Entombed (16 page)

"What do you mean,
'mad boyfriend'?" I asked, reminded again of Kroon's words.

"Oh, that was just the
excuse she used when she tried to worm her way back into our lives,
Miss Cooper. But by then I'd talked to a psychiatrist, an expert in
substance abuse. I found out how manipulative addicts are, and neither
my husband nor I was going to let Emily under our roof, no matter what
story she made up to weaken our resolve. The doctor assured us she was
just spinning a tale."

"What did she tell
your husband?"

"That she had to leave
New York because her life was in danger," Brandon said, waving the idea
off with the back of her hand. "That was Emily. Always exaggerating
things, always over-the-top with her storytelling."

"But was there someone
in particular she was afraid of?" I wanted to make clear to Sally
Brandon that Emily's murder suggested she might have had some
legitimate reason to be terrified at the time she had sent out her SOS.

"It was this boyfriend
of hers, she claimed. He'd moved in with her-we could only imagine what
kind of problems that young man must have had. I guess she couldn't get
him out of her apartment when she was ready to, so she wanted to come
back to the country for a spell."

"But was he abusive to
her?" I asked. "Is that what she was worried about?"

"She never mentioned
anything hurtful he did to her," Sally Brandon said softly. "I might
have believed that. No, this was-well, frankly, this sounded like Emily
in one of her drunken stupors."

"How so?"

"Emily told my husband
her boyfriend had killed a woman. She said that's why she was so
frightened of him. She was convinced he had buried someone alive."

16

"Early to bed, early
to rise. I didn't think you'd beat me in this morning," Mike said.
"Hope you bought breakfast. I'm dead broke and starving."

I pointed at the bag
on Laura's desk. "The two bagels are yours. What's with you and the
money lately? I'm happy to float you a loan."

"Long story. I'll tell
you next week. And I'd love to borrow a couple of hundred to get
through till payday, if it's not a problem. I know my
Jeopardy!
tab is sky-high."

"Take whatever you
need from my wallet," I said, turning my attention back to the computer
screen. I had come in at seven-thirty to try to find the old case
records of Emily Upshaw's drug arrest in the office archives. It was
nine by the time Mike arrived.

"Any luck?"

"I don't think the
system goes back far enough. Besides that, if it was her first arrest,
it was most likely ACD'd." With an adjournment in contemplation of
dismissal, Emily's first brush with the law would have been put over
for a six-month probationary period. If she had not been rearrested,
the charges against her would automatically have been dismissed.

Mike walked behind my
chair and picked up the phone. "Who's this? Yo, Ralph. That Upshaw
woman who was autopsied yesterday, would you check if they did a
fingerprint card? Yeah, I'll hold."

It was standard
practice for the medical examiner to take prints of the deceased. In
many cases there was an issue of identification, and in others they
could be helpful in resolving criminal investigations.

"Excellent. Want to
rush those down to Police Plaza? Send them to Ident, will you, please?"
Mike said, hanging up the receiver. "Chances are whatever sleazeball
lawyer stood up on her case never went the extra yard to have the
prints expunged."

"So this will give us
the name of the arresting officer."

"And maybe the guy she
was hanging out with, if he was a codefendant in the case."

I swiveled back to my
desktop. "Let's break down what we need to do. Is Scotty going to get
property and tax records for the building on Third Street, so we can
check the list of names of people who lived there twenty to thirty
years ago?"

"I figured we'd ask
him when he comes in-"

"You two talkin' about
me?"

"Speak of the devil,"
Mike said, getting up to shake hands with Detective Scotty Taren. A
thirty-year veteran of the job, he was a heavyset man, about Mike's
height, with silver hair and a nose that looked like it had been
flattened by one too many fists.

"That's what you'll be
calling me, all right. I've gone over to the dark side," he said, not
moving from the doorframe of my office.

"Good timing." I stood
up and extended my hand to Taren, trying to pass him Dr. Ichiko's
subpoena to appear before the grand jury, which I had just finished
typing. "C'mon, I've got coffee and your favorite croissant. Take your
coat off and let's sort out where we're going."

