Killer Look (3 page)

“Yeah. It's the only late-afternoon flight out of here now.”

That would take just thirty-three minutes, and then I could grab the shuttle to LaGuardia.

“Are things quiet enough—I mean, except for me,” I said, with a forced laugh, “that I might impose on you to run me to the airport?”

“I don't see why not, Alex. I'll walk next door,” he said. “Can you be ready in ten minutes?”

“You bet.”

He backed out of my doorway, left his car in place, and walked up the drive toward my neighbor's home.

I dialed Cape Air, booked myself into one of the three remaining seats, and poured a short nip of scotch while I finished gathering my papers and clothes.

The bumpy flight was right on time. I'd been through worse things than air pockets lately. I dragged my suitcase to the Delta terminal, submitted myself to the metal detector, and boarded the 7:30 shuttle to LaGuardia.

I didn't make the choice of my destination until the cabdriver had crossed the bridge and headed south on the FDR, passing the spot, no doubt, where Tanya Root's body had been dumped in the
river. If I went home, I risked the possible rejection of Mike not coming over to me when his tour ended.

I gave the driver the address of Mike's apartment—a tiny walk-up near York Avenue on East Sixty-Fourth Street that was so small and dark he had nicknamed it “the coffin.”

We'd had keys to each other's homes for more years than I could remember, for an assortment of good reasons. I climbed the stairs and let myself in.

I didn't bother to unpack, but I took a steaming hot shower before I tossed Mike's dirty underwear and socks off the bed and settled myself under the covers.

It was after eleven
P.M
. when I heard the door close behind him and looked up at his face as he stood over me. His fingers were combing through his thick black hair as his puzzled expression turned into a smile.

“What happened, Coop?”

“I needed you, Mike. Murder trumped everything but that.”

“Did you vote, Alexandra?” Stephane asked me.

I was waiting for Mike and our friends Mercer and Vickee in the bar at Ken Aretsky's Patroon, another restaurant in my comfort zone of places with great food where I also felt totally at home. Stephane, the handsome maître d' with the most divine French accent, had helped me to a glass of my favorite Chardonnay.

“
Mais oui, mon ami
,” I said. Somehow I had lifted myself out of my state of emotional paralysis to get things done after Mike had left for work. “I always vote.”

It was the first Tuesday in November.

“Your boss, he is up for reelection today?”

“Next year, Stephane.”

I had been crushed by what I had recently learned about Paul Battaglia's political involvement with a shyster minister, the Rev. Hal Shipley. Though Battaglia had a two-decade hold on the job of district attorney, I found myself wishing he would find a graceful way to step down. I had no desire to support him any longer.

“I'll have whatever she's having,” Vickee Eaton said to Stephane as she sidled up next to me at the bar. “Been way too long, girl.”

I reached over to give her a hug and probably clasped on to her a little harder and longer than I meant to do.

“I wasn't sure you would come tonight,” I said. “I'm mortified. I didn't want to see you and Mercer before I found a way to express how very grateful I am to you for—”

“Stop that, will you?” Vickee said. “Did it ever occur to you that I was just doing my job?”

“And breaking every rule in the book while you did? I don't imagine that was the case.”

Vickee Eaton was also a detective, assigned by the police commissioner himself, Keith Scully, to the Office of the Deputy Commissioner for Public Information. Mike told me that it was Vickee who kept him one step ahead of the PC's plans in the manhunt for the demented perps who had taken me.

“How are you, Alex?” Vickee asked, one hand on my arm as she tried to get me to square off and look at her. “Really. The truth.”

“Let me give you ladies your privacy,” Stephane said, pouring wine for Vickee.

“Would you please top me off?” I asked, tapping the side of my glass.

“Certainly, Alexandra.”

“We'll be four, Stephane,” I said as he headed toward the main dining room.

“
Oui, Mademoiselle.
Detective Chapman already called to reserve.”

“Are you feeling any better for a few weeks on the Vineyard?” Vickee said.

I knew the answer people wanted when they asked how you felt after an ordeal or a tragedy. The questioner meant well, whether
you just buried a relative or had your third round of chemo or were the survivor of a sexual assault. They rarely wanted to know about the dysfunction or disarray in your life caused by the traumatic event. They wanted the short answer. They wanted, “I'm okay” or “I'm over it.”

“So much better, Vickee. I think I'm back on my feet again.”

Her reaction would tell me whether Mike was spreading the news that I was hanging on to my marbles by a thread.

“What did you do today, Alex?”

She met my stare with a poker face. But that's how good a friend she was, too. Good enough to ask me to be godmother to her son, Logan, when he was born four years ago. Good enough not to judge me by one of Mike's reports on my condition.

