Killer Heat (8 page)

No, Judge, I don't want to move for a mistrial. Let's just go
forward," I said.

It was an hour later. Lamont had granted a recess while we
regrouped. The Latin Prince who'd been arrested, Ernesto Abreu, had
been charged with harassment and taken away in handcuffs. The
broken metal detector meant that any spectators would be patted
down before entering the courtroom, and I knew that Louie Larsen
would slow that process sufficiently so that we could carry on
without incident or unwelcome visitors.

The jurors were given a curative instruction. They were told to
ig nore the outburst that had occurred and not to discuss it among
themselves. Most of them were no longer smiling at me as they had
during voir dire, some undoubtedly wondering whether what Abreu had
shouted was true.

Kerry Hastings had been rattled by the interruption. Despite
her resolve, she was more nervous now, and more emotional.

The jury was riveted by her testimony, moved by her valiant
effort to get away from her assailant despite his repeated threats
to kill her.

“I'm going to ask you to look around the courtroom today and
tell us whether you see the man who attacked you in 1973.”

Hastings shifted her lean body and looked at Floyd Warren. “I
can't tell you that I do. I couldn't identify his face then, and I
can't do it now.”

Several of the jurors looked at me to see if this was a setback
for the prosecution. They didn't understand, yet, that DNA made
this case stronger than an eyewitness identification.

Warren stared his victim down and shook his head from side to
side.

I finished my direct with questions about the medical
examination she underwent that night and the clothing her assailant
had worn.

“That's his,” she said, when I handed her the long-sleeved
yellow shirt with large white polka dots. “I could see the pattern
in the dark. I watched his hand, even when I was face down on the
bed, because I kept trying to see what he was doing with the
knife.”

“Did the defendant take anything from you?” I asked.

“Yes, Ms. Cooper. He stole six dollars-all single bills-that
were in a handbag on the chair next to my door.” Kerry Hastings
looked back at the jurors. “And he stole my life.”

“I have no further questions, Your Honor.”

“Mr. Grassley, are you ready to proceed?”

“Yes, sir.”

Grassley had been watching the jury's reaction, trying to gauge
whether the old-fashioned attack on this victim's character would
work. He was clever enough to realize that it probably would not.
Instead, he opted for the classic post-rape shield law defense-that
Kerry Hastings had indeed been subjected to a devastating
experience but that Floyd Warren had been railroaded by the
prosecution-an argument made even easier by Ernesto Abreu's
well-timed courtroom explosion.

The cross-examination of Kerry Hastings, the experience that had
crippled her so completely at the first trial, lasted only twelve
minutes this time. No one was more surprised than she when Judge
Lamont told her she could step down from the stand.

The afternoon moved just as quickly. We were barely into the
evidence before Rosemarie Quiggley, a forensic biologist from the
medical examiner's office, testified about her analysis of the
stain found on Hastings's underpants. Although she, too, had not
even been born when the rape occurred, Quiggley described the
robust nature of seminal KILLER HEAT 69 fluid-its ability to be a
viable test source after three decades in the back of a file
cabinet-and the DNA profile it yielded.

“Did you also examine the swab taken from the mouth of Floyd
Warren after his arrest by Detective Mercer Wallace?”

“Yes, I did.”

“And were you able to compare those two samples?”

“Yes. I compared the two DNA profiles and determined that they
were a perfect match at fourteen of the loci studied.”

“Would you please tell the jury how many people in the world,” I
said, “exactly how many people on this planet, would have a
profile identical to this one?”

“Ms. Cooper, if you looked at the DNA of a trillion-with a 't'-
that is, one trillion people, you would never see another
that matches Floyd Warren's genetic profile. You'd have to find
166 planets the size of Earth, with billions of people on each,
before you'd encounter something like this.”

The day ended at five forty-five with Mercer's testimony about
the arrest of the defendant.

When Mercer and I got back to my office, there was a note taped
to my door from Laura Wilkie. She assured me that Kerry Hastings
had been driven to her hotel by two detectives from the District
Attorney's Office Squad and that Mercer should call her there.

He picked up my phone to dial just as Mike Chapman entered the
room.

“Heard you had a good day in court, if you don't count the
shoutouts.” Mike was wearing a navy blue windbreaker, with the
crisp white logo of the NYPD on his chest, and jeans with a
freshly pressed crease down the front.

“Even better for Kerry. I think she's really relieved.”

“You got your summation ready for tomorrow?” He knew my habits.
I'd been taught by the great litigators who broke me in to craft
my closing arguments before the trial began. It always gave tighter
structure to the presentation of the case.

“Would you like a sneak preview, Mr. Chapman? I could use some
practice on a thoroughly skeptical citizen of the state.”

“No, thanks. Floyd Warren's dead meat, unless you blow it for
us.”

“You taking Mercer for a drink? That's a very dressed-down look
for you, Detective.”

“It's my body-in-a-swamp best, Coop.”

I lowered my summation folder and looked at Mike. “What body?
What do you mean swamp?”

“This time it's Elise Huff.”

Mercer hung up the receiver. “Where?”

