Likely To Die

3

MERCER REACHED HIS HAND OUT TO STEER me around the stained portion of the floor and across Gemma Dogen’s office to the area near her desk. Raymond Peterson, the lieutenant in charge of the Homicide Squad and a thirty-year veteran of the force, was talking into his cell phone, his back to me as he stared out the window, which overlooked the East River and the shoreline of Queens. One of the guys from the Crime Scene Unit was still hunched over the open file drawers, rubber-gloved hands poring through folders to consider which surfaces he might dust for latent prints.

The usually laconic Peterson was obviously agitated as he shouted into the telephone, “Bullshit. I don’t care how many guys you have to pull off that security detail or authorize for overtime. We need ‘em here to go through the garbage. Yeah, that’s exactly what I mean. Garbage. Whoever did this had to be covered with the deceased’s blood when he left this room. Not a pail goes outta here until it’s searched for clothing, weapons-”

Chapman was shaking his head at Mercer and me. “Every container in this hospital has waste items covered with blood in it. It’s a medical center, not a nursery school. We’re never going to break the case that way.”

“Gotta do it, man,” Mercer responded. “Probably be a huge loss of time and manpower, but you just can’t ignore it.”

“Good morning, Loo,” I said to Peterson, calling him by the nickname used to address police lieutenants throughout the department. “Thanks for letting me in on this one.”

He punched the end button on his phone, then turned and smiled in my direction. “Glad to have you here, Alex. These clowns think you might be able to help us shed some light on it.”

I was grateful for Peterson’s acceptance. He and Chief McGraw were from the same era in their NYPD training-a time when females were not allowed to be either homicide detectives or prosecutors. They had both entered the Academy in 1965 when murder was considered men’s work only. Paul Battaglia had changed the face of our business a decade later when he opened the ranks to young women who were graduating from law schools in great numbers. The New York County District Attorney’s Office had grown to six hundred lawyers in the 1990s. Now half of the assistant D.A.s who handled every crime from petit larceny to first degree murder were women.

“I gave Alex the broad strokes, boss. You got anything you want to ask her while we got her here?”

“I’ll have a lot more for you after the autopsy, Alex. Sexual assault seems to be the motive. Doesn’t look like the place was ransacked for valuable property. Wallet’s still in the desk drawer. Right now we’re all assuming she was raped. The guy gagged her with a piece of cloth to keep her quiet-we got that over at the lab. Skirt, panty hose, underwear were removed. You think how long she lay around in here will make any difference in whether they find any, uh, well, things, that might link a killer to her?”

“You mean like DNA evidence?” I asked.

Chapman interrupted. “He means that the fact he decided to become a cop and not a priest still doesn’t make it any easier for him to talk about body functions and sexual organs. He’s Irish Catholic, Cooper, first and foremost. What are the chances that there’s gonna be semen in the doctor’s vagina and will it be useful to us? That’s the kind of stuff he really wants to know.”

“Too many variables at this point. If the killer ejaculated, and if he did that in her vaginal vault or on her body, then I’d expect to find seminal fluid,” I started. “Unless your killer wore a condom. Believe it or not, now there are even rapists who carry condoms with them.”

Chapman shook his head in disbelief as I went on. “I’m sure the medical team that attempted to save her was more interested in trying to revive her than in evidence collection, so there’s no way to know whether anyone even did an internal exam yet. The ME will do it during the autopsy anyway. Was she facedown or faceup?”

“Facedown when the guard found her,” Mercer told me.

“Well, if she was in here for hours, facedown is better.”

“Why’s that?” Peterson asked.

“Gravity, Loo. The semen is less likely to run out of her body that way. And the sooner she died after the assault, the smaller the chance her own body fluids would have participated in the deterioration of the sperm. So there may be something of value.

“Next problem,” I went on, “is that somebody has to give us a clue about when the last time she had intercourse was. You could have intact semen from a lover or gentleman friend deposited a day or two ago. If your killer was dysfunctional or didn’t ejaculate, you may have a motive for him to get enraged and stab his victim, but the semen will be from an earlier encounter that was entirely consensual. Red herring. Mike, when you talk to the ME, make sure they do a pubic hair combing. That’s a possible for DNA, too.”

“Here’s what we’ll do,” the lieutenant said. “There’s no point batting this around until we’ve got more specifics. Not just about this stuff, but the whole situation. The Chief’s setting this investigation up as a task force. He’s gonna give me detectives from a few other commands to work with the Squad; Mercer and some more guys from Special Victims because of the sexual assault angle.”

