Death Angel

TWENTY-FIVE

I made the two rookies as comfortable as I could in my den. I went into the bedroom suite, took a steaming-hot bath, and then slept fitfully till 6:30 A.M., when I awakened and dressed for the office.

By the time I emerged from my bedroom, one of the cops had brewed a pot of coffee. They tried to divert me by telling stories of the more bizarre cases they’d handled recently.

Mercer had texted that he would pick me up at 7:30 and that the officers would be relieved then.

When the doorman called to say that Mercer was in the driveway, my bodyguards brought me downstairs and delivered me to my next keeper.

“Good morning, Alexandra.”

“Morning.”

“We didn’t mean to sandbag you last night. The commissioner’s plan makes sense.”

“I understand it all. I just wasn’t expecting such an abrupt end to my day. It’s so impersonal to have two armed strangers keeping watch in my home.”

“But safer than not.”

“Thank you.”

“And it looks like Raymond Tanner has a bad case of recidivist rage, Alex.”

“What now?” As Mercer drove to the southbound entrance of the FDR, I picked up the day’s papers, which were between us on the front seat.

“Too late for the news. Tanner raped a young woman at two A.M.”

“I can’t believe it. Where did it happen?”

“This time in Brooklyn. In Prospect Park, just off the Midwood Trail.”

“Dear God. This is our worst nightmare,” I said. “Is she going to be all right?”

“Yeah. I went to the hospital to see her. Twenty-one years old.”

“Homeless?”

“Out of work. Her parents, way out on Long Island, gave her a hard time. They didn’t want her staying there unless she could contribute to the rent because they’re struggling. So she’s been living in Prospect Park.”

Prospect Park was also designed by Olmsted and Vaux, using many of the same elements as they had created in Manhattan, on an even larger chunk of land. I’d jogged the Midwood Trail many times with my friend Nan Toth. Like the Ramble, it was a woodland area with the last remaining natural forest in Brooklyn.

“Are you sure it’s Tanner?”

“No doubt, Alex. Same exact language, same order of the sexual acts. He threatened to split her head open with a lead pipe, and she felt the cold steel of the weapon when he pressed it against her ear every time she squirmed.”

“And the tattoo?”

“It was too dark for the girl to read it. All she could say was that there were letters inked on his hand-two words, she thought. And the forensic exam yielded seminal fluid, so we’ll have DNA.”

“Good, ’cause Tanner’s in the data bank,” I said. “But how ironic that he moved to Prospect Park.”

“Why?”

“In so many respects it’s like a double for Central Park. The combination of great natural beauty, like the Midwood Trail, along with man-made lakes and waterfalls. Tanner seems to know both of them pretty well.”

Many people don’t realize that in the 1850s and 1860s, when Central Park and then Prospect Park were designed, Brooklyn was a separate city from New York, and the two were only connected by ferry service. It was not until 1898 that New York-then comprised of only the island of Manhattan and a small piece of the Bronx-joined forces across the river with Brooklyn, at that time the third-largest city in America.

“They’ll be looking at him hard for Angel’s killing. The Midwood’s so much like the Ramble, and both girls were homeless, white, and about the same age.”

“Impossible to know-with no ID for our vic-whether there’s any connection between them. Did she tell you where she was living?” I asked.

“Do you know Elephant Hill?”

“Yes.” The name referred to one of the highest points on the Midwood Trail, where a century ago there had been a menagerie that housed elephants and bears. Now there were towering trees that covered the landscape along the interweaving paths.

“She was camping out there, in sort of a shelter.”

“A cave?” I remembered the story Flo had told about the small grotto behind the waterfall in the Ravine, and that Mia Schneider had promised to find out for Mike and me the location of the original caves that were part of the Park design.

“No. This one was made of logs,” Mercer said. “Apparently it’s a thing in Prospect Park, according to what the rangers told the cops, that when trees fall and begin to decay, they’re left in place unless they block a path. This way the fungi and molds return nutrients to the soil.”

“You’re serious? She was living in a stack of moldy logs?”

“The first team in showed me the photos. They’re all over the Park.”

“How can we not take better care of the people in this city?” I said. “It rips me up to think of how vulnerable these kids are.”

