Death Angel

TWENTY-SIX

“Rose is going to call you before I finish talking,” I said to Laura as I stuck my head in, barely pausing on my way back to the conference room. “You don’t know where I am, you don’t know when I’m coming back, and you’ll be happy to get a message to me if necessary.”

The light on the first line of her phone lighted up. She put her hand on the receiver to pick it up, but I put mine on top of hers.

“And if the man himself walks over to talk to me, just tell him I’ve stepped out.”

A second ring. I knew it was Rose Malone calling for Battaglia, who’d be looking for an apology first and then for more information about my taped conversation with Pell.

“Tell him I seemed very upset. That I flew out of here,” I said. “And if Manny Chirico drops by, remember to tell him that I love him. I absolutely love him. Or maybe give that message to Rose, and tell her to be sure to pass it along in front of Battaglia.”

Laura picked up the phone. “Alexandra Cooper’s office.”

She covered the receiver with her hand and mouthed to me that it was Rose. I shrugged and shook my head, and scooted down to the conference room.

“You look like you got hit by a truck,” he said.

“We have to get lost for the rest of the day, Mercer. I may have just talked myself out of a job.”

“C’mon, Alex. What’s-?”

“Insubordination. Rudeness. Untimely display of my ill-managed temper. Threats,” I said, sitting at the table with my head in my hands. “I think I just sort of threatened Paul Battaglia. And the mayor of the city of New York. Tell me I didn’t do that.”

Mercer walked over behind me and started to massage my shoulders. “I know you didn’t do that.”

“Quite sure I did. It’s Friday. I’m just going to take off early for the weekend. Unless you’ll hang with me,” I said. “Can we take the most critical papers we need with us and go to my apartment and keep working?”

“I’ll do anything you want. But let’s get your head on straight.”

“That feels good. Keep rubbing my neck.”

“Will do if you tell me what just happened in there.”

I got as far as Chirico’s presentation of Raymond Tanner’s prison photos. Mercer had been with us at Stallion Ridge on the day our last major investigation came to an abrupt end. He had helped to find a way to celebrate my birthday when my personal world imploded that afternoon, and so the timeline Chirico established made great sense to him.

“Jessica Pell and Raymond Tanner in the same air space up at Fishkill?” he said. “Mighty dicey. Being on her bad side’s a dangerous spot.”

“I think that tat is only about spooking me. Nothing more than that.”

“So what’s Battaglia’s problem?”

“I didn’t get to the end of the story, Mercer. I went up to court yesterday to see the judge, like I told you I was going to do.”

“You what?” He let go off my shoulders and sat down opposite me. “Pick up your head, look me in the eye, and tell me you didn’t do what I told you not to do, Ms. Cooper.”

“I didn’t mean to go against you, Mercer. There’s just too much on the line here for this laissez-faire approach everybody seems to have about Pell.”

“Spare no details, Alexandra.”

Every word of my conversation with Jessica Pell was still fresh in my mind. I repeated the story for Mercer, whose expression never changed throughout the telling. Then he stretched his arms out on the table and bowed his head.

“Who’s going to believe you, Alex? You think you’re getting jammed up so you went to her one-on-one? I would have gone with you if I’d thought for a minute you were serious.”

I pointed at the scratches on my cheek and Mercer reached across the table and held my chin in his hand to look at them.

“It’s not about you, is it, Alex? You didn’t crawl out on a limb for your own sake. You did this so Pell wouldn’t pull the plug on Mike.”

Tears welled up in my eyes. I shook my head from side to side.

“Damn, I wish I’d been there.” Mercer stood up and started to pack several of the manila folders into one of my canvas sail bags.

“One more thing you should know,” I said. “I had the guys from the DA’s squad wire me up. It’s not just my word, Mercer. There’s a tape.”

He dropped the file that was in his hand, and the papers spread over the floor. “Mother of-”

“Hey-it’s legal.”

“Ill-advised, Ms. Cooper. Risky but ballsy-and yes, legal. Where’s the audio?”

“At my apartment. And a copy in the squad safe.”

Mercer smiled at me. “Way to go, girl. Wait till Mike hears.”

“No way. Blood oath on this one. When Pell gives the all clear, let him just think the madwoman came to her senses. He can’t know I got into this battle.”

“I can respect that for now. Pick the files you want,” he said, bending down to retrieve the papers. “I’ve got mine. Now all we have to do is figure a way past McKinney’s door, and we can hustle down the rear staircase.”

“It’s Friday. McKinney’s shrink gets the first crack at him in the morning. We’re good to go.”

I called Laura from my cell. “All calm?”

“Not from my vantage point. Rose called three times before the DA came by. You do not want to cross his path today. He wants to hear from you as soon as I find you.”

“In about three minutes, two people who look a lot like Mercer and me will slink past your door. Bury your nose in a file cabinet and then we’re out of your hair. I promise I’ll respond to all your calls and texts. I just blew out of here. That’s all you know,” I said. “And I will try to find some way to thank you.”

“Stay safe, Alexandra. The radio says that Tanner bastard raped again last night.”

“I’m with Mercer, and he’s on top of that. Talk later.”

With a small fraction of the case folders in our totes, we raced down the short corridor between the conference room and my office. Instead of the main elevator, we took the service staircase down to the street.