“Where’s our base gonna be?” Mercer asked.

“We’ll handle it out of an office in the 17th Precinct. Chapman, you’ll be going to the autopsy and dealing with the medical examiner, right?”

Mike nodded and lifted his pad again to take some notes.

“I also want you to sit down with someone from hospital administration. Get a complete breakdown and description of every one of these buildings-how they’re connected, what the access is, where every door and lock and guard is supposed to be, and where they actually are. I want a list of every employee in the medical center-doctors, nurses, students, technicians, messengers, bedpan cleaners. Every patient, ambulatory or not. Every name from that nuthouse psychiatric hospital next door-and I don’t want to hear any crap about ‘privileged information.’ They cooperate or they’ll all be in straitjackets by the time I get done with them.”

Mercer also had his pen poised ready for his assignment.

“Wallace, you start with the personal side. Find the ex, interview her neighbors and colleagues, get a picture of her habits and hangouts. Zotos will do this part of it with you. We need a location check-every other crime that’s occurred on premises here-and then move on to every other hospital in this city.”

“Done, boss.”

“After that, check with medical centers in Philly and Washington and Boston -see if anything like this has happened anyplace else. I’ll get somebody to supervise the garbage detail, and I’ll set up the tips hotline this afternoon. Alex, have your people check all your records for anything with a similar M.O. or connected to a medical setting.”

“We’ll start on it right away. I’d also like to have a look at Dr. Dogen’s apartment if I can. I don’t mean for evidence-Mercer can do that. But when he’s finished, I’d like to go back with him once. It always helps me to get to know the victim, to get a sense of her life.” In murder cases, unlike rapes, there was no survivor for me to work with, no way to get inside the spirit that was destroyed by death. And if there was no family member to entrust that being, that life, to me for the purpose of the investigation there was no other way to come to know it.

“No problem, boss. I’ll have the apartment processed today, then we can go back with Cooper whenever she’d like.”

“Okay, Mercer. But be sure and have it sealed up-I don’t want any relatives or friends taking anything out of there until we know the lay of the land.”

“What do you say we all meet at the end of the day and see what we got?” Chapman asked of Peterson.

“Exactly. Be back at the 17th Precinct station house at seven o’clock. I’m sure the Chief will want a briefing on the situation, so come prepared. You, too, Alex.”

I thanked him again and followed Mike around the perimeter of the soiled carpet toward the door. As I looked down to avoid stepping on Gemma’s deadly trail, my eye caught on a thick blotch of deep red color that almost looked like an intentional design set against the pale blue dhurrie. It was even and clear, quite a contrast to the ragged discoloration that marked the rest of the deceased’s path from the point at which the assault had started.

“What do you think that is, Mercer?” I asked over my shoulder since he was still behind me.

“What is?”

“That mark on the floor, in the blood?”

“Don’t go seeing ghosts on me, Coop. It’s just blood.”

Mike had turned to look down, too, and both were bending over the spot I had focused on. “It looks like a cattle brand. Maybe some object-a belt buckle or a clasp of some kind got imprinted or pressed into it. Crime Scene photoed it.”

It didn’t seem a bit like that in my view. “It looks like she was writing something, like it was part of a word.”

Chapman was all over me. “She didn’t have the strength to breathe, Blondie, much less write. She was checkin‘ out, not doing a grocery list.”

I ignored him and traced the shape in the air for Mercer. “It looks like the letterF, you know, a capitalF -or maybe anR, but with squared corners-and then a tail going off this way, wiggling,” I said, drawing an invisible line from the bottom corner, downward and to the left. “Doesn’t it?”

“We’ll have your video guys take some shots of it, too, Alex, but I’m sure it’s wishful thinking.”

“Get me a Polaroid of it, Mercer.”

He nodded his head but was already whistling the old Temptations tune “Just My Imagination” as he made another notation on his pad.

Mike held the door open for us and closed it behind Mercer and me, telling the uniformed cop beside it not to let anyone in without authorization, as he mimicked me on our way down the hall. “I can hear the summation already-that’s what you start prepping for as soon as you get a case, isn’t it?-with one of your dramatic lines about the hand from the grave, pointing a finger at the killer. Good try, Cooper. The jury may laugh but the press corps will love it.”