Likely To Die

10

BURGUNDY-SUITED DOORMEN FLANKED THE entrance to Gemma Dogen’s apartment building on Beekman Place, a short walk from the medical center complex. Wallace palmed his gold detective shield to the older of the two, on our left, who acknowledged his recognition by swinging back the large glass doors.

Wallace pointed me to the right, through the lobby and past an enormous display of forsythia and pussy willows that seemed to be rushing the season. We got on the elevator and Mercer pressed twelve.

“Damn,” he said as the doors opened onto a dim hallway made more oppressive by a heavy pattern of taupe flocked wallpaper. “I brought a camera in case you wanted any photos. Left it in the trunk. It’s the third door on the left-12C. Here are the keys, large one for the bottom lock. Let yourself in and I’ll be back up in five.”

I fingered the key chain as the doors pinched shut behind me. I hesitated while toying with the miniature replica of London’s Tower Bridge from which the two keys dangled, thinking I might be more comfortable entering Gemma’s home with Mercer than alone.

Grow up, I told myself. There are no ghosts inside and Mercer will be here within minutes.

I slipped the shorter key into the top lock, then turned the long Medeco one into the cylinder below. The knob seemed to stick for a minute before it cracked open, and I was startled at that exact moment by a noise behind me. I stepped on the threshold and looked over my shoulder to see only the swinging door at the service end of the hallway moving back and forth.

There were no voices and no other noise on the corridor and yet I could have sworn I saw someone’s face peeking out from behind the small porthole window there toward me. It was a creepy feeling, as though I were being watched, and I reassured myself that nosy neighbors were likely to be concerned about the strangers who were parading in and out of the dead woman’s home.

The entryway light switch was on the wall next to the front closet, so I flipped it up as I closed the door behind me.

My eyes swept around the large space. It was a postwar building with rooms of a generous size, spoiled by concrete ceilings that resembled a huge, upside-down vat of cottage cheese but saved by a floor-length wall of windows that looked over the expanse of the East River. Today the clouds hung dense and low and I could barely see beyond the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge and the traffic gliding toward La Guardia Airport.

Gemma Dogen’s taste was simple and stark. I moved through the living room, which appeared to have been furnished during a single stop at a low-cost, contemporary Scandinavian store. Every piece had sharp angles and lines; all fabrics were neutral in shade and slightly rough to the feel. I wished her the deep, rich colors and thick, soft materials of my own home, which enveloped and soothed me when I was ready to relax, kick my shoes off, and leave my professional world behind me at the end of a tough day.

I placed my coat over the back of one of the chairs at the dining table and turned into the short hallway that led to her bedroom. Antique British travel posters of Brighton, the Cotswolds, and Cambridge lined both sides of the wall leading into another sterile-looking chamber with its queen-sized bed.

If the photographs with which she surrounded herself were any evidence of her priorities, Gemma Dogen certainly liked her role in the academic community. She beamed from platforms and podia when she was dressed in her professorial garb. Flags flanking the stage settings showed her equally at home in England and in America and I silently applauded a woman of her accomplishment who had been such a brilliant success in a specialty dominated for so long by men.

The alarm clock next to her bed was still displaying the correct time. I pressed the little button on top to see at what hour Gemma scheduled her days to begin. It flashed a reading of 5:30A.M. and I admired even more the discipline that drove her out that early, especially these March mornings, to run along the riverside path before going to work. The harsh buzz of the front doorbell brought me out of my reverie and I headed back to let Mercer in.

“Who else you expecting?” he asked, ridiculing the fact that I had looked through the peephole before turning the knob.

“You know my mother’s rules, Mercer.” I supposed I’d been doing that peephole thing instinctively since I moved to Manhattan more than a decade earlier. “And someone was lurking around out there when I let myself in. Did you see anybody?”

“Not a soul, Miss Cooper. Carry on, girl.”

“Did you see the alarm clock?”

“Not that I remember. Anything significant?”

“Just worth checking out the time of her usual schedule. It was last set for 5:30A.M. -we should note it in case it helps backtrack if we get any closer to knowing the time of the assault.”

