Likely To Die

11

CAN YOU BELIEVE,“ MERCER ASKED OF Chapman as he pulled up in front of the station house, ”McGraw hasn’t leaked this yet?“

He was referring to the fact that no reporters or cameramen were circling the building like sharks, smelling the fresh blood of a suspect in a hot case.

We got out and went into the lobby, past the uniformed sergeant on the desk, and upstairs to the squad room. This time even the precinct detectives and cops looked interested in all the activity. Every one of them would be used for some chore in nailing the pieces of the puzzle together during the next twenty-four hours.

“Hey, Chapman, you on this dirtbag?”

“Paulie Morelli. Damn, I haven’t seen you since your partner nailed the Zodiac killer. Did that arrest catapult your ass out of Bed-Stuy or what?”

We were on our way up a flight as Morelli was trying to descend. “Yep. Right here to the 17th Squad. A little slow if you’re used to catching homicides.”

“Yeah,” Chapman said, leading us up, “but if you like your women with teeth, Paulie, the Upper East Side ’s the place to be. Helping us out with Dogen?”

“I’m on my way to look for stand-ins for the lineup.”

“Lineup?” I asked. “Somebody better slow this train down and let me know what’s going on.”

“That’s what you’re here for, Blondie.”

Mike steered me through the squad room. Unlike the night before, every man was actively engaged in an aspect of the case work. A few were handling the phones while others were interviewing witnesses. Alongside almost every desk, being questioned, was a civilian-some in nurse’s or doctor’s uniforms, others in outfits labeled with the name of the delivery service that employed them, and still a few in the ill-fitting, mismatched, unwashed apparel of the homeless population.

As we walked toward Peterson’s command module, I noticed that the holding pen door was still wide open. But tonight it held only a single visitor.

I glanced in. Sitting alone on a bench was a black man I guessed to be about sixty years old. He was slumped against the far wall, his legs outstretched in front of him. Also in the pen with him were two large shopping carts whose contents remained a mystery to me from this distance. I could see that he was wearing a plaid flannel jacket with long sleeves over a T-shirt. When my focus dropped to his lower torso, I noticed the pale green surgical pants with the drawstring waist. My eyes were riveted on the dark red stains that blotched the calves on both legs of his trousers. Gemma Dogen’s blood.

Lieutenant Peterson was standing at the desk, phone to his ear, finishing a conversation as I entered his room. He winked at me as he spoke. “No, Chief. I won’t let that ballbreaker tell me what to do. Nope. Just thought it was smart to have her here for legal advice-search warrant, lineup, Q and A. Nope, we’re running the show, I’ll make it clear. I hear you.

“Welcome back, Alex. Looks like we got a break. C’mon into the locker room and we’ll bring you up to speed on the day’s events.” Mercer and Mike had gone directly into the briefing area, where some new faces had been added to last night’s crew.

Peterson made all the introductions and I took one of the seats at the table.

“Okay, here’s what we got. The B team spent the day at Mid-Manhattan. McGraw let me bring in the A team as well and use the 17th Squad for canvassing below the buildings in the bomb shelter tunnels. My guys had the administration and medical staff interviews set up in some of the conference rooms at the medical college. Must have had thirty or forty people from neurology and the Minuit faculty lined up for their initial questioning, just comin‘ and goin’ all afternoon. Background on them, what their relationship was with Dogen, anything they saw or heard the night before her body was found-the usual.

“Nobody’s expectin‘ any solutions on the first round. Nice and easy, getting the lay of the land.

“About six-thirty, Detective Losenti here gets a call from two of the doctors we’d already spoken with earlier in the day-they’re both right inside, Alex. I thought you might want to talk to them yourself. The two of them left the neurological floor together to go down to the radiology department on the second floor. Had to look at some X rays in a case they’re both consulting on. Walk into the supply closet opposite the X-ray room and this guy-the one you see in the pen-is curled up on the floor taking a nap. They roust him to get him out when they notice his pants legs are covered with blood. One of ‘em stayed in the room while the other one called Losenti, whose beeper number was on the flyer we handed out asking people to call if they saw or heard anything. He was still in the hospital complex so he went right over to radiology.”

