The DeadHouse

18

Chapman was itching to get out of Frankel's office. Bart followed us past the receptionist's desk and into the hallway. "What do you think, Alex, do I have to tell Vinny about this?"

"Hey, schmuck. Get real. You're now a permanent part of my files on the case, and we're not even out of the box. Coop and me have a few dozen questions for you we haven't even thought of yet. We haven't talked about Ivan, we haven't asked you about the work Lola was doing, we haven't asked whether you know anything about a load of cash she was hiding. Or about drugs."

Mike gave up on the elevator and tugged on the strap of my bag as he turned to trot down the three flights of stairs to the exit. "Next stop for you is my office. Pick a day. Make it easy for yourself, Counselor. And try telling Vinny the truth. Might be a new thing for you. Or, you can tell him you're in the field. That seems to have worked for you before."

"Let's try and schedule an appointment for the beginning of the week, Bart," I said. "You know how this is going to break, so why don't you tell the district attorney about it before Battaglia gives him a call?"

Frankel was leaning over the banister, calling down to us as quietly as he could. "Do you think I'm going to need a lawyer?"

"Line up a good proctologist first, Mr. Frankel. It's rough in those maximum-security pens."

Mike started the engine and we sat in the lot while it took its time warming up. "Born loser. Knew it the minute I saw him. Know how I could tell? Grown man with a backpack. There's just no excuse for it. Half of those twerps in your office use 'em, too. I get on the elevator at Hogan Place, one of those guys from Appeals gets in after me and turns around. Bam! I get smacked right in the puss with nine pounds of law books. By the time you get out of high school, you should figure out some other way to carry stuff around. What are you thinking about?"

"The position Frankel put himself in. That he'll be out of a job before New Year's. Whatever his involvement is in Lola's death, he was terribly indiscreet to be sleeping with her. And we'll have to tell Sinnelesi that he withheld evidence from us. Not to tell us that he had been with Lola after she left Lily's, and that he actually saw her go into her building with a witness who we didn't even know about before this? Irresponsible and unethical."

"There's some reason that Bart wouldn't give up the fact that he went to Lola Dakota's office," Mike said. "Before we have him back over to interview, let's be sure and examine the inventory of stuff that was there, and get the photos Hal Sherman took at the college. It's even creepier to think that he might have gone there after he found out she was dead.

"Want to swing by the county jail and see if Ivan has anything to tell us? Talk to him about his student snitch, Julian Gariano? See what kind of mood he's in?"

"I'd love to, but his lawyer called on Tuesday while I was up at your office. Said Anne Reininger gave him my name and number. Left me a message telling me who he was and how to get in touch with him. And that under no circumstances was anyone to attempt to speak with his client out of his presence. Does Ivan still bother you, too?"

"Sure does. It's too neat to assume he didn't have something to do with Lola's murder, when he had already gone to such lengths to get rid of his wife. Suppose he figured out or got tipped off that the hit men were part of a government sting operation? It's too late to remove his voice from the tapes and get out of trouble completely. But say he sets up some kind of defense that proves he- what do you call it in legalese?-that he had withdrawn from the plan and he just let these mopes go ahead with it to show what grandstanders they were.

"Meantime, he makes a backup plan to kill Lola. Paying someone in the city to let him know when she's returned to Manhattan. Lola gets knocked off… splat, all over the bottom of the elevator. So even if you don't believe it's an accident, Ivan the Terrible's got a rock-solid alibi for the rest of last Thursday, sitting behind bars, waiting to be arraigned in a Jersey courtroom. And Fat Vinny looks like the incompetent that he is."

People like to think of domestic violence as an issue of the underclass, as something that occurs in minority communities, among the poor and uneducated, as something personal that is not "our problem." Both Mike and I, just like every cop and prosecutor in this country, have investigated and charged doctors, lawyers, judges, businessmen, and clergy with beating, raping, abusing, and murdering their spouses. I was not about to ignore Ivan Kralovic, who had already proved that he was at best abusive, and at worst a potential killer.

"Am I dropping you at your office?"

"Let me check my messages. It was slated to be a slow day. There's no point going there if I don't have to." I used my cell phone to dial into my voice mail. The mechanical voice told me that I had four new messages. I played them back and the first two were from assistants in the unit, telling me about the new cases that had come in over the holiday. The third call was from Sylvia Foote.

"Your pal Sylvia called an hour ago," I told Mike. "About Professor Lockhart, from the history department-"

"The guy who was, shall we say, 'tutoring' the law student we interviewed?"

"Yes. He's returning to town tomorrow afternoon. She left his number. He's agreed to speak to us over the weekend anytime we like. Sylvia says Lockhart is willing to cooperate. Was very fond of Lola. That's the gist of it. She's still looking for Grenier and Lavery." I hit the prompt to save the message so that I could retrieve Lock-hart's number and call him when he reached New York.

