Terminal City (7 page)

“Anything inside? Any potential evidence?” Mike asked.

“Seems to have been doused with Clorox or some kind of bleach, the kind of thing that would destroy any residue of DNA or prints.”

Mike swallowed more vodka. “I’m traveling with you, Mercer. Where’d they find it?”

“The Northwest Passage.”

I knew he wasn’t talking about the open sea route through the Arctic from the Atlantic to the Pacific. “Where’s that?”

“You spend entirely too much time in turban town,” Mike said, referring in his politically incorrect way to the headdress of many of the city’s yellow cab drivers. “Public transportation wouldn’t kill you, you know.”

“It’s the northeast corner of 47th and Madison,” Mercer said. “A thousand-foot-long corridor that leads to Grand Central.”

“And to the subways going in every direction out of this hood,” Mike said. “However the killer got this broad into the Waldorf, I’d say he’s comfortably on his way back home.”

“But it sounds like he left us a trophy,” I said, referring to the trunk.

“What are the odds it’s of no forensic value?” Mike asked. “Saddle up, Mercer, and let’s check it out. Northwest Passage to nowhere.”

SIX

Mike and Mercer walked me to my SUV, which I’d parked between Patroon and the Waldorf. The drive home took only six minutes. I used the interior staircase to get into the lobby from the garage, picked up my mail, and said good night to the two doormen on duty.

It was late enough, almost midnight, to forget topping off the night with a cocktail, since I’d left most of mine behind on the bar. But my empty stomach was growling and the liquor was likely to knock me out and prevent nightmarish flashbacks to the image of the young woman in the hotel suite.

A hot shower, no matter the weather, always helped to wash away the detritus of the day. I scrubbed myself, then toweled off and carried my drink into the bedroom.

I often had trouble sleeping, but never more so than after witnessing the kind of brutality I’d seen today. Soft music, relaxing scents, an excess of alcohol, and even the knowledge that I would be working around the clock until this case was solved rarely calmed me enough to do the job. I was fearful of dreaming, fearful of where my subconscious would take me. Eventually, though, I stopped tossing and nodded off.

I was out of bed before six, showered again—cool water this time—to get a fresh start on the day.

It was early enough for me to have a car service take me to Bay Ridge, wait for me while I ran in to say hello to Mike’s mother in the Lutheran Medical Center, and then deposit me downtown at the DA’s office well before Battaglia would be in for his briefing. I dialed the service and asked for a pickup in twenty minutes.

I dressed, made a cup of coffee, and toasted the last remaining piece of food in my refrigerator—an English muffin. There would be no flowers allowed in the intensive care unit, so I sketched a bouquet on a note card with an IOU for a dozen roses to be delivered when Mrs. Chapman got home.

The newspapers were on my doorstep and I picked them up on my way out to read in the black car on the way to Brooklyn. The
Post,
never known for its good taste, had a banner headline:
ASTORIA HYSTERIA—WALDORF TOWERS TRAGEDY
. No surprise that I had to dig inside the Metro pages of the
Times’
first section to find a story, below the fold, about the body on the forty-fifth floor of the landmark hotel.

Someone had managed to leak a few details to the
Daily News
reporter—either a hotel staffer or one of the first responders:
SLASHER SOUGHT IN SOCIETY HOTEL
. The article had a grisly account of the victim as I saw her—deep wide slit in her throat, bathed in blood, and completely naked. I dropped the papers to the floor of the car.

I e-mailed Mike and Mercer, without telling them about my surprise detour. I asked what they had learned about the abandoned trunk, in preparation for my meeting with Battaglia.

Shortly before the car pulled up in front of the medical center, Mercer replied.
Trunk is at least sixty years old. Sort of a burgundy leather exterior, with brass fittings. Must have been pretty snazzy once. Interior has that name brand you mentioned in a few scattered places, but the bleach wiped out most of the design. It’s at the lab now. By the way, reported stolen a week ago, with all its contents. From the Yale Club, on Vanderbilt Avenue, just a few blocks from the Northwest Passage.

Those facts saved me the exercise of finding out when and by whom the trunk was bought. It would be easier for the cops to interview the Yale alum to learn how it went missing.