“I hate to tell you that today marks one week since Angel was found in the Lake. This Brooklyn rape will give Scully exactly what he needs to withdraw a task force from Central Park and beef up the patrols in Prospect.”

“But suppose Tanner’s playing a game? He’s fully capable of switching up his location and then doubling back.”

“Course he is. So don’t be stubborn about letting us stay close to you.”

“No comment, Mercer. I think he’s moved on from thinking about me.”

It was easy for Mercer to find a parking spot on Hogan Place so early in the morning. We picked up coffee and Danish at the corner cart and went upstairs to settle in the conference room with all the case reports. With every twist, like Tanner’s new attack, and every bit of information about the evidence, like Vergil Humphrey’s claim about the black angel statuette, we had to reevaluate each assumption we’d made earlier.

I left a voice mail for my counterpart in the Brooklyn DA’s office-the chief of the Special Victims Unit-telling her that I would be happy to exchange details with her on our Raymond Tanner cases, and give her all the background on both his criminal and psych history. Then Mercer and I began digging into piles of police reports, talking over the significance of the developments of the last twenty-four hours.

It was just after 9:30 when Laura came down to look for me.

“It’s the district attorney, Alex. He called on your hotline, so I picked it up. He wants you in his office right away.”

“Tanner, you think?” Mercer asked.

“Probably,” I said, pushing back my chair to get up. “It’s not like him to call himself. At least Rose will tell me what it’s about.”

I walked down the corridor and crossed through the secured entrance to the executive wing. Rose barely looked up from her desk, her expression as tight as I’d ever seen it. That signaled to me that there was no point asking her about the district attorney’s mood. I hadn’t been summoned for a casual chat.

When I entered Battaglia’s office, I was surprised to see Manny Chirico sitting across the table from him. “Good morning, Paul,” I said, looking from one of the men to the other. “Sergeant Chirico.”

“Sit down, Alexandra.”

I did.

“I understand this character Raymond Tanner is on the street. A case you lost, I see.”

“Yes, sir.”

“One completed rape earlier this morning, one attempt earlier this week, and possibly a murder.”

“That’s right.”

“What’s he got against you?”

“That I tried the case against him, I guess. Who better to hate than the prosecutor?”

“But you did a lousy job,” Battaglia said, with the straightest of faces.

“Thanks, boss. You might tell him that when you see him. I think he finds the psych hospitalization terrifically confining when he thinks he can get away with so many more rapes on the outside. Especially since he must think, like you do, that I did a lousy job.”

“You okay with the bodyguard?”

“I guess it’s necessary.”

“Scully called me on it late yesterday. Wish I’d heard about the situation from you,” the DA said, “but it seems like a sound idea.”

“Then I’m okay with-”

“So long as it’s not Mike Chapman.”

I met his stare head-on. “It’s not, Paul. Anything else you want?”

“Don’t get up yet, Alexandra. The sergeant tells me he’s been dealing with a problem of Chapman’s all week.”

“Just like you have, boss.”

“Excuse me?”

“It’s why you and McKinney were so happy to dump the Central Park homicide in my lap. Jessica Pell’s on the warpath, she’s obviously had your ear about me, and you’re taking her seriously. Without the courtesy of letting me be heard.”

“Don’t ever forget who runs the show here, Alexandra. Why the hell shouldn’t I be taking the judge seriously?”

“Because she’s crazy,” Manny Chirico said. “I’m telling you, Mr. Battaglia, she’s dangerously off-balance.”

I exhaled, realizing that Chirico was actually on Mike’s side. Maybe he had a good purpose in coming here, forcing Battaglia to look at the two threats-one against Mike and the other against me-as a single package.

“What’s your point?” the DA asked Chirico.

“I’ve had a week to think this through, puzzle the pieces, pull together some information before the judge meets her noon deadline and makes her demands of you and the commissioner.” The sergeant was well respected by his men, with a great career as an investigator in the detective bureau. “I think I know how you feel about Alexandra, Mr. B, and there’s no way I’m giving up Chapman to a lunatic, no matter how bad a slide his love life took.”

He opened a file folder and placed a sheaf of photographs in front of Battaglia.

“What are these?”

