The DeadHouse

5

I called Sylvia Foote. She was not an easy person to reach.

"She'll be in meetings all afternoon," her secretary said. "I don't think she'll be returning any calls until the beginning of the week."

"Tell her it's about Lola Dakota. About the murder of Lola Dakota."

"Murder?" she asked, taking down my number.

By the time I had left a similar message with Rose Malone for Battaglia, Sylvia Foote was on the line.

"Miss Cooper, my secretary just repeated your conversation to me." Foote was in her late sixties-humorless, rigid, and entirely protective of the administration's concerns. "I need to tell my president about this immediately. I'd like you to answer some questions for me."

"And I'd like you to answer some questions for us." "Perhaps we can schedule an appointment for the end of next week."

I knew that the Jersey prosecutors would move in as quickly as possible, looking for clues that would connect Ivan Kralovic to Lola's death. If, in fact, Dakota had been murdered in Manhattan, then Sinnelesi would have no jurisdiction here. But if he wanted to keep his name in the headlines, as Battaglia figured, Sinnelesi would argue that he had a duty to investigate whether Lola had been kidnapped from his side of the river and follow the trail to our doorstep.

By Monday, New Jersey police might already be swarming around the King's College campus and Lola's apartment building, scouring students and neighbors for information, gossip, and potential witnesses.

"I think we need to talk this afternoon. One of the detectives can bring me up to your office."

"I simply don't have time to do that."

"Don't have time?" A prominent member of the university family was dead, and I was only hours away from formal confirmation that we were dealing with a homicide, but Sylvia Foote was stonewalling me already. "I'll be up at your office by two o'clock."

"I'm sorry I won't be here to discuss this with you today."

"In that case, I'll start with the students over in the political-"

"We'd prefer that the students are not involved in this."

Where was Chapman when I needed him? He'd be telling Foote that either she could play hardball with him or do this the nice way. He'd be up there with grand jury subpoenas that she could ignore at her own risk, or she could cooperate and be treated like a lady. And the first time she looked down her long crooked nose at him and attempted to dismiss him with an arrogant order to leave, he'd stick out the subpoena and tell the sour old bag to take it.

"Not involved? It would be lovely if nobody had to be involved, and even nicer if Lola Dakota was alive. That's simply not one of your choices. We're going to have to sit down with you and go over everything that will need to be done, identify every individual we'll need to interview and each document we'll need to access."

Laura walked into my office and placed a slip of paper on my desk as I listened to Foote drone on: Mickey Diamond is on your other line. He's looking for confirmation that Dakota's death has been declared a homicide by the ME. I shook my head in the negative and mouthed back to her to get rid of him.

"I've already got the Post calling me," I tell Sylvia. "Somebody's leaked the story to the press and the autopsy hasn't even been started yet. You'd better give some thought to how the students- and their parents back home in Missouri and Montana-are going to react to news of a murder in your comfortable little community. It's going to get their attention a lot more quickly than the obituary page did." How would Chapman punctuate that point? "Especially if word gets out that the president's office is stalling our investigation."

Foote was silent. I expected that she was balancing the reality of what I was saying against the bet that her old friend Paul Battaglia would not approve of my heavy-handed style. But she was also smart enough to know that he would back me in my effort to get to the campus before Sinnelesi's troops arrived on the scene.

"My office is in the new King's College building on Claremont Avenue, half a block in from 116th Street. Did you say you could be here by two?"

I phoned Chapman and told him that since I'd left my Jeep at the office the night before, I would swing by to get him in front of his place and head uptown to interview Foote. I told Laura to beep me if any urgent calls came in, and that I would check with her for messages when the meeting was over. The ice was still caked thick on the windshield, and I struggled with the scraper as the defroster worked slowly to melt it.

Chapman was standing in front of the coffee shop next to his apartment building on First Avenue. His only concession to the bitter cold was the fact that he wore a trench coat over the navy blazer that he had adopted as his uniform once he had been assigned to the detective bureau. His black hair was blowing wildly in the wind, and he kept reaching up with his hand to chase it. He opened the passenger door and got in. "So what else do I need to know about Columbia beside the fact that its football team sucks?"

"You'll drive Foote crazy if you don't keep it straight that Dakota was teaching at King's College when she died, not at Columbia. They'll be very jumpy about that. They use some of the same facilities, and students enrolled in either school can take courses at the other, but they are entirely separate institutions."

I had spent a lot of time in Manhattan during my undergraduate years. My best friend and roommate at Wellesley, Nina Baum, met her husband, Gabe, when we were sophomores. He was a junior at Columbia, and I had often accompanied Nina when she came to the city to spend a weekend with Gabe.