I looked around the room at the faces of the detectives. It was 9:30 at night and everyone had been going since dawn, but the optimism of breaking the case so quickly boosted everyone’s spirits and brought them back together as a team.

“What does he say?”

“He’s either playing dumb now or we got a real psycho on our hands. A few of the guys have tried to talk to him and got nowhere. I want Chapman and Wallace to take him into one of the interview rooms and see if they can make any progress with him. It’s gonna take hours. He mumbles, says the only name he has is Pops, and the stuff on his pants is red paint. Stepped in a bucket of red paint. Then out of the blue he apologizes for ‘what happened to the lady.’ ”

“Is it possible?”

“It’s blood, Alex. Human blood. I ain’t tested it yet but I’ve seen enough of it to last me six lifetimes. That’s why I wanted you here. Figure out what we can take with or without a warrant, how you want this handled so we don’t jeopardize any evidence we seize. I’m not interested in McGraw’s suggestions. He can spend his time doing all the media spin he wants, we’ll finish off this investigation my way.

“Used to be an expression, forty years ago, back when he and I were in the Academy together and things were different in New York. Used to say about a boss who’d never worked his cases like a real detective that he couldn’t find a Jew on the Grand Concourse. No offense, Alex.”

“Forget it, Loo,” Chapman said, “Sherlock Holmes couldn’t find a Jew on the Grand Concourse anymore.” An area of the Bronx that once had been home to thousands of upwardly mobile Eastern European immigrants was entirely Hispanic today.

“What’s the lineup for? I mean, who can ID this guy doing what?”

“Almost everyone we’ve talked to saw someone on a hallway or in an elevator or a stairwell Tuesday evening or night. I don’t know if we’re talking about one person in the medical center or a dozen different prowlers or a lot of wishful thinking. But we’re gonna let some of these hotshots take a gander at Pops and see if he looks familiar.”

“I don’t think a lineup makes any sense at this point, guys. We don’t have any witnesses who claim to have heard anything in Dogen’s office or seen someone leaving it, do we? Let’s not waste our time with it.”

“Alex, we got a lot of people-housekeeping, nurse’s aides, medical students-who were on and off those hallways all night. I’d like to see if anybody can put this guy in the general vicinity. You can keep working on whatever you want. This can’t hurt.”

“Sure it can, Loo. Suppose he’s our guy, and nobody’s ever seen him before. It’s premature at this point.

“The most critical thing is to get those pants off him and get them to the labimmediately. Let’s get that blood tested and make sure it matches Dogen’s. Have you got Crime Scene here to photo him?”

“Yeah, Sherman ’s waiting.”

“Fine. Get a few shots of him as he is. Make sure they shoot his legs, too, to show he isn’t injured anywhere. Go over his hands and arms to see if she was able to scratch him-”

“Done that. Negative.”

“Well, Chet didn’t think he gave her the chance. You got something to put on him when we take his pants?”

“We’ve got more surgical outfits here than Scrubs has. Yeah, we’ll give him a clean pair.”

Chapman asked the lieutenant what had been found in the shopping carts that were inside the pen.

“One of them happens to be Pops’shome, Mr. Chapman. Now, I certainly don’t want to search his home without a warrant, do I? So we’ve just parked it right there in my driveway for the time being. It’s a two-car garage, you might have noticed. The other one belongs to Pops’s good friend, who’s being questioned now by Ramirez.”

“And your eight ‘guests’ from last night, they’re gone?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, young lady. Ralph,” Peterson looked at Losenti, “who are my friends visiting today?”

“We’ve moved them over to the Anti-Crime Office, Loo. Watching the basketball game tonight. Just fed them a tasty assortment of ribs from Wylie’s. Why would they want to leave?”

Peterson laid out his plan. Chapman and Wallace were to take Pops into the room used for lineups to begin their interrogation. That way if he and I wanted to observe any of it, we could view them through the two-way mirror that allowed us to see into the room, although the men on the other side couldn’t see out.

