The Deadhouse (13 page)

"Credit cards will be totally maxed out and it will be a perfect
diversion for me."

"And you'll turn the damn beeper off, right?"

"I'll switch it to the vibrate mode. You'll never know it's there."
Even my best friends had to deal with the fact that my days often
started with an assault or were punctuated by a murder.

"Heat wave, Alex. It may actually get up to twenty-eight degrees
today. See you in an hour."

The day went exactly as planned. Bundled up against the cold, we
shopped ourselves into a state of exhaustion. Most of my family's gifts
had been mailed out of town so they would arrive in time for the
holiday. I could scatter the rest to my friends throughout the week,
take a carload to the office for everyone there, and save Jake's for
Christmas Eve.

We were savoring our last cup of espresso after dinner when the
small device attached to my waistband began to buzz and wriggle against
me. I pulled it off and saw the lighted notice declaring that I had one
page. I depressed the button and it displayed Mike's home number.

"You call him back. He always asks how you are." I handed Joan the
phone, knowing she would break the ice between Mike and me.

She dialed the number and spoke into the receiver, affecting her
best French accent. "Can I interest you in a brandy, Detective Chapman?"

"Who's—?"

"Surely a flic as brilliant as you should be able to—"

"Mademoiselle Stafford! Your place or mine?"

"I'm afraid that I'm not alone. I've got that blonde with me. Don't
forget, I'm expecting some little Christmas trinket from you."

"Well, I've got Coop's all picked out." "What are you getting her?
I'm green with envy already." "You know those Lojack things you install
in cars so the cops can track them in case they're stolen? I'm gonna do
the first human Lojack insertion. I spend more time hunting down this
broad around town, trying to figure out where she is when I need her.
I'm gonna stick a needle with that computer chip deep into the buttocks
of her cute little right—you've probably seen 'em bare, Joanie. Which
one's cuter? The right or the left cheek?"

"Neither one's that appealing, Mike. They're both a bit scrawny.
Drinks on me. Please come join us. We're at—" "No can do. Somebody beat
you to it. Put blondie on." I put the phone back to my ear. "Did you
get my message?" I asked sheepishly.

"Yeah. Had to run right out and get myself a date last night. Didn't
want you checking my hand for blisters."

"I'm sorry for—"

"There's more important stuff to talk about. Just got a call from
the captain over in the two-six. One of the custodians was going
through the dorms at King's College today. Making sure everybody was
out 'cause they're closing the building down till after the first of
the year.

"The guy had to break open the door to one of the bedroom suites
that was locked and bolted from the inside. Found a kid from Philly, a
twenty-one-year-old senior, swinging from the railing in his closet.
Hung himself with the drawstring from a pair of sweatpants. Suicide."

I thought first of the boy's family, and how their lives would be
shattered by this news they might not even know yet. Mike talked on.

"Criminal justice major. Julian Gariano."

"In Lola Dakota's classes?"

connection to her that anyone can make. Seems your office was about
to bust Gariano next week. Six-month investigation with an indictment
that was supposed to be unsealed for his arraignment, by the Special
Narcotics Bureau. Kid and his accomplice have been importing huge
quantities of Ecstasy for a couple of years. His codefendant was
arrested at the airport, coming in from Amsterdam with more than a
hundred thousand tablets. Rolled over and gave up Gariano in a flash."

"So what's this got to do—"

"Guess who he lived with a year ago, his main squeeze? Charlotte
Voight, the girl who's been missing since April."

10

Planning anything this particular Monday morning was a futile race
against time. Every agency and business from which I needed records and
information would be shutting down, some for just the period
surrounding Christmas, and others for more than a week until after the
New Year's holiday. Lab scientists, cops, prosecutors, and witnesses
would be taking days off for traditional celebrations and trips to be
with family out of town. I took a cab to the office at 7
a.m.
and reviewed the file
for the short hearing I had to conduct at nine-thirty.

