?"

"If you think he's
done so many of the cases, how come you only indicted him on this one
charge?" the all-news-radio reporter asked.

"We wanted to get
started with the oldest case, so we don't risk losing it. We'll be
presenting the others later in the month to do a superseding
indictment. But this gets us out there in the public awareness and into
the national data banks without wasting any more time. This rapist can
run but he won't be able to hide for very long."

"This weekend's
murder, Mr. B, you have any idea why the police commissioner is hedging
on calling it part of the Silk Stocking pattern?"

"It's premature to do
that kind of thing and alarm the public until all the evidence is
analyzed," Battaglia said, scowling again.

"Alarm the public?"
Diamond said. "You got women running around the Upper East Side like it
was the January white sale at Bloomingdale's. It's sheer bedlam today.
I think panic is a better word for it."

"That's exactly what
we're trying to avoid. Let me give you ladies and gents some of the
latest statistics. The numbers for last year-violent crimes in
Manhattan-are way down over the previous twelve-month period." I had
heard this drill more times in ten years than I would ever be able to
count. Battaglia's next sentence was predictable. "Figures don't lie,
but liars figure."

He chuckled but most
of the reporters rolled their eyes. "Homicides are lower, robberies are
down-"

"Rape is the only
category of felonies that went up. Why so, Mr. B?"

The side of his mouth
twisted in my direction and he gave me an almost imperceptible nod, in
gratitude for the briefing I'd done earlier. "There are two issues
involved here," I said. "First, I think all of us involved in this work
accept that there is more reporting of these crimes, not actually more
victimization. We have so many more services available for survivors
now-legally, medically, and psychological counseling, too.

"The second thing is
that you have to make a distinction between stranger and acquaintance
rapes. Stranger attacks represent fewer than twenty percent of reported
sex crimes. That number has been very stable and has shown no
significant increase anywhere in the city for more than five years."

"So why is that any
different for acquaintance rape?" the local NBC reporter asked.

"Because effective
NYPD strategies-like anticrime units, community policing, an aggressive
sex offender monitoring unit, and a smart SVS-they can keep the
stranger rapists off the street with greater success. Acquaintance
rapes are cases in which the victim is with the offender because she
thinks she knows him, she trusts him. He's a family member or coworker
or friend. She walks right past the cop on the beat to go to his home
or her apartment or a hotel room. Law enforcement can't prevent this
kind of case from happening, and that's why you see the numbers going
up from time to time."

Mickey Diamond brought
us back to the moment. "How come nobody prevented that foreign student
from getting stabbed last week? How about yesterday's murder?"

Battaglia took control
again. "That's precisely why we're taking this very aggressive
approach, this John Doe indictment. No serial rapist is entitled to put
his hands around the throat of this city and strangle it with fear."

He stood up to signal
the end of the questioning period and started toward his desk.

"So you're saying
these attacks are the work of one man, Paul?" Diamond asked.

Battaglia pretended
not to hear him. He wanted nothing on the record that could be quoted
back to him if he guessed wrong. "Rose, you want to get me the mayor on
the phone? And help clear these crews out of here as fast as you can."

Diamond was
relentless. "Heard you came face-to-face with that skull in the
basement over at NYU the other night, Alex. Want to comment on what you
thought about the experience? Tell us where that investigation is
going?"

Battaglia's head
whipped around and he glared at me to ensure that if I had thought for
a second that I might respond to the question, I'd think better of it.

"That's entirely a
matter for the police and the medical examiner. They've got to figure
out who the woman is and how she died before there's any reason for my
office to be involved. Alexandra has nothing to say about it. We're
closing up shop here so you'd better scram before you miss your
deadlines."

"So I guess that means
the commissioner hasn't told you about the call that came into the tip
hotline this afternoon?"

Battaglia hated to be
out of the loop on anything. He looked to me for help. I shrugged my
shoulders and shook my head, knowing he would blame me for not having
the latest information. "I've been tied up most of the day," he mumbled
to Diamond. "I'm sure the PC called but I haven't gotten back to him
yet. Which tip are you talking about?"

"Some shrink from the
Village saw my piece over the weekend," Diamond said proudly. "Says he
thinks he knows who the girl in the brick coffin is. Claims that one of
his patients whose initials were A.T. went missing almost twenty-five
years ago."