Once inside Mercer’s SUV and headed uptown, I called Rose’s number.

“Alex? Let me put you right through. You seem to have started a small war.”

“No, no, no. I’m not in the office. I’m taking the day off. I’d just like you to tell the boss I’m sorry for the contretemps, and that I’ll call him later. No point his waiting for me to come see him because I’m gone for the day.”

“And if anything breaks on your murder case?”

“The detectives know how to find me. Sorry to be so disrespectful.”

We were setting up our work space at my dining room table by 11:15, air-conditioning at full blast and summer sunlight flooding the cheerful apartment.

There was a knock at my front door half an hour later. The doormen never let anyone except Mike or Mercer up to my floor without calling first. “Did you-?”

“Yeah. I buzzed Mike when I was looking for a parking space. Told him to spend some time here before he heads to the Park. And hush, I didn’t say a word about Pell, okay?”

I walked to the front door and opened it. “C’mon in, Mike.”

“How’s her mood, Mercer?” he said, practically tiptoeing past me, not even venturing a greeting.

“Better since I apologized for both of us last night.”

“I get it. It was the right thing to do, and the cops were perfectly nice,” I said.

“How nice?” Mike asked. “You get lucky?”

“Very. I actually got to sleep for a change,” I said. “You’ve heard about Tanner in Prospect Park?”

“Yeah. SVU and Homicide are jumping all over the place.” Mike was carrying a cardboard banker’s box, which he rested on the mahogany table.

“What’s that?”

“The Cold Case Unit pulled the Baby Lucy kidnapping papers for me. What’s left of them.”

The paperwork from cases that lingered for years-or decades-was often picked apart, unintentionally destroying the integrity of the investigation, while on the dusty shelves where it was stored. Cops would go back to them to review witness statements, or characters would reappear in a later investigation so their earlier questioning became relevant. Police reports sometimes vanished, and cases like the disappearance of Lucy Dalton would have generated mounds of documents and media reports, many of which wouldn’t survive long stretches of inattention.

“That’s it?” I asked.

“Six more like it. I just picked the first one up at 7:30 this morning. Sat in the squad room reading till you called, Mercer. I think I’m still on day two of the investigation. What a manhunt this was,” Mike said. “Why are you guys here and not downtown?”

“I’m exhausted, and it was kind of quiet at the office. Everybody ready to take off for the weekend. I just figured we’d be more comfortable at my house, and I’d be all set up to keep working over the weekend.”

Mercer gave me a thumbs-up.

“Is this what you’re doing today?” I asked Mike. “Reading ancient history?”

“That was the original plan. Peterson wanted to keep me on a leash, in the office. They were expecting fireworks from Judge Pell right around now.”

I busied myself labeling folders with colored tabs.

“Don’t go to the bank on this,” Mike said, “but Manny Chirico called right after Mercer did. He thinks she’s going to back off. He must have worked his charm on her is all I can say.”

“Must have. He’s got loads more of it than you do, and he’s too smart to misuse it,” I said. “So now what?”

“Fair game, kid. So I called Mia Schneider. Someone at the Conservancy is pulling out the original renderings of the Park from the 1850s so we can see if there are really any caves in it. That could set me up for tomorrow.”

“I’m with you,” Mercer said.

“Don’t you guys want a day off?”

“Maybe Sunday. I hate that the Park presence will already be so reduced by the end of the day,” Mercer said.

“And my next stop is the Dakota,” Mike said. “See what I can wheedle out of Ms. Sorenson.”

There was a manila folder on the top of the box, crisp and clean and new. Mike slid some photographs out of it and put them on the table. “Courtesy of Hal Sherman and his Panoscan man.”

This was my second photo exhibit of the day. I was hoping that it would be half as productive as the first.

The digital camera had captured its characteristic fish-eye images, a full 360-degree photo record shot from Bow Bridge just hours after Angel’s body had been pulled out of the Lake.

I started with the shots in order, scouring the ground around the Lake, spreading farther into the trees and bushes till it was too dense to see, hoping to find some jarring scene, something totally out of place, a clue that hadn’t been visible to the Crime Scene crew as they worked within short range of the victim’s corpse.

“Stumped?” Mike asked.

“I give up. Where’s Waldo?”

Mike reached among the photos for the blow-up of the Dakota apartments. “Count up from the ground floor, Coop. Lavinia Dalton’s got the entire eighth floor.”

“Of course. You told me you saw a shadowy figure on nine, in one of the eyelid windows.”

I went to my coffee table to take hold of a decorative antique magnifying glass and looked again.

I slid the horn-handled magnifier up to the tiny rectangular windows, which sat a flight above the grand long ones of the eighth floor but below the eaves of the roof.

“The servants’ quarters,” Mercer said, standing over my shoulder.

Directly above the living room windows of Lavinia Dalton was one of the openings. With my naked eye, I could see the outline of a tall object, maybe even a figure, framed in the narrow pane of glass.

I pushed the magnifier up and tried to focus the image more clearly.

“It’s a person,” I said, recalling the crush of cops and passersby who had huddled around Bethesda Terrace while the Crime Scene Unit was taking the pictures. “It’s a man, I think, his palms pressed against the window, looking down at the homicide detectives doing their work.”

Mike grabbed the photograph from my hand. “And I’m going to find out who he is.”