I told the driver that I didn’t expect to be in the hospital more than fifteen minutes. There weren’t many visitors in the rotunda when I entered, so I stopped at the desk and asked for the ICU. The only people in the elevator with me were medical personnel who appeared to be changing shifts.

I pushed through the two heavy doors to the unit. There was an administrator at the nurses’ station, sitting amid the beeping and flashing monitors.

“Good morning. I’d just like to say hello to Mrs. Chapman, if she’s awake.”

“Mrs. Who?”

“Chapman. Margaret Chapman. I’ll be really quick. I just want to give her a hug and leave this note.”

The woman lowered her reading glasses and scanned the patient names on her clipboard.

“Honey, I hate to ruin your morning, but we don’t have any Mrs. Chapman.”

“But she was here last evening. Admitted a couple of days ago. She didn’t—?” The word stuck in my throat. What if something had happened to her during the night?

“This is my fourth midnight shift in a row. There’s been no Mrs. Chapman in ICU. She didn’t die. She didn’t disappear,” the woman said, shaking her head at me as she scrolled down the computerized list of names on her desk. “Hon, she just never was in this hospital.”

SEVEN

I was sitting in the anteroom of Paul Battaglia’s office by 8:10
A.M.
Even Rose Malone, his trusted executive assistant and my good friend, was not in yet. I started up the large coffeepot and tried to control the range of emotions that had overtaken me with the thought that Mike had betrayed me.

Rose was only a few minutes behind me. “I just spoke to the boss, Alex. He’ll be on time for your meeting.”

“Thanks so much,” I said, pouring a mug for each of us.

“It’s going to be another brutal day, isn’t it? And you’ve got this horrible new case.”

She didn’t waste a minute setting up the papers on her desk and triaging them for Battaglia’s attention.

“Yes. He wants to be brought up to speed.”

“Go on in and turn on the lights. I’ll hold all his calls.”

I settled into the wooden chair opposite Battaglia’s oversized desk. The original campaign poster from his first run for DA more than six terms ago occupied the wall space behind his desk. The slogan “You Can’t Play Politics with People’s Lives” had become rather oxymoronic, since the man spent much of his day doing exactly that. His plush green leather armchair beneath the poster was a reminder that he expected to be more comfortable than anyone sitting where I was, in the position across from him.

I smelled the district attorney’s cigar before I heard him trumpet his greeting to Rose. No one was actually sure whether he brushed his teeth at night or just kept the last expensive Cohiba of the day clenched in his mouth until he got out of bed.

“Who did Scully think he was fooling by not answering the question about rape at the press conference?” Battaglia said as he entered the room.

“Just trying to keep the reporters out of the trash bins till the ME confirms the findings. The guys are also trying to figure whether it’s a known perp and if she had sex before she was killed. Always that possibility.”

“Glad you kept your mouth shut, Alex.”

Of course he was. Battaglia got credit for having one of his troops visible, in the fray early on, but no chance for a misquote yet.

“I had nothing to say, Paul.”

“What don’t I know?”

I described the scene in the hotel room to him, told him about Fareed Azeem, dropped in the fact that Mike Chapman was back in play, let him know Johnny Mayes’s theory about the trunk, the late-night discovery of the luggage, and the fact that it was stolen from the Yale Club.

“Holding back on anything?” the district attorney asked me, one hand poised on his telephone.

Battaglia wanted a juicy tidbit to dangle in front of the mayor. He would ask Rose to dial City Hall before I was ten feet away, just to show how in touch he was with events.

“You’ve got it all. I’ll be working out of the Waldorf for the next few days. I’m going to grab Ryan Blackmer to second seat me on this.”

“Regular updates, okay?”

I walked out the door, told Rose where I’d be, and headed across the corridor to my office. Laura Wilkie, my longtime secretary, was already fielding calls.

“I guess you never made it to dinner with your law school buddies last night, did you? I saw you behind Scully on the late news.”

“Slight detour on the way to the restaurant.” Five of my closest friends from the University of Virginia tried to meet once a month. Tales from the civilized lands of mergers and acquisitions, corporate litigation, estate planning, and mogul management were occasionally trumped by an intrusive felony.

“Did you ever get fed?”

“Watered is more like it. I’ll survive.”

“You’ve already got some messages,” Laura said, following me to my desk and handing me the slips with numbers written out. “And Mike, too. You must be glad he’s back in town.”

