Likely To Die

28

BATTAGLIA’S MONDAY MORNING REACTION to my unexpected skirmish was nothing compared to the whipping I took from Mercer and Mike on Sunday evening. When they arrived at seven, my doctor was just finishing up his examination, documenting his findings in detail because I told him they would be evidence at the trial. He made the guys promise not to aggravate my fragile condition with any excitement or emotional turmoil and he insisted on remaining with us while I relived for them my encounter with Coleman Harper.

“No cross-examination, gentlemen,” he dictated as he left us. “She needs an early night-and a quiet one.”

Mike had called in Hal Sherman from the Crime Scene Unit to take photographs of my injuries. I didn’t need a mirror to remind myself what shape I was in when I saw the expression on his face. “I’ve photographed cadavers that look better than you do, Alex. If you were the winner, what does the other guy look like?”

Chapman lifted my hair from the side of my neck to show Hal the ligature marks. “Don’t worry. She took a nice chunk out of his ass. He’ll be singing soprano with the Attica boys’ choir.”

The flash from the camera made my eyes sting as he shot close-ups of the bruises on my forehead, then focused on my wrists and forearms.

Nobody wanted me to stay alone in case I needed anything during the night. So I accepted the invitation from David Mitchell to sleep on the fold-out sofabed in his living room, where he and Renee could look out for me, with Zac at my feet. Mike and Mercer left at nine, taking my clothing along with them to be vouchered and sent to the police lab for serology and analysis.

I was determined to show up at the office bright and early before the story of the attack took on mythical proportions. It was obvious that Gemma Dogen’s murder case would have to be reassigned to another assistant district attorney-along with the assault on me. I was an ordinary witness in this matter now and not a prosecutor. Rod Squires let me have a choice of lawyers to handle the two attacks as long as it wasn’t Sarah or anyone in the Sex Crimes Unit. I asked that it be given to Tom Kendris, who was a friend and whose work I respected.

There was a bedside arraignment at Bellevue for Coleman Harper and I was pleased when Battaglia called me himself to tell me that Judge Roger Hayes, a sage and intrepid jurist, had remanded the defendant without bail.

Laura would need an extra week’s vacation even more than I did. She spent the better part of each day dodging the calls from the press, everybody looking for an exclusive. I hated to say no to Katie Couric, so Battaglia reluctantly agreed to go on camera himself to do aToday show interview about the issue of violent crime as it occasionally involved health care professionals. Mike Sheehan was begging me to leak something to him for Fox 5, but I knew there were enough of the guys he used to work with in the Police Department to take care of that impropriety for me.

Most of the week I spent working with Tom Kendris and the detectives so that I could testify before the grand jury on Thursday afternoon. We devoted hours to analyzing the evidence in the case, with Gemma’s voluminous records from ten years of her guardianship of Minuit’s neurosurgical program spread out on every flat surface in Kendris’s office. I kept coming back to the pictures of the crime scene floor trying to divine whether the dying woman had actually been writing some message to us in her blood.

Now the unfinished letter looked to me like an R, and so, in hindsight, I had her spelling out the word “Reject.” Every time he saw me glance at the picture, Chapman pulled it from my hand and told me to get real. “She didn’t have the strength to write anything at that point.” I would always be willing to believe that she did.

Maureen and her husband Charles had been brought back from their safe house on Sunday night, so Mercer drove me out to see them after work on Monday. We hugged each other until I thought I would crack her rib cage. Then we took out our date books and picked a May weekend for our trip to a spa.

The lab results had confirmed that the “nurse” who drugged Mo had given her a massive dose of a horse tranquilizer-nothing that would kill her but something that would call to everyone’s attention that she had been made as a cop.

There hadn’t been any progress on figuring out who had done it, although Mike suspected it was Coleman Harper trying to divert the police from looking at him and get them to focus their attention on DuPre, who was one of Mo’s attending physicians. No one was able to convince Mo, though, to blame it on her pal John DuPre. She was having trouble with the fact that he wasn’t really a doctor at all since she had liked his manner better than that of the guy whom David had assigned to be in charge of her hospital admission. We imagined that John was probably cruising around the country right now, looking for a little town where he could hang out his shingle and start up a new practice. Maybe this time using some dead doctor’s name that he could lift off a tombstone.

Joan Stafford had returned to New York on Tuesday evening and insisted that I come for dinner. She cornered me once she had me seated at the table. “Here’s the deal. It’s an offer you can’t refuse. Nina’s taking the red-eye in from California on Thursday night and on Friday the three of us fly to the Vineyard and help you open the house for the season. Just us girls-she’s leaving the baby in L.A. with her husband and Jim has to go to Vienna to cover the summit. U.S. Air has been flying direct from La Guardia as of April first. I’ve booked three seats and we’re not interested in any arguments from you. We take the last flight up at 5:45 Friday afternoon and come back at the crack of dawn on Monday. I’ll have you at your desk before nine, okay?”