“An anonymous call came into 911 an hour ago. Some old guy
found her body in a desolate corner of Brooklyn, off the Belt
Parkway, wrapped in a blanket and dumped in a muddy stretch of
reeds and weeds.”

I closed my eyes.

"It won't be yours, Coop. But if you want to see the scene so
you can report back to Battaglia, you'd better come along with me
now.

The Brooklyn DA is holding a press conference at nine tonight.
This one's on his turf.

A phalanx of police cars was parked along a
dead-end street not far from the Belt Parkway. Huge spotlights
rigged atop Emergency Service vehicles brightened the area as the
late-summer twilight descended on the city. Cordoned off beyond
the last patrol cars were the vans of camera crews from local news
channels.

I couldn't see the water of Jamaica Bay, but I could smell the
salty sea that was only hundreds of feet away, where the marshy
stretch of land bordered on an inlet.

Mike led Mercer and me onto the path that had been trampled in
the tall grasses by the first-response teams that had recovered the
body. Crime scene tape was wrapped around the lone telephone pole
on the side of the road and draped loosely over the bushes. We
followed its yellow plastic trail

What brings you to the sticks, Chapman? A pudgy red-faced man,
not quite as tall as Mercer's six foot six, waddled toward us. It
was hard to walk in the muck without lifting one's feet above it
with each step, and his extra weight made his movements even
harder

Somebody has to make sure you get it right this time. Dickie
Draper, this is Alex Cooper. I think you know Mercer."

“Pleased to meet you,” he said, removing a small aerosol can
from his pants pocket and spritzing it around his head. “You could
survive a gunshot wound to the head out here and these frigging
mosquitoes would still kill you with West Nile.”

“The Huff girl, that's how she died? A gunshot wound?”

“Nah. I'm just saying, you don't have this kind of real estate
in Manhattan. You need safari gear to survive out here.”

Draper lifted his feet, one at a time, and made an about-face.
“Where's the girl?” Mike called after him.

“At the morgue,” he said with a wave of the hand. “Had to get
her out of here before the press ghouls overran us.”

Rising above the brown tips of the reeds, off in the distance, I
could see rows of uniformed cops. There were dozens of them,
walking in two lines perpendicular to each other, arm's length
apart, flashlights in hand. They formed grids, combing the wild
landscape for clues, in this unpopulated area east of the parkway
and west of Kennedy Airport. “You want to tell us about it?” Mike
said.

Dickie Draper looked like he had twenty years of experience or
more under his imitation alligator belt. “You got a need to know,
or you just slumming?”

"Paul Battaglia assigned the investigation to me when Elise went
missing. I've interviewed some of her friends, which may be
helpful to your guys. And I'd also like to be able to give my boss
a report tonight.

I know he's been talking to her father since she disappeared.“
Draper took another step away from us. ”CPL 20.40. We got a body,
we got the case."

“You're quoting the criminal procedure law to Coop?” Mike
said.

“Maybe if the bar association has a prom this year, you two can
take each other. Talk the law. Recite CPL passages.”

“I don't want your case, Detective,” I said. “It's obvious,
unless you've already got a suspect, that this one has to be
worked from both ends. Elise was last seen by her friends in
Manhattan, and no matter where she was actually murdered, I
realize the fact that her body is here gives you
jurisdiction.”

“Mr. Raynes will be by in an hour,” Draper said. “He's made it
clear he wants the ink on this one, okay?”

“Even if it means hauling himself off a bar stool to get it?”
Mike said. “I'm impressed.”

The rivalry between the district attorneys of New York and Kings
County had been long-standing. Battaglia's prestige was
unparalleled, both for the many violent crimes that he vigorously
prosecuted and for the innovative methods he undertook to police
the white-collar community. Jerry Raynes had been in office for
almost as long but had never achieved the same prominence. Both
men had six hundred lawyers to do the heavy lifting, but Raynes
constantly struggled for press coverage to further his political
ambitions.

“I didn't say he'd be sober, did I? I just said he'd be here,”
Draper answered, looking up at a low-flying 747. “And I don't
think he's looking to share the stage with Battaglia.”

“How'd she die, Dickie?” Mike asked.

“Looks like a blow to the front of the head. Three or four of
them, maybe. Blunt force trauma. Maybe bashed in with a rock or a
brick.” Mike and I exchanged glances.

“Badly decomposed?”

“Not so bad as you'd think,” Draper said, swatting the side of
his neck. “Especially with all these bloodsuckers around. She was
wrapped up in a blanket-olive green, old army style. It's back at
the station house. Red hair all over it, clumps of it. All that
red hair is how come we could ID her so fast.”

“Is there a label on the blanket? Something to trace?”

“Partial. There's some really faded writing. I got it in my
notes.”

“Any sign of sexual assault?” Mercer asked.

“The kid was naked, there was duct tape covering her mouth, and
there were marks on her breast-scratches or bites. We won't know
about DNA till the ME does the internal exam.”

The last piece of the sun-a glowing red ball-was setting behind
us. Like clockwork, jumbo jets passed overhead every few minutes on
their way to the landing strips.

“Who found Elise?” I asked. “Why would anyone be out here?”

