The Kills Page 5

  “I suppose it’s possible. They didn’t let on that they were the least bit interested in the evidence you found in his apartment after he was in custody, did they?”

  “That’s so typical. We put it under their nose, and they act nonchalant so they don’t have to give you anything in return.”

  The day Tripping was arrested, and based on the information Paige Vallis had given me when I interviewed her at the hospital with Mercer, I had drafted a search warrant.

  Mercer had executed it that evening.

  Tripping’s apartment was more like a military outpost than a family home. His bedroom had only a mattress on the floor, while Dulles slept on a cot in an alcove off the kitchen. The walls were hung with a variety of scimitars and scythes, primitive weapons that looked capable of beheading an enemy with a single swipe. There was a bayonet and casing on the floor beside the mattress, and several bowie knives on tables throughout the warren of small rooms.

  Vallis claimed Tripping had threatened her by holding a cold metallic object against her head, telling her it was a gun. She never saw it. Dulles led Mercer to a closet in the bedroom, from which he recovered an air pistol, with its pellets and case. None of these things was illegal to own, and only chargeable if the defendant had actually used them against another person.

  There had been books and papers everywhere. Beside a lamp in the living room, under a black-sheathed stiletto, was a leather-bound copy of The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, the private edition published in 1926 and signed by T. E. Lawrence. Mercer had vouchered all the scraps, receipts, and correspondence, and we had spent days trying to find anything of significance among the writings that were in our safekeeping.

  “A guy just can’t get any luckier than this,” Mike Chapman said, walking into my office. “Here we are, less than one hundred shopping days until Christmas, and Ms. Cooper’s gift just falls into my lap. Now, Mercer, I suspect you want to give a tired guy like me who’s been up all night keeping the city safe half of that fat sandwich you’re filling up on.”

  He laid out a full-length fur coat across my papers and files.

  “Not that Tiffany Gatts has agreed I can have this yet, but it would look mighty snappy on you, come the first frost.”

  “What’d she say?” I asked.

  “Her exact words were a bit too crude to use in this refined company, but it was something like, ‘I don’t have to be talking to you, do I? Get me a lawyer.’”

  “You mean you didn’t get a thing out of her? Nothing about Kevin Bessemer? Nothing about where the coat came from?”

  “All she kept saying about the fur was, ‘It’s mines. ‘ Over and over. I asked where she got it, whether she had a sales slip for it, whether Kevin gave it to her. No use. Then when I started asking her about Kevin, she clammed up completely.”

  “The coat’s stolen, right?”

  “Trying to find that out. Lieutenant Peterson’s got guys working the phones, checking to see if anything like this has been reported missing lately. Precincts around the city, Major Case Squad, Robbery Squad. Brought it for you to look at. See what you think. I only know about one kind of fur and it isn’t this.”

  “Keep that thought to yourself,” I said, picking up the heavy garment and examining the pelts.

  The deep mahogany skins had rich color and fine long hair. They seemed dry to the touch, but they were clearly of good quality and fine styling. I spread the coat out on my desktop to look inside at the lining and label.

  “Ever hear of that furrier?”

  I shook my head from side to side. “Matignon et Fils. Rue Faubourg, Paris. That’s a pretty pricey neighborhood.”

  I picked up my phone and dialed a number in Washington.

  “You calling Interpol?”

  I laughed. “No. Joan Stafford.” My girlfriend knew more about shopping on the Faubourg-St. Honor�� than all the flics in France.

  She answered on the first ring.

  “You kept me up way too late last night reading the novel, which I adored. Your favorite detectives want to know if you’ll help us solve a little caper this afternoon, since I’m so worn-out.”

  Joan was living in D.C., engaged to a foreign affairs columnist for a major newspaper. She was one of my closest friends.

  “Will Chapman give me his gold shield if I do?”

  “At least that. Think fur. Think France.” I told her the name of the maker.

  “You’re out of luck to get a bargain, if that’s what you’re in the market for,” she said. “Gregoire Matignon closed his doors in the 1960s.”

