Entombed (13 page)

Mercer ignored him.
"The skeleton lady and Emily Upshaw- we know she sucked the bottle a
bit too much way back then- might have moved in the same small world."

"Yeah, well, that's
like telling me it's a quarter of the population of this or any other
big city. Dope, alcohol, people who are scared of the dentist's drill.
Both of you are leaping to conclusions that seem pretty absurd."

I looked at my watch
and yawned. "What do you say we carry this discussion forward on
Monday, when you get an autopsy report on Emily? Mercer and I have to
finish up in the grand jury and file our John Doe indictment on the
rapist. And Mike, can I ask a special favor? No leaks this time."

"Nevermore, blondie.
Nevermore."

The Nineteenth
Precinct was only a few blocks from my apartment. Daylight was just
beginning to break on this next-to-last morning of January as I walked
home at about 7
A.M.
Sanitation trucks
blocked the cross streets as they loaded huge piles of green plastic
trash bags into their bellies, gypsy cabdrivers honked to get my
attention as I jaywalked across Third Avenue, and what was left of the
snow and ice that skirted my path was now coated in soot. The doormen
were huddled in their long uniform coats, with hats and gloves,
grudgingly opening the door to let me in. I picked up the Sunday paper
from the mat in my hallway, went inside to undress and climb into bed.

I slept until noon.
After I had called Battaglia to alert him about the murder of Emily
Upshaw and the question about whether it was part of the recurring
rapist's pattern, the rest of the day was a lazy mix of reading the
Times,
catching up with
friends and family by e-mail and phone, and rearranging my closets.
There were empty spaces and shelves where Jake had kept clothes and
toiletries and books, and I tried to fill the gaps-constant reminders
of the breakup-with things of my own that I had moved back then to make
room for him.

On Monday morning, a
light dusting of snow fell as I hailed a cab to go down to the office.
I spent the first hour drafting the indictment of the Silk Stocking
Rapist for Laura to type, so that it could be signed by the foreman of
the afternoon grand jury and filed with the court. Brenda Whitney, in
charge of media relations, came in to discuss all the relevant facts so
that she could prepare a statement for Battaglia to release to the
press. Since there was not yet an arrest, I needed an unsealing order
to make the news public. Completing the essential paperwork was as
time-consuming as prepping the case.

"Got time for a
headache?" Alan Vandomir asked as he knocked on my open door shortly
after ten.

"Another one?"

"A little lighter than
what you were dealing with all weekend." Vandomir was one of the best
detectives in Manhattan's Special Victims Squad and I liked working
with him. "I want you to hear this story-we'll make it as quick as we
can."

"Bring it on."

He walked to the
waiting area across the hall and returned with a teenaged girl dressed
in a lavender velour warm-up suit and chewing on some sticks of red
licorice. Vandomir motioned her to one of the chairs in front of my
desk and sat next to her while he introduced us and got her to start
talking.

Seventeen-year-old
Darcy Hallin told me she was a high school student on Staten Island and
had been dating a classmate for the first half of senior year. She was
tall and big-breasted, with frizzy blonde hair. She went into the
details of their sexual relationship, which included the assurance that
they had protected sex. Most of the time.

"Last month I missed
my period, and then I started getting sick and stuff, so when I told my
boyfriend about it he said he had an uncle who could solve the problem."

"How?"

"That he was a doctor.
That he would-you know-take care of things for me. So Friday I went to
his office."

"Where?" I asked, to
make sure that whatever event brought her to me was something over
which I had jurisdiction. "In Manhattan?"

"Yeah. But I don't
know the street. Somewhere in midtown," she said, smiling at Vandomir
and waiting for him to agree with her. "Right?"

"What happened at his
office?"

"First thing he did
was make me undress."

"Was there a nurse in
the room, or any kind of assistant?"

"Just Dr. Foster and
me."

"Did he give you a
gown to put on?"

"No. He told me to
take all my clothes off and put them on a chair."

"Have you ever had a
gynecological exam before?"

"Nope."

"Did the doctor know
that?"

"Uh-huh. He asked me
who did the last one and I told him I never had one."

