Fairstein, Linda - Final Jeopardy (11 page)

Waldron continued, “We got some lifts, Alex, so we’ll have to do a set of eliminations before you leave. I directed the coroner to get Miss Lascar’s prints, too. Sorry about the mess that black powder is terrible. You’ll need someone to clean it up after we’re out of here.”

It was routine for the cops to take prints of anyone who had legitimate access to the location, to eliminate them from the latent prints found.
It would be expected to encounter my fingerprints as well as Isabella’s on some of the surfaces.

And once we were eliminated, the inquiry would tighten to find the source of the unidentified whorls and ridges that might be hiding on glassware, porcelain fixtures, and cabinet doors throughout the rooms.

I stepped through the front door into the tiny hallway central to most colonial farmhouses, with its staircase leading up to the guest bedrooms. I led the solemn troupe past that to the left, into the living room, its crisp Pierre Deux upholstery and clean lace curtains looking just as I had left them.

“She must have used the fireplace,” I observed aloud, assuming that was the kind of detail Luther might want to know.

“Those cinders weren’t there after my trip. It wasn’t cold enough to want a fire.” And I had been alone Labor Day weekend, conscious of how romantic the setting becomes with a fire lighting that cozy room.

“That candle is Isabella’s, too,” I added.

“I’m sure there’s one in the bedroom just like it.”

“You’re right about that,” Luther said.

“She always travels with them. Rigaud. Takes her own scent wherever she goes to create the feeling of being at home.” I had seen those tiny green votives - cypres was the one she favored in every hotel suite or guest room Isabella had ever planned to stay in for more than an hour.

Mike rolled his eyes in mock disbelief. The habits of the rich whether movie stars, yupsters, or cocaine addicts they were all grist for his mental mill, to be worked into the routines he schemed up to delight the guys back at the Homicide Squad as they waited out the night watch for news of another corpse.

I doubled back, seeing nothing else out of the ordinary in that room and passed my three escorts as I crossed the hallway and peered into the dining room. The table was empty, eight chairs drawn close around it, and as I leaned to look at its surface I could see the thin film of dust that usually collected within a week’s time of non-use.

“It doesn’t look like she ate in here,” I said, which did not surprise me, since the kitchen was twice the size of the dining room and had a sturdy oak table where I usually ate, except when I was entertaining, with the help of a local catering service.

We walked single file into the kitchen, and my jaw dropped at the sight of the black fingerprint powder coating the cupboard handles, refrigerator door, coffee mugs in the sink, the wineglasses still in the Rubbermaid drain, and the receiver of the telephone.

“Sorry, Alex, but we-‘ I interrupted Luther briskly.

“I understand what you had to do. It’s just unpleasant to see it in my own home.”

“Would you check the food supply, please? Anything different or unusual?”

Luther held his handkerchief around the handle of the refrigerator as he pulled open the door.

“There was nothing in it when I left except diet Coke and beer, so all of this is Isabella’s,” I told him.

There was milk and juice, English muffins and butter, yogurt and half a packet of hot dogs.

“Was she a vegetarian?” Wally asked.

“Yes, Wally. But I guess her boyfriend went both ways.”

I looked in the pantry and cupboards, which were pretty bare. Just as I left them.

“Must have cleaned out your shelves so the mice don’t get nothing over the winter, Alex,” noted Wally.

“Wally, she’s got the skinniest roaches in all of New York City. If they wait around for Alex to serve ‘em food, they’ll die of starvation,” joked Mike, knowing that my dislike of cooking meant that the cabinets were usually empty.

Luther moved to the old Welsh cupboard which held my collection of antique pitchers and opened the doors below, where the liquor was stored.

“Anything missing?”

“I don’t measure the bottles, Luther. I wouldn’t have a clue what was here last month or whether something’s an inch lower than it was before. I told Isabella to help herself to whatever she wanted, of course.” I thought of my Aunt Gert, who used to swear that her housekeeper sipped gin every Wednesday morning when she came in to clean her apartment. Gert took to using the tape measure from her sewing kit to check the level in the bottle, but could never remember where she hid the slip of paper with the number on it from week to week. The housekeeper long outlasted Aunt Gert, but the old girl would have been right up Luther’s alley.