Message four. Three twenty-six P.M. I looked at my watch. It had been only ten minutes since that message was recorded. Hey, Alex. It's Teague. I'm up at Special Victims with a new complaining witness. Just reaching out to see whether anyone could interview her before she heads back out to L.A. tonight.

The Special Victims Unit occupied space in the same office building to which Manhattan North Homicide had been transferred more than two years ago. Just above 125th Street, in an unlikely-looking brick structure that faced the elevated subway tracks on the West Side, the two squads were on the same busy corridor. I dialed the number and the civilian aide who answered passed me along to Teague Ryner, another bright young detective who often teamed with Mercer.

"Thanks for calling back so quickly. I was hoping you'd make a decision on this one before she hops on a plane. I don't want to make an arrest unless you think we've got something. Want me to give you the facts?"

"Sure."

"Girl's name is Corinne. Twenty-eight years old. Lives in Santa Monica, says she works in the music business. It all started after she had a few Brain Tumors-"

"Brain tumors? How awful. Is she-"

Teague laughed. "Not that kind. It's a drink. A pretty lethal one."

"What's in it?"

I had seen women's vulnerability increase dramatically after downing multiple Tequila Sunrises, Long Island Iced Teas, Sex on the Beach, and other creations that bartenders invented with every new season. They woke up in strangers' apartments, on the backseats of taxicabs, beneath trees in Riverside Park, and on sidewalks in midtown. "It's my right," they would often tell me, "to drink whatever I want, and as much of it as I want." Detectives, prosecutors, advocates, and jurors were supposed to deal with the aftermath. This was my first Brain Tumor.

"About six different liqueurs mixed together," Teague told me. "She can't remember how many of them she drank. In fact, that's the trouble. She can't remember much of anything."

"Did she drink them voluntarily? I mean, she's not claiming someone drugged her, is she?" Two different kinds of problems, under the law.

"Voluntarily? She was chugging them like they were root beer."

"Tell you what. I'm with Chapman, on our way back from an interview in New Jersey. Since he's got to go up to the squad, I'll just come with him to your office and we'll figure it out together." No point spoiling the end of another colleague's day, as long as I was working.

"I'll check with you before I leave, okay?" I said to Mike as he let me out in front of the building. I headed upstairs while he parked the car.

The day tour had just ended, and the teams working four to twelve had come on duty. Teague had caught the case in the morning, when the victim had called the police from the emergency room at New York Hospital to make an official report. Even though many of the cops took vacation leave during Christmas week, sexual assaults continued to occur at an alarming rate. Despite the drastic reduction in street-crime statistics, the volume of acquaintance-rape cases remained steady. Women were far more likely to be attacked by men who were known to them rather than strangers-not the public perception but a well-documented fact. And the alcohol that fueled so many of the holiday parties, at people's offices as well as their homes, led to an alarming number of new incidents.

"Hey, Sarge, how've you been?"

"We can hardly keep up with everything. What a wild week."

"Where's Teague?"

The sergeant led me to a small cubicle in the back of the squad room. Ryner and his witness were talking quietly, as he took notes while she recalled more events of the night before. "Corinne, this is Alexandra Cooper. She's the prosecutor who can answer your questions."

Before I could be seated, Corinne asked the first one. "What kind of case do you think I have? I mean, like, I really don't want to go through, like, all the hassle if nothing's going to happen to this guy."

"I'll try to give you an answer, but I'm going to have to get a lot more detail from you about everything that went on during the evening."

"Well, that's part of the problem. I don't remember much of the night. I met this guy at a party. He told me he's a vocalist. Sings with the Baby Namzoos."

"Who?" Whatever happened to rock and roll?

"They're kind of a hot group now." She could barely disguise her disdain for my ignorance. "Anyway, I started drinking with him. Next thing I know it's ten o'clock in the morning, and I wake up in his hotel room. Naked. There's no way I would have done that unless he forced me to be there."

"Did he have sex with you?"

"Why else would I be naked and in bed with him? He must have. That's what I went to the hospital to find out."

"I'm going to have to start at the beginning with you, Corinne." No one was going to be charged with rape in this jurisdiction because a woman assumed that a crime must have occurred. The doctor or nurse who examined Corinne may have been able to find evidence that recent intercourse took place, but they would be unlikely to know whether it was with or without her consent.

"Any medical findings of significance?" I asked Teague.

"Nothing."

"Lacerations, abrasions, discoloration, swelling?" He shook his head in the negative.

I elicited background information from Corinne about her education and employment. I questioned her about the medications she took regularly and her alcohol consumption habits.

"Have you ever had so much to drink before that you couldn't remember things the next day?"