“Voted. Shopped for groceries. Took some things to the dry cleaner. Started to sort out one of my closets.”

Best to leave out the hour or two I spent in a fetal position on my bed, and the uncontrollable tremors that started when my cell phone beeped with an AMBER Alert about the kidnapping of a Brooklyn toddler.

“That's the way, Alex. Take it slow. Nobody's expecting you to be slaying dragons in the courthouse anytime soon,” Vickee said. “The guys will be here any minute.”

“Mike and Mercer are together?”

“Yes. The commissioner figured he ought to put a Special Victims detective on the Tanya Root matter till they get a handle on how and why she died.”

Mercer Wallace—Vickee's husband—was one of a handful of first-grade African American detectives in the NYPD. He was a rock-solid investigator, four years older than Mike, and the person with whom I had worked more rape cases than any man in the department.

My professional antennae stood up at attention. “Why? Does
Scully think she was raped?” I said. “I'd better get someone assigned from the office to team with them.”

“Slow down, girl. You're on leave, remember?” Vickee said. “Catherine Dashfer is handing out the assignments for you. She's on it herself.”

No wonder I hadn't been able to reach her yesterday. She was my trusted deputy and close pal, but I suspected she had orders from Battaglia to shut me out of the trail of information.

“There are some things I ought to tell her,” I said to Vickee. “I've had some ideas since I heard about this last night. Like next week's big fashion show at the Met.”

“Tell Mike,” she said. “Tell Mercer.”

“You don't think Catherine will talk to me about it?”

I was beginning to sound paranoid now, which was bound to make all my buddies take note. There didn't seem to be a PTSD symptom that was passing me by.

“Of course she'll talk to you, Alex. It's just that you're going to see the guys in a few minutes,” Vickee said. “What other ideas have you had?”

I didn't answer. I took a slug of my wine, looking around for Stephane to fill my glass before Mike arrived.

“What? You don't trust me anymore?” Vickee said, rubbing my back.

“You don't seem to think my Met suggestion is the way to go. I mean, I know very few supermodels ever have big breasts,” I said. “Kind of ridiculous this woman wanted to enhance them at this point.”

“Kate Upton,” Vickee said. “She's got a chest, Alex.”

“But she was discovered when she was sixteen.”

“Maybe the girl wanted to be like Tyra Banks. Huge ones.”

“But Tyra was even younger,” I said, nodding at the bartender, who had taken his place opposite us in time for the evening crowd.
“Fifteen when she was picked up to hit the runway and the cover of
Vogue.
”

“Whatever your point is, Alex, I don't think the current wisdom in the department is that Tanya Root is a supermodel, by any stretch.”

“I get what you're saying. But if the guys have no way to jumpstart this, they might at least talk to people in the fashion community,” I said. “Or do you already know something that Mike didn't tell me?”

“Don't be silly, Alex,” Vickee said. “I have no idea what the guys found out today. I'm just talking common sense. The woman's age, the surgery to increase her breast size, the fact that if a top model has gone missing there'd be someone—an agency head, a boyfriend, a designer—someone to blow the whistle on her disappearance.”

I didn't have anything else to offer about Tanya Root. I knew that before I opened my mouth. But I didn't like the feeling of being out of the game. Mike, Mercer, and I had worked scores of these cases as a team, feeding ideas off one another's insights and experience.

“Keep an eye on my glass,” I said, smiling at the bartender. “If you see me getting low, just add some more and put it on my house tab.”

I could go a lot longer on wine for an evening than I could on whisky.

“Sure thing, Ms. Cooper.”

“Logan would love you to come for an overnight at our place,” Vickee said, changing the subject entirely. “You could spend a few days with us. Readjust to city life.”

“I'm dying to see him,” I said. “Maybe after I get settled in back at home.”

I saw Mercer coming to join us while Vickee was doing her
best to offer me another safe haven. He was much taller than Mike—almost six-foot-six—and had his arms spread wide to embrace me.

“You look a hell of a lot better, Alexandra, than the last time I saw you,” Mercer said.

“That's a good thing,” I said. “My psych-ward pallor was off-putting to everyone.”

“It wasn't a psych ward. It—”

“Might as well have been,” I said. “Everybody poking and prodding me like I was an alien creature, just set down on Earth for a short visit.”

Mike followed Mercer into the small wood-paneled room and stepped behind me, planting a kiss on my neck.

“Got that one right, Coop,” he said. “
Klaatu barada nikto
.”

Mike was quoting from his favorite movie about aliens:
The Day the Earth Stood Still.
I had watched the original and the remake with him more times than I could count.

