Death Angel (18 page)

“I have the feeling the sound of you hitting me will come through loud and clear, Your Honor,” I said. “And actually, I’m very well rested.”

“Did that snow monkey get a piece of your cheek, or did you cut yourself shaving this morning?” Mike asked.

It was 1:30 in the afternoon, and for the first time in days, clouds were moving in over the Park. We were standing at the foot of the Bow Bridge, where Angel’s body had been found.

“Must have been a cat,” I said.

“Want to tell me about it?” he asked, hands on hips as he kept up the usual tone of our patter in front of the group of cops standing behind him.

“Nothing to tell. I just scraped it on the edge of the kitchen cabinet when I reached for a coffee mug.”

“I know you can’t cook, Coop, but not even a safe cup of brew?”

“Danger everywhere,” I said. There was no point telling him about my tête-à-tête with Jessica Pell unless my efforts failed. “What’s here?”

“I checked in with Hal Sherman this morning, to see the Panoscan.”

“They filmed it right from this spot, didn’t they?”

“Exactly. It’s interesting, but I don’t know that it gives us much.”

Mike was looking due north, and I took my place next to him. We were even with East 73rd Street, though much closer to Central Park West.

“To the north,” he said, “all you can see is the Ramble. It’s tree covered and so steep that anything—or anyone—up there would be obscured from viewing this place or being in sight range. There could be a connection, of course, or it could be where the killer came from—”

“And the body, too.”

“Yes, and the body. But the foliage is too dense to see through.”

He turned to his right and I did the same. Above the tree line, the upper floors and rooftops of the prestigious addresses of Fifth Avenue—the Gold Coast, as it has often been called—dominated the view.

“See how many of them have the little eyelid windows you were talking about?” Mike said.

“All the old buildings do.”

“The staff sure had the best views, if nothing else.”

Then we took in the southern perimeter, just as we had from the Arsenal roof the night before. Finally we were facing west, staring directly at the façade and roof of the Dakota, with a completely unobstructed view.

“I froze the Panoscan right there,” Mike said, “and zoomed it in. You can see everything so clearly from this point.”

“Did you catch anyone looking out the windows?” I asked, jokingly.

He held out his arm, pointing at the apartment. “I swear there’s a shadow—a shadow the size of a person—framed in the window on the ninth floor, right above where Dalton lives.”

“Really?”

“Hal is going to try to enhance the shot for me. Probably not a big deal, though. There were sirens and lot of police activity by the time the Panoscan team arrived. I’ll bet half the buildings on both sides of the Park had people rubbernecking from their windows.”

“I guess so. Anything else?”

“That’s it. Just wanted you to see it from this perspective.”

When I called Mike before I left the office, he told me that Mia Schneider had arranged for us to visit Lavinia Dalton. Her nurses would admit us at two and allow us to see her briefly, if she was up to it, and to look around the apartment, especially in the room that housed the collections of silver.

We left the other cops behind, crossing the bridge and climbing the steps of Bethesda Terrace to exit the Park on 72nd Street and Central Park West.

“You okay, Coop?”

“Very okay.” My head was down, and I could feel the color rising from my neck to my forehead. “You?”

“Don’t get all sappy on me, kid. It was just a kiss.”

“Not spunky, not sappy,” I said. There were still uniformed cops everywhere along the walkways of the Park. “How long does the lieutenant think this police presence is going to last?”

“Tomorrow’s one week since the body was found. Scully’s going to pull most of the units out of here by the weekend.”

“’Cause she’s nobody?”

“Because the sight of so much blue in the green Park is off-putting to the tourist trade. The mayor wants business as usual. He gave us a week to get our killer, and we failed.”

“But Raymond Tanner’s out here somewhere.”

“Don’t whine, Coop. You know how I hate that.”

“Remind me what else it is you don’t like,” I said, waving at two policewomen I’d worked with a few months back.

“There’ll still be an undercover team working on the homicide, and with all the media Tanner’s had in the last twenty-four, I expect he’s anyplace but Central Park.”

“He likes it here. Comfort zone and all that.”

“Tanner also likes his freedom. There are lots of parks in the five boroughs,” Mike said. “Did Mercer have any luck with names from Seneca Village?”