I smiled at her across the table. “It’s the new me, Joanie. I’m ready.”

I wanted to go home to the Vineyard and nothing could be easier than having my two best friends at my side when I drove into Daggett’s Pond Way for the first time since last October.

Nina Baum took the red-eye and arrived early on Friday. I had left my spare keys with the doorman so she could shower and relax before coming down to hang out with me at the office. Our friendship had started the first day we both arrived at Wellesley when we had been assigned by lot to be roommates, and I had never found a more loyal or loving friend.

Sarah had called in early to say she was taking the day off and fortunately, for a change, the Sex Crimes Unit had a quiet one. Nina and I went to Forlini’s for a long lunch, came back to close up my desk for the weekend, and hopped into a taxi to meet Joan at La Guardia.

The flight was smooth and easy. Joan had arranged for a Jeep rental at the airport so we didn’t have to bother to get my old car out of storage. The fifteen-minute ride up-island was magnificent as we caught the last light of the spring day. Green buds were starting to sprout on most of the trees and daffodils dotted the yards and roadsides with cheerful yellow fringe.

My stomach churned as Nina braked for the turn onto the path that leads to my house. Isabella Lascar had died there and I would never again be able to make that turn without thinking of that. I was pleased to see, though, that Joe, my caretaker, had planted wonderful beds of tulips and bearded iris all along the drive and placed a granite marker at the base of the tree where Isabella’s life had been taken.

The little farmhouse had the wonderful smell of fresh paint, which had also removed every sign of the fingerprint powder the police had used and gave my home a cheerful accent with its hand-drawn stenciling and clean linen-white trim.

I put my things down in the master bedroom and walked out to meet Nina and Joan on the deck. “I couldn’t have done this without both-”

“Shhh. I haven’t seen this view in three years,” Nina reminded me. “I just want a glimpse of it before it’s completely dark.” It was my own little piece of heaven and I sat on the railing to absorb its beauty, taking in the hillside with its fields of wildflowers, the ponds that were emptied now of all the boats of summer people, and the sea beyond.

Joan was on her feet. “Okay, ten minutes to get yourself out of that ridiculous lady-lawyer suit. We have an eight o’clock reservation for dinner at the Outermost.”

“I didn’t even realize they’d be open before the beginning of May.”

“You haven’t had time to realize anything lately. If I’d left it in your hands, we’d be having popcorn for dinner.”

“Don’t knock her. Itis one of the few dishes she does well, Joan.”

I went inside and changed into jeans and a blazer, then sat in the back of the Jeep while Nina drove us out to the western tip of the island-Gay Head-where Hughie and Jean Taylor built and ran the most wonderful inn on the island. A neo-Victorian house with only seven guest rooms-each made from a different kind of wood-it sat on a spectacular piece of land that rolled down to Vineyard Sound. It offered, in addition, the world’s most perfect sunset.

We were too late for that feature tonight, but their chef, Barbara, was a graduate of the Culinary Institute and could do some pretty special things in that kitchen. I carried a couple of bottles of wine under my arm because, like this whole end of the island, Gay Head was dry.

We walked across the lawn to the entrance of the inn. Jeanie welcomed us warmly as I introduced my friends to her and she asked if we wanted to go out on the veranda to sip some wine before we sat down in the dining room. The bar was actually outside, on a wide terrace facing the water, and I told Joan and Nina that if they liked my view they absolutely had to see this one.

I led the way out onto the porch and froze in the doorway. Hughie was playing the piano and a chorus of familiar faces was singing “Happy Birthday” to me, champagne glasses in everyone’s hand. Mike was behind the bar, of course, helping out Hollis, the regular bartender. Mercer had brought Francine with him and they were flanked by Sarah and Jim, Charles and Maureen, Rod Squires, and Renee and David. Joanie and Nina had filled every room at the Inn and the party was on.

I was radiating my happiness as I made the rounds of the crowd, kissing everyone and learning how three carloads of friends had banded together to keep the plan secret and drive up here this morning.

“Open your presents!” Mike shouted at me pointing at the pile of boxes stacked up at the far end of the bar.

“You’re a few weeks early,” I chided my pals. “I’m hanging on to thirty-four every minute that I can.”

“Yeah, but Nina said you were flying down to visit your parents on the thirtieth for your birthday. And we figured the only way to surprise you was to start early.”

I accepted a cold glass of champagne and worked my way through the group. Joan steered me to a tall vase of yellow roses on the bar with a card nestled among them that was signed from Drew. I bit the inside of my lip and promised myself to call him tomorrow to make a date for dinner and a chance to talk about the past few weeks.