"No can do, Alex."
Taren held up his fingers, crossed in the sign that wards off vampires
and evil spirits. "I've been ordered not to take direction from you. I
will grab the coffee, though. I'm freezing my ass off."

"What are you talking
about?"

"The wicked prick of
the east-your pal McKinney. Called me at home last night about the
bones-in-the-basement case when he saw Dr. Ichiko on the late news. Had
the same idea you did about hitting him with a subpoena. Lit into me
when I told him you were running with it."

"Yeah? Well, that's
exactly what I'm doing. Would you take this-?"

"He's pulling rank,
Alex. Says he's deputy chief of the division and he hasn't yet assigned
anyone to the case. I'm to scoop Ichiko up and bring him directly to
McKinney. And your pet cop here, Mr. Chapman-well, it wouldn't be
polite for me to tell you what I was told to do with him."

I picked up the phone
to leave a message demanding to meet with Battaglia. Mike saw me put my
finger on the button that hot-lined me directly to his assistant. He
pushed my hand away and took the receiver from me, replacing it in the
cradle.

"Pick your battles,
Coop. I realize this gets your goat, but you're jumping to all kinds of
conclusions about that skeleton before you even know who she is or what
happened to her. McKinney wants to throw this whackjob doctor into the
grand jury, let him. We got business to do. Scotty won't hold back on
us."

"Just keep feeding me,
Alex. I'll tell you whatever you want to know."

"Property records?"

"I started on it
yesterday. We should have something by later in the week. We're getting
calls from missing persons units all over the country. Once we send
dental information, we should be able to eliminate some of those."

"Coop thinks your old
case is connected to Sunday's homicide on the Upper East Side. You got
time to sit down with me later on?" Mike asked.

"Sounds like a long
shot, but I'll beep you when I get back here with Ichiko. Let me not be
late for Mr. McKinney. I've never known him to be in before ten-thirty,
but he promised a special arrival time just for me." Scotty Taren
saluted me with his right hand as he turned back into the hallway.

"What's your day
like?" Mike asked.

"Without Dr. Ichiko?
I'm putting Annika Jelt, the Swedish girl, into the jury this
afternoon, and helping one of the kids with a difficult witness this
morning."

"Then I'll ski on down
to headquarters and try to find Emily Upshaw's old paperwork. Check
with you later."

Stewart Webster was a
young prosecutor who had only been in the unit for five months. He was
being supervised by one of my favorite colleagues, Ryan Blackmer, but
the week before they had met a brick wall in the form of an
uncooperative eighteen-year-old witness. I had asked them to have her
in my office at ten.

Ryan got there first
to tell me the facts. "You've got to have the last word about this
because it's going to get press if it goes forward."

"Why?"

"Yolanda-that's the
witness-she says he raped her on a moving subway train, just as it
pulled into Times Square."

The location was a
sure way to grab a headline, making every straphanger in town fear for
her safety.

"But you think
otherwise?"

"BFL."

Our informal unit code
name for a big fat liar. "You couldn't break her?"

"Her older sister kept
interrupting the questioning. Thought we were being too tough on her. I
tried to keep her out of the room but she kept bursting back in."

"You figure any motive
to lie?" There always was one in a false report, and discerning what it
was could usually break the story.

"It might be she got
caught by a transit cop. Somebody got off the train and reported some
kind of sexual encounter near the rear of the car. When the cop
approached, Yolanda stuck her head up and cried rape."

"Was he going to lock
them up for public lewdness?"

"He tells me he never
got that far-she started wailing first," said Ryan. "And then there's
the fact that the sister came home from work early-around midnight-and
Yolanda still wasn't in the house like she was supposed to be."

"What kind of job does
the sister have?"

"Exotic dancer. The
Pink Pussycat Lounge on Varick Street. That's how she supports her
college education."

"Exotic? That's a lot
classier than what I'd call it."