“Done.” Mercer opened his pad and scratched in some notes. “Now, your video guy took some film in here, and we had Crime Scene go over it, too. George Zotos has been pouring through a lot of the files. Seems like she didn’t entertain here much. Used this living room more like an office. That whole wall unit to the left is full of books, but the one on the right is all files and stuff from the med school.

“We’ve been over a lot of it. Take your time, I’ll be here with you. Let me know if you want a picture of anything.”

I started back to the kitchen. Like mine, its shelves and cupboards were pretty bare. The standard upscale equipment-Cuisinart, Calphalon pots and pans, Henckel knives, and an imported espresso machine-all looked pitifully underutilized. This was the Gemma Dogen I could relate to.

“We’ve been through there, Coop. Zotos inventoried the fridge but then threw everything out. Skim milk, carrots, head of lettuce. You’re welcome to look, but it won’t tell you much.”

I walked back into the bedroom and sat in the armchair that was adjacent to Gemma’s bedside table. The bed was neatly made up and the spread was pulled tight without a crease. Either she had arisen at her usual time and straightened up after her jog or she had never gotten home during the night to go to sleep.

I picked up the book from the bedside table-a slim volume on spinal cord injuries, just published by Johns Hopkins University Press, which seemed as depressing as the task ahead of us. I looked at the pages that Gemma had dog-eared and underlined but they meant nothing to me and I replaced it under the lamp.

Closet doors were on runners, which I slid back to look at the way she presented herself to her world. On one side were dark suits with no trim or detail, utilitarian but not of any style. The other end was mostly casual gear-an assortment of khaki slacks, simple cotton shirts, and jackets. Running shoes and sneakers of every variety and condition covered the closet floor. Several pairs of solid English walking pumps must have carried her through her professional appointments. Sensible, my mother called them, but unexciting. A few white lab coats, cleaned and starched, hung between the business and the play clothes. My hand reached for the sleeve of a navy wool suit. I wondered if anyone had claimed Gemma’s body from the morgue and thought of taking an outfit for her burial.

I went back into the living room. Mercer stood up from the chair at Dogen’s desk, where he had been looking through some of the manila files that lay on top, and offered the seat to me.

“Here’s the mail that was left for her today. Doorman gave it to me on my way back up. Bills for Con Ed and cable TV, statement from Chase Bank, and a postcard from her ex on his trip to the Himalayas. Read it-looks like he expected to see her in England in a couple of weeks. Medical symposium at the University of London. Take that with us to give to Peterson, okay?”

“Fine.” I looked it over, pleased that she had such a civilized relationship with Geoffrey that he actually expressed pleasure at the idea of seeing her soon. Most of my friends didn’t enjoy that status with their exes, a thought that had me smiling until I caught myself with the sad realization that Geoffrey might not yet even know Gemma’s monstrous fate.

Mercer moved over to study the bookshelf wall. With his usual eye for detail, he started listing titles and descriptions as I opened desk drawers to flip through agendas and calendars.

“This lady was serious, Cooper. Very little here that isn’t medical or strictly business. Small collection of classics, kind of stuff you like. George Eliot, Thomas Hardy. Then you move to the CDs. Lots of German opera, plenty of Bach. Can you imagine a music collection without a single piece of jazz or even one Motown disc? Too whitebread for me, girl.”

“I don’t think I noticed, Mercer. Is there a computer in her office?” I was surprised not to find one in the apartment.

“Yeah, they’re working on downloading that, too. She didn’t keep one here, which is why it wouldn’t have been unusual to see her in the med school office so late. When we were there yesterday morning, practically everyone we spoke to said Dogen liked to do her writing late at night, when it was really quiet over there. Unfortunately, anyone who knew her knew that.”

I slid the chair over to the wall opposite the one Mercer was facing. The lower half of the cabinets were file drawers, each hung with legal-size Pendaflex folders. Some were divided by color and all were split up by year. Beyond that, I could make no particular sense of the order or subject matter. Like Mercer, I held onto my legal pad and tried to make notes about what categories the documents covered.

“For such a logical lady, some of this makes no sense. I can’t imagine her system for finding stuff. She’s got scores of folders on ‘Professional Ethics’-”

“Yeah, that was one of her areas of expertise, Coop. She gave a lot of lectures about it.”

