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Battaglia talked at me for quite a period of time before he began to ask for facts that he didn’t yet know. And then it was time to give him every shred of detail from the moment Isabella first was introduced to me and spent time in our office through our most recent correspondence and her request to escape to a private hideaway.
The District Attorney waited for my presentation to conclude before he leaned in, eyeballed me, and asked:
“Can you think of any aspect of this, any hint of scandal, that’s going to come back to hurt this office, Alexandra?”
The unspoken portion of that sentence, I knew, was…
“Because if there is, Alex, you’d better start cleaning out your desk drawer and thinking about the advantages of the private practice of law.”
“No, Paul,” I said, shaking my head repeatedly, “I’ve been thinking about it all of last night and this morning. There’s nothing more that I haven’t told you, really.”
He sat back upright in his chair and reflected for several seconds before his when began to soften and he took on the aspect of the Paul Battaglia I idolized.
“Okay, Alex, how do you come out in all this? What are we going to do about you?”
“I’m practically numb today, Paul. I think it’s actually good for me to be at work because it gets my mind-‘ ”Good for you, maybe, but I don’t know how good it is for the office. Patrick McKinney thinks I ought to put you on leave for a few months and wait till this all clears up.“
“Oh, Paul, that’s ridiculous. What he really thinks is that I should throw my body on top of Lascar’s coffin and be burned alive. Of course Pat wants me to take a leave he can’t bear having me around in the first place.”
“Well, I spoke to the District Attorney up there in Massachusetts this morning the one in charge of the murder investigation. He and the police chief would like you to fly up for a few hours tomorrow. They need a lot of background from you, and they have to go through your house so you can tell them what things are yours and what were Isabella’s… and what belonged to the mystery guest.
“So make your arrangements and, let’s see, tomorrow is Friday I want you to go up and give them whatever they need. And your detective goes with you, understand?
Who’ve you got?“
“Mike Chapman, Manhattan North.”
“Fine. Just keep in touch with me every step of the way.
I think you know that I don’t like surprises, Alex.“
“Yes, sir.”
“Two other points. You are not to go to Lascar’s funeral. No Hollywood, no photo-ops, no way for the press to keep tying this back in to us. She’s dead say your farewells privately. Understood?”
I nodded in agreement.
“And the other thing. You are not a cop, Alex. As I’ve told you before, you could have gone to the Police Academy and saved your old man a lot of money. You are an assistant district attorney, an officer of the court, a lawyer. Let the boys and girls in blue play police officers and keep your nose out of it.”
I nodded again.
“Oh, I meant to ask you, do you have any idea who was paying her a visit up there?”
“No, I don’t, Paul. She never mentioned it and I never asked.”
“Well, when did she get to the Vineyard?”
Whoops, I could feel it coming. I had a rough idea of the answer, but not an exact time. Two “I don’t knows’ in a row. Bad form with Paul Battaglia.
“How seriously should we be looking for this second stalker?”
I was about to make the third strike.
“Paul, I just don’t know the answer to that we’re trying to evaluate it now.”
“All right, Alex, be sure and let me know whenever you get some answers. Take care of yourself, that’s the most important thing right now. Oh is there any progress on that serial rapist, Upper West Side? I’m getting a lot of crap from that local community board can’t your guys wrap this one up?”
Yeah, and if I have a free hour this afternoon I’m going to go out looking for Judge Crater, too, I thought, as I told the District Attorney, “We’re trying, boss.”
Mike Chapman was sitting at my desk eating one of the sandwiches that Laura had ordered in for lunch when I returned from Battaglia’s office.
“How bad did it hurt?” he asked as I walked in, picking up the growing pile of messages from Laura’s desk.
“Not too bad,” I replied.
“The mayor must have given him the money he wanted. He’s clearly annoyed, but not wild. Have you heard about the plans for tomorrow?”
“Nope. What’s up?”
“I’m taking you to Martha’s Vineyard show you how a real police investigation gets done,” I said, chuckling at the thought of Mike meeting the town police. A few house burglaries when the summer people leave after Labor Day, loads of moped accidents in season, and endless cases of Driving Under the Influence all winter long, but I couldn’t remember a murder that had occurred on the Vineyard in my lifetime.
“Whoa, an overseas trip, and with the Cooperwoman! You know, I think Patrick McKinney is right. This whole thing with Lascar is just a ruse for you to get a weekend alone with me on an island, so we can…”
“Detective Chapman, if you don’t control yourself I’m going to leave you behind with that needle-nosed prick.
It’s not a weekend, it’s a day trip. I’ll have Laura make the plane reservations. It’ll save a lot of time if you leave your gun home we won’t have to deal with all that security stuff at the airport.
Chapman replied.
“Well, there are only two ways to get there. I mean, you’re right, we are going overseas. It’s not like most places in the country where a killer could just drive to a murder scene and then just drive away. You can only get to the Vineyard by sea and by air.”
“Yeah, Alex, but thousands of people still do it every year, don’t they? And they don’t need passports.”
I knew that the Vineyard had a small year-round population of about fifteen thousand, which swelled to almost eighty thousand in the summer vacation months of June, July, and August. Then, after Labor Day, the crowds departed and the little island regained its tranquillity, much to the delight of the locals.
“It becomes much more difficult to get to the island after the Labor Day weekend,” I explained to Mike.
“For example, all summer long, there are direct flights to Martha’s Vineyard from New York. Lots of flights, several times a day, from both La Guardia and Newark airports.