“We won’t have fillers to run the lineup for at least an hour, but there’s a lot of other things to be done. Alex, what would you like to get to work on?”

“First, I want to call Battaglia, just to give him a heads-up before he hears it on the late news. I think I’d like to speak with Sarah Brenner and get her up here with me to work on this. I’ll need a second hand to get busy on warrants once this gets moving, and she’s the one I’d most like to have on board. Then I might as well get started reinterviewing the doctors who found Pops and the guys who are going to view the lineup.

“Oh, Mike, do me a favor and call Maureen. Tell her no matter what she hears on the news, she’s still going in tomorrow for us. It’s all set up, we might as well see what intelligence we get out of it, and know exactly what’s happening in there.”

“Fine. Use the phone in my office to make your calls and I’ll try to find you another room for the interviews.”

“Coop, does Steve’s Pizza deliver this far south?” Wallace asked.

“What’s wrong with the joint around the corner?” Peterson interrupted.

Chapman settled it. “It’s gonna be a long night, Loo. You don’t want any of us to have agita, do you? Steve’s is the absolute best and the guy would deliver to Jersey for Cooper. It’s only on Seventy-first Street -he’ll have it here in twenty minutes. Know the number?”

I could dial it in my sleep. I called out the number and heard Chapman order six large pies, extrathin crust, everything on them, and hold the anchovies off two slices for Miss Cooper. “And put it on her tab, okay?”

It would be foolish of me to think I was telling Battaglia something he hadn’t already heard, especially because of his wife’s position on the board at Mid-Manhattan. It didn’t disappoint me, then, when he told me he thought I’d be calling this evening.

“How do you think it looks?”

“I don’t even have my foot in the door yet, Paul, but there’s an awful lot of blood on this guy’s clothes. Peterson tells me they also looked his body over to make sure it wasn’t from a wound of his own and he’s completely clean. I think we’ll be here a few hours. I won’t call ‘til morning, but you know where to find me.”

Sarah had already put the baby to bed when I reached her. She and James were finishing a quiet dinner together. “I’ll take a cab right up there to meet you.”

“Are yousure you should be doing this? I don’t want to skip over you and give someone else the chance but I don’t want you to do this if it wipes you out or endangers the pregnancy.”

“You know I wouldn’t. I’d love to work with you on this. I’ll stay a few hours tonight and we’ll see where it goes. I’ll just need an extra chair to stick my feet up on every now and then. See you in half an hour.”

“I’m ready, Loo,” I said, walking out into the squad room to meet up with Peterson.

Wallace was leaning against the door of the holding pen. I could hear him talking to Pops and asking if he’d be good enough to come along and tell his story one more time. As they walked single file down toward the lineup room, I told the lieutenant that I wanted to see the notes on the interviews with the two physicians before I spoke with them.

“Chapman, get off the phone and bring Cooper here your paperwork.”

Mike was using a desk in the far corner of the room. He hung up, grabbed his folder, and came back to Peterson’s office accompanied by a well-dressed man of about fifty-five.

“Mr. Dietrich, I’d like you to meet Lieutenant Peterson, my boss, and Alexandra Cooper-well, she’s sort of my boss, too,” Mike added, laughingly. “She’s the assistant D.A. on the case. This is William Dietrich, the director of Mid-Manhattan.”

“How do you do? I’d like to thank you for everything you’ve done so far, lieutenant. We’re all just stunned by Dr. Dogen’s murder. I, uh, I was wondering if there’s anything you can tell me at this point-”

Peterson cut him off. “We know how your people feel, Mr. Dietrich. As soon as there’s anything we can go public with, you’ll be the first to know.”

Dietrich’s artificial skin bronzer and touched-up black hair added to his aura of unctuousness. He was the number one man at the hospital complex and in the desperate position of trying to control the public image of a medical center in complete chaos.

The lieutenant walked back to his desk to get another cigarette, and Dietrich tried the personal approach with me.