“Well, wedged in between that and a couple of folders on ‘Regenerative Tissue’ is her file on ‘Met Games.’ ”

“She was quite a jock, apparently.”

“Yeah, but Laura Wilkie could have straightened out her life a bit. Organized everything. You go in looking to renew your baseball season tickets and it’s somewhere in the middle of brain tissue. Two file drawers later you get to all the stuff about running equipment. Uh, uh-Laura wouldn’t stand for it. She’d have all the brain material in one place and the sports files in another.”

I was getting bleary-eyed from looking through file labels and listings. I had wanted to get a sense of Gemma Dogen and, beyond that, none of these documents would have any meaning unless they surfaced later as a piece of the investigation.

Mercer was photographing the items on the desktop as I stood up and stretched my back. “I’ll just take a few shots so we can keep the context of how we found things.”

“Whoever speaks to the next of kin, we’ll have to let them know what’s here. Pictures will be useful.”

“You can come back any time. Rent’s paid up through April, so Peterson doesn’t want any of this touched until we know who her heirs are. And know whether she was an intended victim or an accidental one.”

The early darkness of a March day had descended over the city while Mercer and I had intruded on the personal effects of Gemma Dogen. It was after six o’clock and I needed to be at the small supper reception the Lenox Hill Debs Board was holding in the principal’s office at the high school hosting my lecture.

Mercer’s flash went off several times as he aimed at a few areas of Dogen’s living room. The light reflected the shining surface of a small golden object and I approached to see what had glimmered so brightly in the otherwise drab room.

“Take it easy, Cooper. It’s not jewelry.”

Mercer lifted a foot-long black stand from the third shelf of the case and read the bronze plate that was affixed to its edge. In italic script was printed the inscription:To Gemma Dogen, in honor of her induction into the Order of the Golden Scalpel. June 1, 1985. Fellows of the Royal Infirmary. London, England.

A solid gold surgeon’s scalpel with a steel blade rested on the ebony box. I lifted it to admire its beauty. “Can you imagine what a superb physician she must have been to get this kind of award when she was only in her forties?” I was conjuring up a clubhouse full of older English doctors, bespectacled and bewigged, presenting the talented young woman with this solid gold token of their respect. “It looks pretty lethal but it’s a magnificent thing, isn’t it?”

“Would have been a hell of a lot nicer for her if she’d kept it in her office. Maybe she’d have had a fighting chance.”

It wasn’t a weapon, as we both knew. It was the tool of a woman who had saved lives and done it thousands of times.

I laid it back on the shelf and told Mercer that I was ready to leave. We put on our coats, turned off the lights, and I locked the door behind me while Mercer rang for the elevator.

It was six-thirty when I said goodnight to Mercer. He dropped me in front of Julia Richman High School and I hurried up the steps to find the chairwoman of the evening’s event.

Sexual assault had been a taboo subject in the sixties and seventies when I was growing up. Rape was a crime that didn’t happen, so the myths went, to “nice girls”-to our sisters, our mothers, our daughters, our friends. Victims “asked for it,” and once they got it none of them were supposed to talk about it. If they didn’t deal with it openly, maybe it would go away.

All of the legislative reform that had been accomplished in this field had come in the last two decades. But the laws had been easier to change than the public’s attitudes.

So most of my colleagues and I spent a considerable amount of time trying to educate about the issues to which our working days were devoted. The people we tried to reach-in religious organizations, high schools, colleges and universities, professional clubs, civic groups-all of them might one day wind up as jurors in these cases. That’s when they bring with them to the jury box every preconceived notion and misconception about this category of crime.

There were very few invitations I turned down if audiences were willing to let themselves be informed about the facts-the differences and similarities between stranger and acquaintance rape, which sexual predators are incapable of being rehabilitated, legitimate offender treatment programs and which assailants they can help, the phenomenon of false reporting, and the ability of the criminal justice system to do better for survivors of sexual assault by dedicating more resources to the issue. Sarah Brenner and I knocked ourselves out at early morning breakfast meetings and evening sessions like this one. The more we helped ourselves, the more we helped those women, children, and men who would someday be victimized and need to count on the response of twelve of their peers to render a fair verdict.

