The Kills (32 page)

We said
good night to Mercer and finished our drinks. Mike's car was parked down the
block, closer to my building, so we walked home and into my lobby. There was no
point objecting to his plan to make sure I got safely inside and that there
were no weird or threatening messages waiting for me on my machine.

I flipped
on the lights and we walked in. It was obvious I had come home to an empty
nest. "Nightcap?" I asked.

"Nah.
You got an early wake-up call and I got somebody keeping the bed warm back at
my place. You got any unhappy campers on the line?"

I checked
the phone next to the bed and returned to the living room. There had not been a
single caller. I dropped onto the sofa and stretched out, hoping Mike would
stay and talk to me. Something about the dynamic of our relationship was
changing, and I wanted to recapture the friendship that had always been so
natural.

"Let
me hear you turn that dead bolt when I walk out, Coop," Mike said, kissing
the top of my head and walking to the door.

I got up
and followed him, locking the door and putting the safety chain across. I took
a long bath, then massaged my shoulder with Tiger Balm before climbing into
bed, too exhausted to read or even relive the evening's chase.

The next
morning Mercer and I rode up to McQueen Ransome's apartment and let ourselves
in. It looked pretty much as it had when I was last there. The closet door was
still ajar, wire hangers still displayed a few cotton housedresses, and dozens
of silver coins were spread out over the floor.

Mercer
and I put on rubber gloves. He had a pack of plastic evidence envelopes that he
stacked next to us, and we both kneeled to gather the coins.

"Anything
unusual about these?" I asked.

"So
far, they all look American," he said, examining them front and back before
bagging them. "Different denominations, but nothing too unusual, it seems
to me."

"I
don't know about your pile, but everything I've got is old," I said.
"There's nothing here minted after 1930."

"I
see what you mean. There's about ten of them here from 1907."

"We'd
better take them to an expert, who can give us an idea of their value."

Mercer
scooped up a handful and reached back to the floor to retrieve a small white
piece of paper that looked like some kind of ticket stub. He examined it before
speaking. "I know he had an appointment here with McQueen Ransome, but I
hardly think that would have required him to crawl around on her closet
floor-especially if it was after he'd found out she'd been killed."

"What
are you talking about?" I asked.

Mercer
held out the piece of paper to me. "Spike Logan said he drove here from
Martha's Vineyard, didn't he? Well, he must have dropped his ferry ticket stub
when he was in here yesterday. Guess he wasn't too despondent to be searching
for something that belonged to Queenie."

"Get
me Monica Cortellesi on the line," I said to Laura, as I unlocked the door
to my office. I had explained to Mercer that she was in charge of our frauds
bureau and would know who the best experts were for evaluating any unusual
artifacts.

"Who's
your contact in the Oak Bluffs Police Department?" he asked.

"What's
the point in tipping off Spike Logan that we realize he wasn't entirely candid
with us? As long as we know where he is, let's hold the calls until we decide
what to do with the information we get."

"Alex,"
Laura said. "That's Cortellesi on your backup line."

"Monica?
Quick question. Who do I want to talk to about rare coins?"

"I
can give you the head of the American Numismatic Association. It's in Colorado
Springs. They do a lot of-"

"Too
far to go. Today. Closer to home."

"How's
Fifty-seventh Street?" she asked.

"Perfect."

"Stark's.
Probably the preeminent firm in the nation for private dealers."

"Reliable?"

"Like
Fort Knox. Family business, started by two brothers in the 1930s. There
probably isn't much they can't help you with."

"Thanks,
Monica," I said, handing Mercer a piece of paper with the name on it.
"Want to call and get us an appointment while I work on those FOIA
requests for the CIA?"

Laura
came in with a handful of messages. "Call Christine Kiernan. She's been up
all night on a new case. The others can wait."

"Would
you see if you can book me on a flight to the Vineyard tomorrow?" I asked.

"Don't
you have to be in front of Judge Moffett in the morning?"

"Yes.
A mercifully short appearance, I hope. Something late in the day. If I can wrap
up the Tripping case early, I may take a long weekend."

I sat at
the computer working on the requests for the old CIA files while I talked with
Christine, the phone propped between my shoulder and ear. "What'd you
get?"

"Rape-robbery
in Hell's Kitchen. Can I come up?"

"Sure.
You got a victim?"

"Nope.
She's still at the hospital. Took a bad beating when she resisted the
guy."

By the
time I had completed the boilerplate applications for the information I wanted
and sent Laura to get Battaglia's signature for the cover sheet supporting the
urgency of my request, Christine had appeared with her file.

"I
got the call at three
A.M.
," she said, handing me copies of the detective's scratch sheet.

"This
all the paperwork you have?"

"Yeah.
The cops haven't had time to type up the police reports yet."

