Bad blood

25

The EMTs responded within minutes from nearby Beekman Downtown Hospital. They had stemmed the bleeding and bandaged the hysterical young woman, who had attracted the attention of dozens of staff members within earshot, before taking her out to the ambulance.

I had stood by the elevator doors as they closed, having tried for half an hour in the restroom to calm Carol Goodwin, to talk her down from her frenzied ranting while the EMTs worked on her. She took that last opportunity to yell out her accusation.

“This is your fault, Miss Cooper! You’re supposed to help people like me. You’re supposed to believe in me. If I die, it’s going to be all your fault.”

I rested my head against the wall, eyes closed and arms crossed, waiting for the gathering of lawyers, secretaries, witnesses, cops, and student interns to disperse.

Joe ordered everybody to get back to work.

“I’m not moving until they all go away,” I whispered to him. “Whatever fumes I was running on to start this week, I’m out of emotional gas. I don’t want to talk to any of them, I don’t want to explain things to anyone. I’ve got a murder trial that I’ve got to focus on, but life-such as it is-seems to be going on for everyone else in all the old familiar ways.”

“Chapman’s right. You do attract a lot of whack jobs, don’t you?”

“It’s my specialty, Joe. What set this one off?”

“Carol Goodwin’s on me. I did just what you told me to do. I followed her when she got on the train after work on Thursday, picked her up at her house the next morning, and tailed her all the way to her office. Reversed it again on Friday, both directions. I knew by the time we got to her subway stop that she was making the whole thing up.”

“How?” I asked, starting back to my office.

“Alex, she claims she’s been stalked for months, right?” Joe was taller than I, with straight brown hair and an irrepressible smile. He was always animated, talking with both hands to underscore his points. “Terrified by some guy for a reason she can’t fathom, but nobody’s been able to flush him out. She complains about the police and everybody not doing enough for her.”

“That’s Carol.”

“The girl gets on the subway with her book, sits down, and starts to read.” Joe was imitating her now, opening a book with the palms of his hands. “The train stops ten times between her office and her home. She never looked up once-not a single time-to see who got on at any of the stops. Wasn’t worried about who was sitting near her or who got off at her station. Kept right on reading, not jumpy and nervous like somebody who’s truly in fear, waiting for the stalker to show up again. She doesn’t have any way to know who I am, so that wasn’t the reason. She had no way to make me. The girl is just a complete phony.”

Laura had a hot cup of coffee waiting for me as we turned into my office.

“And I take it you chose this morning, on my doorstep, to break that news to her?”

Joe tried to keep a straight face. “Carol didn’t go nuts on me until I locked her up.”

“For?”

“Filing a false report.”

“Help me here, Joey. We got something besides your hunch?”

He laughed. “When I tailed her home Thursday night, she stopped off at a Chinese restaurant. Walked in and came out five minutes later with her take-out bag and holding a menu in her hand. Lucky I waited around. Friday morning she dropped an envelope in the mailbox near her house. She called Steve Marron on Saturday, saying she was freaked out of her mind.”

“By what?”

“Carol told him that when she opened her mail, there was a menu from the restaurant she had eaten in on Thursday.”

“The menu?”

“Exactly. Said she had dinner at the restaurant-which wasn’t true-and that the guy had obviously followed her there while Steve wasn’t doing anything to help and mailed her the menu to creep her out, show that he’d been stalking her. If ten or fifteen other clients hadn’t had their mitts all over the menu, too, we’d have lifted clean prints, I can bet you.”

“So you jumped?”

Joe raised his hands and shrugged his shoulders. “I had to lock her up. There was no stalker, and she obviously mailed the damn thing to herself, like she’s been making up the rest of this nonsense, driving the cops crazy.”

“Where’d you get her?”

“I picked her up in front of her house this morning. She came like a pussycat at first, until we got here and she asked to use the ladies’ room. I shouldn’t have let her go in by herself.”

“The EMT says it wasn’t a serious cut. He thinks Carol was just acting out.”

“All she wanted to do was talk to you. I read her the rights, asked her if she wanted to call a lawyer, but she just needed to explain things to you,” Joe said. “I figured I’d come by to see whether you were in court or not-if you had a few minutes to hear her spiel-and let Laura give me someone to write up the case.”

I looked at my watch. “Carol probably just wanted to distract me from what I’m supposed to be doing. Suck a little more time and energy out of me. It worked fine.”

It had rattled me to see one of my own witnesses moved to the point of self-mutilation. I needed every ounce of concentration for the courtroom events of the coming week, and Carol’s words-placing the blame for her arrest on me-had shaken me up.

“The ambulance is waiting for me to go with them over to have her stitched. You making a bail recommendation?” Joe asked.

I dug on my desk for the Goodwin file. The legal charge wasn’t as serious as the young woman’s psychological problems. I scribbled some notes to be attached to the arraignment papers and handed them to Joe.

“Let’s ask for a remand for psych observation. Be sure they put a suicide watch on her, too. Call me later and let me know how she’s doing.”

I walked him out to Laura’s desk. “McKinney just called,” she said. “What time are you going up to see Judge Gertz?”

“Tell him Lem Howell is meeting me there at four. Gertz wanted to check with us after the funeral to make sure we’re ready to go in the morning. Mike expected to have Brendan Quillian back in the Tombs by midafternoon.”

