Death Angel (25 page)

“How do you lose a patient?” Mike asked. “A psych patient, no less, who threatened to kill himself and off his old lady, too?”

“If you calm down, Detective, I’ll remind you.”

The storm that struck the New York metropolitan area on Monday, October 29th, was the largest Atlantic hurricane on record, with a diameter spanning more than 1,100 miles.

“Water had flooded the streets in lower Manhattan that night, and flooded the hospital’s basement as well. Our generator was gone, and we had a pretty desperate mission to make our patients safe. You’re thinking of psych patients, Mr. Chapman, but we also do heart surgery here and deliver babies; we have people on dialysis and ER admissions with brain trauma and life-threatening injuries.”

“I didn’t mean to imply—”

“By the next day, all of our thirty-two elevators had shut down. We lost our ventilators, so we put portable oxygen equipment next to the patients who needed it We ran out of food and we had no drinking water, Detective. But if you stood still for a minute, you could hear a sound like Niagara Falls roaring through the elevator banks as the river water submerged all of our generators. Any of this sound familiar?”

Hoexter had silenced both of us.

“I began to urge that we evacuate, like the NYU and Coney Island hospitals had done before us. And you know what? I received resistance to that idea, even while sleep-deprived nurses were carrying newborns down ten flights, and two of my best docs were helping a triple-bypass patient navigate an unlighted staircase, dragging his oxygen tank behind him.”

“I’m sorry I sounded so critical,” Mike said.

“The NYPD was great. So was the National Guard.” The silver-haired doctor seemed overcome by emotion. “I sat at my desk with a couple of flashlights but no phones, trying to figure out who should be saved first, while ambulances—ambulances by the dozens, organized by FEMA—lined up in front of my hospital and squared the block, two or three times over.”

Those images had been shown on the national news over and over again that evening and in the days to follow. It was an unforgettable scene. Emergency truck after emergency truck, from every hospital and service and department anywhere within an hour’s drive had responded, red lights flashing in the rainy night as they waited to take on patients while the storm surge continued to wipe out all the power in the city’s southern grid.

“I had no idea where these individuals were going,” Hoexter said, reliving the desperation of that moment as he retold the story. “All we knew is that they couldn’t survive here. ICU, the nursery, the coronary care unit—those patients went first. Where we were sending them, God only knew.

“I’m told that when each stretcher arrived at the front of the line, a dispatcher—someone on our staff—had triaged the patient, and the corresponding ambulance made its own determination about which facility—Mount Sinai, Roosevelt, Lenox Hill, Cornell, Columbia Pres—about which one could take that particular person and treat his or her needs.”

“And off they went into the night,” I said.

“Most of them left Bellevue without medical records to accompany them. All of them left with uncharged cell phones because we’d been without power for so long. Neither they nor we had the ability to notify next of kin. And when they walked—or were wheeled—out the door, none of them had the slightest idea where they were going. Nor did we.”

“So you lost patients, literally.”

“Seven of them, Ms. Cooper,” Hoexter said, dropping his head into his hands, elbows on his desk.

“All psych?”

“Yes. All civil commitments. The NYPD got all the criminally insane prisoners out. But Wicks was among the last patients evacuated. He had no urgent medical needs, like the others in his unit,” Hoexter said, checking the notes on the computer. “He’s quite intelligent and really hated being confined. Somehow, in all the confusion of that dreadful night, Eddie Wicks simply put on a rain jacket, followed the others out of the building, and walked away from his keepers.”

Hoexter tapped a button on his keyboard and printed out a photograph of Eddie Wicks. He passed it across the table for both of us to see. I looked at it, then handed the paper to Mike.

I didn’t know the significance of Wicks’s disappearance. Clearly, it shouldn’t have presented the threat to society that the escape of Raymond Tanner did. Wicks was a danger to himself, and possibly to his mother. And maybe Mike’s concern about the figure in the window of the Dakota was legitimate. Maybe Eddie Wicks had returned to his favorite hiding place.