“Coop believes she was saucered in from another planet to save all the Earthlings, just like Gort,” he said to Vickee. “Why don't you convince her that other people have the situation under control?”

“I'm trying to do that, Mike,” Vickee said.

“She's got this messianic complex, like the world will really come to a stop if she isn't solving sex crimes twenty-four/seven.”

“Don't be ridiculous. Tomorrow is manicure and pedicure, then haircut and color. Relaxed enough for you, Detective Chapman?” I doubted that I could sit still long enough to be pampered, but I so desperately wanted to give it a try.

“Sounds perfect to me,” Vickee said.

“Sparkling water all around,” Mike said to the bartender.

“Don't do that on my behalf,” I said. “Not-drinking, I mean. I'm off the scotch.”

“Why would you think that's the reason, kid? Mercer and I have worked up a real thirst today. Might be that something we stirred up by snooping around will have us going back at it later on.”

That was pure bullshit. Mike could throw down vodka all night and, with a few cups of espresso, be back on the job with no sign of overimbibing. Besides, nothing was going to heat up on Tanya Root's case tonight.

“Progress?” Vickee asked.

“Nothing to speak of,” Mercer said.

“Anyone come up with something helpful on Tanya Root?” I had already perked up at the prospect of talking about a real investigation.

“Not yet,” Mike said. “There should be a sketch ready to go public by tomorrow or Thursday.”

“No missing persons?”

“Always. Calls galore, but nothing that fits,” Mike said.

“The model angle?” I asked.

“More likely a hooker. Model wannabe,” he said, turning to the bartender. “You mind switching on that TV, m'man?”

The bartender picked up the remote and clicked the power on. The small set was hung in the corner, above the rows of bottles of aged liquors that had such rich color and, I imagined, soothing taste.

Mike took the remote from the bartender and began searching for
Jeopardy!
. He had an unerring sense of timing and had rarely missed the last question of the show, whether at a crime scene or the Medical Examiner's Office or a dinner with friends. For as long as I could remember, Mike and Mercer and I had bet on Final Jeopardy!, passing twenty-dollar bills back and forth throughout any given week as though they were Monopoly money.

“Were there any signs of sexual assault on the vic's body?”
I asked Mercer as Mike found the channel and upped the volume.

“Didn't Mike tell you there wasn't much of anything left for the ME to study?”

“Well, how about the interior vaginal vault?”

“Ms. Root was in the water for days,” Mercer said. “Sort of washed out any evidence there might have been.”

“How stupid of me. I should have known that,” I said.

“Saved me from insulting you, Coop. Right on the money. Stupid it is,” Mike said. “Now, pay close attention.”

Trebek revealed the giant blue board with the category:
MAJOR LEAGU
E BASEBALL.

I groaned. Things were definitely not going my way.

“Put your money on the bar, kid,” Mike said. “One twenty for us, and another for the bartender, who seems to think you're the glass-half-full, not half-empty, kind of person.”

“You know as much about baseball as we do,” Mercer said.

“Yankees,” I said, pulling the money from my tote. “Just Yankees.”

“The Final Jeopardy! answer is:
HE IS TH
E ONLY PLAYER TO WIN
THE AMERICAN LEAGUE
BATTING TITLE WITHOU
T HITTING A HOME RUN
.”

The timer ticked on while the three contestants seemed as baffled as I was.

“Child's play,” Mike said. “Okay if we go to our table?”

“I'll send the Pellegrino over,” the bartender said.

“And my Chardonnay, please?”

“Ixnay on that, kid,” Mike said. “You stay sober and I'll let you play detective with me this week. Break you back in, if you're up to it.”

None of the contestants had come up with the correct question. Trebek apologized to them before he got ready to ask the winning question.

“You got this?” Mike asked Mercer.

“Indeed I do.”

They both spoke at the same time. Mercer said, “Who is Rod Carew?” while Mike said, “Who is Sir Rodney, one of the great Zonians?”

The two friends high-fived each other as we walked to the front of the dining room. I looked longingly at the dregs of my drink, left behind us on the bar, while they tossed around statistics about the Twins star who had been born in the Panama Canal Zone.

Mike tried to get me to eat some of his grilled thirty-five-day dry-aged sirloin and sides of onion rings and fries—usually my favorite dinner—but I could barely manage a Caesar salad, which Stephane whipped up at the side of the table.

Vickee chattered on about the social gossip of the last three weeks, trying to keep the conversation away from crime and violence. Keith Scully sent his regards—which signaled to me that Vickee had told him she was on her way to see me tonight—and one of the other women at DCPI was pregnant again and one of the guys from Major Case who'd given me a hard time over the years had been flopped back to a lesser command.