The fact that it was
the first time the girl was going through the procedure made it
impossible for her to know what the standard practice should be in such
exams. It was the perfect moment for someone to take advantage of her.

"What did Dr. Foster
do next?"

"First he told me he
had to do a breast exam."

"How did he do that?"

"Like he was feeling
up on me, is what I thought."

"Can you tell us
exactly how and where he touched you?"

First Darcy told us
how the doctor rubbed his hands around her chest, then she demonstrated
on herself. The long caresses and manipulation of the girl's ample
breasts bore no resemblance to the steps physicians took in legitimate
examinations. Neither did his repeated questioning, asking her whether
it felt good while he touched her.

"What was next?"

"He made me lie down
on the table and put his fingers inside me. He was touching me funny
and poking me inside with some kind of instrument that I couldn't see,
and that's when the man knocked on the door."

"What man? Touching
you how? Slow down, Darcy."

"Somebody just banged
and Dr. Foster, he like got real nervous. He told me to get up and get
dressed, and he started to hide all his medical tools back in his bag."

"Did the other man
come into the room?"

"Nope. He kept calling
the name Pierre-telling him to open up. But he didn't. Not then. Not
till he threatened me."

"What did he say?"

"'If you tell anybody
about this, I'll get you. I know how to find you and I'll make sure you
never talk again.' Then he took me by the arm and made me walk through
the waiting area, out the back door to the alleyway. He tossed his case
with all the stuff in it into the Dumpster, which I thought was really
weird."

"How did you get away
from him?"

"He made me walk to
the subway station and he waited until I got on the downtown train to
go home. Said if I told anyone about this except my boyfriend I'd never
see my mother again."

"I'm glad you decided
to tell someone, Darcy."

"I didn't have a
choice, really. I was bleeding so badly that night that I had to get my
mother to take me to the hospital." She smiled at Alan Vandomir.
"They're the ones who called the police."

"So you paid a visit
to Dr. Foster?" I asked Vandomir.

"By way of the back
door on Saturday morning. That's where we found all the equipment
inside the Dumpster. And Lucky Pierre was right at his desk."

"What kind of medicine
is he licensed to practice?"

"None, actually.
That's why we're here."

I looked at the
vulnerable teen and wondered what would have happened to her had there
not been such an opportune knock on the door. "Don't tell me he's a
gardener or a hairdresser?"

"Nah. He's a
phlebotomist. All he's trained to do is to draw blood for lab tests.
Doesn't know the first thing about gynecology or anything else medical.
And you're certainly not going to like where he works, Alex."

"I'm afraid to ask."

"Try the court system.
He's employed by the Midtown Community Court. His assignment is to draw
blood from hookers to test for sexually transmitted diseases."

"Public service is a
wonderful thing, isn't it? Now I'll have the chief administrative judge
on my back for embarrassing him with this arrest."

The MCC had been a
controversial innovation from the outset, almost a decade ago. The
mayor and the judicial head of the criminal court system had been
allies in moving some misdemeanor cases out of the Centre Street
courthouse and handling them in the neighborhood in which they'd
occurred. It hardly made a difference to any of us in the DA's office
to have the cases-mostly prostitution and low-level drug dealing-out
from under our feet. But Battaglia had been hell-bent on maintaining
jurisdiction over every offense, no matter how petty, and he would
revel in this bit of mismanagement by his adversaries.

"I'll have it written
up as sexual abuse and throw in an unauthorized medical practice. We
can have Darcy sign the affidavit and send her on her way, for today."

By two o'clock, I had
finished charging Vandomir's case and when Mercer arrived, I had the
John Doe serial rapist indictment signed and filed. By the time I made
the rounds from my eighth-floor office to the ninth-floor grand jury
rooms to the tenth-floor Supreme Court clerk's office and then up to
fifteen so the judge overseeing grand jury matters could unseal the
indictment, it was after three and Mike Chapman was sitting at my desk.

"The plot thickens,
Coop."

"Were you there for
the autopsy this morning?"