“How about his mother?” Mike asked. “Why does she still think he’s here in Bellevue?”

Hoexter scrolled down through the file. “I don’t know what she thinks.”

“She’s next of kin. Why didn’t she get notified?”

“She may be next of kin,” the doctor said, “but Mr. Wicks is fifty-nine years old. He didn’t want any relatives notified about anything. The head of his team says a lot of his anger is directed at his mother. Bernice Wicks, is that her name?”

“Yeah.”

“We had no obligation to tell her anything.”

“Suppose he’s still on the warpath?” Mike asked. “Part of the reason he’s in this snake pit is because he threatened to kill her.”

Hoexter put his reading glasses on and returned to the patient file on the computer screen. “That problem wasn’t even referenced any longer by mid-August. I doubt he’s a menace to his mother. It was all about suicidal ideation. All about Wicks’s desire to hurt himself.”

“So where’d he go, Doc?”

Hoexter leaned back and put his hands behind his head. “I haven’t a clue.”

“Where was he likely to go, given his condition back in October?” Mike sounded exasperated.

“We try to treat the human mind, Detective. We have no ability to read it.”

“You just told us you don’t think he’ll hurt his mother.”

Hoexter brought his arms down and looked Mike in the eye. “Eddie Wicks was diagnosed with this bipolar disorder when he was fifteen years old. It’s a highly treatable condition, and it appears that Wicks accepted that treatment for long periods of time. He was in some pretty damn fancy facilities, as I skim his history.”

“How does it manifest itself?” I asked. “The bipolarity?”

“The mania occurs when the patient’s elevated mood exists with three or more classic symptoms for most of the day, for a week at least.”

“What symptoms?”

“Feelings of euphoria, becoming restless and hyperactive, confusion and poor judgment.”

“Alcohol abuse?”

“Frequently. And I see Wicks has a history of that.”

“Increased sexual drive?” I asked.

“In a much younger man, certainly. In Wicks, it doesn’t appear to be a serious part of the history.”

“And the depressive episodes?”

“Characterized by negative feelings—intense sadness and hopelessness, withdrawing from others, feeling angry and unable to think clearly.”

“Does Wicks exhibit any psychosis?” I asked.

Hoexter went back to the computer screen. “Yes. He was frequently delusional. Persecutory delusions.”

“I guess it won’t help that the police will be looking for him,” Mike said.

Hoexter scrolled up again. “Looks like he’s had these delusions since his late teens.”

I thought of the way Lavinia Dalton’s household staff—and their loved ones—had been subjected to interrogation and media scrutiny after Baby Lucy’s kidnapping. A bipolar kid who’d witnessed his father’s death must have been particularly vulnerable to feelings of persecution. Perhaps he’d been haunted by them his entire life.

“And never been cured?” Mike asked.

“We can’t cure this disorder, Mr. Chapman. We can manage it with medicines and therapeutic intervention. That’s the best we can do.”

“And now Eddie Wicks is off his meds.”

“Yes. He was being treated with lithium and with valproate, to which he was responding pretty well. But unless he’s sought treatment somewhere more to his liking, he’s off his meds, and that’s a very difficult place for him to be.”

“So what’s at risk here, Doc?” Mike said. “I want to talk to this guy. He may know something I need for a murder investigation. Now that he’s been out of here for eight months, he may even be a witness to events in the case. I don’t want to start a conflagration, but I’d like to find Eddie Wicks.”

Hoexter took a minute to reflect. “It’s clear that he’s afraid of the police, Mr. Chapman. He might find your manner a bit—”

“Overbearing?” I said, with a frisky tone in my voice.

“Better that you say it than I, Ms. Cooper. Wicks will probably respond more openly to questioning by you than by the detective. I doubt he’d find you—well, quite as intimidating.”

