Terminal City

TEN

Mercer and I entered the lobby of the morgue in the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. It was not the ideal setting for an interview of the victim’s family, but I couldn’t imagine asking them to sit in the hotel suite in which their daughter died.

The sign that greeted us was probably the first thing the Thatchers saw when they arrived half an hour earlier, at 4:00 P.M.: LET CONVERSATION CEASE, LET LAUGHTER FLEE. THIS IS THE PLACE WHERE DEATH DELIGHTS IN HELPING THE LIVING.

There was a faint, bitter odor of formaldehyde, which seemed to have seeped into every crevice of the building, an unnecessary reminder of the work that went on here.

The head of the Identification Unit had offered us a private room in which to meet. We were pacing the small space until I heard the wails from a woman approaching in the corridor.

Mercer opened the door and started to introduce himself. Bill Thatcher held out his hand, but his wife was inconsolable. She turned away from us and collapsed in her husband’s arms. I followed Mercer out of the room and closed the door.

Fifteen minutes passed before Mr. Thatcher opened the door to start the introductions again.

“I’m Alexandra Cooper. Please call me Alex. I’m the assistant district attorney who’ll be working on Corinne’s case. Mercer and I have partnered together for more than a decade.”

Bill Thatcher appeared to be as puzzled as he was pained. His eyes were bloodshot. He had no doubt been crying since he saw his daughter’s photograph several hours ago. His wife was unable to compose herself, with good reason. She was trying to stifle her sobs with a wad of Kleenex tissue.

“We’re going to try to answer all the questions you have,” I said, after I expressed my condolences. “And while I know this is an impossible moment to impose on you, there are things we are hoping you can tell us about Corinne. We need to catch the person who killed her.”

I didn’t believe in euphemisms. The harsh reality was that their daughter was dead, and as difficult as it was for them to absorb that, they would have to deal with the fact that she was murdered-not just “hurt” or “harmed”-and do it at warp speed.

“You have a job to do, Ms. Cooper. But I’m not sure we’re ready for that.”

Readiness wasn’t a choice Mercer or I could give them.

“The lieutenant has a detective waiting to take you to your home. But we do need to start with a bit of information about Corinne.”

“No offense, Ms. Cooper-Alex. You don’t look old enough to be responsible for my daughter’s life,” Thatcher said. “And you seem to be very nervous.”

“I am nervous, Mr. Thatcher,” I said. I’d been brushing my hair away from my face and twisting my pen in my hands. “I don’t like this part of my job.”

Telling family members about the brutality of a loved one’s death never got easier, nor did probing their lives to sniff out any undercurrents of darkness.

“I’d like to talk with the district attorney. Get someone more able to do this.”

Most prosecutors’ offices were, as Mike liked to say, a children’s crusade. Idealistic graduates just out of law school vied for the handful of jobs available with the Manhattan DA, the best training ground for litigators in the country. Before moving on to private practice or other careers in public service, they were tested with the most serious crimes in the city. I had prosecuted dozens of felonies to verdict, handling major cases by my third year in the office.

“We’ll get you in to meet Mr. Battaglia whenever you are up to it, sir,” Mercer said. “You have to trust me that Alex has more experience handling these crimes than most lawyers twice her age.”

“What crimes? What crimes do you mean,” Bill Thatcher said, backing up and sitting down, placing his head in his hands. “I don’t understand what happened to Corinne.”

I wanted to tell him that no one understood what happened. It was obvious to me that the family had not yet been informed about the details of the attack.

Mercer took the lead in describing the manner of death, omitting the fact that she was likely drugged and tortured before she was cut. Thelma Thatcher’s body slumped against her husband’s. I would have to make sure her physician was notified before she left the ME’s office. She was not likely to get through the coming weeks without medical care and perhaps sedation.

“Was she-was she violated?” Corinne’s father asked.

“It appears that she was,” Mercer said. “We’ll get more facts from Dr. Mayes when his tests are done.”

“What kind of a man-?” Bill Thatcher couldn’t finish his sentence.

“There’s no good answer for that question, sir.”

“Corinne wouldn’t know anyone like that,” he said. “It must have been a stranger. Some kind of psychopath.”

“That may well be. That’s why we need you to tell us about her.”

The Thatchers were both retired schoolteachers. They were in their late sixties, and Corinne was the youngest of their three children.