  “Was he a big deal?”

  “Just the biggest, Alex. One of those old families that started out in Russia, dressing the czars and czarinas. Then moved to Paris to service the royal families of Europe. The Duchess of Windsor, Grace Kelly-you know that classic photo of her when she started dating Rainier, wearing a golden sable, stepping out of an old Bentley in front of the Grimaldi Palace? That kind of clientele. As the monarchies became threatened with extinction, the minks thrived and Matignon went out of business.”

  I ran my fingers over the faded red stitching on the old label. “That’s a help. I’ll call you later.”

  “What’d she say?”

  “That it sure wasn’t made for Tiffany Gatts. You find a monogram?”

  “Where?” Mike asked.

  I folded back the lapels of the broad collar and scanned the lining. “It’s pretty traditional to sew the client’s initials into the lining.”

  “Jeez. And to think my mother used to mark my labels with a felt-tip pen, so the other kids at school didn’t make off with my leather jackets. This winter I’ll get her to try embroidery.”

  “See?” Near the bottom of the left front of the coat, in a deep chocolate shade of thick silk thread, was an elegant script monogram. I read the letters aloud. “R du R.”

  “That should narrow my search.”

  “I’d say you concentrate on the Seventeenth and Nineteenth Precincts,” Mercer said, smiling. “High-rent districts on the Upper East Side. Lots of European diplomats. Some Eurotrash with delusions of nobility. Maybe Westchester. Maybe Great Neck.”

  Mike grabbed the telephone directory off my bookshelf. “These guys listed under the D ‘s or the R ‘s? We haven’t got a lot of them in Ireland.”

  “Start with D. “

  “DuBock. DuBose.” He ran his forefinger down a long list of names. “DuQuade. Now we’re getting close. DuRaine, DuReese, DuRoque���”

  “I don’t want to put a damper on your enthusiasm, but something as old as this,” I said, fingering the worn cuff of the once-glamorous coat, “you’ve got to figure that since the furrier closed so long ago, and with all the PC attitudes towards animal skins lately, this may have been through thrift shops or secondhand-clothing places.”

  “You need a more positive attitude, Coop. Some folks have still got the first fancy outfit they ever wore to church or work or a funeral parlor. Maybe it’s the difference between your relatives and mine.”

  “Suit yourself. Then don’t forget that most women store their furs for the summer. Better check and make sure there wasn’t a heist on Seventh Avenue,” I suggested, directing Mike to the fur district between Twenty-fifth and Thirty-fourth Streets.

  Laura was out on her lunch break, so when my phone rang I answered it myself. It was the security officer in the lobby of the building. “Thanks for letting me know. It’s okay, I realize it’s not your fault.”

  I looked up at Mike. “Maybe you could shut my door. There’s a screamer on her way upstairs. Tiffany’s mother just blasted past the guard’s desk when they tried to stop her at the metal detector.”

  “I had a pet water buffalo once had a better disposition than Mrs. Gatts. He was smaller than she is, too.” Mike walked toward the door but he was a few seconds too late.

  All 280 pounds of Etta Gatts blocked the doorway of my office.

  “Where do I find Alexander Cooper? Where is he?”

  T
he three of us spoke at once. As I identified myself to her and corrected my name, Mike was saying that he wasn’t here just now, and Mercer was doing his best to step between the woman and me to diffuse the situation, telling her to calm down and back off.

  “Where you got my baby at?” She was breathing fire.

  I hadn’t even asked Mike that question. I assumed they had the sixteen-year-old in custody, but I didn’t know for what.

  “Take it easy, Mrs. Gatts,” Mercer said, towering over the large woman. He explained to her how important it was to stay quiet so she didn’t get thrown out of the building.

  While he tried to soothe her I talked to Mike. “I’ve got a case to try. What the hell is going on here? Where’s the girl?”

  “Downstairs, in the holding pens.”

  “Charged with?”

  “Criminal possession of stolen prop-”

  I interrupted him before he could finish. “You can’t make out felony value with this old thing,” I said, pointing to the fur coat. “It’s not worth twenty-five hundred dollars at this point.”