“I’ll tell Pat to pick you up here at quarter of?”

“Thanks, Laura. Would you hold everything, except Mercer or Mike?”

I spent the next couple of hours at my desk, reworking my direct examinations of Mike and several of the other detectives, based on the rulings that Gertz had made throughout the past week. I was hampered by his indecision on my domestic-violence expert and was hopeful he’d give me the green light today.

Laura knocked on my door at one o’clock. “I’m going out for a walk, Alex. I’ll bring you back a sandwich.”

I took a bill out of my wallet and gave it to her. “Thanks. I’m starving.”

“Here are your messages. This guy named Luc has called three times.” She handed me the slips. “Should I have…? Never mind. Your expression says it all. Next time I’ll just ignore your directions and put him through.”

I waited until she closed my door and dialed his cell number.

“Bonjour, Alexandra. I hope I’m not bothering you with my calls?”

“My secretary just told me about them. I’m delighted you phoned.”

“Is it always this difficult to get through to you?”

“I think Laura will see that it’s easier from now on.”

“I want to thank you again for making the weekend such a pleasure. You may have heard by now that you have to charge me for another night.”

I laughed. “Vineyard fog, I assume?”

“Exactly. Nina and I waited together at the airport for almost four hours until they shut it down. The fog was so thick you couldn’t even see across the airstrip. We went back to the house and she grilled a couple of steaks that were in the freezer. I may know more about you than even you do.”

“Sunday night was included in the package deal, Luc. I’m delighted you both got to enjoy it.”

“So, I have some business dinners this week that I’ve got to attend, but one of my very dear friends has offered me the most impossible table in town. Will you be able to have dinner with me on Thursday, Alex? At Rao’s? Do you know it?”

I hoped Nina had explained to him what life was like for me in the middle of a trial.

“I absolutely adore Rao’s. And you’re right, it’s the hardest ticket in town.”

The twelve-table restaurant in East Harlem was run more like a club, only open for five meals a week-dinner from Monday to Friday-with so many high-profile regulars that there was hardly any way to snag a reservation without being given a personal invite.

“Will you say yes?”

I wanted my enthusiasm for seeing Luc again to register in my voice. “I want you to understand how much I’d love to have dinner with you-and how especially delicious it would be to do it at Rao’s-but Thursday night isn’t going to work.”

He was quiet, waiting for more of an explanation.

“We’ve lost time at the trial-my fault last week and with the funeral today-so the judge is going to start us earlier in the morning and keep us going until six, if he can, from now on. Prepping witnesses and all the catching up I have to do when we get out of court,” I said, tripping over my words, nervous that Luc wouldn’t understand the bind I was in, “I just can’t make a dinner date during this week.”

“Well, if I can rearrange my schedule to stay in New York over the next weekend, may I have the first bid on Saturday night?”

“Absolutely,” I said, knowing that as I worked myself through the heart of the prosecution case, with or without my cooperating snitch, I’d probably look like a zombie by the time Saturday rolled around.

“I’ll let you get back to work now. I’ll try to find you again tonight. Let you know if I can change my plans.”

“I look forward to that.”

When Laura returned, I ate at my desk and redrafted my closing argument. The original version included points about the testimony of Marley Dionne, so I needed an alternative summation in case his refusal to talk to anyone since his attack at Rikers extended to the witness stand.

Mike Chapman called at three fifteen. “Packed house, Coop. Duke filled the church this morning. Brendan even managed to shed a few tears.”

“Tell me he’s back behind bars. Under lock and key again?”

“I just delivered him to the Tombs.”

“Have you heard anything from Mercer?”

“Yeah. It took them five hours at the property clerk, but they found the evidence from Bex Hassett’s case. Looks like it was stored properly. No reason they can’t take a shot at analysis. He’s on his way to the lab.”

“The girl’s sweater?” I asked.

“Uh-huh. There’s a rough edge on the zipper. They’ll work up the blood for a profile.”

“Mike, I really need you and Mercer to go back at Marley Dionne. That’s got to be the first order of business. I’m planning to try to use him on Wednesday, and then follow him up with your testimony.”

“I didn’t ask for this funeral detail. The lieutenant just stuck me with it. We’ll pay a visit to Dionne tomorrow. Aren’t you even curious about why Brendan Quillian called Bex Hassett the day before his wedding?”

I swiveled in my chair and stared out the window. I didn’t want to snap at Mike, but I would take him on if he had jeopardized the case. “I’ve already had a rough day. Please tell me you didn’t ask him about that?”

Lem Howell would raise a stink if Mike had even tried to question his client.

“Temper, temper, Madam Prosecutor. There were two uniformed cops sitting right there in the front seat of the car. I didn’t ask him anything.”

“But you said-”

“Now there are no rules that say I can’t talk to the man, are there? Offer my condolences and the like.”

“So you told Brendan what?”

“I just thought he’d want to know that I found his name in an old case file. Probably a coincidence is what I thought. Another homicide. Another manual strangulation. A sixteen-year-old girl named Rebecca Hassett.”

I reached in my desk drawer for some aspirin. “If he responded to you, I really do not want to know what he said. Got it?”

“He didn’t speak at all. I was sitting on the wrong side of him, so all I was looking at was the walled-up eye of the Cyclops. But I’m telling you, Coop, his whole body twitched so bad, I think if he wasn’t cuffed to me, he would have thrown himself out of the car.”