The Kills Read online

  Moffett excused the jurors for the weekend, told the court officers to escort Paige Vallis to the witness room until I made arrangements for her to leave, and asked his clerk to call Ms. Taggart’s office to see why she and Dulles were delayed.

  Mercer Wallace had come up at three-thirty, as we had arranged earlier, so that he could wait for Paige and drive her home. He was sitting with her when I went to the witness room.

  “Alex,” she said, getting to her feet as I walked in, “I want to apologize again for what happened this morning. For-for leaving out that stuff about Harry Strait. I’d like to explain-”

  “I’d like it, too, Paige. But it’s got to wait until next week. Months ago you told me straightaway you had killed a man during a struggle for your life, but you couldn’t even own up about a former lover who’s somehow entangled in this mess?”

  Mercer shook his head from side to side, wanting me to back off, cut Paige some slack.

  “I’m trying to tell you I’m sorry. I had no idea it would be relevant.”

  “Okay, okay. Look, I can only talk to you about administrative things while you’re Robelon’s witness,” I said, squaring away when Mercer would deliver her back here on Monday.

  Maxine had followed me in and handed back Paige’s pocketbook. Mercer picked up her briefcase, which she had left in my office.

  “I don’t know what to do with this, Alex, other than give it to you,” Paige said, opening the clasp and removing a brown paper bag. “The hospital mailed this to me because they didn’t have a home address for Dulles, once he was put in foster care.”

  I reached in and pulled out a blue baseball jacket. The word YANKEES was written across the back of the windbreaker in white lettering, and the team logo was on the front breast. I smiled. At least the boy and I had one thing in common.

  “I thought I’d see him here today, and be able to give it to him myself,” she went on. “That’s why I hung on to it. I’d like to talk to him, to see how-”

  “Forget that one, Paige,” I said. “Maybe when this is all over. I couldn’t let you do that now, even if I wanted to. But this is going to be very useful to me, when I actually get to meet Dulles. It’ll be a great icebreaker. Maybe I’ll get him a cap to go with it.”

  “You’ll give it to him then, for me?”

  “You bet.”

  “We’ve got tickets for the play-off games at the end of the month,” Mercer told her. “Maybe I’ll just leave Alex home and take the kid.”

  “I think it was like a security blanket for that child. The one constant in his young life. His grandmother gave it to him before she died, and he wouldn’t leave the house without it, the morning I took him,” she said, shaking her head.

  I folded it over and replaced it in the bag, glad to have some connection to happier days with which to begin my eventual conversation with Dulles.

  “Anything else you need before you go home?” I asked. “You’ll call or beep Mercer if Harry Strait shows up on your doorstep this weekend? Or if you get any other calls connected to the case, right?”

  “Of course.”

  I thanked her for her fortitude and patience with the process, and sent her off with Mercer, walking down the corridor to the main hallway so that Maxine and I could reenter the courtroom through the front door.

  Mike Chapman was leaning against a column close to the entrance to the trial part. He was holding a red-and-white Marlboro box-odd, since he never smoked cigarettes-and it looked like it had a thin metal strip extended for an inch above its edge. He was speaking into the piece of wire as I approached, and Andrew Tripping was pacing frenetically just three feet away from Mike.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, as he waved at Mercer over my head.

  “Agent four-two to command central,” Mike said, doing an obvious stage whisper into the wire. “Subject is agitated. Blonde persecutor is approaching and subject is twitching and tweaking-”

  “Would you please cut it out before I get called on the carpet for this?”

  “Works like a charm on a paranoid schizophrenic. Another few minutes of my talking into this paper clip and your man Tripping will flip out big-time. I’ve been telling command central that I thought the perp was ready for a secret assignment inside Attica, like going undercover as the girlfriend of the biggest, baddest inmate in the joint.”

  “Put your toy away,” I said, pushing in the double doors.

  “Mercer said you might need help carrying your files downstairs after he left.”

  I handed him the paper bag with the Yankees jacket. “Hold on to this for me. I don’t have enough evidence in this case to overburden myself.”