"What's
the story?" I asked.

"My
complainant is in her twenties. She's a medical student at NYU. Just moved into
a renovated brownstone in the west Forties. Dicey block."

Every
time a run-down section of Manhattan was gentrified, there was a period of
increased violence before the neighborhood reinvented itself. Thirty years
earlier, when TriBeCa was transformed from an area of commercial buildings and
warehouses to residential lofts, the first tenants were exposed to muggings and
assaults on a regular basis. There were no streetlights, no local merchants
with familiar faces, no grocery stores to duck into when being followed, and
many marginal transients who squatted in abandoned spaces. A similar fate
befell the residents of Alphabet Town-Avenues A through D-when they reclaimed
their streets from the drug dealers and prostitutes who had made the
neighborhood so unsavory for so long.

"Coming
home from the hospital?"

"You
got it. Twenty-four-hour shift, she was exhausted and completely oblivious to
her surroundings. She had the hood of her anorak pulled up over her head
because it was raining so hard."

"Tell
me about it."

"Never
heard the guy coming. Got her as she was going into the vestibule of her
building."

"A
push-in?"

"Yeah.
He held something against the small of her back, sharp and pointed. She thinks
it was a box cutter. Told her to get under the stairwell and keep her mouth
shut or he'd slit her throat."

"I
hope she obeyed," I said quietly. I had seen too many autopsies of victims
who had unsuccessfully tried to resist an armed attacker.

"She
did exactly what he told her to do. Took off her clothes and laid down on the
floor. He was about to penetrate when a hypodermic needle fell out of his
jacket pocket. She freaked and started to scream."

"AIDS?"

"That
was her first thought. She was sobbing to me at the hospital, asking me what
the point of surviving the attack was if the rapist transmitted a terminal
illness."

"So
he beat her to shut her up."

"Broke
several bones in the orbital socket of the right eye. Knocked out a
tooth."

"And
raped her anyway?" I asked.

Christine
nodded her head.

"Have
they offered her the prophylactic to prevent HIV transmission?" There were
powerful drugs that physicians believed would block the virus, but they were
only effective if taken within twenty-four hours of the assault.

"Yes.
She's probably going to start them this morning."

"What
did he take?"

"Her
briefcase."

"Was
she wearing scrubs when he attacked her?"

"Yeah,
he figured out she was a doc. Kept asking if she had drugs in her bag, or any
blank prescriptions."

"Did
she?"

"No.
Just books. A ton of medical texts, a wallet, a cell phone."

I looked
up at Christine. "You do a trap-and-trace yet?"

"I
haven't done anything. I just got down here from Roosevelt Hospital and knew I
had to give you the details."

"Ever
done one?"

"Nope,"
she said, with obvious hesitation in her voice. "What is it?"

"It's
a triangulated cell phone call. It works like GPS-global positioning
satellites. If the perp is using the stolen phone to make calls, the cell
company can tell us exactly where he's standing when he's on the line. Just one
catch. You've got to get it done before the battery charge runs down and he
tosses the phone away."

Most
thieves who took victims' cell phones, even as an afterthought, used them until
the batteries ran out, for sport if not necessity. Before the recent successes
of the GPS technology, we could often connect them to the crime weeks or months
after it was committed by tracking calls on the stolen phone to long-lost
relatives and friends. This gave us the chance to find the assailant before he
attacked again.

"You
need to call TARU," I said, referring to the NYPD's high-tech-equipment
unit. If there was any way to eavesdrop surreptitiously or use electronic
surveillance of any kind, these teams were the leaders in the field. "Get
started with a court order and they'll have tracking devices up and running
within the hour."

I could
smell Battaglia coming. The cigar smoke wafted into my room before the district
attorney turned the corner. I sent Christine on her way and offered him a
chair.

"Let
me guess," I said. "Judge Moffett called. Wants you to convince me to
let Tripping take the misdemeanor plea without any further complaining-or
research."

"Can
you tell me this weekend's Yankees-Red Sox scores, too?"

"Hardly
clairvoyant, Paul."

"Put
this whole thing to bed, Alex. You got bigger fish to fry. While I have your
ear, got a piece of advice for a friend of mine?"

"Sure."

"What
do you do with an employee-single mother, law degree, supervises young
attorneys-goes on an office business trip paid for by the government and gets
herself featured in a glossy woman's magazine headlining an article called
'Romance on the Tracks'?"

"Meaning
what?"

"Gives
them an actual photo of herself to run with the article. Describes meeting a
guy on a train ride from Albany, having a few drinks with him, and then going
back to his apartment for a one-night stand."

"If
she admitted it was job-related? I'd can her. That's a stupid and dangerous
message to send to the public in my line of work, not to mention to your own troops.
But then, not everyone's a sex crimes prosecutor."