“I’ve checked you out today, Alexandra-you don’t mind if I call you that, do you?”

“Not at all, Mr. Dietrich.”

“You’ve got quite a good reputation, I mean, for this kind of atrocity.”

Checked me out with whom, I wondered. Now he moved to the hands-on approach, standing beside me and lifting my elbow with his fingers to gently guide me away from the direction of Peterson’s room for a private talk.

“I’m a great admirer of your father’s, Miss Cooper. He’s really a legend in the medical profession. He’s enjoying his retirement, I take it?”

Don’t even think about using my family as a way to get to me, you schmuck. “Very much, Mr. Dietrich, thanks.”

“Be sure to give him my regards. I’d love to get him back up to New York to lecture to our students and do some consulting with our cardiology department.”

“Well,” I said, gripping my folder with both hands, “you come up with an interesting aortic regurgitation to study and I’ll have him on the next plane. Now, Mr. Dietrich, if you’ll excuse-”

“It’s Bill, Alex. Just call me Bill.”

“I’m going to ask you to step back outside while Detective Chapman and I get to work.”

“I’m counting on you to keep me informed, Alexandra. I think you know better than anyone here what it’s like in a great hospital like ours. There are too many lives at stake for me to be hearing about these things on the eleven o’clock news with the rest of New York.”

“We’ll do the best we can, Mr. Dietrich,” I said as I pulled away from him and returned to Peterson’s office.

Mike closed the door and I sat at the desk to look over his notes. “Dietrich came here with his boys-the two witnesses. Tried to lawyer up but the guy who represents the hospital was on his third martini before dinner. Told him to just go ahead and cooperate with the police.

“The two you want to talk with are across the hall. Losenti made the mistake of interviewing them together. I’ve got them separated so we can speak with them one at a time.”

“Who’ve we got?”

“John DuPre. Male, black, forty-two years old. Married, two kids. He’s a neurologist. Howard University, Tulane med school, residency down South. Opened a private practice in Manhattan two years ago and he’s been affiliated here ever since. The other one is Coleman Harper. Male, white, forty-four. Divorced with no children. Also a neurologist. Vanderbilt undergrad and med school. Practiced for a while. Now he’s here as a ‘fellow.’ ”

“What does that mean?”

“You’ll have to ask him. I didn’t get that far. He’s one of the guys Spector-the neurosurgeon-pulled out of the gallery to assist on the operation when Dogen didn’t show up. And the patient’s doing just fine.”

“Who do you want to start with?”

“I’ll go get DuPre.”

Chapman returned a couple of minutes later with Dr. John DuPre. I stood up to greet him and he extended a hand as I looked him over. He was eight years older and a few inches taller than I, with shortcropped hair, a mustache, wire-rimmed glasses, and a trim physique. He was dressed in a sports jacket and navy slacks and had the same earnest expression on his face that most people sucked into a murder investigation present to their interrogators during the early rounds of questioning.

“I know it’s been a long day for you, Dr. DuPre. Detective Chapman and I would like to have you go over your story once more if you don’t mind.”

“If it will help, I don’t mind at all. Seems like I’ve been doing it all evening.

“I arrived at the medical college in the middle of the afternoon. My private office, where I see most of my patients, is on Central Park West. I came over to Minuit to use the medical library. That’s on the sixth floor, where, uh, where Gemma’s office is. Or was.

“The library was pretty busy-it usually is in the late afternoons. I got into a discussion with several of my colleagues about a case that Dr. Spector is working on.”

“Bob Spector? The neurosurgeon who had asked Dogen to assist the morning she was killed?”

“Exactly. Spector’s doing some very important research on Huntington’s disease. Do y’all know what that is?”

DuPre cocked his head and looked up at us, his soft southern drawl framing the question.

“Only that it’s a hereditary illness, no known treatment.”

“That’s right, Miss Cooper. It’s a disturbance of the central nervous system and it’s characterized by progressive intellectual deterioration and involuntary motor movements. Spector’s devoted a lot of attention to the disease, and, well, he’s the big cheese around here so-”

“Dogen was the chief though, wasn’t she?” Chapman asked.

