Likely To Die

by Linda Fairstein

  Mercer also had his pen poised ready for his assignment.

  “Wallace, you start with the personal side. Find the ex, interview her neighbors and colleagues, get a picture of her habits and hangouts. Zotos will do this part of it with you. We need a location check-every other crime that’s occurred on premises here-and then move on to every other hospital in this city.”

  “Done, boss.”

  “After that, check with medical centers in Philly and Washington and Boston -see if anything like this has happened anyplace else. I’ll get somebody to supervise the garbage detail, and I’ll set up the tips hotline this afternoon. Alex, have your people check all your records for anything with a similar M.O. or connected to a medical setting.”

  “We’ll start on it right away. I’d also like to have a look at Dr. Dogen’s apartment if I can. I don’t mean for evidence-Mercer can do that. But when he’s finished, I’d like to go back with him once. It always helps me to get to know the victim, to get a sense of her life.” In murder cases, unlike rapes, there was no survivor for me to work with, no way to get inside the spirit that was destroyed by death. And if there was no family member to entrust that being, that life, to me for the purpose of the investigation there was no other way to come to know it.

  “No problem, boss. I’ll have the apartment processed today, then we can go back with Cooper whenever she’d like.”

  “Okay, Mercer. But be sure and have it sealed up-I don’t want any relatives or friends taking anything out of there until we know the lay of the land.”

  “What do you say we all meet at the end of the day and see what we got?” Chapman asked of Peterson.

  “Exactly. Be back at the 17th Precinct station house at seven o’clock. I’m sure the Chief will want a briefing on the situation, so come prepared. You, too, Alex.”

  I thanked him again and followed Mike around the perimeter of the soiled carpet toward the door. As I looked down to avoid stepping on Gemma’s deadly trail, my eye caught on a thick blotch of deep red color that almost looked like an intentional design set against the pale blue dhurrie. It was even and clear, quite a contrast to the ragged discoloration that marked the rest of the deceased’s path from the point at which the assault had started.

  “What do you think that is, Mercer?” I asked over my shoulder since he was still behind me.

  “What is?”

  “That mark on the floor, in the blood?”

  “Don’t go seeing ghosts on me, Coop. It’s just blood.”

  Mike had turned to look down, too, and both were bending over the spot I had focused on. “It looks like a cattle brand. Maybe some object-a belt buckle or a clasp of some kind got imprinted or pressed into it. Crime Scene photoed it.”

  It didn’t seem a bit like that in my view. “It looks like she was writing something, like it was part of a word.”

  Chapman was all over me. “She didn’t have the strength to breathe, Blondie, much less write. She was checkin‘ out, not doing a grocery list.”

  I ignored him and traced the shape in the air for Mercer. “It looks like the letterF, you know, a capitalF -or maybe anR, but with squared corners-and then a tail going off this way, wiggling,” I said, drawing an invisible line from the bottom corner, downward and to the left. “Doesn’t it?”

  “We’ll have your video guys take some shots of it, too, Alex, but I’m sure it’s wishful thinking.”

  “Get me a Polaroid of it, Mercer.”

  He nodded his head but was already whistling the old Temptations tune “Just My Imagination” as he made another notation on his pad.

  Mike held the door open for us and closed it behind Mercer and me, telling the uniformed cop beside it not to let anyone in without authorization, as he mimicked me on our way down the hall. “I can hear the summation already-that’s what you start prepping for as soon as you get a case, isn’t it?-with one of your dramatic lines about the hand from the grave, pointing a finger at the killer. Good try, Cooper. The jury may laugh but the press corps will love it.”

  4

  IT WAS EIGHT-THIRTY WHEN I PARKED THE Cherokee on the narrow street in front of the entrance to the District Attorney’s Office and dug into my pocketbook to remove the identification tag that would get me through the metal detector inside the main door. I picked up my third cup of coffee from the vendor who wheeled his cart of bagels and pastries to the corner of Centre Street every morning and walked inside past the security guard who was too engrossed in a skin magazine to notice my arrival.