Then I blasted out a list of e-mails on the in-house network. I had
to find one of my senior attorneys to handle the new pattern in the
Nineteenth Precinct, and to put a rush on the subpoena for the victim's
stolen cell phone records. I drafted a list of things for Laura to work
on while I was in court, and wrote memos about case developments that
she needed to type and get to the district attorney.

We had our own NYPD branch, a squad detail of about fifty officers,
based one flight above me, so I called the voice mail of Detective Joe
Roman and told him to do a complaint report with the statements Shirley
Denzig had made to the Witness Aid workers. I also asked him to run a
pistol permit check on Denzig's father, in Maryland, and to determine
whether his gun had in fact been stolen.

Laura had just reached her desk at nine, and before she could sit
down she was buzzing me on the intercom. "It's Howard Kramer."

"I'll take it. But if Chapman calls, put him right through. I
thought he'd be here by now."

I picked up the phone to greet Kramer, a litigator and managing
partner at one of the premier law firms in the city, Sullivan and
Cromwell. Although I knew Howard through his work, we had become better
acquainted after his marriage to Nan Rothschild, the Barnard professor
who was also my ballet class companion.

"How've you been?"

"Fine. Everybody's well. I know how busy you are, but I thought you
might want to see Nan sometime this week. She's flying in from London
this afternoon, on her way back from a conference at Oxford. I read in
the
Times
that you're involved in the Professor Dakota mess.
Nan was working with Lola on a project that the college was sponsoring,
and she may have some insights for you."

I knew that Rothschild was one of the most prominent urban
anthropologists in the country. A professor at Barnard College, she has
led and participated in some of the most extraordinary excavations in
America, including several in the heart of New York City that had
unearthed Colonial burial grounds and artifacts of early settlements.

"I was talking to Nan at class a few weeks ago and she described the
dig she was supervising in Central Park. Seneca Village. Is that what
Dakota was involved in?" The village was a community of several hundred
people who were moved from their mid-Manhattan homes in the 1850s to
make way for the creation of the Great Lawn in the park. Nan had
captivated me with stories of the most current high-tech means of
exploring the city's past.

"I don't think Lola had anything to do with that one. Nan was
brought in as a consultant by King's College on something brand-new.
The head of their anthropology department, a guy named Winston Shreve,
asked her to head up a small project for them. Shreve had this idea to
take a significant urban structure with an interesting architectural
history, let Nan lead the excavation, and then combine the students'
physical dig with courses about the political and cultural history.
Lola was one of four teachers heading up the operation. It's attracted
a lot of attention in academia— very substantive, but at the same time
very lively for the students. You'd be amazed at some of the things
they've found." "Where are they working?" "The Octagon Tower. Do you
know it?" "Never heard of it."

"You'll have to let Nan take you over to see it—it's quite
extraordinary. It was New York's first lunatic asylum. Of course,
that's what they called it then, back in the early nineteenth century.
It's on Roosevelt Island, the northern end, just south of the
lighthouse."

"Not part of that great-looking ruin you see from the Drive?" The
one I had pointed out to Chapman on Saturday night.

"No, not the hospital. You can't see the Octagon from this side of
the river. Tell you what. Come over to the house for drinks tomorrow
night, and Nan will tell you everything she knows about Lola. Then,
when you have a chance, I want her to promise she'll take you out to
the Octagon so you can watch what's going on." We agreed to meet at
seven on Tuesday just as Chapman walked in the door, taped a sprig of
green plastic mistletoe on the bookshelf overhanging Laura's chair, and
kissed her on the back of the neck. "I'll be bringing a detective with
me, if that's okay. See you then."

"Where are we going?" Chapman asked.

"Right now, we're going to Part Seventy-four for my hearing. Can you
believe that the dig Lola was working on was an old lunatic asylum? I'm
afraid if the two of us make a site visit, they're likely to keep us.
My friend's wife is going to tell us what Lola was up to if we stop by
their house tomorrow. This hearing will be short. As soon as I'm
finished we can scoot out of here, up to the college."

