Killer Look

FORTY-EIGHT

Keith Scully didn’t need me standing on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art with him when he announced the arrest of Reed Savage and asked for the public’s help in finding Tiziana Bolt. He was flanked by Mike Chapman and Mercer Wallace.

I watched from within the Great Hall. Scully’s announcement was short, because of the time of night, lack of notice, and need to put together a full package of facts. But it might have been the most elegant venue in which an NYPD press conference was ever held.

Mike came back inside after the commissioner left. We waited while crews took down the bank of microphones and all the cameras were carted off in reporters’ vans.

The last of the security guards were waiting for Mike and me to leave.

Mike took off his jacket and put it around my shoulders. “Time to go, babe.”

“Are you sure there are no photographers left out there?”

“Just pigeons, so far as I can tell,” he said. “New York at night, Coop. Just pigeons and perps.”

“One fewer of those,” I said, walking through the revolving door behind Mike and taking his hand to go down the steps.

“We’ll go to my place. That way we’ll avoid anyone looking for you.”

“Makes good sense.”

We were halfway down before I heard footsteps. I picked up my head and saw a figure in a dark suit coming up the staircase, almost upon us.

“Mike-” I said, tensing up and dropping his arm.

“It’s okay, Coop. It’s your boss.”

“Alex,” Paul Battaglia said, calling out my name. “Alex, we’ve got to talk.”

“This isn’t the time, Mr. B,” Mike said. “I’m taking her home.”

“Keith Scully told me you were still here, Alex. I need five minutes with you.”

Battaglia was one step below me, practically face-to-face.

“Not tonight, Paul,” I said.

Not without my lawyer, I thought.

I saw a man leaning out of the passenger window of a car that had stopped at the curb. He reached out his arm in our direction.

I couldn’t see because of the dark that he had an object in his hand, and didn’t know it was a gun until he fired two shots.

Paul Battaglia fell forward. I caught him as he collapsed in my arms.

Mike ran down the museum staircase, but the car was already out of sight.

I lowered myself onto the steps, holding Battaglia all the while, repeating his name over and over but getting no response.

Blood pooled beneath us. I saw the hole in the back of his head.

Mike was on his cell, yelling at the 911 dispatcher for an ambulance and backup.

“It’s too late, Mike,” I said. “The district attorney is dead.”