As we drove uptown, I tried to fill Mike in on the bits of college history that I remembered. Columbia was founded in 1754, by royal charter of King George II of England, and its original name was King's College-the name recently adopted by the experimental school that carved out a piece of the neighborhood for itself at the start of the new millennium. The university's first building was situated adjacent to Trinity Church on lower Broadway, and some of its earliest students included the first chief justice of the United States, John Jay, and the first secretary of the treasury, Alexander Hamilton. The institution closed down during the American Revolution, and when it reopened eight years later, it had shed its imperial name in favor of "Columbia," the personification of the American determination for independence.

By 1850, the college had moved to Madison Avenue at Forty-ninth Street, shaping itself into a modern university by the addition of a law school to its undergraduate and medical faculties. In 1897, the campus was moved to its current site in Morningside Heights at Broadway and 116th Street; this academic village- modeled on the idea of an Athenian agora-represented the largest single collection of buildings designed by the great architectural firm of McKim, Mead and White.

"What's with this experimental school thing?"

"I only know what I've read in the news. King's is an effort to set up an alternative educational model, drawing from a few of the stars of the Columbia teaching staff, but trying to structure a fresh view of the process. It borrows some of the stature of the Ivy League reputation, but it's been spun off on its own, free and clear of the mother university."

"Who's in charge?"

"We're about to find out. Foote said she'd have the acting president at the meeting."

"Wanna take Third Avenue uptown? Stop for a minute at the corner of Seventieth Street."

I pulled up in front of P. J. Bernstein's.

"Hungry?"

"No, thanks. Had a salad at my desk."

Chapman got out of the car while I double-parked and waited for him. In a slight nod to Christmas, Bernstein's window displayed a few large smiling Santa faces. But there was also a huge menorah with electric candles on the countertop, while blue, gold, and white-fringed streamers declared a Happy Hanukkah to the deli's customers.

Mike returned in a few minutes with two hot dogs wrapped in a napkin, overflowing with sauerkraut and relish, and a can of root beer. "I know the rules. No droppings on the floor mat. No sucking the sauerkraut out of my teeth in public." He chewed on his lunch as I continued driving and cut through Central Park at Ninety-seventh Street, taking Amsterdam Avenue the rest of the way north to the campus.

"Had any cases out of King's College yet?" Mike asked, licking the mustard off his fingers and swigging from the can of root beer.

"Not one."

"Must be the only school in the country with no reported crimes. Wait till these kids find Cannon's and the West End." Those two bars were magnets for the collegiate community and havens for the binge-drinking students who found their way to our offices with every kind of problem that alcohol abuse created.

Mike displayed his badge to the expressionless, square-tinned security guard who sat inside the small gatehouse at the entrance to College Walk on 116th Street, barely looking up from the skin magazine he was holding in his bony hand. "Okay if we park this inside for a couple of hours? I'm taking my niece here for an interview, see if I can get her back into school. A mind is a terrible thing to waste."

The guard waved us in without looking up. I found a space in front of the Graduate School of Journalism, on the corner of Broadway, and Chapman locked his arm in mine as I lowered myself out of the Jeep; we jogged together across the double-wide street and headed down to Claremont, fighting against the strong wind as we ran.

Sylvia Foote's secretary was expecting us. She took our coats and led us into Foote's small office, which overlooked the avenue and Barnard Hall directly opposite. Foote extended a hand to both of us, and made the introductions to Paolo Recantati, explaining that he was the acting president of King's College, and formerly a history professor at Princeton.

Recantati invited us to sit in a pair of black leather seats with our backs against the large bay window, while he moved across from us to a straight-backed wooden armchair and Foote remained behind her desk. They offered nothing, and waited for me to speak.

"As you know, Sylvia, I'd been working with Lola Dakota on the case against Ivan for almost two years. And I'm sure she made you aware of what the New Jersey prosecutors were doing. Despite their best efforts, it's doubtful that Lola's death was an accident after all. Detective Chapman and I are here to try to get your help in finding out what was going on in her life and who else, besides Ivan, might have wanted her dead."

Recantati spoke to me before Foote even opened her lips to form a response. "I know what your area of expertise is, Miss Cooper. Are you telling me that someone sexually assaulted Lola and then killed her?"

"There's no reason to believe that at-"

"Then exactly why are you involved? Shouldn't we be working with Mr. Sinnelesi's office on this? Lola's case was being handled by his people."

"The Dakota matter has been my investigation for close to two years. I supervise the domestic abuse cases as well as sex crimes. The issues, the sensitivity concerns, the needs of survivors going through the system-many of the problems overlap in these situations. I know the background of Lola and Ivan's relationship, most of her history, a lot of the intimate details of her private life. If she was the victim of an attack-a murder-in New York, I will be the person in charge of the prosecution."

