The Bone Vault

5

“What did you do to that pitiful-looking kid who’s sitting in the conference room crying?”

“Get away from my office before Pat McKinney sees you talking to me or I’m dead.”

“That case anything I should know about? She the girl who was attacked outside Port Authority last week?”

I grabbed Mickey Diamond’s sleeve and dragged him to the top of the stairwell opposite Laura’s desk. TheNew York Post courthouse reporter was trolling for stories and he had come to the wrong place at the worst possible moment this morning. “You do remember, don’t you, that it’s against the law for me to identify a rape victim to you?”

Diamond had been a fixture at 100 Centre Street for more years and more tabloid headlines than anyone could remember. Our public relations director was headquartered a short walk down the corridor from my office, and Diamond hung out in her anteroom when he wasn’t watching trials, trading tales with reporters from the other papers in the pressroom on the ground floor behind the information rotunda, or making up stories out of whole cloth to keep his byline lively.

“Is she crying in spite of you or because of you?”

“Somebody ought to put a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on the entire eighth floor, meant only for you. Just stay here a minute. I need your help. Did you call Battaglia this morning?”

“What for? I got that triple from last night with the transgender victim and the two thugs who were three-card-monte dealers on the Deuce. Right in front of one of the Disney theaters.”

Forty-second Street-the Deuce, in perp parlance-had undergone a major face-lift during my tenure in the DA’s office, but it still attracted sharks who preyed on the tourists who flocked to that neighborhood. “My editor wants to know if the deceased was shtupping Minnie or Mickey, but I didn’t think to bother your boss with that.”

“That’s all you’re working on?”

“Unless you’ve got something sweeter.”

“Nothing yet. But somebody leaked a breaking story and Battaglia’s blaming me. I need you to check with everyone in the pressroom, keep your ears open, be discreet-”

“I was with you until you got to that part.”

“Then forget I said it. Just listen. You’re going to hear something interesting later on. That much I can promise you. Find out for me who had it first. Find out where it came from.”

“I’m gonna give you a source when you won’t even give me a clue about that bawling little adolescent you got in there?”

“You’re going to give me a direction. I don’t need a name, I need to get out of the sinkhole I’m in right now.”

“What’s in it for me?”

“You got any space left on the wall of shame?” Diamond had wallpapered the courthouse pressroom with his page-onePost headlines. He turned every human tragedy and violent crime into an alliterative eye-catcher or tasteless punch line to help sell the tabloid rag. Unfortunately, the work of my unit had provided a rich source of material.

“I might have to cover up some of your old cases, but they’re turning yellow anyway.”

“Get me what I need and I can assure you you’ll be so busy for the next couple of days that you won’t know what hit you. Meanwhile, get lost before McKinney eyes the two of us together.”

“Give me a hint.”

I pushed at Diamond’s shoulder and pointed down the stairs. “Go see Ryan Blackmer. He’s taking a plea this afternoon on the case with the oral surgeon who sexually abused a patient after he gave her nitrous oxide.”

“Today? I already have my piece written. ‘D.D.S.-Dentist Desired Sex.’ Would have been a cover story if the triple hadn’t happened.”

“Where’s Cooper?” McKinney’s voice echoed in the stairwell. I heard Laura tell him that I had gone to the ladies’ room and would be back in a few minutes. Diamond waved over his shoulder and trotted down to the seventh floor.

“Tell her I want to know whose side she’s on. She’s got some witness out here crying and the kid’s mother is complaining that Cooper was going to give her a lie detector test and take her away from home. What kind of crap is going on around here? This office hasn’t used a lie detector since 1973. I want to see her immediately.”

I waited until I could hear McKinney’s footsteps walking away from my office and crossed back to find Vandomir standing beside my desk. “When did you come up with this tactic? You oughtta patent it. Worked like a charm on Angel,” he said.

“Remember those old Dick Tracy cartoons that were called ‘crime stoppers’? My favorite was the one that said the best lie detector was the threat of a lie detector. I haven’t yet met the teenage girl who isn’t afraid of a needle. I just designed the most unpleasant-sounding imaginary machine I could think of, wait until I catch them in the first concrete fabrication before I describe it, and then give them an hour to decide which is worse-the big needle or ‘fessing up. I’ve never had to wait more than fifteen minutes.”

“This one took exactly eight. She pleaded with me to let her tell me what really happened. Anything but sticking a needle in that skinny arm of hers, and having to seeyou again.”

“What did she give you?”

“Felix was telling the truth. She fell in love about two minutes after getting in the cab and he began to pick her up at school every day. It was her friend Jessica they did a threesome with. She’s the one who’s Ralphie’s girl.”

“So why the 911 call?”

Every false report had a motive, some reason that person decided to pick up the phone and invite the NYPD into his or her otherwise private life. Find that spot, and the need for deception usually became crystal clear to the investigator.

“‘Cause Felix didn’t bring a condom with him that night, and when she told him to pull out or she’d never let him have sex with her again, he told her she wasn’t that good anyway. Said he got it better from Jessica. She was jealous and angry. Figured she’d get back at him by getting him in trouble with the cops. Never thought anybody would take it too seriously.”

“The knife?”

“Didn’t exist.”

“Force?”

“Nope. She invited him in and led him right to the bedroom.”