While I walked on to thank Sarah and Francine and compliment them on their well-kept secret, I could hear Mike and Mercer over my shoulder, back to talking about the murder of Gemma Dogen.

“You remember that conversation we had in the precinct, about whether love or money was the motive in more cases? Well, I was right again. Coleman Harper. Can you imagine, for whatever reason the guy wasn’t content to be one kind of doctor, he had to have more?”

“You’d think some of the people we’ve interviewed this week would have come forward before now, when she was killed,” Mercer responded. “Now they’re jumping out of the woodwork to tell us how resentful Harper was of Dogen, how angry he was at the way she treated him when she met him almost ten years ago.”

“You should see the crap they recovered when Zotos and Losenti executed the search warrant on the guy’s apartment.”

I was in a great position to do an overheard since Tom Kendris hadn’t wanted to tell me about any of the other evidence in the cases now that I was a witness. Mike was talking. “All kinds of disguise stuff-fake hair, mustaches, makeup. They even got a note that Robert Spector had sent him months ago saying he was doing his best, but Dogen has ‘blackballed you all over the world.’ Harper must have been thinking of every kind of way to get the job done.

“My guess is he went there in the middle of the night, knowing he’d find her alone, to talk her out of rejecting him again. He had Spector’s support and she was the only thing standing in the way of his admission to the program. If she was leaving town anyway, she was just being a spoiler in his view. I’m thinkin‘ she told him to forget about it right then and there, so he stabbed her. He had come-ready with his butcher knife-prepared to get his revenge.”

I couldn’t pretend not to listen any longer. I leaned on the bar, and even though Mike shot me a look he and Mercer kept talking.

“You know when it all started?”

I shook my head back and forth.

“Gemma Dogen’s predecessor had been the first one to have reservations about Harper’s ability. That’s a decade ago, kid. This Dr. Randall is the one who said he would admit him into the neurosurgical program, but only if he completed a residency in neurology first.

“Dogen took over when Randall left later that same year-only she made her own decision. She evaluated the reports on Harper’s work and she flat out refused to be bound by the promise that Randall had made to him. Effectively, she ended his chances of getting into the program.”

“What about the ‘Met Games’?” I asked.

“That was all Spector’s doing. It was his idea to park Harper over there for a year, figuring he’d have a chance to change Dogen’s mind. But Harper continued to screw up. Then he went down south to practice for a while. Finally, it was Spector who got his hopes up again this last time. Told him to get back up to Mid-Manhattan by doing this fellowship thing where Spector could supervise him. Thought with Dogen leaving there’d be one last chance to get his man in before he got too old to try for that kind of residency. Harper’d be fifty years old when he finished it as it is. Trouble with that plan-Spector alerted him one year too early. Dogen just wouldn’t let go.”

We were all silent knowing that it was only a few days short of April fifteenth.

“Have either of you sorted out why Spector was pushing so hard on Harper’s behalf?” I asked.

“Not completely. Yet. But you really hit a nerve when you found Gemma’s notes on that. Both of them are mum on it for the moment, but I’m diggin‘ around. We’ll find out. Besides that,” Mercer went on, “it all just kept snowballing. Robert Spector knew that Gemma would quit-just on principle-the minute Coleman Harper was admitted to the neurosurgical program. Spector’s a winner automatically ’cause he’d wind up with Dogen’s job, which is exactly what he wanted.”

Mike broke in. “I guess we rattled Harper in that last interview when we told him we’d be getting the hospital’s records from ten years back. He knew Minuit didn’t keep them that long. But what he didn’t know was how long Met kept its documents-and whether his archnemesis, Gemma Dogen, had her own set of papers on him. How much you wanna bet that he’s the guy who broke into Metropolitan to see if he could unload their file room of his own records? And that’s why he kept Dogen’s keys after he killed her. He must have slipped up to her apartment on Sunday to clean out whatever she had on him figuring sooner or later someone would find the papers that damned him.”

“Why’d he let me finish that conversation with Mercer instead of just grabbing me while I was telling him all about the files I had found?”

“If Harper had jumped you while you were on the phone, no matter how far away Mercer was he just would have called 911 and the cops would have been there before Harper could kill you and get safely out of the building. Probably thought if he got rid of you after the conversation and made off with the only set of Dogen’s files that still existed, it’d just be Mercer’s word against his with no proof to back it up.”

“We assume it was Harper in one of his disguises who got past your doorman and slipped that black-and-white note under your door,” Mercer suggested. “He may not have known the whole story on Jean DuPuy, but like Gemma he knew something was fishy about the guy’s background. Too slick, too glib. Don’t forget, they had both practiced in the South. I expect Harper knew something about the real John DuPre that started him thinking.