  “I’m also here to tell you that we might get lucky. Those lifts we got from Queenie’s apartment?”

  “Yeah?”

  Mike was referring to the latent fingerprints for which the Crime Scene Unit had dusted.

  “Well, they got prints of value.”

  “Fresh? I mean, it sounds like there were kids in and out all the time, doing errands for her.”

  “These should be good. You know those raised seats, the plastic ones, that have to be on top of the toilet if you’ve got injuries or health problems and you can’t lower yourself down all the way?”

  “Sure.” Queenie Ransome had suffered a stroke, and I thought again of how every aspect of her privacy, every shred of dignity left to her, had been invaded and abused by this investigation.

  “The killer must have stopped to relieve himself, and picked up the seat to place it on the floor. Lifted some good prints right off the sides. Both hands, four fingers each. Clean and clear.”

  “Have you run them through NCIC?”

  “Jeez, Ms. Cooper, how did I make it this far without you?”

  “So there’s no match?”

  “Nope, not yet. But it gives us something to work with.”

  “See you downstairs. I’ve got to finish up here,” I said, letting the doors swing shut behind me.

  Within minutes, Nancy Taggart and Dulles’s lawyer, Graham Hoyt, pushed through the same doorway, and marched together, grim-faced, down the aisle toward us.

  “I don’t like to be kept waiting, Ms. Taggart. You’re holding up the works here. And that’s the second time today for you, Mr. Hoyt,” Moffett said, stepping down from the bench, unhooking the clasps of his black robe and heading for his chambers. “You, Robelon. You and your client are excused until Monday. We’ll start up at nine-thirty sharp.”

  Hoyt shook hands with both Andrew Tripping and Peter Robelon as they passed him, with Emily Frith trailing behind them. He spoke quietly into Robelon’s ear.

  “Follow me,” the judge said, when the others had left the room. “You wanna get the kid? And the foster mother?”

  “We’ve come to tell you we can’t do that, Your Honor. There’s a problem,” Taggart said, unable even to look in my direction.

  “Now what?”

  Nancy Taggart began to explain to the judge. I rose to my feet, tapping the cap of my pen against my file, anxious to tell Moffett that this was predictable from the mother’s phone call to me last evening. Now we had lost a whole day because Taggart had demanded that I leave this in her capable hands.

  “Judge, Ms. Taggart isn’t being entirely candid with you. Let me tell you what happened yesterday afternoon, and about my conversation with Ms. Taggart thereafter. I offered to provide all the help she needed to find this foster mother, whoever she is-”

  Taggart pointed to the hallway behind her. “I’ve got Mrs. Wykoff here-the foster mother. She’s not the problem. It’s Dulles who’s gone missing, sir. He’s run away.”

  13

  Six o’clock on Friday afternoon, I was sitting in Battaglia’s office with Mike Chapman, Mercer Wallace, and Brenda Whitney, who was in charge of the district attorney’s press relations.

  “You think kidnap or you think runaway?” the DA asked. The smoke from his cigar mingled with the smoke of the cheaper brands he had given to Mike and Mer
cer.

  Brenda coughed as I answered. “The foster mother thinks the kid just bolted from her car and took off, while she went into the high school to pick up her older child. But I’ve never laid eyes on her before,” I said of Cicely Wykoff, “so it’s impossible for me to gauge her credibility.”

  “What’s the department doing to find him?” Battaglia asked of the cops.

  “I called headquarters from the courtroom. Chief of D’s put a couple of guys from Major Case on it. We’re dumping phones, doing a background on the foster mother and everybody in her orbit, and checking with the crossing guards near the school to see if they can ID the kid,” Mike answered.

  “Where’s Mrs. Wykoff now?”

  “Pat McKinney assigned the investigation to the Child Abuse Unit. I’m not sure who’s interviewing her. He figures they’ll get a lot more information if she isn’t worried about me using it in the case. The child welfare agency had drilled that into her.”