  “And aiding a fugitive-”

  “Better.”

  “And felony-weight possession of crack cocaine. A white patent leather bag full of little vials.”

  I turned back to Mrs. Gatts. “I think the best place to wait for your daughter would be downstairs, inside the entrance to One Hundred Centre Street, where the judge will see her later this evening and set some bail.”

  “What you mean ‘this evening’? It’s not even two o’clock yet. What you mean ‘bail’? Tiffany’s just a baby. You got no right to hold her where I can’t see her.”

  Mercer reached out his hand to steady Mrs. Gatts’s flailing arms. She took a step back and kicked at my door with all her considerable might.

  I tried to follow Mercer’s lead and be diplomatic. I took a step toward the woman but Mike blocked me with an outstretched arm. “You could make things much easier for Tiffany, ma’am. We just need her to help us. She’s been keeping some dangerous company.”

  “Like who?”

  “Kevin Bessemer.”

  “Bessie? That man in jail. He old enough to be her father. What she doing with him?” Etta Gatts clucked her tongue in disbelief, and I let Mercer try to explain why Tiffany was in trouble.

  “Don’t mean a damn thing. The lieutenant told me my baby was too young to have sex with a thirty-two-year-old man. That it’s rape. Well, in this state she too young to vote and too young to drink. That makes her too young to go to jail.”

  “Three out of four ain’t bad, Mrs. Gatts. Sixteen years old and she gets treated like an adult in criminal court. You oughta do like Ms. Cooper says and have a serious talk with Tiffany. She’s the only one,” Mike said, pointing at me, “who can give your daughter a break.”

  “I don’t want no break from you,” the woman said, kicking the metal door again. Mercer reached for her elbow but she raised her voice a few decibels as she twisted loose and kept hollering.

  “Take it easy.”

  “Don’t touch me,” she screamed at Mercer. “And you, you skinny-ass bitch, you watch yourself. My hand to the heavens, my people ain’t through with you yet.”

  6

  “Look on the bright side, Coop. At least she called your tail part ‘skinny,’” Mike said, tossing his napkin across the room into the wastebasket. “I’m going to take this coat over to the photo unit to get it shot, along with some close-ups of the label and monogram.”

  “First you could escort Alex up to the courtroom,” Mercer said. “She needs you to eyeball a couple of funny-looking feds, get a make on them. I can’t go because the jury panel will be hanging out, and I’m going to testify next week.”

  “Guard my pelts, pal.” Mike picked up my case file and followed me out the door.

  We weaved our way around and between the potential jurors, who waited impatiently outside the courtroom in the airless corridor. One of the court officers saw us coming and opened the door to admit us.

  Five minutes later, at two-fifteen sharp, the group of sixty was allowed in. Twelve resumed their seats in the box and the others obeyed directions to fill the benches in front.

  The two men in dark glasses parked themselves in the back row.

  I walked to the rear of the courtroom with Mike to try to get an overheard. As we neared the pair, Mike looked up and broke into a smile, surprised to spot an old acquaintance.

  “Hey, good to see you. I’m Mike Chapman.” He extended his hand to the guy farther away from the aisle, who shook it but didn’t say a word. “Sheehan’s bar, right? Didn’t I catch you there just before the summer? You bought the last round.”

  The man shook his head. “I think you got that wrong.”

  “No, no, I didn’t. Must have been another watering hole, but I’m sure you’re the guy I was talking to. You’re a G-man, aren’t you? Used to work out of Langley.”

  The second guy looked at his partner to see whether he blinked.

  “Good try, but you’re wrong. Must have been talking to my twin brother.”

  “The better-looking one, yeah. Probably so. You here to testify?”

  “Nope.”

  “Look,” Mike said, “I’m a cop, a detec-”

  “No kidding. And last I knew these were public courtrooms, so I hope you don’t mind that my buddy and I just sit and watch.”

  Mike just shrugged. “Suit yourself. But you’re in the wrong seats. The judge has a couple of places saved for you two.”