“Yes, but rumor had it that she was moving back to England at the end of this academic semester. So quite frankly,” DuPre said, pulling one side of his mouth up into a smile, “a lot of us have figured that Spector’s ass is the one to kiss. Forgive my bluntness, Miss Cooper. A lot of us have been trying to hitch our wagons to Bob Spector. I think he’ll be our next chief.”

“What kind of relationship did you have with Gemma Dogen?”

“The ice maiden? A very distant one. Mind y’all, we got along fine when we had to. But I didn’t know her very well and-I know you’ll hear this from other people-she really didn’t have very much use for me.”

“Because?”

“No idea, no idea at all. I don’t want to play the race card, as y’all say. Could just as easily have been that she was a snob-didn’t think it worth her time to talk to me because I wasn’t a surgeon. She kept to herself quite a bit. Every now and then I’d catch up and run with her in the morning-we both jogged on the walkway along the river-but I think she was happiest when she was alone.”

“Were you one of the doctors who assisted Spector in place of Gemma Dogen the morning she was killed?”

“No, no. I don’t know anything about that, detective. I wasn’t even in the hospital Wednesday morning. As a neurologist, I can’t do surgical procedures, y’see. I can treat patients with brain disease, but not in the operating room.”

“What prompted you to go down to the radiology department when you did, doctor?”

“It wasn’t my idea, actually. The credit goes to Dr. Harper, Coleman Harper. Spector had some X rays done of a patient with Huntington ’s that he’s been following for several years. We were talking about the project and Coleman suggested that he and I go down to look, to compare them to the set taken last year.

“We got down to the second floor. Quite surprised to find the door to the room unlocked. But, then, you know the problem we have here with security. It’s not unique to us, mind you. I’ve seen it at all the large medical centers. I even remember hearing about a murder like this one at Bellevue before I ever came up here to New York.”

“What happened, I mean,exactly what happened when you went into the room?”

“The gentleman you’ve got in custody, he was just curled up on the floor sound asleep. Coleman had flipped the light switch on and there he was. You couldn’t help but notice the stains on his pants. I knew it was blood. I told Coleman to go out and call someone immediately, that I’d wait to make sure the guy didn’t go anywhere.”

“Did you wake him?”

“Not ‘til Coleman got back. I mean, I couldn’t see any weapon, but I couldn’t be sure he wasn’t sitting on top of it. We just sort of nudged him with our feet. Opened his eyes and started mumbling. Just kept saying, ’Sorry. Sorry.‘ I have absolutelyno idea whether he was talking about bein’ sorry about bein‘ somewhere he wasn’t supposed to be, or for what he did to Gemma.”

“Then?”

“Then the detective we beeped was over there in less than ten minutes. Took the gentleman away with him.”

Chapman asked DuPre a few more questions while I recorded some details on my pad. We thanked him and asked him to stick with us a bit longer while we spoke to other witnesses, reminding him not to discuss his statement with anyone else.

Peterson ushered him out of the room and Chapman went to get Coleman Harper.

Dr. Harper was still in a white lab coat when he walked into the office more than three hours after he had been brought from the hospital to the station house to retell the story of the discovery he and DuPre had made. He was a little shorter than DuPre-about my height-with flecks of premature gray in his dark brown hair. He was stocky and solidly built, and his left leg jiggled nervously as he sat in the chair opposite me at the desk.

We shook hands as I explained to him why I needed to question him and told him to relax.

“It’s really weird, Miss Cooper. I’ve never been involved in anything like this before. Where do I start?”

“Don’t worry. Most witnesses we meet have never been through anything like this. Mike and I have some questions to ask you.”

Chapman started with the usual background information. He got Harper talking about himself and his credentials.

“I first affiliated with Mid-Manhattan about ten years ago. But I left, it was a year or so after Dr. Dogen arrived here, so I wasn’t around for much of her tenure. I moved back down to Nashville, where my wife’s family lived, to continue my neurological practice there.

