Karp scowled and stood up. “I could give a rat’s ass about the press. We’ve got a young guy locked up and charged with murder, and he could be innocent as far as we know because there’s nothing in here”—he slammed a hand on the file folder—“that corroborates his guilt. I need some answers, and fast.” Karp turned to look out the window onto the teeming sidewalks and streets below.
He turned back to Guma. “How many times have I said whenever we have a confession from a defendant or an admission of culpability that we need other evidence connecting the defendant to the crime?” he said. “That’s the very basic rudiment of corroboration. And in a case like this—a high-profile case that serves as a window for the public to see into the justice system—we didn’t even begin to check the provenance of the ring.”
“You thinking what I’m thinking?” Guma asked, already starting to stand up from his chair.
Karp turned and nodded. “Go get the ring out of the evidence safe,” he said.
“I’m on it,” Guma answered, heading out of the office as Karp picked up the desk phone and punched in a number.
When a familiar voice picked up on the other end, he said, “Clay, do me favor, get a car and meet me and Goom out front in a half hour; we’re going to take a drive up to Columbia University to see Professor Dale Yancy. Thanks.”
Twenty-five minutes later, Karp and Guma walked out of the Criminal Courts Building and up to the curb, where a black sedan with tinted windows waited. They climbed in, Guma in front and Karp in back. Sitting in the driver’s seat, Clay Fulton, the head of the NYPD detective squad assigned to the DAO, turned around. “Any stops along the way?” he asked.
Karp thought about it for a moment and nodded. “Take us to the crime scene first.” Fulton stepped on the gas and not long after that Karp sat gazing up at the dingy ten-story apartment building where less than a year earlier Olivia Yancy and Beth Jenkins had been butchered. He imagined their terror and their helplessness, knowing they were going to die, anticipating the painful cuts and vicious blows. The killer raping Olivia even as she bled out.
With an effort, he pulled his mind away from the crime scene photographs indelibly fixed in his mind’s eye, unclenched his fists, and looked around. The savagery was so incongruous with the scene surrounding him on a warm afternoon in May.
In many ways, the Morningside Heights neighborhood on the Upper West Side of Manhattan resembled a small town more than the urban jungle usually associated with Gotham. Gentrified over the past four decades, the streets were lined with apartment buildings and row houses, but there were no skyscrapers in sight. And the street-level spaces were filled by small cafés, fresh produce grocers, florists, and boutique coffee shops.
In some ways, Morningside had a similar feel to the Lower East Side’s Alphabet City with its more laid-back atmosphere and ranks of casually dressed pedestrians. Quite a difference from the hectic pace of the business-suited men and women in the Financial District and Midtown’s Madison Avenue. Absent the glitz of the opposite end of the island, Morningside attracted a smaller percentage of tourists who were more likely to be students and faculty of one of a half dozen higher education institutions in the neighborhood.
In fact, Morningside Heights was sometimes referred to as “the Academic Acropolis” due to the number of educational institutions packed into the section of New York that ran north to south from 125th Street to 106th and was framed by Riverside Drive on the west and Morningside Drive on the east. Within those boundaries were Barnard College, Union Theological Seminary, New York Theological Seminary, the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, the Manhattan School of Music, Teachers College, Bank Street College of Education, and, of course, the neighborhood’s biggest landowner and star resident, Columbia University.
Morningside was the sort of neighborhood where professors led informal discussions on the scientific questions of the day at the PicNic Market and Café or debated books and philosophy at the Greek restaurant aptly named Symposium. And jazz fans could find top-notch students and professors taking to the stage at the Smoke jazz lounge.
It was hard to imagine such a brutal crime had been committed there, and Karp wanted the guy who did it. The right guy, he thought before saying aloud, “Thanks, Clay. I just wanted to see this place for myself. Let’s head over to the university. Darla Milquetost called and Mr. Yancy is in class, but he’ll be done in thirty minutes and I want to catch him before he leaves.”