  “He’s right, you know,” Battaglia said, chewing on the cigar end as he talked. “Besides, you’re in the middle of a trial. You can’t possibly handle this.”

  “I know it,” I said. “But the kid’s life is a hell of a lot more important than the Vallis rape. I hate to say that, but the reason she was attacked was because she wanted to make the boy safe. I’m ready to walk away from this case if it’s freaked out the child so much.”

  “And let him go back to that lunatic father?” Mercer asked. “No way.”

  “Boss, I know I won’t be able to concentrate on the testimony if we haven’t found the boy by Monday.”

  “Don’t jump the gun, Alex. Do what you’ve got to do and trust the PD to do their bit. Can’t you buy a little time from Moffett?”

  “He looks ready to tank the whole thing. We’ll finish the Vallis cross on Monday. Then I’ve got a waitress from the coffee shop, the cops, and the nurse. Without the boy, the judge is likely to dismiss for failure to make out a prima facie case if Robelon is persuasive when he makes his motion.”

  “Brenda, how do we handle this? I’m sure DCPI gave it to the press,” Battaglia said. He knew how to spin the media better than most people knew how to spell their names.

  The NYPD’s deputy commissioner for public information would have already released a photograph of Dulles Tripping, asking for help in locating him.

  “They’re faxing over a copy of their press release. They don’t want to connect it to the trial at all. They’re just sticking with the missing child approach. The chief was hoping to make it in time for coverage on the six o’clock news. It’ll probably be the lead story by eleven.”

  Mercer had dropped off Paige Vallis at her apartment in TriBeCa and returned to my office before Battaglia had called me in. “You’d better get back on the phone with Paige and explain it to her before she hears it on television,” I told him.

  “This is going to hit her hard. She’ll blame herself for his disappearance,” he said.

  “There goes my jury,” I said, practically groaning. So wrapped up in worry about the boy, I hadn’t thought about the need for press announcements to mobilize the public to help find Dulles. My jurors would see the weekend news on television and in print. There had been so much testimony about Dulles, through Paige, that they would certainly connect the fact that he had vanished to our trial.

  “Didn’t the judge instruct them not to listen to media accounts involving your case?” Battaglia asked.

  Chapman blew a smoke ring and stood up, helping himself to another cigar from the DA’s humidor. “Yeah. The jurors won’t dare read the page-one headlines about the case, just like I’m about to slither into a hot tub tonight for a m��nage with Sharon Stone and blondie, here, and like you won’t be sitting behind that desk when you’re eighty-five years old. Get a grip, Mr. B-they’ll devour the story.”

  “I’ll keep you both posted over the weekend,” I said to Battaglia and Whitney.

  We walked back to my office. Mercer said good night to us, heading over to the sixth floor across the street, which housed the Child Abuse Unit. He was going to bring the detectives up to speed on everything he knew about Dulles Tripping. Nancy Taggart was probably already there, being debriefed.

  “So much for bonding with my witness,” I said, taking the paper bag from Mike and locking the Yankees jacket in a filing cabinet. “You got anything else for me?”

  “Well, before your weekend was ruined, I was going to ask you to come with me for a couple of hours tomorrow morning. Just wanted an extra pair of eyes going over Queenie’s apartment one more time.”

  “What about Sarah?” I asked.

  “Somehow, I don’t feature going over a crime scene with Sarah’s toddler and infant in tow behind her. Too much drool minimizes the potential to pick up DNA.”

  “Why is it that everybody is so sympathetic to motherhood?” I asked, smiling. “I haven’t got any excuses that stack up against breast-feeding, Saturday-morning soccer games, runny noses, or a trip to Costco to stockpile Pampers.”

  “Hey, if the choice is encouraging you to stay in bed or come with me to Harlem, it’s not even a close call. Pick you up after your ballet class?”

  Mike knew the drill. I had studied dance since childhood, and used my weekly lesson now not only as a form of exercise, but as a way to relieve some of the tension of this all-consuming job.

  “Ten o’clock, in front of William’s studio.”