"Yeah. It happens to me every now and then. I've had some blackouts, too. Not passing out completely, but just carrying on with my friends, and then having no memory of it the next day. My doctor tells me I'm not supposed to mix my antidepressants with liquor, but most of the time it doesn't really bother me… I haven't had anything to eat since last night. Do you think you could send out for a sandwich for me?"

"No problem," Teague replied. "There's a sandwich shop that delivers, or there's a guy on the corner with a hot dog stand. I can run down and get one for you, whichever you'd prefer."

Corinne's face screwed up in disgust. "You mean those New York City hot dogs that sit in that dirty water in those pushcarts all day? I couldn't possibly eat that stuff."

No, but she could drink a six-pack of some liquid concoction without a clue about what was in it or how it would mix with her medication, and never even blink. Teague left the room to call in an order for Corinne and a few cups of coffee to keep us all going.

Gorinne rested her head, cushioned on her crossed arms, on the table in front of her. "Would you like to tell me about the evening, or as much of it as you can remember?" I asked.

She had met Craig at the party at about midnight, and they were really getting along well together. After a few vodka and cranberry juice cocktails, they left to go to a bar somewhere in the East Nineties. That's where she had the Brain Tumors. Maybe three of them. Maybe five.

"Was he coming on to you at all?"

"Like, what do you mean?"

"Did he seem to be interested in you physically? Did he ever touch you or kiss you?"

"Oh, yeah. We were dancing, I remember that. The jukebox was playing music and I asked him to dance with me."

"Fast or slow?"

"Slow stuff, mostly. He was kissing me, you could say."

"Were you kissing each other?"

"Sure. But I know what you're gonna say. And that doesn't give him any right to have sex with me, especially if he didn't use a condom."

"Did you see anybody else that you know at the bar?"

"No. He's the one who decided where to go drinking. I didn't know another soul."

"How about the bartender? Were you talking to him?"

Corinne thought for a minute. "Yeah. After we'd been there for a while, most of the place kind of cleared out. He and Craig were having a long talk about something-movies, I think it was. They both liked the same kind of movies. Science fiction, stuff I don't know about."

"So there's a good chance, if Teague stops over there tonight, that the bartender can help put together some of the things you don't remember when it came time to leave the bar?"

"Like, what do you mean?"

"How you two were acting toward each other. He might recall some of your conversation, if you had any in his presence at the bar. How many drinks he served you and how drunk you were. Or what kind of physical interaction there was between you and Craig." It was often useful to remind a witness that other people we could talk to might actually be able to help us reconstruct some of the things she had been too wasted to think about clearly.

"You're really going to speak with that bartender?"

"Don't you want us to? After all, part of what you claim is that you didn't go to Craig's hotel room willingly, under your own steam."

She extended one arm out on the table in front of her and rested her head back down on it. "What if he tells you, like, that Craig and I were making out while we were in the bar?"

"That still doesn't give him the right to force you to have sex with him, or to take advantage of you if you weren't participating." I fed her back the line she had tried to use earlier to get me to act on her complaint. If Craig had engaged in a sexual act with her after she had passed out, we might be able to establish the occurrence of a crime.

"Yeah, well, what if the bartender tells you that we both went into the men's room for a while? What's that gonna do to my case?"

"That depends on what you tell me happened in the men's room, doesn't it?"

"You're gonna be all judgmental about it." Corinne focused her eyes on a spot on the ceiling, above my head, and looked even more sullen than she had when I arrived.

"I have no reason to be judgmental. You tell me what the facts are, I'll tell you whether we've got evidence that proves a crime was committed."

"But it's only my word against his?" She was whimpering now.

"That's all we need-your word-in any case. It used to be different, twenty years ago. There had to be more proof than the story of the woman who brings the charge. But now, rape is like every other crime. Your testimony-your credible testimony-i_s what I present to the jury. Then you're cross-examined by Craig's lawyer. After that, Craig tells him everything he remembers."

I paused to let that fact sink in. "Corinne, what happened in the bathroom at the bar? Did you have sex with him?"

Her eyes returned to the spot on the ceiling. "Not sex. I gave him a blow job. I didn't let him touch me."

I had told her I did not have to make judgments about people. That didn't stop me from wondering about her definition of sexual acts. Maybe it was a generational thing, although she was only ten years younger than I. I had heard it enough times that I had learned to train the young lawyers in my unit never to accept a victim's characterization of the encounter when she said there was "no sex." Ask, I taught them, exactly which body parts made contact with the other person. Most of us make too many assumptions about what other people call sexual acts.

Now she was rubbing her eyes and yawning. "You know, Miss Cooper, I never wanted to call the police about this. It wasn't my idea. That woman at the hospital made me do it. The only reason I went to the emergency room was to get a morning-after pill. I mean, like what if he had sex with me, didn't use a condom, and I find out I'm pregnant?"