Corinne Thatcher had grown up in a small community in Suffolk County. Like her older brother and sister, she attended college at Hofstra University. We let her father talk about her most special traits, the goodness and generosity of spirit that had won her so many friends along the way. She had struggled with career choices, deciding not to follow in her parents’ footsteps, nor to apply to nursing school as she had originally planned. But she had spent most of the last three years working on disaster relief with the American Red Cross before becoming overwhelmed-and perhaps disillusioned-by the emotionally charged work.

“Was Corinne an employee of the Red Cross?” I asked.

“Not anymore. She spent six months as a volunteer, when one of those tornadoes hit Oklahoma a few years back. Most of the workers are volunteers. But after her training and the time she spent on the job, they hired her to lead some of the major projects.”

“What wonderful work to do.”

Bill Thatcher continued to talk as his tears flowed. “My cousin was from Enid, so when he lost his home in the storm, she flew out. Didn’t know the first thing about saving lives, but they taught her everything from CPR to getting blood to people who needed it.”

Mercer threw in all the platitudes about the good dying young. How violently she died was better left unspoken.

We let Thatcher talk about Corinne’s work for as long as he wanted to, his wife occasionally blotting her tears and adding a few words about her child’s extraordinary kindness to others.

I waited until he seemed to have exhausted himself listing her good acts. We needed to know whether anyone in her orbit could have been responsible for this tragedy. “What did she do for the Red Cross, exactly?”

“The disaster relief work took her all over the country. All over the world, actually. Anywhere there was a flood or a cyclone or a fire that destroyed a community. Supplying people with food and shelter and medicine, that’s the kind of thing that Corinne did.”

“Not tonight, of course, but can you put together a list of the places she lived and some of the people at her job?”

Thelma Thatcher spoke. “My son can do that.”

Corinne’s father started reeling off a list of cities in the Midwest and on both coasts.

“What did she do abroad?” I asked.

“She lived in Okinawa for a while. It was Red Cross work, but it was with the air force in particular. I think it was called communications liaison.”

Mercer took over. “So she had to handle emergency messages between military personnel on the island and their families back home?”

“Yes. She didn’t mind it that much, but when there was a death that she had to report-like telling an officer that his dad had died, or even an ill soldier needing to reach out to relatives, it really took a toll on her.”

“I understand.”

“From there she went to Dubai.”

“Really?”

“It was a promotion, actually. Corinne learned how to issue grants to families to get them immediate assistance in an emergency.”

“Related to war in the Middle East?”

“Some of that, Mr. Wallace. Yes, sir. But she was pretty miserable living there, so she asked to come back home.”

“Is that when she quit?” I asked.

“No. No, it wasn’t. She got assigned to the support resources operations for postdeployment.”

“Sorry,” I said. “I’m not familiar with what that is.”

Thatcher sighed as he began to explain the duties to me. “Obviously, ma’am, there are always challenges when service members come home from war. Their spouses may have assumed new responsibilities or taken jobs. Some adjust quickly and easily, but many have trouble reestablishing relationships or handling depression.”

“I thought those were issues for the military to deal with.”

“I don’t know for how long the Red Cross has been involved, but they are very much in the mix. That was Corinne’s job.”

“Here in New York?”

“Yes, most of her work was here in the city.”

“Did she have direct contact with ex-military men?” I asked.

“And women.”

“One-on-one?”

“Some individually, others with their families. She had to deal with post-traumatic stress issues and often with TBIs.”

“I don’t know-”

Bill Thatcher cut me off. “Traumatic brain injuries. A lot of our soldiers have long-term health problems. There’s a good bit of reunion adjustment.”

“You said that Corinne became-well, overwhelmed by the work, is that right?”

“Yes, ma’am. It got to her, seeing how much some of these young people gave to their countries and how hard it was for them to get on with their lives.”

Mercer followed with a list of questions that suggested we were both on the same wavelength. Were there any ones in particular with whom Corinne had bonded? Or about whom she was most worried? Or who had threatened her well-being? We also needed to know if she had become intimate with any of them.

The answer to every question was no.

“Who knew Corinne best?” I asked.

Bill Thatcher flinched. “Knew her?”

He still wasn’t able to think of his daughter in the past tense. That might take months to happen.

“With whom was she closest? Her brother?”

“No. Not so much anymore. Maybe her roommate?” He turned to his wife.