“Raymond Tanner. They’re eight-by-tens of all the photos of him, from the standing shot at the time of his arrest in the case that Alex tried to his most recent from psych city.”

There were at least eight pictures in the pile. Battaglia studied each one and passed it along to me. I knew the arrest photo and had introduced it into evidence at the trial. It showed Tanner standing in Central Booking, next to the measure on the wall that recorded his height at six-foot-one. The tattoos that snaked down both sides of his arms from beneath his white T-shirt were already in place-a bodyscape of violence featuring guns of all shapes and sizes and knives that dripped blood from their tips.

But there was, as yet, no writing on the backs of Tanner’s hands, which hung by his sides in the first photograph.

The next four were taken at the facilities in which he was incarcerated as a result of the NGRI verdict. One pair was from the infamous Clinton psych ward, in which Tanner stood-first a full-body shot from the front and then from the back-with his long-sleeved shirt on. The next was with the shirt removed, showing some of the art on his chest and his back, including a brightly colored dragon whose tail curled around his torso while flames shot out of its mouth.

Eighteen months later, at a facility midstate, the same photos-facing the camera and away-showed a new sketch across the span of his upper back. It was a crudely drawn pit bull, black and white, with drops of blood on his bared teeth. The word BUSTER was printed below the dog. But still there was no lettering on Tanner’s hands.

The next pair of photos marked the prisoner’s admission to Fishkill’s mental facility, from which his brutal forays into the city began.

I looked at his hands, which again were unmarked. The first shot was unremarkable because of his clothing; the second showed that a red-caped black-figured drawing of a devil had been squeezed in between the pit bull and the old dragon. Some jailhouse artist had misspelled Lucifer-LOOSIFUR-under the tattoo.

The last photo was dated just days before Raymond Tanner absconded after his taste of freedom during work release. Battaglia looked at it without comment-I had no idea whether any of the images made an impression on him-and passed it to me.

“Here it is,” I said to Manny Chirico. “For the first time you can see the words.”

“What?” Battaglia asked. “What are you trying to tell me?”

“See that? See the words KILL COOP?” Chirico said, grabbing the picture from me and handing it back to the district attorney. “That’s the tattoo on Tanner’s hand.”

“I’m aware of that.”

“Look at the date, Mr. B. That picture was taken on May 8th. Did you notice that the image was not in any of the previous photos?”

Battaglia wouldn’t acknowledge that he hadn’t tracked that feature. He reached a hand out toward me, and I passed the stack back to him.

“They’re taken periodically, Mr. B, to enter information in the databanks, whether it’s about tattoos or scars or nicknames or prison events.”

“I’m following you.”

May 8th. I was frantically trying to attach a significance to that date. My birthday was April 30th-just one week earlier-and that was shortly after Mike told Jessica Pell he’d be spending time with me that night. I wanted to know where Manny Chirico was going with his theory, and I desperately wanted him not to trip up in front of an unforgiving Paul Battaglia.

“And May 8th,” Chirico said, “was while Tanner was obviously still at Fishkill, but allowed to come into the city for work release.”

“It’s also the Feast Day of St. Victor the Moor, Sergeant. What’s your point?”

Chirico extracted the next group of papers, half an inch think, from another folder. “Think about it, Mr. B. Assume that Raymond Tanner hated Alexandra, especially during his trial. She was the face and voice of the prosecution, standing in the way between him and a free ride.”

“But she didn’t get the verdict she wanted, Manny.”

“Even worse. To the perp who hears the words ‘not guilty,’ he thinks he ought to walk out the door. Get out of jail free. Instead, he’s freezing his ass off in a prison on the Canadian border. And who does he have to blame? Alexander Cooper. She’s the reason he’s there.”

Battaglia stared at the photo showing Tanner’s tattooed hand. “So you think it would have made more sense for him to have had the KILL COOP branding done when he was most enraged? When they slammed the cell door on him?”

“Makes much more sense, Mr. B,” Chirico said. “He’s had lots more people to hate than Alex since he went behind bars. So that’s why I’ve run everyone who’s currently in the psych ward with Tanner starting April 1st.”

“Got it,” Battaglia said, tossing the photo on his desk.