  Again the younger one, closer to me, furrowed his eyes and checked his partner while Mike pointed and spoke. “Right over there. First two behind the dark-haired little broad with the dandruff on her shoulders, there’s a label that says ‘Reserved for assholes.’ Must be a really top level assignment to be baby-sitting one of your former whackjobs at his trial. Next time you guys oughta ask for a clothing allowance. That polyester is so flammable. C’mon, Coop, get to work. I’ll split.”

  “I didn’t invite you here to stir up a hornet’s nest,” I said as we walked away. “Moffett is barely tolerating me as it is. Now you have to go and mouth off to these characters.”

  “Those two are completely useless. What’s the difference if I agitate them a little bit? You needed a pro to tell you those guys are CIA? Check your peepers with an eye doctor.” Mike turned away and let the courtroom door swing shut behind him, and I walked back up to the well just as Harlan Moffett stepped into the courtroom.

  “All rise. Hear ye, hear ye,” the clerk droned on, announcing the entrance of the judge and reading the case into the record.

  Moffett explained the procedure. In the old days, most of the questioning of the panel was done by the lawyers. In high-profile cases, or matters with sensitive issues, it could drag on for days. More recently the state courts had adopted the federal procedures, in which the judge controlled what was asked. We would have our jury sworn by the end of the afternoon.

  He began with general information, reading the names of all the participants and witnesses in the case. “You know anybody, recognize any of these names? Just raise your hand and I’ll call on you.” Jurors took the opportunity to look each of us over but none responded.

  “You’re going to hear from three police officers during the trial. Anybody here have cops in the family?” Six hands went up around the room. “No reason to make you believe them any more or any less than other witnesses, is there? You’ll evaluate their testimony the same way you would any other person, isn’t that right?”

  Robelon and I were making notes next to those names we had of people already sitting in the jury box, how they responded to the inquiries, whether aloud or with facial expressions and physical gestures. We would probe them on personal information that seemed relevant to either side. In this case, Paige Vallis carried far more weight than the few police officers, who would be subject to more intense scrutiny as witnesses in drug sales or gun possession cases. They had nothing to offer that would shed light on the ev
ents in Andrew Tripping’s apartment.

  Moffett had reached the point at which he talked about the crimes with which the defendant was charged. “You got any problems with any of these?” he asked, trying to get past the word “rape” without raising any red flags. In my dozen years at the prosecution table, I wagered this would be a first if he succeeded.

  Two hands went up in the jury box. I looked over my shoulder and saw more scattered through the rows.

  “Your Honor,” I said, getting to my feet, “may we take these at the bench?”

  Moffett wasn’t pleased with my suggestion. It would waste precious minutes, and would result in more people being excused than he wanted. He knew that if he denied my request to approach him and hear the personal revelations one by one, fewer women would discuss their concerns in the open courtroom, among strangers. Both Robelon and I would have less opportunity to make challenges for cause.

  He was about to deny my request when my adversary rose to agree with me. Always better for the defense to let the jurors think they were truly sensitive to the issue.

  Number three stood between Robelon and me, at the front of the courtroom, telling Moffett she could not possibly serve at this trial. “I was a victim of rape myself, Judge.”

  “When was that?”

  “Five years ago. Raped and beaten.”

  “Was it here, in New York? Miss Cooper or one of her colleagues handle your investigation?”

  “No, sir. No one was ever caught.”

  “And Mr. Tripping didn’t commit the crime, did he?”

  She stared at her shoes and tears filled her eyes. “No, sir.”

  “And you know he’s presumed innocent and has the right to a fair trial?”

  She was choking up and couldn’t talk. She nodded her head in the affirmative.

  “So what’s your problem?”

  Robelon got the point and was eager to have the judge let her go. He had no desire to waste one of his limited number of peremptory challenges on someone who was clearly not going to be sympathetic to his client, or anyone else charged with this offense.

  “All I’m asking is why you can’t give this defendant a fair shake. Tell me.”