"Do you think that's what happened?"

This time she groaned. "I don't know. I just don't know what happened. Don't you get it? That's exactly what I told the doctor who examined me. And after he told me he couldn't see anything unusual, that's when the counselor told me that maybe I was raped."

"Maybe? We don't charge people with felonies, Corinne, 'cause 'maybe' they did something bad. I have to believe a serious crime was committed before I authorize the police to make an arrest. And I have to persuade a jury, beyond a reasonable doubt,that the person charged committed that crime. I can't ask them to guess. I can't ask them to fill in the blanks that you don't remember. If Craig had intercourse with you when you were unconscious, that's another thing-that's a crime. But nobody goes to state prison for twenty-five years because you got drunk and then don't like the way the night ended for you.

"And Teague and I will have to spend a lot of time trying to figure out which of those things is what actually happened."

"But how can you do that?"

"Maybe we won't be able to. But we'll start with the bartender. We'll see if there's a desk clerk at the hotel who saw you coming in with Craig. Maybe even a security surveillance tape that will show you walking with him. It might suggest whether or not you were in any distress-or instead, that you were laughing, having a good time. I'll get the records of all the charges from his bill. See if there was any room service, any minibar use, any pay-TV movies charged to Craig's room during the time you were-"

"Oh, jeez, let's just forget about it then." Now she was moving from apathy to anger.

"You don't have to do all that work. That's Teague's job. Did I remind you of something you had forgotten? Did you have more to drink in the hotel room? Get into bed with the guy to watch a movie?" It wouldn't be the first time.

"Where's the detective? Can I talk to him a minute? I mean, like I have a plane to catch."

"Teague and I are here because you wanted our help. We'll get you to the airport. Please try and answer my questions. One call to the hotel and we'll have some of this information anyway. It's all part of the record that goes on the guest's bill." Corinne was fuming. She wouldn't look at me for almost a minute, and then she spoke.

"All right, so we had some more to drink. He ordered up a bottle of champagne. Is that against the law? I had a couple of sips of champagne."

Nice nightcap for a bunch of Brain Tumors. The chances were good that there would be a charge for an X-rated movie on Craig's bill, shortly after room service arrived with the chilled bucket of bubbly.

"How about the movie, Corinne?"

"It was so gross I couldn't even watch it after the first ten minutes. Like group sex in a hot tub or something. He was into that shit. Not me. Look, let's just forget about this. I don't think I have much of a case." She twisted her watch around on her wrist to see the time. "If I don't go now, I'll never make this flight." She stood up and opened the door.

"This morning, when you woke up, did you ask Craig what had happened?"

"Yeah, I asked him. He was like all surprised I didn't remember. He said we-um-we like made love. That he thought I was having a really good time. I just know I wouldn't have done that if I had been sober. Not without a condom."

"But you weren't sober, Corinne. That's what alcohol does, that's what drugs do to us. They change the way we act, they loosen us up. Sometimes we say and do things we wouldn't have done otherwise. Sometimes it makes us more vulnerable to many kinds of danger."

"Well, I'm just too hungover and tired to deal with this now. I didn't want him arrested. I just wanted to teach him a lesson anyway. Please, can I go home?"

Teague had paid the delivery boy and returned to the interview room with Corinne's sandwich. I left them alone so that he could try to soothe her and get her to go over the more complete version of her story, which she had neatly trimmed for him on the first telling. The hot coffee tasted good at the end of a long day, and I walked back to sit with the sergeant and talk about the rash of holiday assaults.

The door to the squad room opened and Mike Chapman burst through before I could finish the cup. "Yo, Sarge. Be sure you get blondie delivered right to the door of Walter Cronkite's apartment when she leaves here. The most trusted man in television can take care of her for the night. Gotta run."

I stood up, holding my finger in the air to signal that I'd be ready in a minute. "Teague doesn't need me anymore. I can-"

"Sorry, kid. Just got a call from the boss at the Nineteenth Precinct. Seems like little miss Annie Oakley made an attempt to get into your building through the garage. Tried to get one of the attendants to let her in with his key. Slipped him twenty bucks. I'm meeting the cops over at P. J. Bernstein's. See if we can pick her off the street before she starts target practice. You and lover boy are grounded for the night, understand?"

I didn't have time to protest. Mike turned to leave, but stuck his head back into the room. "And by the way, I checked with Freddie Figueroa, the detective who canvassed Lola's building the day after the murder. Remember Claude Lavery, 'Professor Ganja-R-Us,' Coop? The upstairs neighbor? On the DD5, all Figueroa had written for his interview with Lavery was that he was in his apartment, working on a research paper and listening to classical music. Didn't see or hear anything unusual on Thursday afternoon. Freddie asked Lavery if he knew the deceased. Said he did, but that he hadn't spoken to her in over a month."