Handwritten yellow posters announcing my appearance were stuck on the bulletin board inside the school entrance, with a large black arrow pointing the way to the auditorium. I followed the designated path, stopping at the open door a few feet before the large hall and stepping inside.

A heavyset woman with a tangle of blond hair pushed into a bun atop her head strode toward me with an outstretched hand. “Hello, you must be Alexandra Cooper. I’m Liddy McSwain. I’m in charge of the speaker’s program for this year. We’re really delighted you could be here, especially with all this murder business going on. We saw your name in the paper this morning and I was certain we’d have to call this off.”

She guided me into the room where a dozen or so of her committee members were munching on finger sandwiches. I introduced myself to some of them and decided to feed myself before I got too lightheaded to go on stage. The crustless slivers of seven-grain bread were divided onto three trays: watercress, egg salad, and tomato. I cursed at myself for having passed up Chapman’s overstuffed turkey sandwich so many hours ago in favor of these debutante miniatures and put a handful of the little morsels on a paper plate.

I moved around the room politely answering questions about the District Attorney’s Office and assuring handshakers that I would convey their warmest regards to Paul Battaglia. More and more middle-aged women kept drifting into the reception. There were obvious distinctions between the older half of the crowd and the younger. The over-fifties carried Vuittons on their arms and wore flat Ferragamos on their feet. The natural blond hairstyles, more up than down, were enhanced by Clairol, clearly a two-step process. The newer inductees favored Dooney and Burke-on the shoulder, not the arm-and the Ferragamo with a slightly higher one-inch heel. The blond seemed mostly natural, with a few streaks thrown in for variety. There was not a lot of diversity evident in the crowd and I was mentally censoring my notes to substitute the words “private parts” for my usual references to “penis and vagina.”

Ten minutes before I was scheduled to go on stage, I freshened up in the ladies’ room and we moved into the large auditorium. More than two hundred women had taken seats around the room and I shuffled my note cards to make certain that I had outlined all of the points I wanted to cover during the hour I had been asked to speak.

Mrs. McSwain had crafted a pleasant opening for her group and a generous recitation of the credentials from my curriculum vitae. I climbed the four steps to the stage, crossed to the lectern, and began my remarks.

I talked about the history of Battaglia’s Sex Crimes Prosecution Unit, which was the first of its kind in the United States. I wanted to impact them with the enormity of the problem of sexual assault in our country, so I was armed with some shocking statistics. Not even twenty-five years ago-that is, in our lifetimes-in this very city the laws were so archaic that in a single year although more than a thousand men were arrested and charged with rape, only eighteen of them were convicted of the crime. A few gasps from the girls down in front. I shook off my thoughts of Gemma Dogen and concentrated on my purpose.

I explained how the laws had changed: eliminating the corroboration requirement that demanded witnesses beyond the victim herself, adding rape shield statutes to prevent defense attorneys from inquiring about a woman’s sexual history, ridding us of the dreadful insistence that victims must resist their attackers even when the latter are armed and threatening deadly physical force. All these accomplishments had come about in just the last two decades.

The hour went quickly for me as I illustrated legal issues with anecdotal material from actual cases. It became clear as the question and answer period began that these women were well aware, unlike the generations before them, that rape was a crime that affected their lives. No one in that room, I was willing to bet, had not been touched-directly or indirectly-by some aspect of sexual assault. Almost everyone I met these days would disclose the experience of a friend or relative, child or adult, who had survived some kind of abuse that was connected to my painful specialty.

As I pointed at raised hands for the first few questions, members of Liddy McSwain’s committee walked up and down the auditorium aisles collecting index cards that had been on the sign-in table at the entrance. Audience members filled in their queries on the four-by-six cards, which were forwarded and handed up to me in a pile.

“That’s a good one,” I said, reading from the card on top. The question is, ‘How important is the use of DNA technology in your work?’ “ The enthusiasm with which I answered belied my disappointment in the lack of its existence in Gemma Dogen’s case. ”It’s the most significant tool we have in this business now. We use it, when seminal fluid is deposited on or in the victim’s body, to make a positive identification or to confirm one that she has made visually. That really takes the weight off the victim at a trial-it’s not just a matter of ‘her word’ in proving the case.