Karp was quiet for a moment then addressed Fulton. “Clay, do you remember when we first met?” Karp asked.
“The LeRoi Rodriguez case, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah.” Karp reminisced, “I was brand-new to the DAO and working in the criminal courts under the inimitable Mel Glass. Man, he was special. But in my class of seventeen ADAs out of eight hundred applicants, I always figured that I was number seventeen. Everybody else seemed to have come from some big-name law school, including Fordham and St. John’s. And all of them had more practical experience working in courtrooms than a grad of the Boalt Hall School of Law at UC-Berkeley whose professors were long on theory and short on practicality. Anyway, I knew I had some catching up to do, so when Mel would ask who wanted to volunteer to handle the competency hearings over at Bellevue Hospital, I raised my hand.”
The hearings were held weekly in the psychiatric ward dayroom. They weren’t to determine a defendant’s sanity at the time of the alleged crimes—that might come up later at trial—but rather whether the accused was mentally competent to stand trial. As such there were two due-process issues: did the defendant understand the nature of the charges against him, and was he able to assist his defense lawyer in the proceedings?
Any given week there’d be fifty or so cases called one at a time into the dayroom, where a judge would read the recommendations of two staff psychiatrists on the competency of the defendant and make his ruling. The defense attorney, usually a Legal Aid lawyer, and the prosecutor were always present but only rarely objected to the findings or tried to introduce evidence or witnesses. In fact, it was all very informal; the judges didn’t even bother to wear robes, and it was well known that they expected to be done by eleven thirty and at the golf course or racetrack by one. They did not like it when competency hearings did not run smoothly and quickly, so everyone—the judge, the lawyers, the court staff, and the staff at the hospital—made sure they went along to get along.
“Then the nightmare snafu scenario unfolded: the judge called the calendar and the psychiatric ward staff failed to produce a defendant, one LeRoi Rodriguez, a forty-one-year-old guy from Harlem who enjoyed cutting up the local prostitutes with a straight razor. He’d been arrested several days earlier with his bloody weapon still in his pocket only two blocks from a young woman whose face he’d mutilated.
“The cops thought Rodriguez was good for a dozen or more similar attacks. As you know, the psychiatric ward at Bellevue is a locked facility—no one just wanders in and out—so I was a little alarmed when Rodriguez was not produced during the calendar call. Even worse, the judge just shrugged and put the case over to a date in the following month. He then instructed the court clerk to call the next case. I was a little bewildered and said, ‘Your honor, shouldn’t we put out a second call and find out where the defendant is? I mean, this is a locked facility, where is he?’ The judge shot me a dirty look and exclaimed, ‘So are you some kind of wise guy or something?’
“‘No, Your Honor,’ I said calmly and respectfully, ‘if the defendant is not produced on first call, it seems to me that before the case is adjourned we should make best efforts to locate him.’ And, of course, as you guys know, everything I was saying was on the record. So the judge is hip with this too and gave me the ‘don’t fuck with me, troublemaker’ look but then turned to the psychiatric ward guard who escorted the prisoners to the hearings. ‘Mike, would you kindly go see if you can locate Mr. Rodriguez? Our young wiseass Mr. Karp does have a point that the defendant is here somewhere. So let’s find him a
nd get this over with.’”
Karp continued. “Mike sort of rolled his eyes, but it wasn’t over. Turns out that there were two L. Rodriguezes: a Lorenzo Rodriguez, a young man who had been charged with jumping a subway turnstile at the Bowling Green Station and had his case disposed of at arraignment and was ordered released by the presiding judge. Unfortunately, a bureaucratic snafu occurred and the wrong Rodriguez was released, leaving the turnstile jumper in the Tombs while the brutal LeRoi Rodriguez was put back on the street, and it was discovered only when ‘Mike’ couldn’t find him. Fortunately, when word went out, my friend here picked up LeRoi.”