  I liked to get to my desk at least an hour before nine o’clock, when the huge office comes alive with lawyers, cops, witnesses, jurors, and miscreants of every description, in addition to the noise of thousands of telephones ringing constantly throughout the day. In the quiet of the early morning, I can read and respond to motions in my pending matters, screen and analyze the case reports forwarded to me by assistants in the unit, and return some of the calls that inevitably pile up by the end of each working session.

  There was no one else on my corridor yet, the executive wing of the Trial Division, so I flipped on the hallway lights, unlocked my door, and passed by my secretary Laura’s desk to hang my coat in the tiny closet in the corner of the room. It felt as though it was fifty degrees in my office, so I slipped off my shoes, climbed on top of Laura’s computer table with a screwdriver to reach the thermostat that some sadistic city engineer had locked into a metal grid out of human reach, and readjusted the heat to a comfortable level so I could settle in at my desk and get to work. My colleagues and I were entrusted with the safety and well-being of the millions of inhabitants and daily visitors to Manhattan but not with the temperature control of our decaying little cubicles in the Criminal Courts Building.

  I dialed my deputy’s extension to leave a message on her voice mail. “Hi, Sarah. Call me as soon as you get in. Caught a murder with Chapman at Mid-Manhattan and we’re going to have to do a search on all our cases involving health care professionals, hospitals, and mental institutions. I’m probably going to need some help with my schedule, too.”

  Next call was to my paralegals, who shared an office on the adjacent corridor. They were both smart young women who had graduated from college the preceding spring and were apprenticing with me for a year before going on to law school. “There’ll be a meeting in my office at ten. New case with lots to do. Forget about going to that lecture at Police Headquarters today-I’m going to need you here.”

  I speed-dialed the number of my friend Joan Stafford, who was undoubtedly in the middle of her daily workout with a personal trainer, and got her machine. “It’s Alex. Scratch the dinner and theater plans for tonight and see if Ann Jordan wants my ticket. I’ve got to work. Apologize to the girls and I’ll speak to you tomorrow.” Joan had bought tickets for a group of friends to the new Mamet play that had opened two weeks earlier, but I would not be able to join them.

  Rose Malone, the District Attorney’s executive assistant, was already at her desk when I called to ask for him. “What time is Paul due in?”

  “He’s addressing the City Council at nine but I do expect him here before noon. Shall I add you to the list?”

  “Please, Rose. I picked up a homicide this morning and he really ought to know about it.”

  “He does, Alexandra. He just called me from the car and mentioned that the Commissioner’s Office had alerted him. I don’t know if you’re aware of it but Mrs. Battaglia’s on the board at Mid-Manhattan.”

  Just once I’d like to tell Paul Battaglia something that he didn’t already know. The man had more sources than McDonald’s has hamburgers.

  “I’ll be at my desk, Rose, so just call when he wants me.”

  I flipped through my appointment calendar and made a list of the meetings and witness interviews that Sarah could cover for me, circling in red the handful that I would have to keep for myself. The computer screen lighted up when I logged on and I quickly typed a response to the boilerplate motion my adversary had submitt
ed in a marital rape case in his halfhearted effort to suppress the admissions his client had made to the cops. Laura could format and print it when she got in, and I would proofread and sign it and have it in front of the judge well before his three o’clock deadline for my papers.

  By the time I had finished writing, Sarah Brenner turned the corner into my office, both arms full of legal pads and case folders. “This is just a start,” she announced to me, shaking her head. “Let me grab some coffee and come back-the raptor had me up half the night. She’s teething.”

  Somehow this meticulous young lawyer with enormous charm and a delightful disposition worked every bit as diligently as I did but managed to do it all while also being the devoted mother of a demanding toddler nicknamed for her uncanny ability to cling to Sarah and wail, usually in the middle of the night when she was trying to sleep. Now she was pregnant with her second, and still had more energy and enthusiasm for our work than half of the lawyers I had ever been shoulder-to-shoulder with during the most intensive investigations.