"Yeah. Tell your pal
Mr. Kroon you kept your promise. If Emily Upshaw wasn't already dead
before she met Dr. Kirschner today, it's a sure thing now."

"Was it as obvious as
what it looked like?"

"Five stab wounds to
the back with a carving knife. Got the heart, one lung, the kidney, and
anything else that matters."

"Was she-?"

"Sexually assaulted?
The jury's out on that one. No semen in the vaginal vault, but don't
gloat about it yet. There's some bruising on her inner thighs, like it
was an attempt. Your perp had attempts that weren't consummated, didn't
he?"

Mercer and I looked at
each other and nodded our heads.

"Plus Crime Scene
found something unusual in the bathroom."

"What?"

Mike took a Polaroid
photo out of his pocket and showed it to us. "See the sink counter on
the right? There's a plastic bottle of bleach on top."

"Okay, so?"

"Emily wasn't exactly
a meticulous housekeeper. Look at the dingy towels and the ring in the
bathtub."

The photo made it
obvious that the only clean surfaces in the room were the toilet seat
and bowl.

"Hal thinks the killer
finished in the bathroom what he started in the bedroom. Masturbated
here and then wiped the toilet bowl to clean off anything that would
leave a trace of DNA. Ever seen that before?"

"No."

"Well, Hal has. There
was a case in Queens last October. Perp had only been out of jail a
week, paroled on an old sex offense. Did a push-in burglary in Astoria
and when he couldn't get it up to complete the rape, he went into the
bathroom and played with himself."

"And the Mr. Clean
routine?"

"Just before his
release from prison he'd been swabbed, by law, to put his profile in
the convicted offender data bank. He knew that was a surefire way to
identify him in the new venture, so he scoured away the DNA."

"All that tells me is
that Emily's killer was smart enough to eliminate any traces of
himself. It doesn't help to figure out whether or not he's our East
Side rapist."

"Damn, you're
stubborn. Mr. Silk Stockings didn't complete the assault on Annika
Jelt, did he? I'm sure he wasn't even aware you'd be able to connect
the cigarette outside on the stoop to that crime. Maybe Emily's killer
is keen to the fact that if you don't match him to the old cases, you
can't identify him or even link the two series. Maybe this is a leopard
who actually has changed his spots."

"No other DNA in
Emily's apartment?" Mercer asked.

"Oh, did I neglect to
mention that? Coop's pal, Teddy Kroon. His prints are-"

"That's the first
thing he told us last night," I said. "Of course they're everywhere. He
found the body of his best friend and tried to see if there was
anything he could do to save her."

"You know how you hate
to be interrupted? Same goes for me. The prints don't surprise me too
much-that's exactly what I was going to say. And neither does his DNA
on a wineglass. Maybe it's a little tacky that he sat there swilling
her lukewarm Chianti while he waited for the men in blue, but it's not
a crime. On the other hand, it makes me wonder whether he was in the
apartment earlier than he admitted to us-maybe even drinking there
while he waited for Emily to come home."

"But the messages he
left on the answering machine, from the bar they were supposed to meet
in?"

"It's the oddest
thing, Coop. Somebody erased them. I didn't want to say it in front of
Teddy, but there were no recordings on it by the time I responded the
other morning. And Teddy's got one more thing to explain."

"What's that?" Mercer
asked.

"Why his DNA was all
over the computer mouse on Emily's desk."

14

"How'd they get a
genetic profile from a computer mouse?" Battaglia asked. "This guy
drool on it?"

"Skin cells, Paul.
They slough off with ordinary use. It probably means that Teddy Kroon
was holding on to the mouse for several minutes, long enough to be
opening files or surfing the Web without realizing he was leaving his
own DNA fingerprint on it."

The scientific
methodology of DNA had changed so radically since its forensic
introduction in the last twenty years that it was not only possible to
develop identifying evidence from minute samples of genetic material,
but also to work from trace evidence, not just blood, semen, and
saliva. Sweatbands inside baseball caps, tearstained clothing, and
steering columns on stolen cars that had been handled by thieves to get
them started could yield enough data to amplify and match to suspects
or convicted offenders.