“Raynes is gonna offer an award to the caller at the press
conference tonight. Whoever was sniffing around this place didn't
want to leave his name. Got in a car and drove to a diner more
than a mile away, but directed us right to the spot.”

“What is this here?”

“No-man's-land, stuck between some low-end housing
projects,”

Draper said, gesturing off in the distance, “and the bay. You
know Arlington Cemetery?”

“Sure.”

“Well, this is where the Brooklyn mob likes to bury its dead.
Hallowed ground to them. The Mafia has probably dumped more bodies
here than we'll ever be able to find. It's the only marsh I can
think of where you can go bird-watching and find big old Sicilian
canaries wrapped in cement overcoats.”

“Your guys pick up anything yet?” Mike asked. “Nope. Did I
mention her hands and feet were tied?”

“Cuffed?”

“Not exactly. Plastic ties. That's the only thing we've got so
far. Like one of them was caught up in the fabric of the blanket.
There was some of her hair stuck to the tape, too.”

Bound. Undoubtedly tortured. Killed.

“How far back off the roadway was the body?” Mike asked. “Thirty
feet, at least. Somebody had the confidence to park at the side of
the road and carry the girl all the way to this drop.”

“And you think she's been out here for a few days?”

“Hey, everybody has to be somewhere. She's certainly been dead
for a while.”

“Have you had any other squeals like this?” Mike asked.
“Brooklyn SVU's lookin' for a phony livery cabdriver picking up
teenage girls. Taping their mouths and binding their hands. Rapes
them but lets them go alive.”

“Could be the others never struggled and this one did,” Mercer
said. “Huff was out bouncing with her friends. Where are your
witnesses from in the livery case?”

“All started out in Queens, the opposite direction,” Draper
said.

“Three of them.”

“No open homicides?”

“Nothing close.” Draper made a circle in the mud and started
back toward his car. “This stuff is for the young pups. I'm outta
here.”

“We've got a dump job in the South,” Mike said.

“Any of this ring a bell?”

“Blunt force. Restraints. Not a fresh kill, either. Naked-and
the guy cleaned up after himself pretty well.”

“DNA?”

“Nothing by the time the docs got to her.”

“A little early to be thinking serial,” Draper said.

The FBI tagged serial killers-a term coined in the 1970s-as
those who had committed three murders over an extended period of
time, with cooling-off periods in between, during which their
other actions seemed to be normal.

“I guess that's how you do it in Brooklyn, Dickie. Just sit back
and wait for a third body to show up. Beats working for a living.
I'm not saying it's the same guy yet, but maybe you haven't seen
the end of us.” Dickie Draper was breathing heavily from the
exertion of the short walk. He opened the door of his unmarked car
and sat in the passenger seat. Rolling down the window, he passed a
handful of Polaroid photos out to Mike and me.

The last friend to have seen Elise Huff alive had taken a
snapshot with her cell phone just hours before they parted ways. I
had downloaded the close-up, which showed Elise's laughing eyes and
big smile, and tacked it to my bulletin board. I had studied the
picture, and I knew her face.

There was no mistaking that the body was Elise, despite the
grotesque injuries. Now both eyes were swollen and discolored, the
nose appeared broken and twisted to one side, and blood was caked
over the crown of her head, which seemed to have been splintered
like a broken lightbulb. Two overheads, a profile from each side,
and long shots of the battered body lying against the drab green
cloth that had covered her were Draper's unofficial record of the
scene. Tomorrow, in the morgue, after she'd been cleaned up, she
would be posed for 8 × 10 glossies in the room where her
autopsy would be performed.

“The 911 call came in at 5:08 p.m.,” Dickie Draper said,
flipping open his pad. He thumbed through several pages before
handing out another Polaroid that was clipped to the paper.
“Here's your clue, Sherlock. Run with it.”

Half of a short white label was still affixed to a corner of the
blanket with tight, tiny stitches. The other ragged edge looked
like it had been torn off over time. The lettering had faded and I
could barely make out a word.

“Give me your flashlight, Dickie,” Mike said.

He shined the beam at the photograph and I read aloud what was
left of the maker's name. “There are three letters, the end of a
longer word, obviously,” I said. “L, A, N-before the abbreviation
'Bros.' ”

“Hey, Chapman, did I tell you about the sand?”

“What sand?”

“On the blanket. There was a lot of sand clumped on it. Maybe
this scumbag was into picnics at the beach.”

I looked down at the muddy rims of our shoes, then up at the
horizon.

“Not here, Ms. Cooper. But you oughta come back for a swim some
afternoon. We got some nice beaches in Brooklyn,” Draper said. “Now
why don't you tell me what you know about this Huff girl?” I
started to fill in some information about her background and her
disappearance.

He looked over my head at the flashing lights that signaled the
arrival of a high-ranking official.

“That'll be the district attorney pulling in,” Draper said,
reaching into his pocket for a glassine envelope as he picked up
my hand. He shook some sand into my palm. "See this? You've got
nothing like it in Manhattan, young lady. You tell Mr. Battaglia
to stick to the pavement.

Mr. Raynes and me, we're on the job.