“Over the moon,” I said. I knew my dry delivery would disappoint Laura, who was Moneypenny to Mike’s droll James Bond imitation.

“Guess I’ll keep my nose out of that one,” she said. “Do you have plans for the day, after the nine thirty court appearance?”

“Setting up shop with Mercer and Pug at the hotel. Could you please hunt down Ryan and see if he’s available to work with me on this case? And ready me a folder to take along when I leave. Ask Catherine and Marisa to check cold cases for a throat-slitting rapist, maybe someone who sketches ladders on the bodies.”

“A fireman? A house painter?”

I groaned.

“Just trying to be useful.”

“I count on that. Tell them, too, to start checking SVUs in all the big cities for anything like this. A guy who might conceal a body in a piece of luggage.”

“I didn’t see that fact in the
Times
.”

“Keep up with the tabloids online. They’ll get the best leaks.”

“Will do.”

“Check with McKinney’s secretary. Find out when he’s back from vacation.”

My direct supervisor, chief of the Trial Division, was a prickly colleague named Pat McKinney. A total ass-kisser to the district attorney, he was most often found at my back, ready to plunge a knife if he thought I was being favored by the boss.

“You’re good for two more weeks.”

I smiled at Laura. “That’s a relief.”

I gathered the case file and got on my way to the thirteenth-floor courtroom of Judge Alvin Aikens. He’d been newly appointed by the governor and was still feeling his way through the practicalities of his judicial role, after more than two decades as a Legal Aid attorney.

The large room was practically empty when I walked in at 9:25
A.M.
The defendant, Gerardo Dominguez, was seated in the front row beside his mother. He was dressed in a dark suit and tie. Like many of the psychos I had prosecuted for sexual assault, the thirty-two-year-old looked benign and respectable when not searching cyberspace for his prey.

I took my seat at counsel table in the well of the courtroom. My adversary, David Drusin, was also prompt. He slapped his client on the back and ushered him to the defense table. I took Dominguez’s measure, since it was the first time I saw him in person, and turned away only when he met my stare with a smile.

“All rise,” the chief court officer said. “The Honorable Alvin Aikens entering.”

Aikens took the bench, signaling us to be seated. He appeared still to be self-conscious in his black robe, tugging at its folds as he pulled his chair into place.

“Ms. Cooper, Mr. Drusin. Good to see you both. You’ll forgive me if I haven’t quite found my groove yet.”

“Just so long as you don’t let the district attorney walk all over you, sir. Those spikes she’s got on can leave quite an impression on your rib cage.”

“Mr. Drusin doesn’t tread so lightly, either, Your Honor. I’m sure we’ll all do fine.”

“Shall we call the case into the record?”

The clerk leaned back in his chair. “People of the State of New York against Gerardo Dominguez.”

“You may sit down, Mr. Dominguez,” the judge said. “Counsel, would you two like to come up and discuss this with me.”

Drusin started to move to the bench.

“Actually, Your Honor,” I said. “I’d like all of this to be on the record. No disrespect intended, but it’s not the proper case for a sidebar.”

“Jesus, Alex,” Drusin said, slapping his palm on the table directly in front of his client. “Why does it always have to be hardball?”

The court stenographer threw up her hands. “What is it, guys? Are we on or off?”

“On, please. This isn’t hardball, Mr. Drusin. It’s just that there will be no secrets on this one.”

“What have we got here?” the judge asked.

“It’s an arraignment. It’s an unsealing of an indictment on the charges of Conspiracy to Commit the Crime of Kidnap in the First Degree and Illegal Access of a New York State Database.”

“Just a chance for Alex to grandstand, sir. I’m sure she’s alerted the press hounds to be here any minute now.”

“I arranged your client’s surrender, didn’t I? No media, no perp walk. Totally under the radar. There’s not a prayer of a reporter showing up here.”

“What’s the fuss, then?” the judge asked. “Sounds like serious enough charges. Let’s get Mr. Dominguez arraigned and then you two can go at it.”

The clerk read the charges from the indictment, now public record. Dominguez pulled on the collar of his shirt and shifted his feet. When asked how he pleaded, he opened his mouth and practically shouted, “Not guilty.”