“He was on Lenox Avenue and had just pulled his razor on a girl standing on the corner waiting for the light to turn green,” Fulton said. “Had him in my sights, ordered him to put the razor down, and was ready to pop him if he didn’t.”
Karp laughed. “Mel Glass kept me on that Rodriguez case and that’s when we met.”
Now it was Clay’s turn to laugh. Guma grinned, too. “Whatever brought on that little jog down memory lane?”
Karp looked out the window of the car as they drove onto the university grounds. “Just that this justice business is not rocket science. It’s common sense, thoroughness, preparation, and follow-through. There are enormous consequences at times when we fail to do what’s necessary and professional in these cases.”
Guma chimed in. “So now Big Daddy and the A-Team have to complete the follow-through.”
When they arrived at Columbia’s main campus, Karp watched Guma struggle for a moment to get out of the car. “You okay, Goom?” he asked.
Guma straightened his shoulders and nodded toward a pair of pretty coeds walking across the campus. “I was just remembering the good old days,” he said with his patented Guma wink and grin.
“Yeah, sure,” Karp replied. He’d seen the weariness and while he worried about his friend, he wasn’t going to embarrass him by saying anything about it. “When was that? The Pleistocene Era?”
“Very funny,” Guma replied as Fulton laughed. “Maybe when you’re done catching bad guys, you can start a new career as a stand-up comic.”
A passing student pointed them in the direction of Philosophy Hall and English lit professor Dale Yancy. They found him on the stage of an auditorium gazing at some one hundred students as he spoke:
Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,
Is the immediate jewel of their souls:
Who steals my purse steals trash; ’tis something, nothing;
’Twas mine, ’tis his, and has been slave to thousands;
But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him
And makes me poor indeed.
Othello, Karp thought. The conniving Iago is speaking. He thought of Felix Acevedo and wondered if his office had “filched” that young man’s good name, as well as the underlying credibility of the justice system. What was that other quote, the one from the honorable lieutenant Cassio after he was involved in that drunken brawl because of Iago and then dismissed by Othello? Oh yeah, “Reputation, reputation, reputation! O, I have lost my reputation! I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial.” A good choice given the reason we’re here.
When class was over, Karp, Guma, and Fulton walked to the front and waited as Yancy spoke to several of his students and then turned and noticed them. He smiled tentatively. “May I help you?”
“Are you Dale Yancy?” Karp asked.
The smile disappeared. “I am. Why?”
Karp stepped forward and held out his hand, followed by Guma and Fulton. “My name is Roger Karp,” he said. “I’m the district attorney for New York County. This is Assistant District Attorney Ray Guma and Detective Chief Clay Fulton, who directs the detectives who work for my office.”
The professor relaxed and smiled broadly. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I should have recognized you from the papers. I knew the face but for a moment thought maybe you were that bastard’s attorneys. I haven’t had much contact from the police or, to be honest, anyone from your office. I thought now that they’ve caught the guy, I would have heard more.”
Karp grimaced as he pulled out his wallet and selected a business card. “Well, first, I’d like to apologize for that; it wasn’t right and there’s no excuse. However, from here on out,” he said, handing over the card, “if you have any questions, day or night, please call me—my home number is on the bottom of that card along with the office number. And Ray Guma here will be handling your wife’s case personally; he and Clay are also available to take your calls.”
Accepting the card and another from Guma, Yancy gave Karp a puzzled look. “Thank you. I really appreciate that … I’ve felt a little lost in the system. But I’m sure you didn’t come all the way up here just to introduce yourselves and give me your business cards.”
Karp shook his head. “You’re right,” he said, “though it should have been done much sooner. But we’re just trying to run down some loose ends. Make sure we get the right man for what happened to your wife and mother-in-law.”
The smile disappeared from Yancy’s face. “What do you mean ‘right man’? Don’t you have him? Didn’t this Acevedo asshole confess?”
“Yes he did,” Karp replied. “But I have a few concerns about his confession and some of the evidence.”