Pat McKinney was standing in the doorway, mug in hand, as I gathered
my papers and white legal pad. "Guess I don't need to worry about the
direction of your investigation anymore, Alex. They're giving you the
big guns to work the case. Detective
I've-got-a-ninety-three-percent-clearance-rate-on-my-homicides
himself." These two despised each other. McKinney took any shot he
could at Mike, and Chapman felt a constant need to cover my back
against McKinney's double dealings.

"Don't dally too long, Pat. You'll be missing your Mensa meeting,"
Mike said just as snidely. Over McKinney's shoulder, we could see Ellen
Gunsher and Pedro de Jesus on their way down the hall to his office for
their daily ritual of coffee behind closed doors.

"I want to be sure you sit down with us before I head upstate for
Christmas, Alex. Pedro has some ideas about the trial you're starting
in January. The blood-spatter evidence. I think it would be useful to
hear him on it."

"Pedro hasn't tried a case since I was in the academy. He's giving
advice to Coop? You two ought to start your own Web site.
Www.I-used-to-be-a-contender
dot com. Sit in your corner office telling war stories to Little Miss
Gun Shy about what it was like in the days when you didn't have to turn
over Rosario material, and scientific evidence meant proving someone
was blood type A or O.

She probably even buys into your baloney. Thinks you were a trial
dog once upon a time. Gunsher wouldn't know the difference between the
inside of a courtroom and the Spring Street Bar. "We got work to do,
buddy. And you, Ms. Moneypenny," Mike said, winking at Laura, "I expect
you to tell me whether you've been good or bad this year. Don't let
McKinney under my mistletoe. His breath's funny. See you later."

We brushed past Pat and trotted down the staircase across the
seventh-floor corridor to take the elevators up to the sixteenth-floor
courtrooms. "How come you were late? I thought you were going to be in
my office by eight o'clock."

"Forgot I had to make a stop at the hospital. See a friend."

"Sorry. Who's sick?"

"Nobody you know. Just promised to be there for some blood

tests. I'll tell you later."

It was unlike Mike not to respond directly to my questions, so I
left it alone for the moment. "Anything more on the student who

killed himself?"

"He was one of the kids that the dean had lined up to talk to us
this afternoon. So far, that's all I know about him. People are dying
to get out of your way, Coop."

Truly, a sobering thought. "The narcotics assistant who has the file
wasn't in yet. I left a message for him to call as soon as possible and
get a copy of all the police reports over to me." I pushed through the
courtroom door and walked forward into the well.

The judge, defense attorney, and court officers were all waiting for
me to appear. I apologized for keeping them waiting as Judge Zavin
ordered the defendant produced from the pens. Behind each courtroom was
a small holding cell to which incarcerated offenders were delivered
from the correction department, brought to the building from the nearby
Tombs or the longer bus ride from Rikers Island. From her desk in the
far corner, the court clerk called the case for the record.

"Calendar number four. People against Harold Suggs. Indictment
number 4362 of 1994. Matter is on for a hearing under the Sex Offender
Registration Act. Counsel, state your appearances, please."

"For the People, Alexandra Cooper."

"Bobby Abramson for Mr. Suggs."

Since the murder of six-year-old Megan Kanka in a small New Jersey
township several years earlier, every state in the country had
responded with legislation mandating that convicted sex offenders be
required to register their addresses upon release with a local police
agency. In New York, before they could be paroled from prison, a
hearing had to be held to establish a level of offender responsibility,
which would determine how often that individual would have to report
for monitoring of his home and work situations. It would also decide
whether the public could be informed that Mr. Suggs had moved into the
neighborhood.

These Megan's Laws, as they have come to be called, arose from the
facts in that little girl's case. Her killer was a convicted child
molester who settled in a home across the street from Megan's house,
although no one in her family was aware of his background. After luring
her into his yard with the promise that he would show her a puppy, the
"rehabilitated" parolee molested and murdered the child.

"Ms. Cooper, Mr. Abramson—have you each had an opportunity to
examine the recommendations made by the review board?"