Recantati pursed his lips and looked off to his left, as though to take a cue from Foote. He was tall and lean, and for a few moments, the crossing and uncrossing of his long legs was the only obvious sign of his discomfort. He'd probably never dealt with anything quite like this in his idyllic ivory tower, before coming to Manhattan.

Chapman pushed himself to the edge of his seat and eyeballed Recantati. "You think if you don't give us what we need, we'll just fold up our tents in the night and slip off to the next unsolved crime? You got how many students here?"

"Almost three thousand at King's," he said softly."And how many next door at Columbia?"

"Close to thirty thousand," he murmured.

"So start out with something like sixty-six thousand mothers and fathers picking this up on the evening news, half of'em spread out around the country, who didn't want their kids coming to this city of perverts and potheads to begin with."

Foote and Recantati exchanged scowls.

"Best view of it is, you had a little marital discord that got out of hand, off campus, so nobody else here is at risk," Chapman said, brushing his hands against each other as though to wipe away the problem. "Worst view of it is that you got somebody roaming this neighborhood, making all these darling scholars and social saviors of the future vulnerable to violence. And exactly what are you two doing to make little Jennifer and little Jason safe at school?"

"Believe me, Detective, this is an entirely new problem for us here on campus."

"You must be frigging nuts if you think I buy that one. We're not talking 'animal house' and student pranks. This is a college in the middle of a neighborhood that used to boast one of the highest homicide rates in the city. Just look next door at Columbia- they've had students murdered in their dorm rooms and apartments, kids who've been robbed and raped by other students, as well as by strangers from the street."

Recantati opened his mouth to speak but Chapman wouldn't be interrupted. "There's been more drugs used in some of these halls than Keith Richards and Puff Daddy have seen in their combined lifetimes. This isn't the time to hide behind your cap and gown, pal."

Foote broke in to relieve the president. Chapman's directness didn't make her happy. "Alex, for the moment, since Lola had personal contact with you, can't we just discuss this one-on-one? The police don't have to be included until we get official word that this wasn't an accident. After all, that's our understanding of the findings at her apartment last night."

Chapman got up and walked to the phone on Foote's desk. "Mind if I call the morgue? I'd hate to waste your time if the docs can step away from the table in the middle of sawing Lola in half to assure you this was only a slip and fall."

Recantati's stunned gaze moved back and forth between Chapman's face and Foote's hand, which she had clamped over the telephone receiver. He seemed caught in the glare of the headlights and longing to be back in the library instead. "Have you and Ms. Cooper worked together on this kind of thing before?"

Chapman laughed. "Seventy years."

Recantati's brow furrowed more deeply. "But-?"

"I count 'em in dog years. Every one I spend with Coop feels like seven."

Recantati was responding to Mike in a way Sylvia Foote never would, looking as though he hoped the police would help him out and take the entire matter off his hands. "So, what is it you need from us?"

Foote cleared her throat. "Not that we can promise you anything before the middle of next week. We've got to clear this administratively."

"How about a command decision, Mr. President." Chapman ignored Foote completely and spoke only to Recantati. "Next week's gonna be too late. I'd like to get into Ms. Dakota's office this weekend, start checking her files, her correspondence, her computer records. I'd like to find out who knew her best, which students were in her classes, what faculty members worked with her, who liked her and hated her, who slept with her…"

Recantati's face reddened at the mere thought, it seemed, that we would be exploring such intimate aspects of Dakota's life. He was silent.

"We could walk right over to her office now, with both of you. That way you can make sure that Ms. Cooper and I don't do anything to cause trouble here."

Time to soften the approach while we had him on the line.

"You understand, sir, that not everything Detective Chapman is talking about may be necessary," I said. "It's entirely possible that Lola's death will prove to be related to her husband's efforts to get rid of her, and not to the campus community at all. We're exploring that angle first, of course. Nobody wants to involve the school or the kids, except as a last resort."

Foote was harder to fool. "Suppose I can gather together some of the political science faculty for you on Monday morning. We'll make the library available to you for interviews, so our staff members don't have to be carted downtown. Then we'll move on to talk with the students, but only if we must."

Not a bad compromise. "I've got to be in court for a hearing at nine-thirty on Monday. So if we can say two o'clock for you to have some people lined up, that will give you the morning to contact whoever you haven't been able to reach over the weekend. Shall we take a look at Lola's office while we're here?"

Foote buzzed the secretary and asked her to have the head of security bring the passkey up to us as quickly as possible. Within minutes, Frankie Shayson knocked on the door and came into the room. "Hey, Mike. Alex. Haven't seen either of you guys since that racket they threw when me and Harry left the job. Never dull, is it?" The former detective from the two-six squad, the neighborhood precinct, crossed the room and grabbed Chapman's hand as he greeted us warmly. "Want me to take 'em upstairs, Ms. Foote?"