“You’re starting to sound like a defense attorney,” Yancy said with a scowl. “What? Is his dad connected to the mob or something? He have an abused childhood and that’s what turned him into a vicious animal who murders innocent women in their homes? And now you want to let him off over a few ‘concerns’?” He turned and walked back to the lectern, where he started shoving his lecture papers into a briefcase.
“That’s not what I’m saying,” Karp replied evenly. “Mr. Yancy, I am truly sorry for what happened. I know you loved your wife. But does it matter to you that we get the right guy for her murder? Or will just any poor sap do?”
Yancy stopped. “Of course not.”
“Well, if the wrong man is convicted,” Karp said, “not only will an innocent man pay the price, it also means that the real killer is out there on the streets, thumbing his nose at the cops, at you, at me, at our entire system of justice. And let me be very clear about this: Guys like this don’t stop killing. They like it. And I very much want whoever committed those crimes to pay for them. Now if I could just show you—”
Yancy cut him off as he whirled around to face him. “I don’t need to see any more photographs,” he cried out. “I came home that day and found my mother-in-law lying in a pool of blood and my wife lying on our bed, where she’d been—” He stopped talking and put a hand over his mouth as though he might be sick. When he recovered, his voice was barely above a hoarse whisper. “I see those images every night before I go to sleep. I don’t need any more photographs.”
Karp winced at the man’s pain. “I understand. But I wasn’t talking about photographs. I wanted to show you a ring and see if you can identify it.”
Yancy scowled. “I’ve already seen one ring and it wasn’t my wife’s.”
The other three men shot each other alarmed glances. “You were already shown a ring?” Karp asked.
“Yes, that detective—Graziani—he showed me a ring he thought was my wife’s engagement ring, but it wasn’t,” Yancy replied.
There were more glances, only now they were angry. Karp pulled a sealed plastic bag from a manila envelope he was carrying, opened it, and removed the ring. “Would you look at this ring please?”
Yancy accepted the ring and shook his head when he looked at it. “That’s the same ring Graziani showed me, and like I said, it’s not my wife’s ring. He said Acevedo confessed to taking it from Olivia, but it’s not hers.”
“You’re sure?” Karp asked.
“I’m positive,” Yancy said. “When I asked him what it meant, he said it wouldn’t matter. He said maybe Acevedo took the ring from another victim. He
said the guy’s a serial killer and probably takes his victims’ rings by cutting their fingers off. Like some sick calling card.”
Karp pointed to the ring in the bag. “I just want to be sure about this ring,” he said. “There’s an inscription on the inside of the ring. You can make out the word ‘Always,’ but the rest of it appears to have been removed.”
Yancy shrugged. “Hers never said ‘Always’ and the inscription area on this ring isn’t long enough for what would have been there if it was my wife’s ring.”
“Which said what?” Karp asked.
A slight wistful smile came to the man’s lips for a moment before disappearing again. “‘Love goes toward love.’”
“From Romeo and Juliet,” Karp said.
“Very good, you know your Shakespeare,” Yancy replied, and then looked puzzled. “But I don’t get it. Don’t you guys talk to Graziani? How come you didn’t already know this isn’t her ring?”
“Could be a miscommunication,” Karp replied.
Yancy looked skeptical. “Or maybe he just didn’t tell you for some reason.”
“We won’t know until we talk to him,” Karp said. “Did he ask you about the ring before or after Acevedo was indicted?”
“I believe Detective Graziani showed me the ring a day or two before Acevedo was indicted,” Yancy answered, “because after the indictment I read about it in the newspapers and was irritated that no one bothered to tell me.”
Yancy walked the men back to their car. As Karp got in the backseat, the professor leaned over to speak to him. “One thing I don’t get: If he didn’t do it, why’d Acevedo confess? Does he get a kick out of pouring salt on wounds?”
Karp looked troubled and shook his head. “Good question. But right now I’m focused on finding who killed your wife and mother-in-law and making him pay.”
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