  “And do me a favor this time. Shower before you get dressed. Last time I met you after class, you smelled like a goat.”

  “Last time,” I reminded him, “you appeared in the middle of class to drag me out because you found a dead rapist Mercer and I’d been after for two years. Trust me, I’ll even put perfume on.”

  “I’ll up the ante for you. Remember I told you the kids claimed that Queenie danced for them?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, apparently before she had the stroke, she could really shake it up.” Mike removed some photographs from the Redweld he carried as his case folder. “You’d have gotten along well with Queenie. She was a dancer, too.”

  I reached for the faded black-and-white pictures that Mike handed to me.

  “See what I mean?” he asked. “Just a bit more exotic than you. Think of the money she saved on costumes.”

  In most of the images, there was nothing between the body of McQueen Ransome and the lens of the camera. A rhinestone tiara on her head, long black satin gloves up over her elbows, and some high-heeled strappy sandals-her exquisite figure was displayed with great confidence and pride. She appeared to be onstage, dancing for an audience. No wonder great photographers like Van Derzee had worked with her.

  I turned over a few of the photos looking for anything that identified the time or place. On the back of several was a handwritten notation of the year, 1942.

  “Where did you find these?” I asked.

  “In one of the piles of stuff that had been dumped out of the drawers.”

  “Any more up there?”

  “There are lots of photos. I just grabbed a couple of these to lure you in. I’m wondering if someone found all this old kinky stuff and it turned him on.”

  “Let’s hope not. Queenie could hardly be confused with the nineteen-or twenty-year-old in these pictures. But you’re right, I’m in for your morning trip,” I said, gathering up my files to head for home.

  “Aren’t you going to stay for Jeopardy! ?” Mike asked.

  “Jake’s back in town. Dinner at home. Why don’t you scoot and take Val out someplace for a change?”

  “Still here?” Lee Rudden asked, standing in the doorway with a bottle in each hand. He was one of the best young lawyers in the unit. “Want a cold brew, Alex?”

  “I’m out of here, thanks.” By the end of the business day on Friday, most of the bureau chiefs brought in some six-packs to end the week with a collegial get-together.

  “Let me take that off your hands,” Mike said, taking the offered beer from Lee.<
br />
  “Got a minute? Can I run something by you real quick?”

  I took the brass hourglass from my desk and turned it over. “I’ll give you three, and the meter is running.” One of my favorite law school professors had amused us with a similar response. Every time a student asked for a minute, it inevitably had turned into no less than ten, and now it was the same with the members of my unit.

  “You know that case you assigned me on Monday?” Lee asked.

  I nodded at him, but the beginning of the week seemed like a lifetime ago.

  “The girl who came in from Long Island for the Marilyn Manson concert, remember?”

  “Yeah. Someone spotted her standing alone on the train platform at Penn Station, crying her eyes out. Called the police.”

  “Right. Well, I finally got her in for the interview today. Twelve earrings in her left ear, a pierced tongue and a navel to match. Eighteen years old. She came in to Madison Square Garden with her friends, but they all got separated before the concert. The others went to buy some dope.”

  “And your girl?”

  “She just waited for them near the stage door, holding up a poster she made at home to get the attention of the bassist.”

  “I’ll bite. What’d it say?” I asked.

  “‘Fuck me, Twiggy!’”

  Chapman laughed as he swigged his beer. “Don’t tell me she’s complaining that he actually did?”

  “Nope,” Lee continued. “Along came an enterprising young man who said he was part of the band’s stage crew. He offered to get Alicia front-row tickets in the mosh pit, in exchange for a blowjob. So Twiggy could see the sign real good.”

  “This guy’s taking scalping to a new level,” Mike said.

  “Alicia didn’t mind the price a bit. They went into an alley around the corner, on Thirty-third Street, and she did the deed. The mook didn’t come up with the tickets, though. She never reconnected with her buddies, and she ended up using the money for her train ride home to buy a cheap seat in the peanut gallery to hear the band and hold up her sign hoping Twiggy could see it.”