The Kills (16 page)

"The
killer must have stopped to relieve himself, and picked up the seat to place it
on the floor. Lifted some good prints right off the sides. Both hands, four
fingers each. Clean and clear."

"Have
you run them through NCIC?"

"Jeez,
Ms. Cooper, how did I make it this far without you?"

"So
there's no match?"

"Nope,
not yet. But it gives us something to work with."

"See
you downstairs. I've got to finish up here," I said, letting the doors
swing shut behind me.

Within
minutes, Nancy Taggart and Dulles's lawyer, Graham Hoyt, pushed through the
same doorway, and marched together, grim-faced, down the aisle toward us.

"I
don't like to be kept waiting, Ms. Taggart. You're holding up the works here.
And that's the second time today for you, Mr. Hoyt," Moffett said,
stepping down from the bench, unhooking the clasps of his black robe and
heading for his chambers. "You, Robelon. You and your client are excused
until Monday. We'll start up at nine-thirty sharp."

Hoyt
shook hands with both Andrew Tripping and Peter Robelon as they passed him,
with Emily Frith trailing behind them. He spoke quietly into Robelon's ear.

"Follow
me," the judge said, when the others had left the room. "You wanna
get the kid? And the foster mother?"

"We've
come to tell you we can't do that, Your Honor. There's a problem," Taggart
said, unable even to look in my direction.

"Now
what?"

Nancy
Taggart began to explain to the judge. I rose to my feet, tapping the cap of my
pen against my file, anxious to tell Moffett that this was predictable from the
mother's phone call to me last evening. Now we had lost a whole day because
Taggart had demanded that I leave this in her capable hands.

"Judge,
Ms. Taggart isn't being entirely candid with you. Let me tell you what happened
yesterday afternoon, and about my conversation with Ms. Taggart thereafter. I
offered to provide all the help she needed to find this foster mother, whoever
she is-"

Taggart
pointed to the hallway behind her. "I've got Mrs. Wykoff here-the foster
mother. She's not the problem. It's Dulles who's gone missing, sir. He's run
away."

Six
o'clock on Friday afternoon, I was sitting in Battaglia's office with Mike Chapman,
Mercer Wallace, and Brenda Whitney, who was in charge of the district
attorney's press relations.

"You
think kidnap or you think runaway?" the DA asked. The smoke from his cigar
mingled with the smoke of the cheaper brands he had given to Mike and Mercer.

Brenda
coughed as I answered. "The foster mother thinks the kid just bolted from
her car and took off, while she went into the high school to pick up her older
child. But I've never laid eyes on her before," I said of Cicely Wykoff,
"so it's impossible for me to gauge her credibility."

"What's
the department doing to find him?" Battaglia asked of the cops.

"I
called headquarters from the courtroom. Chief of D's put a couple of guys from
Major Case on it. We're dumping phones, doing a background on the foster mother
and everybody in her orbit, and checking with the crossing guards near the
school to see if they can ID the kid," Mike answered.

"Where's
Mrs. Wykoff now?"

"Pat
McKinney assigned the investigation to the Child Abuse Unit. I'm not sure who's
interviewing her. He figures they'll get a lot more information if she isn't
worried about me using it in the case. The child welfare agency had drilled
that into her."

"He's
right, you know," Battaglia said, chewing on the cigar end as he talked.
"Besides, you're in the middle of a trial. You can't possibly handle
this."

"I
know it," I said. "But the kid's life is a hell of a lot more
important than the Vallis rape. I hate to say that, but the reason she was
attacked was because she wanted to make the boy safe. I'm ready to walk away
from this case if it's freaked out the child so much."

"And
let him go back to that lunatic father?" Mercer asked. "No way."

"Boss,
I know I won't be able to concentrate on the testimony if we haven't found the
boy by Monday."

"Don't
jump the gun, Alex. Do what you've got to do and trust the PD to do their bit.
Can't you buy a little time from Moffett?"

"He
looks ready to tank the whole thing. We'll finish the Vallis cross on Monday.
Then I've got a waitress from the coffee shop, the cops, and the nurse. Without
the boy, the judge is likely to dismiss for failure to make out a prima facie
case if Robelon is persuasive when he makes his motion."

"Brenda,
how do we handle this? I'm sure DCPI gave it to the press," Battaglia
said. He knew how to spin the media better than most people knew how to spell
their names.

The
NYPD's deputy commissioner for public information would have already released a
photograph of Dulles Tripping, asking for help in locating him.

"They're
faxing over a copy of their press release. They don't want to connect it to the
trial at all. They're just sticking with the missing child approach. The chief
was hoping to make it in time for coverage on the six o'clock news. It'll
probably be the lead story by eleven."

Mercer
had dropped off Paige Vallis at her apartment in TriBeCa and returned to my
office before Battaglia had called me in. "You'd better get back on the
phone with Paige and explain it to her before she hears it on television,"
I told him.

"This
is going to hit her hard. She'll blame herself for his disappearance," he
said.