  Sarah came back from the vending machine and sat in the chair on the far side of my desk. “Want to keep her for a few nights? Bring out your maternal instincts and all that?”

  “I’ve got my own raptor. Chapman. Woke me up this morning to give me a case. I’d like to keep it, if the boss lets me, but I won’t do it if it’s too much for you.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not due for another five months. I’m perfectly healthy, and I’d much rather be here than at home.” Sarah hesitated. “I’ve been waiting for something to engage your interest again. You need a tough case to get you moving. I’ll handle all of your overflow. Promise. What’s this one about?”

  I explained what I had heard and seen at Mid-Manhattan and what Lieutenant Peterson had assigned everyone to do.

  “Just be sure it’s solved before I go into labor. I don’t want any home delivery job, likeRosemary’s Baby, but it’s chilling to think of some madman loose in a hospital. Wait until you start to review the cases we’ve had. I mean, they’re all in different facilities, and over periods of time, but it’s certainly eye-opening.”

  I had investigated and tried some of them myself during the years that I had run the Sex Crimes Unit, but we had never tracked them as a single category. Sarah and I started anecdotally from memory, calling up to each other the cases we remembered from recent interviews and precinct referrals. When the paralegals Maxine and Elizabeth joined us at ten, we gave them the task of doing a hand search through our screening sheets, the record of every victim and suspect who had made a complaint about or been the subject of a sexual assault investigation in Manhattan going back almost a decade.

  “Pull each one of them in which there is any mention, other than the victim’s examination, of the words ‘hospital,’ ‘doctor,’ ‘nurse,’ ‘technician,’ ‘psychiatric patient,’ or anything else that seems to be related to a medical setting. Xerox copies for Sarah and me. I want everything you can find before I leave here at the end of the day.”

  Laura had also arrived shortly after ten and was given the same assignment for her computer files. They didn’t go as far back as our screening sheets but would be a faster check than the tedious exploration of those handwritten documents that Sarah and I had collected since we took over the unit-the most thorough record of sexual deviancy compiled anywhere in the world.

  “Anything else I can help with this morning?” Sarah asked.

  “No, thanks. I’ve got Margie Burrows coming down any minute. I’m going to reinterview one of her witnesses. She missed a few of the essential points first time around.”

  Nothing unusual about that. Burrows had asked to be appointed to our unit and we had given her a couple of cases to work on, under our supervision, to check her skills. She had the requisite compassion and manner for working with rape victims-a trait some prosecutors come up short on-but hadn’t yet developed the critical eye to probe for inconsistencies. It was a delicate balance that some questioners like Sarah Brenner seemed to be born with and others would never be able to learn.

  Sarah left as Margie announced herself to Laura. I invited her in and pulled up a third seat for the complaining witness, Clarita Salerios.

  I had reviewed Margie’s notes, and knew that Salerios was a forty-seven-year-old woman who worked as a clerk in the shipping office of a large company. She was divorced, with grown children who lived in the Dominican Republic. Recently she had become severely depressed because of the death of her ex-husband, with whom she had tried to reconcile. One of her girlfriends had referred her to asantero -sixty-six-year-old Angel Cassano, who had been arrested for attempting to rape her several weeks earlier.

  I introduced myself to Clarita and explained that although Margie had already interviewed her at length, there were some facts that remained unclear to me. Like, why asantero?

  “Is no problem, Miss Alex. I tell you whatever you wanna know. I guess you call him a witch doctor.”

  It would certainly hold my attention for a few hours and keep my mind from wandering back to Gemma Dogen. Of the thousands of matters I had worked on in the last ten years, none had involved a witch doctor.