15

"Would you please tell
us, Dr. Ichiko, why you changed your mind this evening and decided
against revealing the identity of your former patient?" The New York
One reporter had sandbagged the psychiatrist outside his Sixth Avenue
office as he closed up, and the interview was running at the top of the
seven o'clock news.

The doctor raised his
coat collar and walked briskly away from the cameras, trying to shield
his face more than to protect himself from the biting-cold air.

"Is it true you've
been offered a substantial amount of money to tell her story tomorrow
night on a network reality show?"

The doctor waved his
hand in front of the camera and tried to dodge the reporter by stepping
off the curb between two parked cars.

"The police believe
they have a homicide on their hands and yet you refuse to talk to them,
Doctor. Am I right?" The reporter gave up and turned back to the
camera. "That was Dr. Wo-Jin Ichiko, who may hold the clues to the
mysterious discovery of a woman's skeleton that we told you about last
week. It seems that the good doctor is willing to spill the beans… but
only for a price."

Brenda Whitney had
left her office-Battaglia's public relations bureau-unlocked so that
Mike, Mercer, and I could watch the breaking story on the evening news.
I had beeped Mike at five-thirty, when Battaglia ejected the press
corps, and he gave us the strange development about the doctor.

"Ichiko's just trying
to cash in on his fifteen minutes of fame. He's got a bullshit practice
treating derelicts, drunks, and druggies and he finally smells a
score," Mike said, talking over the reporter.

"Who'd he call first?"
Mercer asked.

"The good doctor
started at the
Post
after he read their story. They leaped at
the chance to get
an exclusive with him. The police department only found out because the
editors checked with headquarters to make sure the guy wasn't a quack.
Meanwhile, Ichiko liked the press reaction so much he began to call the
networks to drum up a little bidding competition for his story."

"I thought the media
can't pay sources for news. I thought they had some kind of ethical
guidelines," I said.

"You use 'ethics' in
the same sentence as 'the media'? I figured you had more brains than
that, Coop. The news producer got Dr. Ichiko a twofer. Flipped him over
to that reality show-
Crime Factor
-the one where ex-cons tell
about
their worst offenses and how they beat the system. They're willing to
pay him twenty-five thousand dollars for what he knows about the girl's
disappearance, and then the evening news show uses outtakes from that.
We get leftovers."

"Déjà
vu?" I asked Mike.

"All over again."

We had handled a
high-profile homicide several years back in which a young woman had
been strangled. Friends of the defendant had made a videotape of him
while he was partying during the trial. He was high on cocaine at the
time and playing with a doll, laughing into the camera as he broke its
neck. Rather than talk to police about what the perp had been saying
off-camera about the murder, or even telling us about the existence of
the tape, the enterprising teen filmmaker sold it to a tabloid
television show for use after the trial was over.

"Does Scotty know?" I
asked, referring to the Cold Case Squad detective who was assigned to
the matter.

"He heard about it on
the radio and dashed over to the doc's office. Couldn't get past the
receptionist."

"Tell Scotty to be
here first thing in the morning," I said. "We'll open a grand jury
investigation and give him a subpoena. The doctor doesn't want to talk
to the police, then let him tell the jurors his story. He clams up, we
hit him with contempt."

Mike made some calls
from Brenda's desk while Mercer and I watched the rest of the news. One
of Emily Upshaw's sisters had flown in to accompany her body back home
to Michigan for burial. She was due at the morgue shortly and had
agreed to talk to us at eight o'clock tonight, after her meeting with
the medical examiner.

At twenty-five after
seven, Mike clicked the buttons to change the channel on the small TV
set Brenda kept on top of an old green filing cabinet.

Trebek was announcing
the topic of the final answer: "Benjamin Franklin's Firsts."

"Twenty bucks," I said.

"I'm only good on
Founding Fathers who were warriors, not statesmen."

"Cough it up, Mike.
Mercer?"

He removed a bill from
his wallet and put it on the desktop. "You're taking food right out of
my baby's mouth, Alex. Lightning rods, bifocals, lending libraries. I
just know the easy things he invented that you learn in grade school."

The big board slid
back. Trebek read it to us. "Franklin's printing press published this
novel, first ever in America, in 1744."

Mike crumpled a wad of
paper and threw it at the screen. "A setup if I've ever seen one.
Literature in the guise of history, to borrow one of your regular
gripes. Nobody was writing novels then. They all should have been
plotting the revolution or fighting against the French and Indians."