“There’s thirty-six guys, but only three of them, according to admin, are into inking tats.”

Battaglia lit a cigar, squinting at me as he struck the match to see if I was part of Chirico’s plan or as mystified as he seemed to be.

“And one of them, Mr. B, had a competency hearing on May 3rd to determine whether he was fit yet to stand trial.”

“So?”

“A competency hearing at Fishkill, instead of here in the courthouse. The perp’s in the loony bin with Tanner ’cause he killed his landlady and stuffed her in the incinerator. He’s up there pretrial-instead of at Rikers Island-’cause he’s a parole violator from an earlier conviction.”

“I know the case,” I said. “Kerry O’Donnell has it. Trial Bureau 80.”

“Exactly. And Kerry had to travel to Fishkill to do the hearing because the prisoner is considered too violent to risk the transport to Manhattan. Still incompetent to stand trial, Mr. B, but they had to go ahead with a hearing since it was mandatory. So they held it at the facility.”

I could see a flash of daylight. “And who conducted it, Sarge?”

“Judge Pell,” he said. “Judge Jessica Pell.”

Battaglia rustled the cellophane wrapper of his cigar into a ball, squeezing it into his fist. “She have any connection to Tanner when you tried him?”

“No, Paul. None at all.”

The district attorney leafed through the papers Chirico gave him. “Was she alone with Kerry’s prisoner at any point in time?”

“No. But his artwork came up during the hearing. Not ’cause his lawyer wanted it to, but Kerry says the guy just rambled on about how he’d found God through the tattoo needle.”

Battaglia held up his hands. “I’m missing the link.”

“I interviewed Kerry on Tuesday, to see what went on while she was there at Fishkill. But it wasn’t until Wednesday morning that Alex linked Raymond Tanner to a new case. Kerry recognized his name and called me back that afternoon. She told me to have the warden pull the log from the day of the hearing.”

“Why?” I asked. I wished that Kerry had told me this, too, but we were good friends and she had put whatever information she had into the proper hands by telling Chirico. That was so much smarter than confiding in me.

“Kerry said that when her proceeding was completed and she was about to leave the hearing room, one of the prison guards walked in with a special request.”

“For what?” Battaglia asked.

“Raymond Tanner-Kerry heard the guard say his name-had started work release. He wanted to get a relief from civil disabilities ruling,” Chirico said, “which is required for some of the licensing needs in the nursing home industry.”

“So he needed a judge to sign off on that application,” I said.

“And there was Jessica Pell,” Chirico said. “In the house.”

“But she didn’t know about my connection to him.”

“The warden gave him the folder, with your name on the cover page as the prosecutorial contact, Alex.”

“They couldn’t possibly have left the judge alone with this Tanner animal?” Battaglia asked.

“Seventeen minutes alone, according to Kerry’s timepiece. After all, Mr. B, he wasn’t guilty. He was just insane, and he was already deemed safe to be out and about among the general population of this big city.”

“Eight days after April 30th. Almost two weeks since Mike Chapman tried to get out of her clutches,” I said. “And within the week, the words KILL COOP are inked on his hand, perhaps suggested to him by a judge out to get Chapman and me for her perceived slights, just minutes after she had presided over a hearing involving his cell-block mate and tattoo artist.”

“April 30th?” Battaglia asked. “What’s that?”

“My birthday, Paul. Mike says it was one of the triggers for Pell.”

The embers on the tip of his cigar lighted up as he turned his head to me and puffed on it. “Sorry I missed it, Alex. Help yourself to a Cohiba. And she was set off because you were in bed with Chapman then?”

“Last time I’m going to address this with you, boss,” I said, pushing away from the table to stand up. “My sexual relationships-such as they used to be-are none of your goddamn business. But if you have Rose check your calendar, April 30th was the day of the confrontation at Stallion Ridge Cellars. Luc Rouget was my lover, as you may recall. The rest of the bullshit that set Jessica Pell off was a function of her own paranoia.”

Battaglia looked back at Manny Chirico. “You can’t prove that Pell talked to Tanner about Alex, can you?”

“He doesn’t have to,” I said. I was ready to tell both Battaglia and Chirico about my conversation with Jessica Pell, and that I had audiotaped it so there would be proof to back me up.