She was obviously unhappy that we had an independent connection to the college, and she wasn't about to let him take us to Dakota's office alone. "If you give me the key, I'll return it to you later today." She reached out her hand to take the ring from Shayson, motioning to Recantati to come along.

The three of us marched down the hallway behind Sylvia Foote and up two flights of stairs to a turreted corner office. On the wall next to the door, instead of a nameplate, there was an ink and pen drawing, two inches by three inches, of a small piece of the U.S. map, with the word badlands written in the middle. The Badlands of Dakota.

Foote unlocked the door and entered first, followed by Chapman.

"Jesus, the feng shui in here is for shit."

Recantati continued to look lost and overwhelmed. "Sorry, Detective?"

"Don't you know anything about the principles of negative energy? This place is a hellhole, just like her apartment. First of all," Chapman said, kicking a box of books out of his path into the room, "all entrances should be free from obstruction. You need a generous flow into the working environment. And she's got too much black fabric in here. Bad karma-symbolizes death."

Chapman worked his way around the room, looking at books and papers that were piled on the floor, careful not to touch or disturb surface items. Foote had taken Recantati aside and was whispering something to him. I took the moment to stifle a smile and ask Chapman a question. "When did you become an expert in the Chinese art of feng shui?"

"Attila's been shtupping an interior decorator for the last six months. That's all you hear about when you work a tour with him. The office is beginning to look like a Jewish princess's idea of a Chinese whorehouse. 'Don't leave your toilet seat up 'cause your fortune will flow down into the sewer.' See, dried flowers like this?" Mike pointed at the dusty arrangement on Dakota's windowsill. "Lousy idea. Represents the world of the dead. Gotta use fresh ones."

Marty Hun was one of the guys in the Homicide Squad. Mike had nicknamed him Attila.

"We'll get Crime Scene over here this afternoon. I'd like them to process the room for prints and take some pictures. Okay with you two?"

Mike moved behind Lola's desk, noting in his steno pad what lay on top of it and sketching a general outline of the office. The smile was erased from his face, and with his pen he shifted some of the papers on top of the blotter. "Who's been in here since last night?"

"No one," answered Foote.

"I'll betcha my paycheck you're wrong on that count."

Foote approached the desk from the opposite side and placed her palm on a stack of books as she leaned over to see what had caught Mike's attention.

"You wanna get your hand off there?"

She straightened up and brought her arm down to her side.

Mike pulled open the top middle desk drawer by putting his pen into the brass handle. "It's too neat. Way too shipshape, both on top of the desk and in this first drawer. Right where you'd keep whatever it was you'd been working on most recently, or something that was pretty important. Every other pile is sloppy and out of line. Even the stack of mail is too fastidious. Somebody went through some of this stuff and couldn't resist just patting these papers into order. Nothing major, but it's just not in keeping with Lola's messy style. Maybe a careful once-over can come up with a print or something. She chew gum?"

Recantati looked to Foote and then shrugged. "Not that I ever noticed."

It was Chapman's turn to whisper now, leaning over and speaking only to me. "Let's lock up the office and get Crime Scene over here immediately. There's a wad of Wrigley's in the wastebasket. It's great for getting DNA. All that juicy saliva will tell us exactly who's been messing around in here."

Mike turned back to face the others. "Ever hear Ms. Dakota talk about a 'deadhouse'?"

Foote glanced at Recantati before both of them looked at us blankly. "Sounds more like your line of work than ours."

As Mike walked from behind the desk, he stared at a small corkboard affixed to the wall by the window. "You know who any of these people are?" he asked.

Foote moved in next to him, and Recantati looked over his shoulder. "That's a photograph of Franklin Roosevelt, of course, and this one's Mae West. I believe that woman in the corner, in period dress, is Nellie Bly. I can't place the other man."

"Charles Dickens, I think." My undergraduate major in English literature kicked in.

Foote stepped back and turned away, but continued speaking. "I'm not sure who the people are in the photos with Lola herself, but I assume they're friends and relatives. That other snapshot is one of the young women Lola taught last semester, in the spring."

Mike must have thought, as I did, that it was unusual for one student's picture to be singled out to be on the board. He asked the obvious question. "Know her name?"

Foote hesitated before she spoke. "Charlotte Voight."

"Any idea why Lola would have her picture up here?"

Dead silence.

"Can we talk to her?"

"Detective Chapman," Foote answered, sinking onto the cushion of the sofa against the far wall, "Charlotte disappeared from the school-from New York-altogether. We have no idea where she is."

Mike's anger was palpable. "When did this happen?"

"She went missing last spring. April tenth. Left her room early one evening, in the midst of a bout of depression. No one here has seen her since."