  Clarita explained that she had gone to the defendant several months ago to help her through her ex’s death. Angel-such an appropriate name for the job description-began by taking her to the cemetery where Señor Salerios was buried, in Queens, and performing some rituals there. Because he was partially blind, Clarita accepted Angel’s request to help escort him back to his apartment in the barrio. On the fourth or fifth trip, he invited her upstairs for an additional ritual.

  By mid-February, Clarita and Angel skipped the cemetery visit and she went directly to his apartment. The ritual changed a bit. Angel suggested that the trusting woman take off all her clothes and lie on a blanket he placed on the floor in his room.

  “Did you think that was strange, Clarita?”

  “No problem, Miss Alex. Is mostly blind, the old guy.”

  I nodded my understanding, remembering how many times I had urged cops and colleagues not to be judgmental of rape victims.

  He put her in some kind of trance, she explained, and while she was meditating, he kneeled beside her and began to touch her.

  “Where, exactly, did he do that, Clarita?”

  “In my bagina.”

  “I see. Go on.”

  After a little while, she asked Angel to stop and he did.

  “Wasn’t it unusual for asantero to do that?”

  “I ask him why he do it. He tell me the spirits told him to do it to me.”

  “Did you believe that, Clarita?”

  She laughed. “Not no spirit of Nestor Salerios, I tell you that myself. I know that for sure. He used to beat me if another guy even looked at me, Miss Alex. He’s a jealous man, even if he dead now.”

  I glanced down at the arrest report in the case, which the police officer had prepared when Cassano was apprehended. It noted that he had a strong odor of alcohol on his breath.

  “Tell me, Clarita, what was Angel drinking that day, at the apartment?” Margie had made no mention of that fact, but that was probably because Clarita had neglected to bring it up.

  “Let me think,” she said, looking up at the ceiling as though trying to decide what to tell me. “Rum. I pretty sure it was rum.”

  “And did he make you drink it, too?”

  “Yeah, he did. He tell me the spirits like it. But I just sip it a little bit. No much.”

  Love Potion Number Nine. The only thing missing was the gypsy with the gold-capped tooth, but she’d probably be in it by Clarita’s next visit.

  Clarita paid him for the session-I bit my tongue and didn’t ask if she tipped him for the extra ritual he’d thrown in at the end-and left.

  The more surprising part of the story is that she called him again to go back two days later. Yes, she admitted, it had crossed her mind that perhaps what he wanted most was some kind of sexual relationship with her and perhaps he wasn’
t such a holy man as she had thought. That’s the point in many of these stories at which I am reminded of those children’s puzzles that present a drawing of a neatly ordered room in which one object is inverted or out of place and the caption underneath reads, “What’s wrong with this picture?” In this instance, Clarita had already been sexually abused by Cassano, knew that what he had done was improper and inappropriate, and had been fortunate enough to extricate herself from his advances and walk away a few dollars poorer but without further molestation. Go back for more? Her loneliness, confusion, and vulnerability screamed out at me as they must have also signaled themselves to the blindsantero.

  On her next visit, after some rum and a few invocations of the spirit, Clarita again fell into a trance, undressed, and lay on the floor. This time the spell was broken when Angel got on top of her body and tried to penetrate her vagina with his penis.

  “I’ve got to stop you here and go back over a few things,” I interrupted. Things that aren’t in Margie’s notes.

  “This ‘trance’ you describe, were you conscious? Were you awake and aware of what was going on?” I needed to make sure she had not passed out or been drugged or intoxicated.

  “Oh, sure, Miss Alex. This time I keep all my eyes opened.”

  “And this time, Clarita, did Angel begin by touching you with his fingers?”

  “No, ma’am. I’m no stupid. I woulda got up and slapped him, he did that.”

  “So the first thing that happened, he just laid himself down on top of you, to have sex?”

  Again, Clarita sought the answer in the ceiling of my office. She looked back at me as she spoke. “Is right.”

  Angel either had to have removed his pants, lowered them, or opened his zipper and exposed his penis before actually mounting her-but any of those actions would have given his target the time to save herself from his approach.