“He called Vickee before he left my office. She had some old family papers from the church, but nothing with names on it. He’s figuring to get Verge by tonight and take it from there.”

The entrance to the Dakota was on 72nd Street, a two-story-high passageway through to the inner courtyard around which the massive building had been constructed, protected by a manned gate house. It was in front of this very spot that John Lennon was gunned down.

Mike gave his name to the guard, and we waited until he got the okay to admit us.

“To the right, please. Elevators in the far corner, to the eighth floor.”

We walked across the cobblestones, both of us dwarfed by the sheer size of the walls around us. Inside the lobby, we waited for the doors to open and deliver us to the door of the Dalton apartment.

“Good afternoon,” Mike said, extending his hand with the blue-and-gold shield in its leather case. “Mike Chapman, NYPD. This is Assistant District Attorney Alexandra Cooper.”

I said hello to the young woman, who was dressed in a traditional housemaid’s uniform, a black dress with crisply starched collar, cuffs, and apron.

“Come in, please,” she said. “We’ve been expecting you.”

Mike and I followed her through the entryway into a living room that was at least fifty feet long, with ceilings almost twenty feet high. The Oriental carpet was patterned in deep burgundy and navy blue, the sofas and club chairs were in subdued colors also, and the elegant but slightly faded décor appeared not to have been updated in several decades.

Beyond that was a formal dining room, walls painted a deep yellow and cabinets at both ends displaying sets of porcelain dinnerware and crystal wineglasses that looked fit for a king.

The next two rooms were small parlors, both facing the Park like the ones we had just come through. They were all designed
enfilade,
so that each time the housemaid opened the next pair of doors, the migration from one room to the next flowed naturally. You could see over your shoulder to the front door and, if all were opened at once, ahead to the end of the floor. Off to the right—the side away from the Park—was an entrance to each, which I presumed fed into a corridor that paralleled the grand spaces.

“Miss Dalton is resting in the dayroom,” the maid said. “The nurses will assist you from here.”

She pushed the two door handles and stepped back. The first person I saw was a nurse, dressed all in white, who was arranging chairs around a single bed, where Lavinia Dalton was sitting upright, another nurse beside her.

The room was lighter and more cheerful than the others, and though the day was overcast, the narrow bed was in front of a large window, positioned so that Lavinia could see the Park laid out below her.

Mike took the lead again in introducing us to the nurses, and I watched as Lavinia cocked her head and smiled at the sound of his voice. We were invited by the nurse to move closer and sit down, and the elderly woman smiled with what seemed to be delight at the arrival of visitors.

Lavinia Dalton was very well cared for, by all appearances. She still had the bones of a once-beautiful face, with light-blue eyes that sparkled as brightly as her smile. Her hair was thick and white, cut short and carefully coiffed. She was wearing a silk dressing gown and still showing off the Dalton jewels—a large diamond ring, several gold charm bracelets with discs the size of silver dollars, and sapphire studs in her ears to match the color of her eyes. Her back was supported by three pillows, and I recognized the classic design of the thousand-thread-count percale Porthault sheets that were more costly than Mike’s monthly rent.

“Miss Dalton,” Mike said, “Alexandra and I came to say hello to you.”

He had seated himself closest to her, reaching out to take her hand, capturing her attention as he did with so many women who were instantly engaged by his charm and good looks.

“Archer,” she said to him, her bracelets jangling as she clasped his hand in hers.

“No, ma’am,” the older nurse said. “This is Mr. Mike.”

“How do you do, Miss Dalton?” Mike said, beaming back at her. “You’re looking very pretty today.”

“Thank you, son. I’m so happy to see you.”

“What kind of day have you had?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “You should ask the nurse.”

“You’re having a very good day, Miss Dalton. You’ve enjoyed your lunch, and now you have new friends come to visit.” The older one spoke again, while the other left the room.

“We’ve just come from Central Park,” Mike said. “That’s why we thought we’d visit you.”

“I love the Park.” Lavinia Dalton lifted her head from the pillow and looked out at the view. She had a clear shot of the western end of the Lake and the great vista overlooking the Bethesda angel. “Perhaps we should go for a walk.”

“Not this afternoon, Miss Dalton,” the nurse said. “It looks like it’s going to rain.”

“We need the rain.”