Mike stood up, ready to go. “Then he’d better hold tight to his balls, Doc, ’cause Coop can break them faster than eggs in a frying pan.”

“I don’t cook, Dr. Hoexter,” I said with a grin, “but I do enjoy breaking—”

“Where’s a guy like Wicks gonna go?” Mike asked.

“He complained to his physician that he could no longer afford the rent on his apartment, and he had no family he was interested in staying with. I’m afraid this would all have fed into his feelings of hopelessness, his withdrawal from others. Wicks might have experienced a few manic days—some euphoria, actually—when we managed to hand him the tools for his own escape from Bellevue.”

“We’ve got to check with the city’s Department of Homeless Services,” I said to Mike. “They relocated thousands of people after the storm.”

“It was a perfect opportunity for many to create new lives for themselves,” Hoexter said. “Folks were washed out of their homes without a chance to bring identification with them. Eddie Wicks had the smarts and ability to sell himself as a storm victim and start life over. You’re right to look at that option, or anyplace in which he had a comfort level.”

“He’d go back to someplace familiar?” Mike asked.

“Especially when manic.”

The ninth floor of the Dakota, his childhood sanctuary. The vast backyard of his youth, in Central Park.

“And if depression gets the better of him?” Mike said.

“The biggest risk there is what brought him here in the first place.”

“Suicide.”

“Twenty-five to fifty percent of patients with bipolar disorder attempt suicide at least once, Detective. Six to twenty percent of them succeed,” Hoexter said. “Seeing as how he has a family member who killed himself and having tried to do so previously, I’m almost surprised Wicks hasn’t made his way to the morgue yet.”

“Sobering words,” I said. “Are there warning signs? Things to look for?”

Hoexter’s fingers were templed now. “Constant talk about taking his life, which is a big part of his record here. Deep feelings of shame and guilt, which he’s expressed, apparently, through most of his life. He blames himself for his father’s suicide—or at least, since he was at home, for not preventing it. He blames himself for his mother’s menial labor, and that he couldn’t rescue her from that life. That sort of thing.”

“Understood.”

“Risk-taking behavior. I’d say heading off into the dark and stormy night last fall, away from his team and his lifeline, with no destination—that’s a major risk. And things like putting his affairs in order, such as they are. Like giving away any possessions he might have.”

“I don’t imagine there are many of those,” Mike said.

“Belvedere Castle and the Obelisk,” I whispered to myself, more as an aside than a statement. “The black angel.”

“What about them?” Mike asked.

“Maybe Eddie Wicks is somewhere in Central Park, or he’s the figure you saw in the ninth-floor window, the day the body came out of the Lake?”

“How did he get his hands on pieces of the Dalton silver collection?” Mike seemed as puzzled as I was.

“Don’t answer my question with a question, Detective. Somebody stole those two pieces of silver,” I said. “Who’s to say it wasn’t Eddie Wicks?”

“Nobody’s where they’re supposed to be,” Mike said.

“What do you mean?”

“Tanner and Wicks walked away from the nuthouse, you’re AWOL from the office, I’m being held by my short hairs, and Mercer’s out of cell range.”

“Maybe he’s still in the attic of the Dakota,” I said, getting back into Mike’s car with two hot dogs from a stand on First Avenue.

“Guess so.”

“I just texted him to phone me.”

We were halfway through our tube steaks when he called back. “Where were you?”

“Time traveling back a century, up on the ninth floor. No reception there. Sorry.”

“So Eddie Wicks can’t help us,” I said. “Don’t tell his mother or Jillian Sorenson yet, but he took a hike during the hurricane last fall.”

“He
what
?”

“I think we need to make sure that once the department issues an alert for him—if Scully thinks that’s necessary—there’s a bodyguard at the Dalton apartment, for his mother’s sake.”

“We’re fresh running out of bodyguards,” Mercer said.

“So I have this idea,” I said. “If it’s okay with Vickee, why don’t I spend the weekend at your house?”