“Then, when my marriage broke up, I just thought it was time to try to come back to a great teaching hospital and do some of the things I’ve always wanted to do. I’ve been here since last September.”

“And you’re here on a fellowship?” I asked, looking at Chapman’s briefing notes.

“Well, yes. It’s a bit of a trade-off, actually, but once my wife left me I decided to try and do things that would makeme happy for a change. I’ve always been interested in neurosurgery. So I took a healthy pay cut for this position-I’m a little older than most of the men and women in the program-but the upside is now I can assist in the operating room. I may actually go ahead and try to get into a neurosurgical program here. Something I should have done a long time ago.”

I exchanged glances with Chapman and looked down at Harper’s twitching leg. I assumed Mike was thinking like I was and was thankful he didn’t make a crack about how steady Harper’s hands must be for brain surgery. A friendly interview with the local constabulary and the doctor was completely aflutter. It was the kind of effect Mike and I had on lots of people.

“So you were in the OR when Dr. Dogen was a no-show yesterday morning, am I right?”

“Yes, yes, I was. Dr. Spector was doing a procedure on a stroke victim. The patient had suffered a stroke on the right side of his brain, actually. I try to watch Spector whenever I can. He’s really a genius.”

“And he picked you out of the crowd to assist?”

“Yes, well, so to speak. There were only a dozen or so of us present and only a smaller handful who’d even worked with him on this kind of thing before. It’s quite an honor.”

“With a good result for the patient, we understand.”

“Not quite out of the woods yet but looking pretty safe at this point.”

“Are you involved in this Huntington’s disease program with Spector as well?”

“Not officially. But I’m certainly counting on his support to get into the neurosurgical program. And, of course, my years of experience as a neurologist have given me an opportunity to study the disorder. You could certainly say I’m following his work closely.”

“So how did you come to be with Dr. DuPre this evening?”

“I had gone to the library to find a volume I needed. When I got there, a bunch of my colleagues were talking about Spector’s new X rays of a patient he’s been studying and DuPre suggested we go take a look. The X rays were mounted down in radiology. I wanted to wait and finish my research but-”

“Excuse me,” I interrupted, “but whose idea was it?”

“John DuPre. He told me he couldn’t wait for me because he had to get home for dinner and asked me to go along with him right then.”

Great. Half an hour into the case and I’ve already got conflicting facts, just on the minor stuff. DuPre says it was Harper’s idea to go to radiology, Harper says DuPre pushed him to do it.

Inconsistencies, Rod Squires used to lecture me in our training sessions, the hallmarks of truth. A pain in the ass, if you asked me. It’s natural for different people to see the same events from different perspectives, we were encouraged to believe, but it sure could foul up a good case.

“Okay, so Dr. DuPre and you went to the second floor-then what happened?”

Harper’s version dovetailed with DuPre’s from that point on. “I mean, once I saw the blood I thought immediately of Gemma. Has he admitted anything yet?”

“Let me askyou, Dr. Harper, did you hear him say anything about Dr. Dogen or the assault?”

“No, he barely spoke in my presence. But I ran down the hall to use the telephone. He wasn’t making much sense between the time I got back to him and the time your detective got there. Man seems unstable to me.”

“Did you know Dr. Dogen well?”

“Depends on what you mean by that. She wasn’t an easy-”

Lieutenant Peterson opened the door. “Excuse me, Alex. Sarah’s here, and I think we’re almost ready to go with some stand-ins. And keep away from the windows in the squad room. Somebody’s flapping his mouth to the press. You got a couple of camera crews setting up in front of the building and if they could get a shot of you up here I’m sure they’d love it.”

“Thanks, Dr. Harper. Sorry to interrupt you. Would you mind waiting across the hall again? We’ll try to get back to you as soon as we finish up some of this other business.”

“Have a slice of pizza, Doc,” Chapman said as he got to his feet and gave Coleman Harper a slap on the back. “We got some homeless guys watching the ball game inside who could use a good checkup. Maybe you and Dr. DuPre could make yourselves useful.”