“Lizzie. Elizabeth Angler,” Thelma Thatcher said. “But she’s on vacation. I think she went abroad to visit family.”

“We’ll need that contact information,” Mercer said.

“Did Corinne quit her job?” I asked.

Her father answered. “Yes, back in June. She’s just taking some time off this summer. Starting at NYU in a few weeks with some grad school courses, so that she can teach. She decided she wants to teach school after all.”

“Did she have a boyfriend, Mr. Thatcher?”

He paused before answering. “Corinne was dating a young man through the winter and spring. She ended that relationship about the same time she quit work.”

“Was he also involved with the Red Cross?”

The Thatchers stared blankly at each other.

“Sir?”

“I don’t think so,” he said. “My wife and I never met him. For some reason, Corinne never wanted to bring him home. She didn’t think we’d approve of him.”

I glanced across at Mercer.

“What do you know about him?”

“Precious little.”

“What was the reason for your disapproval?”

Bill Thatcher swallowed hard. “He wasn’t educated, this fellow. And Corinne knew how important that was to us. Now I hate myself for it. For being so small-minded.”

“That was the only issue for you?” I asked.

He thought about my question for a few seconds too long.

“Did he have a criminal history?”

“I have no reason to think so. Thelma knows his name, I’m sure.”

“So, you didn’t even know that much,” I said.

“What is it, Thelma? Pedro, or is it Pablo? Something like that.”

Mercer grimaced as he nodded to me. Something like that. The boyfriend’s background was “something other” than the Thatchers’.

“He was Dominican. I didn’t feel he was right for our daughter.”

The bold fact of Thatcher’s prejudice didn’t seem to slow him down at all.

“Because of his ethnicity. Just that?”

The father was silent. He avoided making eye contact with Mercer.

“Or was he ever violent toward Corinne? Did she mention any inappropriate behavior?” I asked. “I mean when she broke up with him.”

The choice of separation by one partner is the leading cause of violence in a dating relationship, when the other one doesn’t want to end the connection. Repeated efforts by the victim to escape the escalating attacks led to fatalities with astounding frequency.

“Nothing like that.”

“Do you know what he does for a living?” I asked.

“I-I don’t.”

“Was he ever in the military?” Mercer asked, with mounting urgency.

“I wouldn’t know,” Thatcher said. “But look here, why are you so interested in the man she dated?”

“We have to check into everyone in Corinne’s world,” I said. “Friends, coworkers, people she might have been intimate with.”

The likelihood that a young woman was killed by someone she knew-rather than a stranger-was tremendous.

“I’ve met the man our daughter was dating,” Thelma Thatcher said softly, lifting her head.

“You’ve what?” her husband said, practically shouting at her.

“His name is Paco.”

“When did this happen?” Bill Thatcher asked.

“In the spring. I came into the city to have lunch with Corinne.”

“You know how I felt about this. You betrayed me, Thelma. You’ve made a fool of me.” Thatcher’s face turned beet red as he tried to restrain his anger.

“What can you tell us about him?” Mercer asked.

“That Corinne liked him very much. That he was quiet and didn’t speak a lot,” she said.

“Details,” Mercer said. “We’re going to need as many details as you can give us, Mrs. Thatcher. We’d like to try to find him tonight.”

“You need to call my son. He has more information than I do. I just remember Corinne telling me she had ended the relationship because her friend-because Paco-was angry. That he was angry all the time.”

Bill Thatcher looked more puzzled than Mercer and I. “She told you all this?”

“Why was he angry?” I said. “Did Corinne tell you the reason?”

She nodded her head up and down as more tears streaked her cheeks. “Paco’s brother had come back from Afghanistan. He lost both legs. His tank was blown up by an IED.”

“That’s a good reason to be mad.”

“He didn’t hurt her, Mr. Wallace.”

“But she told you Paco was always angry.”

“That was her world, Detective. Good people, but many of them damaged, many of them struggling, many of them deeply unhappy. This boy wasn’t taking out any hostility on my daughter,” Thelma Thatcher said. “He directed his anger elsewhere.”

“Do you know-?”

“Paco’s brother isn’t a citizen of this country. He joined the army to fight in this war and came home without his legs and half his face missing. Corinne told me she couldn’t get her friend to focus his-his venom, she called it-into something more constructive. Paco’s anger, according to Corinne, is directed at the president of the United States.”