Mike threw his head back and started talking. “Nightmare on Elm Street. There they were, planning a nice romantic weekend together, and you throw yourself into the mix.”

“Don’t choke on the dog,” I said to Mike. “They’ve got a toddler. No such thing as a romantic weekend.”

“We’ll be fine with that,” Mercer said.

“Frees up the two rookies who were sitting on me to hold Bernice Wicks’s hand if we flush Eddie out of hiding. Meanwhile, I’m safe and sound with you two.”

“How can you just invite yourself to their home?” Mike asked.

“Because the department thinks I have to be protected against Raymond Tanner, and because I have no plans for the weekend, Mr. Chapman,” I said, covering the phone with my hand. “Care to change that?”

“Not in the stars right now, Coop,” Mike said, chewing on the hot dog. “I’m a eunuch for as long as Manny Chirico wants me to be. Ask Mercer if Crime Scene got anything out of the room.”

Mercer heard Mike ask me the question and responded. “The coffee cups are going to the lab for possible DNA in the saliva. They’ve done imaging of the footprints, which appear to be an adult male—not a sneaker but some kind of rubber-soled shoe. Size twelve. Newspaper fragments from late May, early June. Snack food wrappers.”

“Generic debris,” I said.

“Except for one little slip of paper,” Mercer said.

“Oh?”

“Stuck in the fold of one of the newspapers was a ticket—like a large manila tag you’d use to label something—from a storage warehouse on Second Avenue: Day & Meyer, Murray & Young,” Mercer said. “Ever hear of it?”

“Of course. It’s on 61st Street, just north of the Queensboro Bridge.” My friend Joan Stafford’s grandmother, one of the wealthiest heiresses in the city, used to roll up her most valuable Oriental carpets and take down her collection of Old Masters every summer, before moving up to Newport, to be stored at Day & Meyer. The carpets were shelved in cedar to repel moths, and the paintings kept in climate-controlled vaults. “It’s where the richest New Yorkers have stored their most precious possessions for a hundred years.”

“Would you guess Lavinia Dalton?”

“It wouldn’t surprise me.”

“The tag has no name, but it does have a number. Surely they can track that.”

“Have you asked Jillian Sorenson about it?” I said.

“No need to tip my hand to her,” Mercer said. “I just don’t trust her. But I’m going to take a run over to the storage place myself.”

“We’re a straight shot up First Avenue. Meet you there in ten minutes.”

“Meeting where?” Mike asked when I clicked off the call.

“61st and Second. That monolith of a building that straddles the block on the east side of the street.”

Millions of New Yorkers passed the Day & Meyer neo-Gothic tower every day, most never knowing the treasures that were housed behind its mostly windowless façade were as valuable as the contents of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

“Have you been there?”

“Never inside. But they used to pick up all of Joannie’s grandmother’s most precious belongings and—”

“Pick them up? What do you mean?”

“I remember being at Grandma Stafford’s home—that incredible duplex on the river—when the men from Day & Meyer came to collect her living room one time.”

Mike pulled out into the uptown flow of traffic. “What in her living room?”

“I told you. The living room. Every piece of furniture she’d bought in Europe’s finest antique markets over the years, the baby grand piano, the rug all those things were sitting on, the Delft porcelain that lined the walls, the family portraits as well as the Mary Cassatt and the minor Van Gogh. And on and on. When the men were done, the room was absolutely bare.”

“And they moved that stuff how?”

“Ah! What they’re famous for at Day & Meyer is the Portovault system.”

“Panoscan I know. What’s a Portovault?”

“Think of each Portovault unit as a steel safe—about eleven feet long and as tall as the ceilings at the Dakota, and weighing about a ton.”

“Like a shipping container?”

“Pretty much. Except that these are on wheels, and they’re impenetrable. They’re loaded onto an armored truck—armored, okay?—and taken to the client’s home, where the men pack them up, lock them—so that the owner can watch—and return them to the building on 61st Street.”