“Anyway, he and DuPuy were both so unhappy to be anywhere near this investigation, they were each pointing fingers at the other one. They must have been so damned excited to find that bloodstained old derelict sleeping in the X-ray department that they tripped over each other to reveal him to someone else. And we actually worried about which one found him first.”

“Do you think it was Harper who tried to run me down with the car?” I asked, thinking back to my near miss with Zac.

“No question about it,” Mike shot back without hesitation. “He probably just freaked. A couple of days earlier, he personally delivered to us a blood-covered mental patient we all bought as the killer. Then he hears on Friday evening’s news bulletins that you, Alex Cooper, exonerated the old guy. Mercer thinks that when Harper had been sitting at the precinct for hours that first night, he heard Peterson ask for a sector car to drop you off after work and gave them your home address. May have gone there in a fury when he heard the news, never expecting to actually see you. Then he hits the jackpot-out you walk at eleven o’clock. Hey, I bet he was striking out without a plan at that point. Just desperate.”

Again, we were quiet as the others reveled around us.

“Know what I can’t stand?” Mike asked. “Forget that these morons don’t want to help out the police when there’s a murder, but somehow they can’t wait to tell any reporter who comes along that they’ve known about the killer or his motives the whole time. Have you seen any of the clippings?”

“Nobody’s shown me anything. I’m a witness, remember?”

“You got the ex-wife being quoted in some rag down South,” Mercer said, “claiming Harper felt Gemma Dogen wasthe only reason he couldn’t get into school anywhere else to study neurosurgery. Then there’s one of the doctors he worked with two years ago who said Harper was ‘obsessed’ with Dogen and absolutely fixated on becoming a neurosurgeon-the one thing in life that was denied him. Even believed Dogen was the ongoing source of most of his problems ten years after she screwed him.”

“Yeah, that’s our shortcoming, Mercer. Cops can’t pay these fools like the tabloids do. Nobody wants to tell me zilch about a suspect. But stick a microphone or a camera in their puss or offer ‘em a hundred bucks for their story and suddenly everyone knows who the killer was all along.”

“Not the big cheese. I saw Spector’s comment in Monday’sPost. Can’t believe his man did it. ‘Harper has a brilliant mind. He’s done some superb medical studies for me.’ ”

“Yeah, well maybe Coleman can study the effects of prison on the nervous system for twenty-five years to life. Okay, Blondie, enough of this stuff-we’re all off duty and out of the jurisdiction.

“C’mon, open up my present first.” Mike reached over to the pile and handed me a package. It was a red leather jewelry box wrapped in a large white bow. I pulled off the ribbon and unfastened the clasp, lifting the lid to reveal a glittering tiara. Nina grabbed it from my hand and sat it squarely on top of my head while Mike assured me that it was a fake and that he’d paid more for the box than for the rhinestones.

“Listen up, guys,” Mike said. “Joanie and I have arranged a gastronomic birthday tour of the Vineyard-my itinerary, her pocketbook. We start here, of course, at the Outermost Inn, where I recommend you begin the evening with the crab cakes followed by the lobster and then the homemade peppermint ice cream.

“Tomorrow is breakfast with Primo-coffee and bagels on the porch of the Chilmark Store. Good food, good gossip. Lunch, the amazing Flynn sisters and the world’s best chowder and clams at the Bite. Dinner with Tony and David at The Feast-don’t miss thepasta fra diavolo. ”

I kicked off my shoes and walked to the edge of the steps that led down to the wide, rolling lawn bordered by Vineyard Sound.

Mike was touting Sunday breakfast at the Inn, Primo’s pizza for lunch, and a farewell dinner at the Red Cat-the tenderloin with caramelized onion. He truly had explored all the best local options for food.

Hughie’s brother, James, was quietly singing about fire and rain in the background while Mike continued to entertain the troops. He was telling them that their weekend assignment was to look for the tallest staircase on the island if they really wanted to see me do my Tina Turner imitation.

I had come to the bottom of the gently sloping hillside where I stood with my feet in the icy water looking off at the not-too-distant spot where it flowed out to meet the Atlantic. I smelled the salt spray of the ocean as I looked over at the flashing signal of the great lighthouse-warning ships away from the rocks of Devil’s Bridge as it had for two hundred years. The sound of the waves lapping against the shore soothed me almost as much as the laughter of the people I loved coming from behind me. I could blow out the candles on my cake at the end of the festivities later tonight and everyone would be urging me to tell them what I yearned for. But as I stood here alone and stared up at the millions of stars that showed themselves from high overhead to the farthest point on the horizon that I could see, I privately made all my wishes for the year ahead.