He was about to close the door when Mike asked if the cops had dusted the bottles.

“Obviously not. There’s no powder on them, is there?”

“Well, take those three in. The front ones. I’d be willing to bet you’ll find prints maybe Isabella’s, maybe someone else’s but they’ve been moved since Labor Day.”

Even I looked puzzled.

Mike went on.

“See how the Stoli and Jack Daniel’s are in front? If Alex was the last to use them, the Dewar’s would be the closest to the door. But the Scotch is a step back and the other two are in front.”

Luther was frowning as he looked from Mike’s triumphant expression to my grin. I guessed that he was more upset by the suggested intimacy of our friendship than the thought he had missed a point he had no reason to know about, but I had missed it, too.

“He’s right, Luther. And Isabella usually drank vodka, so…”

“I thought she was a vegetarian,” mused Wally, puzzled by the significance of any of this.

“Do they drink?”

“She was a man-eating vegetarian, Wally,” Mike said, deadpan, ‘and a heavy-drinking one at that. Alex used to tell us she liked vodka, wine, and lighter fluid best, didn’t you? That’s what kept her so arrogant and frisky.“

Luther had his notepad out and was starting his list of additional things to do. There was nothing else of significance in the kitchen and we paraded out the far door ahead of him, through the room I had converted into a small office which seemed untouched and into the master bedroom.

While I stopped to take in the tableau of Isabella’s interrupted retreat, Mike walked across the large room to stare out the glass doors, which made up the entire wall, at the stunning view down the grassy slope to the blue tints of the pond and sound. This room was my favorite, sunny and cheerful all day, and so private that not a curtain or shade covered an inch of the opening. My only encroachers were the deer who ventured out at night and the osprey I had built a nest for at the edge of the property. Over my bed was a whimsical trompe painting of my wildflower field done by a local artist who liked to come to my hilltop to paint, and who gifted me with it years ago.

Now there was the clutter of Isabella’s belongings. I recognized the monogrammed luggage from T. Anthony: two duffels and a train case. A few of the silk lounging outfits she collected had been hung in the closet much too formal for the Vineyard but most of the sweaters and leggings were still sitting in the open cases, and underwear all La Perla was draped on my chaise and lying twisted on top of the coverlet on the unmade bed.

Luther caught up with us and the three men watched as I circled the room to distinguish between my possessions and those that would be neatly repacked and sent out to Isabella’s cousin, her only living relative. Next to my clock radio was the other Rigaud candle and a script of a screenplay for a movie entitled A Dangerous Duchess the Story of Lucrezia Borgia. Isabella had longed to do a period piece about a complicated character, but despite the eagerness she had expressed, it appeared from the place mark still near the front of the manuscript that her plans to slip away to read were put on hold by the pleasurable companionship of a playmate.

My eyes moved to the tab leon the other side of the queen-sized bed.
The books and tea caddy that sat there had been in the same positions all summer and seemed unmoved. I tossed through her bags and folded up some of the items I knew were Isabella’s, and explained to Luther that nothing I could see gave me any leads. The bathroom was full of her lotions and potions, all from Kiehl’s, and more makeup than most women would use in a lifetime.

“We, uh, recovered some used condoms from the bathroom wastebasket and sent them down to the lab,” Luther said.

“No, Luther, they weren’t here from my last trip,” I offered, since he seemed uncomfortable about suggesting that.

“I’m afraid there’s not much more I can show you here. Are you thinking that the guy who was here with her killed her, or that the shooter came in after the killing and took anything?”

“I wish we could answer that one, Alex. Right now we just don’t know.
Miss Lascar’s purse was right there in the car with her, with plenty of cash and traveler’s checks in it.

So if you’re not missing anything from the house, it doesn’t seem like anything of hers is gone either.“

“Luther, was her Filofax in the pocketbook?”

“Her what?”

“Her datebook. It’s a red leather booklet, about this size,” I said, outlining its dimensions with my hands.

“That’s her bible, she never let go of it. It has every name and phone number she’s ever known in it, every appointment, every assignation, every lover. Did you find anything like that?”

Wally answered first.

“Was my boys that found the stuff, Alex, and there wasn’t any finder facts that I know of.