“Where they’re unloaded again?”

“Or not,” I said. “The building has an interior rail system—that’s why the units are on wheels—so each one goes from the loading dock to a freight elevator and right into an assigned space, like the most gigantic safe imaginable.”

“Locked and loaded. And then the whole room just sits as it is, waiting for its owner to send for it someday.”

“When the season at Newport ended, Granny Stafford used to call for her vault, and everything was dusted off and put back into place.”

We reached 61st Street before Mercer did. My cell mailbox was full, and I was happy to ignore everything incoming, most of which had to be from an angry Battaglia. I dialed Nan Toth’s office number and was pleased that she was at her desk and picked up.

“Glad you’re still there,” I said. It was almost four in the afternoon.

“Yeah, but where are
you
?”

“Field trip. Don’t ask.”

“I am asking. Laura’s tearing her hair out with worry.”

“I’ll explain everything later. Will you be there a while?”

“Yes, unfortunately. I have a witness on my d.v. case who can’t come in until after work at five.”

“Great. Can you hammer out some creative subpoenas for me while you wait?”

“How creative?”

“I’m meeting Mercer in a few minutes,” I said, leaving Mike out of the mix in the event Battaglia or McKinney pressured my good friend Nan on my whereabouts.

“A break in the case?”

“To be honest with you, I don’t know what it is. We may be chasing rainbows—or shadowy figures in windows and shoe prints in dusty rooms—but that’s all we’ve got to do at this point.”

“Okay. What do you need?”

“Mercer’s got a receipt for something that’s in storage. You know Day & Meyer?”

“The Fort Knox of storage facilities. I’ve heard of it.”

“We’re about to go in to try to access a particular container.”

“Because?”

“Some guy who had the receipt may have been watching the police remove the dead girl’s body from the Lake in the Park. We have a picture of him checking out the crime scene at seven
A.M.
last Friday morning, the time the body was bagged and the guys were scouring for clues.”

“Go on.”

“And there were several items of value—stolen items which are part of a larger collection—that may be connected to the girl’s death. We’re betting this storage container holds the key to connecting the dots to the killer.”

“So you want me to draft a search warrant for the container?” Nan asked.

“That will take way too long.”

“And no judge in his right mind would sign it.”

“That, too,” I said. “All I’m asking you for is a grand jury subpoena. No judge’s signature required. There’s an open investigation. It’s all legal.”

“And that subpoena would be—?”

“A ‘must appear’—to the manager of Day & Meyer, to show up on Monday, before the grand jury, with the contents of the container. As soon as Mercer gets here, I’ll give you the number on his receipt.”

“On the theory that it will be way too much trouble for the manager to get inside the storage vault, and he couldn’t possibly bring the contents—whatever they are—with him to the courthouse, so he’ll just roll over and let Mercer have a look.”

“Something like that.”

Nan paused for several seconds. “Alex, how far out on a limb are you going to go?”

“Probably not much further. Battaglia has a chain saw, and I can hear him buzzing while he tries to cut me off. I get it if you can’t come along.”

Nan sighed. “Just a subpoena.”

“Thanks. I’ll call you once we’re inside.”

Mike was out of the car, directing Mercer to a parking spot across the street from ours. As he made his way to us, he showed us the large manila ticket, bearing the name Day & Meyer, which was in a small plastic bag.

“Let’s get inside before they close,” Mike said.

The building was about fifteen stories high. The walls were solid to the rooftop, except for a double row of windows that formed a strip down the middle. The Portovaults were probably parked on both sides of that. Many prisons looked less forbidding than this private fortress.

Once inside, a security guard directed us to the manager’s office. When the three of us entered, he raised his eyes from his desk to ask how he could help us.

“NYPD,” Mercer said, showing his blue-and-gold shield and introducing each of us.