Webster knocked on the
door. I waved him in and he stepped aside to introduce me to Yolanda
and her sister, Wanda.

"Why don't you sit
right here, Yolanda? And Wanda, I'm going to ask you to wait in the
conference room until I'm ready for you."

"How long's this gonna
be? I got school this afternoon," Wanda said.

"The more candid
Yolanda is with us, the faster this will go." Wanda seemed to be
pouring out of a costume from a late-night dance performance, and I
couldn't begin to guess in what kind of class she was enrolled.

Wanda tilted her baby
sister's chin up so their eyes met. "You tell the lady the troof now.
Don't be wasting anybody's time when I got things to do."

The young high school
dropout claimed that she met Laquon at six o'clock in the evening the
previous Wednesday in front of a Starbucks on Broadway.

"What did you and
Laquon talk about?"

"Nothin'."

"Well, how did it
begin? What's the very first thing he said?"

"You know, like, he
just approached me and told me he thought I was cute, and like that."

"What were you doing
when he came up to you, Yolanda?"

"Nothin'."

"It was about ten
degrees outside, and dark, at six o'clock last Wednesday. Why were you
just standing there on the street?"

"I don't remember."
Yolanda was looking at her inch-long fingernails, picking at the
glitter that coated each of them in a different color.

"I'd like you to look
at me when you answer me, okay? We're talking about things that
happened less than a week ago," I said firmly. "I expect that you can
remember them, so give it a try."

She glanced up at me
and went back to rearranging the pattern on her nails. "I think I was
waiting for my boyfriend to get off his shift."

"Does he work at
Starbucks?"

"Yeah. He do."

"What time did he
finish work?"

"I don't 'xactly know.
It was supposed to be six, but when he didn't be out by a quarter
after, I couldn't wait no more."

"Why was that?"

"Because of Laquon. He
wanted to take me to a movie."

"How long had you two
been talking before you agreed to go to the movies with Laquon?"

"'Bout ten minutes.
Till I knew him good." Yolanda was scratching at the surface of her
nails, sweeping the glitter that fell in her lap onto my carpet.

"What movie did you go
to?"

"I don't remember."

"Where was the
theater?"

"Near where we was.
Broadway and Lincoln Center."

"What was the movie
about?"

"Some kind of Jackie
Chan action thing."

"Well, Yolanda, if you
testify in court, you're going to have to tell the jury every detail
about what happened from the time Laquon first started talking to you.
They're not going to be too happy with 'I don't know' or 'I don't
remember.' Juries and judges don't send guys to jail when you can't
tell them everything that went on."

She flicked her nail
at me, in disgust, and neon green glitter wafted all over my desk.
"It's not my fault I fell asleep in the movie."

"That's not what
Laquon says." If she could bullshit me, I could certainly bluff her,
too. "He told the cop there was a different reason you two weren't
watching the movie."

"Yeah, well, why you
be all believin' him? What'd he say?"

"What would you guess
he said?"

Yolanda started
chewing on a nail. "I don't know."

"Do me a favor and sit
on your hands. Stop playing with your polish and sit on your hands
while we talk." I waited while she tucked her pitted nails under her
substantial thighs. "What if I tell you the manager of the theater told
the cops exactly the same thing Laquon said?"

She cocked an eye and
stared at me. "He be lying, too." She turned to look over her shoulder.

"Don't worry. The
door's closed. Your sister can't hear us. So they're both lying when
they say you and Laquon were making out in the theater-that you were
kissing each other and-?"

"I didn't like him
like that."

"Well, how did you
like him?"

"Just like a friend.
An old friend."

"What time did the
movie end?"

"I don't know."

"Where did you go when
the movie ended?"

"I don't remember."

"Did you have anything
to eat or to drink?"

"Not that I remember."

Ryan and Stewart
exchanged glances. "I'm telling you, Alex. She's got total amnesia. She
doesn't remember anything else until she was on the subway train," Ryan
said to me. "We got three hours totally unaccounted for."

"How did Laquon
explain it to the cops?"