But the district attorney continued to ignore me. “Sergeant, you think she put him up to the tattoo as some kind of threat to Alexandra?”

“It’s not a threat,” I said. “It’s an advertisement. Pell had no idea Raymond Tanner would go AWOL. She’s twisted, Paul. She was just trying to get at me any way she could at that moment. I bet she saw my name on Tanner’s file and that set her off. She may have lit a fire under him without even knowing how far he might go with it.”

Battaglia scowled at me. “You keep saying Pell’s twisted and crazy. That’s not the woman I know, and the mayor vouches for her like she’s Sonia Sotomayor.”

“You gotta trust me on this one, Mr. B,” Chirico said. “She’s smart, but this broad is off-the-charts whacko.”

Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor had worked as a prosecutor in Battaglia’s office before my tenure. The well-respected jurist and amazingly grounded woman was the polar opposite of Jessica Pell.

“You want examples, Paul? You don’t think she’s crazy enough to just want to put the fear of God in me ’cause she thinks I’m after Mike’s ass?”

“Why? You’ve got ex-?”

“Buckets full,” I said. “What would you like to know? Pell went to some Innocence Project program and did a panel with a three-time loser who was exonerated last summer on a murder charge. Hooked up with him after the show. You know what that means, Paul? Hooked up? She took him home with her that night and had sex with him. He blogged about it on his website-www.outandoverit.com-shortly before he was arrested in Queens County for throwing lye in the face of his ex-wife.”

“Jesus.”

“I’m not done. In the fall, when Dan Berner tried that triple homicide in front of her, she sent him mash notes before the trial was over. Happily married guy who’s squeaky clean and she practically wanted to do him in the robing room.”

“Why the hell didn’t he-?”

“Tell McKinney? Of course he did. And defense counsel, too. There’s a whole file on Pell that Pat must have.”

“Calm down, Alex,” Battaglia said. “You catch more flies with honey.”

“I’m not a flycatcher, Paul. And Pell may have jumped on her moment with Raymond Tanner for sport-she’s just that crazy-but now he’s out of the blocks and running wild.”

“Does Scully know what you’ve got?” Battaglia asked the sergeant.

“I’m on my way over to him now. I thought I’d show you first since it’s Alex who’s in Pell’s crosshairs, in regard to Tanner.”

“I’ll talk to him later, Sergeant. Let’s let Pell run her course.”

“Well, that option is totally unsatisfactory to me, Paul,” I said. I couldn’t control my anger. “That whackjob gives an ultimatum to Manny about one of the best detectives in the city-and about me, whatever that’s worth to you-and you’re going to let her play it out in two hours, no matter what Manny has to say to you? No matter what we’ve just heard?”

“You got a better idea?”

“I do,” I said, walking toward the door. “You call the mayor right now and tell him he gets her resignation before six o’clock tonight. Hizzoner wants to know what a stalker’s like? Well, his deputy mayor gave us one-and the mayor appointed her himself, put her in robes, with a gavel in her hand-and I’d like to serve Pell right back to him on a silver platter. He listens to you sometimes, Paul. You tell him she resigns by the end of the day.”

Battaglia almost choked on the cigar smoke, he puffed so hard. “Or what?” he said, laughing at my show of temper. “What do you want me to tell the mayor?”

“Tell him to watch Brian Williams at 6:30. Nightly News.”

“That’s comical, Alex. You doing the weather this evening, are you? Is that your next gig?” He laughed again, but Manny Chirico’s handsome face was frozen in a grimace as he watched me open the door.

“Yeah, boss. Storm brewing on the bench. Tropical-force winds. What the mayor ought to know is that I have an audiotape of Jessica Pell that’s a bit incriminating. Made it myself, Paul.”

Battaglia took the cigar out of his mouth and crushed it in the glass ashtray on his desk.

“Who the fuck signed off on a wiretap of a judge?” he shouted at me. Smoke even seemed to be coming out of his ears.

“It’s not a wiretap, Paul, and I didn’t need your signature,” I said. “All I have to do is download the audio and e-mail it to one of the television producers. It’ll make a great scoop on the news tonight. Especially the sound of the judge smacking me across the face.”