This time of year they’ve been eliminated. From now until next June, there’s only one scheduled airline that flies from Boston nine-seater planes, a few times a day and small private or chartered planes.
“Same with the ferry. The ferry goes from Woods Hole, on Cape Cod, to the Vineyard, but fewer times a day after the holiday weekend is over.”
“Where are we going with this travelogue, Coop?” Mike asked.
“You know what we’re looking for,” I responded to Mike.
“Who was with Isabella on the island, and was that guy or woman the one who killed her. Or maybe he witnessed the killing and fled, but knows who did it.”
“All right, do you know when she went up to your house?” It wouldn’t take much to draw Chapman into an investigation, I knew that from years of experience.
“She told me she was going at the end of last week, when she finished some business in Boston, probably Thursday or Friday. I assume Chief Flanders has already contacted the Ritz and knows when she checked out,” I offered.
“And she told me that if she had enough time, instead of flying, she was going to try to have a driver, a limo, take her down to Woods Hole it’s only ninety minutes by car from Boston and she wanted to arrive the ”old-fashioned“ way, by sailing across to the island.”
“Yeah,” laughed Mike.
“Just like the Pilgrims the limo, to the ferry, to the rented Mustang, to the chintz-lined cottage. The rental agency people should be able to tell us when Isabella picked up the car. Then, the next thing I do, if Flanders hasn’t, is to check the passenger manifests for the airline, starting at least a week ago. What’s it called?”
“Cape Air. Exactly. And there’s a tiny office at the airport for private planes, which all have to register and submit flight plans in order to come and go. The air arrival and departure part of this won’t take much time at all. The local police will know most of the names of islanders and regular commuters, you’ll have a few honeymooners and golf outings for the weekends, and then Isabella’s manager can look at the unknowns for familiar names that he might recognize, but which wouldn’t mean anything to us, right?”
I suggested to Mike.
“That covers the air, Sherlock,” Mike replied.
“But what about the water? Does the ferry take cars onto it, as well as foot passengers?”
“Yes, it does. Look, the big problem is boats. There are lots of marinas and plenty of little coves. A private boat could come from the Cape or the Hamptons, drop anchor, discharge and pick up a killer with no way to trace it.
That’s how most of the drugs get to an island, as you know. Anyway, you could even walk onto the ferry with a shotgun inside a Vuitton tote there’s no such thing as metal detectors on the boats.“ I was getting a second wind by this point, suddenly thinking that I knew of a way, even though a long shot, of tracking Isabella’s arrival.
“But, Mike, if she came by ferry, and she wasn’t alone, there’s another possibility,” I suggested.
“On a beautiful fall afternoon, most people who travel on the ferries head topside. There are hundreds of seats, a snack bar binoculars to scan the horizon the views of the Vineyard, crossing the sound from the Cape, are absolutely spectacular. Isabella Lascar would have been just like every other tourist on that boat, and whether it’s a first trip or the thousandth, I don’t know anyone who isn’t captivated by the beauty of that vista.”
”No, much easier. Every single tourist and half of the regulars, make that trip with a camera, Mike,“ I said.
“People are always taking pictures of each other against the boat railing, like it was the QE2, or feeding the seagulls or just staring at the view.”
“You think people recognized Isabella and took her picture?” Mike asked.
We had gone all over Manhattan together and people failed to recognize her when she was casually dressed, without makeup and a serious hairdo.
“I mean, she looked absolutely beautiful whether or not she tried to hide it. She’d turn heads, even if people didn’t know exactly who she was.”
“So, how does that help?”
“Two possibilities. One is that someone did take her picture, recognizing Isabella Lascar, the movie star. The other,” I thought out loud, ‘is that she simply was captured in the frame of some photographs you know, people taking amateur shots of the scenery usually have bodies in the foreground, whether they intend to or not. Even if Isabella was trying to be incognito, she may be in somebody’s snapshots along with her weekend guest.“
“Which might give us a key witness,” said Mike, ‘and a motive, and maybe even a perp.“
Urge anyone with film from the ferry at the end of last Week, with pictures of Isabella, to come forward, and if it leads to any information about the identification of her killer… then we get the police to offer a reward. There’s a shot at coming up with something. I’d even check the camera store near the ferry landing they do developing in several hours, and probably have the names and numbers of everyone who has brought film in to be developed during the past week.“
‘I’ll make a deal with you, Alex,“ Mike offered, as he threw out the remains of his sandwich and pushed away from my desk.
I’ll get started on it in your paralegals’ office and you keep occupied on your own cases.“
I sorted through the phone messages that had accumulated and gave most of them back to Laura, knowing they could wait till the next week. I kept the ones I wanted to handle.
Jed’s secretary had called. No way for him to leave Paris until the business meetings end on the weekend he’ll call me at home later and come straight from the airport on Saturday. Shit, I thought, not exactly the response I had craved. But I knew my own priorities when I was in the middle of a major investigation which had to come before any personal considerations, so I understood Jed’s position -1 guess.
Well, I mused as my annoyance grew, once again Gina has avoided the burden of over preparation.
Ellen Goldman called to confirm tomorrow’s appointment. Battaglia had given her permission to do a big story on the innovative work of our Sex Crimes Prosecution Unit for the USA Lawyer’s Digest, the premier glossy legal journal. I had already spoken with her several times on the telephone and we were ready for the first interview.
Slightly. I got her machine and left a message kicking our appointment back until Monday afternoon.