“It’s just as critical that we use it to exclude suspects. If a defense attorney tells me his client was in Ohio on the day of the rape, I simply ask him to provide us with a vial of blood. If the suspect is not our man-that is, if there’s no DNA match-there’s no arrest. And it also lets us be more creative. Four times now in the last few months we’ve used it to convict rapists who could never have been identified otherwise because the women were blind or blindfolded by the attacker. Ten years ago we were calling it the tool of the future. Well,this is the future and it’s helping to resolve issues in a growing number of cases.”

I skipped over two cards that asked about how prosecuting these jobs affected my personal safety and my private life. Sorry, girls, not the kind of thing I discuss publicly.

“This question is about sentences for rapists. It’s a bit complicated to answer because of the different degrees of crimes involved, and since so many offenders have previous convictions they’re often eligible for longer incarceration.” But I set out to give a five-minute exposition on the range of sentences as they related to each kind of assault.

Liddy McSwain was coming to the rescue. She stood on the side of the stage and announced that we only had time for three more questions.

I took another one, which asked about the new system of handling domestic violence cases that the NYPD had inaugurated a couple of weeks earlier. Then an easy one, to describe the medical services available in our city hospitals for pediatric and adolescent cases of child abuse.

The question on the next card made me bite my lip, look up to the rear of the room, and scan for a couple of faces I might recognize.

The familiar writing on the card read: “The Final Jeopardy answer is: it’s black and twelve inches long. What is-?” Chapman and Wallace were flanking the rear door of the room. Mercer’s head was bent down, shaking with laughter, while Chapman looked dead on at me, pointing his finger across his chest toward Wallace.

I was almost tired enough to lose it in front of these lovely women. “I’m sorry, ladies, most of the rest of the questions are about the tragic death of Doctor Dogen at Mid-Manhattan and the course of that investigation. It wouldn’t be appropriate for me to comment on any matter that’s pending but I can assure you that the city’s best detectives are working on it right this minute. Thanks for coming out in this bad weather tonight. I really appreciate your interest in these issues.”

As I stepped down onto the auditorium floor, several audience members hovered around me. A few made gracious remarks about the speech, one wanted to know whether I could put her in contact with the Crime Victims Assistance Program at St. Luke’s so she could volunteer some counseling, and-as always-three wanted to talk about “something” that had happened to them at some time in their pasts.

I listened briefly to each in turn, told them that we should have these discussions in a more private setting, and gave them my business card to arrange a time to call on Monday to make appointments. It never failed that after a speaking engagement at least one woman disclosed an incident of victimization for which she now had the strength to seek help-whether it was her own experience, her college daughter’s, or her best friend’s. Rape remains a dreadfully under-reported crime.

My coat was on a chair in the last row. Mercer had picked it up and held it for me as I walked toward them. “No need to apologize, gentlemen. How would I have been able to recognize you two if youhadn’t been rude and juvenile? I might have thought it was someone else. But in Chapman’s case, it’s a more reliable means of identification than DNA. Whatever invitation you’re here to offer tonight, I decline. I’m busy.” I kept walking and pushed open the solid wooden door. “Don’t call me, as they say, I’ll-”

I could hear Chapman’s stage whisper follow me out. “Don’t worry about it, Mercer. If she’s serious, I’ve got Patrick McKinney’s beeper number. He’d never say no to doing the Q and A on Dogen’s killer. Give him a call.”

My head whipped around at the mention that the murderer was in custody and I stopped immediately.

“I apologize, Blondie. You’re right, that really wasn’t the question tonight. Is that what you’re upset about? Oh-and, yes, we have a suspect Looks good. The lieutenant sent us to pick you up ‘cause he’s determined to do everything by the book. Screw Chief McGraw.”

“Someone from the hospital-staff?” I asked as we walked out to the front steps, now coated with a thin layer of sleet.

“Nah. One of the tunnel men. Covered with blood up to his knees. Like Chet said, this guy must have been in a slaughterhouse.”

“We’ve had him in the 17th for a couple of hours.”

“Talking?”

“I’d call it babbling at this point. You’ll see for yourself.”

I got in the backseat of Wallace’s car for the short ride down Lexington Avenue to look the beast in the eye.