"There
goes my jury," I said, practically groaning. So wrapped up in worry about
the boy, I hadn't thought about the need for press announcements to mobilize
the public to help find Dulles. My jurors would see the weekend news on
television and in print. There had been so much testimony about Dulles, through
Paige, that they would certainly connect the fact that he had vanished to our
trial.

"Didn't
the judge instruct them not to listen to media accounts involving your
case?" Battaglia asked.

Chapman
blew a smoke ring and stood up, helping himself to another cigar from the DA's
humidor. "Yeah. The jurors won't dare read the page-one headlines about
the case, just like I'm about to slither into a hot tub tonight for a
ménage with Sharon Stone and blondie, here, and like you won't be
sitting behind that desk when you're eighty-five years old. Get a grip, Mr.
B-they'll devour the story."

"I'll
keep you both posted over the weekend," I said to Battaglia and Whitney.

We walked
back to my office. Mercer said good night to us, heading over to the sixth
floor across the street, which housed the Child Abuse Unit. He was going to
bring the detectives up to speed on everything he knew about Dulles Tripping.
Nancy Taggart was probably already there, being debriefed.

"So
much for bonding with my witness," I said, taking the paper bag from Mike
and locking the Yankees jacket in a filing cabinet. "You got anything else
for me?"

"Well,
before your weekend was ruined, I was going to ask you to come with me for a
couple of hours tomorrow morning. Just wanted an extra pair of eyes going over
Queenie's apartment one more time."

"What
about Sarah?" I asked.

"Somehow,
I don't feature going over a crime scene with Sarah's toddler and infant in tow
behind her. Too much drool minimizes the potential to pick up DNA."

"Why
is it that everybody is so sympathetic to motherhood?" I asked, smiling.
"I haven't got any excuses that stack up against breast-feeding, Saturday-morning
soccer games, runny noses, or a trip to Costco to stockpile Pampers."

"Hey,
if the choice is encouraging you to stay in bed or come with me to Harlem, it's
not even a close call. Pick you up after your ballet class?"

Mike knew
the drill. I had studied dance since childhood, and used my weekly lesson now
not only as a form of exercise, but as a way to relieve some of the tension of
this all-consuming job.

"Ten
o'clock, in front of William's studio."

"And
do me a favor this time. Shower before you get dressed. Last time I met you
after class, you smelled like a goat."

"Last
time," I reminded him, "you appeared in the middle of class to drag
me out because you found a dead rapist Mercer and I'd been after for two years.
Trust me, I'll even put perfume on."

"I'll
up the ante for you. Remember I told you the kids claimed that Queenie danced
for them?"

"Yeah."

"Well,
apparently before she had the stroke, she could really shake it up." Mike
removed some photographs from the Redweld he carried as his case folder.
"You'd have gotten along well with Queenie. She was a dancer, too."

I reached
for the faded black-and-white pictures that Mike handed to me.

"See
what I mean?" he asked. "Just a bit more exotic than you. Think of
the money she saved on costumes."

In most
of the images, there was nothing between the body of McQueen Ransome and the
lens of the camera. A rhinestone tiara on her head, long black satin gloves up
over her elbows, and some high-heeled strappy sandals-her exquisite figure was
displayed with great confidence and pride. She appeared to be onstage, dancing
for an audience. No wonder great photographers like Van Derzee had worked with
her.

I turned
over a few of the photos looking for anything that identified the time or
place. On the back of several was a handwritten notation of the year, 1942.

"Where
did you find these?" I asked.

"In
one of the piles of stuff that had been dumped out of the drawers."

"Any
more up there?"

"There
are lots of photos. I just grabbed a couple of these to lure you in. I'm
wondering if someone found all this old kinky stuff and it turned him on."

"Let's
hope not. Queenie could hardly be confused with the nineteen-or twenty-year-old
in these pictures. But you're right, I'm in for your morning trip," I said,
gathering up my files to head for home.

"Aren't
you going to stay for
Jeopardy!
?" Mike asked.

"Jake's
back in town. Dinner at home. Why don't you scoot and take Val out someplace
for a change?"

"Still
here?" Lee Rudden asked, standing in the doorway with a bottle in each
hand. He was one of the best young lawyers in the unit. "Want a cold brew,
Alex?"

"I'm
out of here, thanks." By the end of the business day on Friday, most of
the bureau chiefs brought in some six-packs to end the week with a collegial
get-together.

"Let
me take that off your hands," Mike said, taking the offered beer from Lee.

"Got
a minute? Can I run something by you real quick?"

I took
the brass hourglass from my desk and turned it over. "I'll give you three,
and the meter is running." One of my favorite law school professors had
amused us with a similar response. Every time a student asked for a minute, it
inevitably had turned into no less than ten, and now it was the same with the
members of my unit.

"You
know that case you assigned me on Monday?" Lee asked.

I nodded
at him, but the beginning of the week seemed like a lifetime ago.

"The
girl who came in from Long Island for the Marilyn Manson concert,
remember?"

"Yeah.
Someone spotted her standing alone on the train platform at Penn Station,
crying her eyes out. Called the police."