Not in the house either. We went through everything pretty good.“

“There’s two things that Isabella wouldn’t part with very easily. One was her ring.” She and I shared a passion for Schlumberger jewelry coveted it, she bought it. She had a fabulous sapphire mounted in a setting called Two Bees the most exquisitely delicate gossamer wings supporting the deep blue stone.

“And her book. That book was the key to her entire life, professional and social. Find the book you’ll find the phone number and other vitals for Mr. Safe Sex and most of the other people you’ll want to interview.”

“Well, I can account for the ring all right. They had to saw it in half down at the morgue to get it off her hand Wednesday night.”

Mike saw me grimace.

“That’s okay, blondie. Keep this up and I’ll have enough overtime next year to get you one of your own.” He only said it to rattle Luther a bit more, but it didn’t help me either, underscoring the additional brutality of an autopsy to the already ugly fact of Isabella’s murder.

“No book, though,” Wally added.

Luther’s pad was out again as he wrote my description of Isabella’s book.

“It was always in her pocketbook or tote. If that’s gone, I’d suggest that your killer had enough fortitude to reach into the bloody car and remove it. That’s my guess.”

When he finished writing, Luther asked me to join him in the kitchen to answer a few questions about Isabella.

“Wally, why don’t you take Mike out and show him around while we’re talking here,” I suggested.

“Finest kind, Alex. Love to do it. Let’s go, Kojak,” Wally chuckled, as he led Mike out the side door and Luther and I sat down at the kitchen tab leto dissect what I knew of Isabella’s life.

Special Agent Luther Waldron was out to show me just how thorough a federal investigation could be, even though it was pretty clear to the rest of us that he didn’t actually have jurisdiction over the murder of Isabella Lascar. He wanted to know the entire history of our relationship and all of the details of our recent conversations, despite the fact that I had gone over that with Mike Chapman the day before.

Had I been anything less than cooperative, Waldron’s boss would have been on the phone to the District Attorney and I would be forced to waste the rest of my weekend doing this again.

“I don’t mean to suggest anything negative by my question, Alex, but why do you supervise the stalking cases that come into the office?
They’re not really sex offenses.”

“No, Luther, they’re not. Back when Battaglia asked me to take over the Sex Crimes Unit, he used to joke that my professional territory was everything between the knees and the neck. That covered most of what I did. But with the increase in stalking cases and harassment that all of us in law enforcement began to see in the late eighties by phone, by mail, by computer, and by physical menacing we didn’t know what to do with them. Once the psychiatric experts started to work with us it was obvious that a lot of the cases involved domestic relationships that had broken up and lovers who had been jilted, so the D. A. thought our unit was a natural home for many of them. They’re usually crimes with complex motivations and victims who need especially sensitive treatment. In that sense, they’re very much like sex offenses.”

Stalking cases are really an odd variety of criminal behavior, which Waldron knew every bit as well as I did. Most states, like New York, don’t even have a law that proscribes the conduct there is no penal code provision that specifically outlaws what most of us think of as stalking, no crime on the books with that name.

We struggle to prosecute under a broad range of petty violations when the bad guy makes harassing phone calls or mails threatening letters.
But the risks are enormous between that sort of action when not punished and the enraged lover who tires of his calls and entreaties being ignored by his subject, and waits outside her office building with a gun in his hand. Not a week goes by when I don’t have several of these pending, with women desperately fearful as they tell me about their estranged husbands standing outside their offices or apartments every day, watching their movements. They plead with me, each of them wanting to know the same thing: if that conduct is a violation of their orders of protection. Can’t he be rearrested?

No, I respond, it rarely is legal cause for rearrest, no matter how sympathetic the prosecutor or cop. Lurking and watching and following seem to have no sanction in the courts, and yet the stalker’s next move often escalates to a deadly one. You can keep the harasser a certain number of feet away from the victim’s front door, order him not to enter her workplace, and demand that his calls and letters cease, but once she’s an open target walking in a public space or street or subway, the thin sheet of paper handed to her by a judge as an order of the court is as worthless as Confederate currency. The criminal justice system is far more capable of dealing with murder than with harassment, though the line that divides them is often deceptively slim.