The old woman was right, but I didn’t know whether that was because she knew we’d had a dry, sunny spell or if she was just making pleasantries.

I turned my head at the sound of footsteps. A very attractive woman in her early sixties came into the room, dressed in a cardigan sweater and pleated skirt. Her long blond hair was held back off her face by a headband.

“Good afternoon, Detective, Ms. Cooper,” she said, addressing each of us. “I’m Jillian Sorenson. Mia told me that you would be coming today. I’m Miss Dalton’s secretary.”

She was all business, stern and unsmiling.

“Thanks for having us in on such short notice,” I said.

“Jillian,” Lavinia said to her, “Jillian, is Archer coming today?”

“No, Lavinia. But you’ve got lovely guests who are here to see you.”

We went back and forth with Lavinia for several minutes, and although she was talkative and good-natured, it was obvious her memory was compromised.

I asked Jillian Sorenson if we might talk to her in another room, and Mike and I retraced our steps to one of the small parlors.

“We don’t want to upset Miss Dalton,” Mike said, “but we do have some questions to ask.”

“Why not start with me?”

“Well, because we’d like information about things that go back quite a long time.”

“I’ve been with the Daltons since the late 1960s,” she said. “That’s why Lavinia knows my name, even though she can’t call the nurses by name these days and she’s unlikely to remember she just talked to you now if we reenter the room in half an hour. There’s still a good amount of the long-term memory intact.”

“Will we upset her,” I asked, “if we talk about her family?”

“Most likely.”

“And you—?”

“I went to Vassar with Archer Dalton’s wife, which is how I found out about the position as Lavinia’s assistant,” Jillian said. “It was a tremendous challenge for a first job because she was such a vibrant social figure in those days. Hard to keep up with her.”

She was a few inches shorter than I and spoke with a clipped upper-crust accent. I was guessing her roots were on the Philadelphia Main Line.

“I imagine it was,” I said. “Do you live in the apartment?”

“When I got out of college, I did live here for the first six years. I have my own home, but for the nights Lavinia isn’t doing well, I do keep a room here.”

Mike seemed to perk up. “So you were on the staff when Lucy was kidnapped?”

Jillian Sorenson’s back stiffened. “I thought your interest was in the silver, Mr. Chapman. I hope you don’t intend to bring Lucy’s name up in front of Lavinia.”

“It is about the silver, but—”

“And I wasn’t considered staff,” she said, responding rather archly, “like the other servants were. I was in charge of all Lavinia’s business and philanthropic correspondence. I was treated like family, and I lived in the family quarters.”

“Were you working here when Archer Dalton and his wife were killed in the crash?” I asked.

“Yes, I was. Lavinia had me fly to Zurich to identify their bodies,” she said, “and arrange to bring them home. It was devastating for me, of course, because we’d been so close.”

“And when Lucy was kidnapped?”

“Why don’t you read the old newspapers, Ms. Cooper? And the police files?” Sorenson said, snapping at me. “There were nine of us working here that day while Lavinia was out. And each of us was interrogated and fingerprinted and questioned time and time again. My photograph was in all the newspapers, which proved rather an embarrassment to my family.”

“An embarrassment for them versus a tragedy for Lavinia Dalton,” Mike said, shifting his arms like a set of scales.

“I’m not minimizing the horror of Lucy’s disappearance—of her death, although that’s a word I’d never use in front of Lavinia. But we all paid a dreadful price for being here that day,” Sorenson said, her arms crossed as she clenched them with her hands. “Even my fiancé was dragged through the dirt by the tabloids.”

“Why—?” I started to ask.

“Because those reporters who thought the Dakota was impenetrable by strangers and assumed the kidnapping was an inside job were looking for a mastermind smarter than the butler. My fiancé was an investment banker. They figured he might have typed some of the ransom notes, which dictated how the money was to be paid and delivered, Ms. Cooper. He ended our engagement the day before we were to be married.”

And my fiancé had been killed in an accident the night before my wedding. I understood her anger and pain.

“So if you two are here to play sleuth all over again about one of the largest manhunts in police history, you’ve come too late. Neither Lavinia nor I have anything to say about Lucy,” Sorenson said. “If you have questions about the silver collection, however, I’m happy to tell you everything I know.”