The man was unperturbed. He pushed his reading glasses to the top of his bald head and listened to our request. The plastic sign on his desk said
WILL JARVIS
.

“I’m trying to get some information about Lavinia Dalton’s account,” Mercer said.

“Then you should speak with Ms. Dalton. We’re not in the business of giving information.”

“It’s about a homicide investigation,” Mike said. “You might be aware that Ms. Dalton isn’t able to help us.”

“You should talk to Ms. Sorenson, then,” Jarvis said.

“We’ve done that.”

“She’s given permission for me to answer your questions?”

“No need to ask her permission. She’s a witness in our investigation. She doesn’t get to call the shots.”

It was obvious the man was quite familiar with the Dalton account, seeing as how he had Jillian Sorenson’s name at the tip of his tongue.

“She’s a witness to murder?”

Mike leaned both arms on the manager’s desk. “We’re not in the business of giving information, either.”

Will Jarvis reached for the telephone on his desk, opened his old-fashioned Rolodex, and started to dial a number. I assumed it was Lavinia Dalton’s home.

Mike put his finger on the button to stop the call from going through. Then he turned to me. “Ms. Cooper, you got that subpoena you were talking about?”

“If Mr. Jarvis will kindly give me his fax number, I can have it sent through in a matter of minutes.”

Jarvis wasn’t happy to hear the word “subpoena.”

“A search warrant,” I said, “will take five or six hours longer.”

“We close at six.”

“The warrant won’t get done until night court,” I said. “We’re used to waiting it out.”

“And the subpoena?” Jarvis asked after slowly reeling off the fax number as I wrote it on a Post-it from my tote.

“Much easier,” I said, stepping back near the doorway to call Nan and tell her what to ask for and where to fax it.

“What’s the information you want?”

“Basic stuff,” Mike said. “I’m not looking to break chops. It’s not about you, Will.”

“Like what?”

“Like how many storage units does Ms. Dalton maintain here?”

Jarvis’s computer was on a table behind him. He swiveled his chair and logged on, searching the database for the accounts while I whispered to Nan.

“The accounts are held by the Dalton trust, actually,” Jarvis said. “And there are eight vaults.”

Even if all the Daltons going back to Lavinia’s grandfather had been collectors, that was still a massive amount of possessions to hang on to.

“How many does the building hold?” Mike asked.

“Five hundred vaults,” Jarvis said. “About fifty per floor, and then we have special areas climate controlled on other floors for things like paintings. The eight Dalton units are together on the twelfth floor. Archer Dalton was among Day & Meyer’s first customers in 1928. We take their family business very seriously, if you get my drift.”

“I’m drifting with you,” Mike said.

I stepped closer. “That fax should be coming through momentarily.”

Mike and Mercer continued to ask questions about the building—obviously impressed by the level of security offered to customers—warming Jarvis up enough that he offered to tour them through to show them how the rail system worked.

Three minutes later, his fax machine lit up and set its gears in motion, and a copy of the subpoena rolled out of the printer.

Will Jarvis picked it up, read it, and lost every trace of good humor Mike and Mercer had just lured out of him.

“You’ve set me an impossible task. There’s simply no way I can produce all the Dalton records, all the receipts of entry for the Dalton vaults—and it’s preposterous to suggest that I can take out the contents of a locked vault that belongs to a customer.”

“Stay calm, Mr. Jarvis,” Mike said. “By all means don’t get all herky-jerky here.”

“This document says I have to appear before the grand jury on Monday. That’s not an option, Ms. Cooper.”

“Options,” Mike said. “I like options. Prosecutors can be so damned unreasonable. You want to discuss the options with us, Coop?”

“I certainly didn’t mean to impose a hardship on you, Mr. Jarvis. Let’s take this one step at a time.”

Jarvis was fuming. He eyes darted back and forth between us. He reached for the receiver again, and again Mike tamped down the button. “Let’s leave Ms. Sorenson out of this.”