“And there’s her poor mother, working all night to try to give her kids a good life, and this one’s going to break her heart. Let’s bring this to an end.”

Angel refused to pick up her head when I walked into the conference room. She had a box of tissues in front of her and had gone through a handful before I arrived. Mrs. Alfieri was standing at the window and staring out, with her handkerchief balled up in her hand.

“Does it feel any better to tell the truth? Isn’t it a relief?” I asked Angel. She didn’t seem to agree with me.

“You both lied to me. You told me what I said to you was just gonna stay with us.”

“I had to tell your mother the truth,” Vandomir said. “She’s got to know she can walk out every night and do her job without having you bringing men into the house. Miss Cooper was right. Family court will take you away from your home if your mother can’t control you.”

Mrs. Alfieri turned to look at her daughter, too pained to raise her voice above a whisper. “You lied to him, Angel. You lied to all of us. Now you know how it feels when someone does that to you.”

I tried to get her to understand the gravity of her encounter with Felix. “Do you know how lucky you are to be alive? You meet a total stranger in a taxicab and start having sex with him. Bring him into your house, where your two little brothers are asleep, not knowing what he’s capable of doing to you or to them.”

“So?” Angel was still sullen and angry.

It ripped me apart to see a kid like this who had a roof over her head and a parent who cared, and was still on a clear path to self-destruction. “You know where I spent my night? Standing beside the body of a young woman-not much older than you, probably. Somebody killed her and then stuffed her inside a box, hoping she’d never be found. She’ll never be going home again. The people who loved her will never see her alive.”

Angel looked at me now, trying to figure out whether I was serious. “And yesterday afternoon I was at the morgue, looking at the autopsy pictures of another girl who was murdered, probably by a guy she met at a club the night before. Ever hear the wordautopsy? Know what that means?”

“Tell her what it is, Miss Cooper.” Her mother walked closer to us, resting her arms on the back of one of the chairs. “Listen to her, Angel. This is what happens when somebody kills you. It ain’t enough that you’re already dead. They gotta cut you all up and take you apart, piece by piece. Then they sew you back up like you was a rag doll.”

Better than my own big needle, I thought. That image grabbed the kid’s attention and had her looking to Vandomir for salvation from the two women who were making her day so difficult.

“What happens to Felix now?”

“He stays in jail. But it’s a different charge. It’s called statutory rape.” I explained to her that even though she had been a willing participant in her sexual relationship with the forty-eight-year-old man, the law deemed her incapable of consent. She was underage, and he would still be punished, although the sanctions were far less serious than those for forcible rape.

“Laura will type up a new complaint,” I said to Vandomir, “and Angel can sign the corroborating affidavit. I want you to take the two of them down to the witness aid unit to get them hooked up for some counseling, okay? They can both use it.”

I walked back to Laura’s alcove, almost tripping over Ellen Gunsher, who was on her way down the hall to Pat McKinney’s suite. The pair spent an inordinate amount of time behind his closed door, leading to endless office gossip about the inappropriate nature of their friendship. If Ellen needed as much supervision as McKinney claimed he was providing, she must have been even more dense than she revealed at trial division meetings on those rare occasions when she opened her mouth.

Gunsher’s arrival gave me breathing room. McKinney wouldn’t look for me while she was hanging out with him, so there was no point even knocking on his door.

I picked up the phone and dialed Jake’s number on my private line, trying to find a tone of voice that was not too accusatory. His assistant, Perry Tabard, answered and told me Jake was in the studio in the middle of a taping. “Would you ask him to call me as soon as he wraps it up? It’s pretty important.”

“Shall I give him a message?”

There was no point telling him what the problem was. I needed reassurance from Jake that he had not betrayed my confidence last night, and I didn’t want a middleman to get it.

Before I could finish my conversation with Perry, Laura buzzed me on the intercom. Mike Chapman was on the phone.

“Hey, Coop, how fast can you get your ass up to the ME’s office?”

“Half an hour. I just need to turn over the rest of today’s schedule to Sarah.” My deputy and close friend, Sarah Brenner, had returned earlier in the spring from a six-month maternity leave. Our professional styles were so similar that I relied on her to run the fortymember unit as my partner. It was shortly after she gave birth that I had my terrifying encounter with the underbelly of the academic community at an elite Manhattan college, without benefit of her guidance and judgment. I was delighted to have her back at my side.

“Great. Meet me at Dr. Kestenbaum’s.”

“The girl-did you learn anything last night? Will they be able to figure out who she is or when she died?”

“Save your cross-examination for the courtroom and step on it. You’re about to have a lesson in theology.”

“I’ve already said my prayers for the deceased. Now I want some answers to my questions.” I was thinking of Battaglia’s directive and anxious to get results for him.

“Dr. K. will give you all the answers you want. You’re going to meet your first Incorruptible.”

“Mywhat?”

“Unless he was an altar boy in my parish, chances are the killer never set eyes on one either.”

“What’s an Incorruptible? What does it have to do with our victim?”

“She’s perfectly preserved, Coop. No decomposition, no decay. We’ll have her identified before the end of the week. It’s a natural phenomenon-happened to a few of the saints every now and then over the centuries.

“I’d have to think our perp closed the lid on Cleo and figured all he was leaving behind in his trail was a box of bones.”