Fat chance, I thought to myself as I said the words aloud. Now that they’re sitting on the case, most of them will be surfing the channels looking for coverage they would never have bothered with before.
“The only evidence you will be asked to consider in this case is the testimony of witnesses who appear here before you or documents that are properly qualified and submitted to you in this room. News accounts and opinions of your family and friends are not evidence. And of course, you must not discuss this case among yourselves.
“I’m going to leave some subpoenas here for the signature of the foreman, and I will be in again sometime next week. Thank you very much.” Unless the detectives had some lucky breaks in a day or two, it was unlikely that I would begin to present testimonial evidence until the time a suspect was targeted.
I was out of the room quickly and turned the jury back to my colleagues. “You coming to the party for Broderick tonight?” Gene asked as I swept by on my way back to my office. Another classmate was leaving the office for private practice.
“Yeah. I’ve got a lecture to do at seven-thirty, but I’ll swing by when I’m done, assuming this case doesn’t heat up.”
Laura met me at the foot of the staircase on the eighth floor and told me that Battaglia wanted me immediately.
I turned toward his wing instead of my own, and was admitted by the security officer on the desk.
“Hey, Rose, great suit. I love that color on you.”
“Good morning, Alex. Thanks. Just wait a few minutes ‘til he gets off the phone, then go right on in.”
Rose was turned to her side, pounding away at the word processor. I glanced over the mounds of correspondence on her desk, trying not to “do a Covington.” Rod Squires had often ridiculed one of the guys who used to work in the office, Davy Covington, who had taken the surreptitious reading of Battaglia’s mail to an art form. He used to stand opposite Rose, pretend to engage her in pleasant conversation, and scan the District Attorney’s letters upside down. Battaglia had caught him at his own game more than once. When Davy gossiped about a local congressman’s fraud investigation before the matter was even officially brought to the office, the District Attorney gave him some very warm references for another job about fifteen hundred miles away. The temptation to peek was overwhelming, but the penalty made it much easier to resist.
I picked up the day’sLaw Journal and skimmed the headline decision. The Court of Appeals’s reasoning on a ruling about a police officer’s search of an abandoned suitcase in Port Authority looked interesting and I made a note on my pad for Laura to clip the opinion for my files.
The familiar odor of a Monte Cristo No. 2 wafted out to announce that Battaglia was on his way to summon me into his office. It was one of the features that Rod and I most appreciated when the D.A. made his unexpected forays onto our end of the corridor. The inevitable cigar smoke and smell always preceded him by a few seconds, time enough for Rod to get his feet off the desk or for me to slip back into my shoes.
“Anything new, Alex? C’mon inside.”
He had an amazing facility for doing four things at once. Not a word that I said would be missed or forgotten, while at the same time he would be scrutinizing a handful of the letters that Rose had just printed out for his approval and prioritizing the calls on two of his six telephone lines, which were blinking on hold as he led me in.
“You need to take those calls, Paul? I can wait.”
“Nah, the senator can call back later. He’s pressing me on that victims’ rights legislation, and I just like to keep him guessing. The other one will just take a minute. Sit.”
Battaglia pressed the clear Lucite button and resumed the conversation. “I’ve got her in here now. What do you need to know?” Pause. “Hold on.”
He looked up at me. “What do you know about Dogen’s husband and family?” Three similar questions followed, all innocuous.
I gave him the information I had, and wondered which newspaper he was favoring with it. He was a master at this, never giving out anything inappropriate, but serving up to a rotating group of reliables a couple of bites that would soon be available through ordinary channels. I listened as he controlled the conversation with ease and assurance. Something his caller said to flatter him caused him to break into a wide smile. I smiled, too, looking at his lean face, strong aquiline nose, and thick graying hair. The man was a genius at his dealings with the press.
“That ought to hold them for a while. Now, any leads I don’t know about?”
I told him what had gone on throughout the evening and what my plans were for the day.
“Y‘ know, nobody at the medical center is very happy with all the articles being printed about the security problems.”
“Well, Paul, you’ve got to admit-”
“Just try and keep a lid on these stories, Alex. People desperately in need of surgery and treatment are checking out like it was a leper colony. It’s not just Mid-Manhattan-I’m getting calls from Columbia-Presbyterian and Mount Sinai. You’d think they were writing about Grand Central Station or the Bowery Mission, not a medical center.
“And another thing, Pat McKinney was in right before you. Says Chief McGraw called him to gripe about something you did last night at the precinct.”
It figures that one asshole would find the other. And McKinney, one of my supervisors who welcomed any opportunity to embarrass me, ran right in here like a washerwoman to bad-mouth me to the D.A. I squirmed but held my tongue, knowing how much Battaglia hated infighting among his staff.
“All I can say, Alex, is that you must have been doing something right. McGraw’s a real pain in the neck. He crossed me twelve years ago, when he was commanding Manhattan South. He’s never been able to work with women-quite a Neanderthal. So don’t let him get to you.”
He stood up and walked in the direction of the door, marking an end to my audience. The cigar was clenched in his teeth and he was smiling even more broadly as he saw me out: “If he gives you a hard time, send my regards. Tell him I said he should zip up his pants and get out of your way.”
I picked up the messages that were stuffed into the clip on Laura’s desk, flipping through them until I found the one I wanted. David Mitchell had called back to confirm that he had made a referral of Maureen Forester to a neurologist affiliated with Mid-Manhattan Hospital. On the basis of her complaints to Mitchell and the results of his preliminary exam, he had recommended that she be admitted to the hospital Friday morning at 10A.M. Dr. Mitchell had insisted, of course, that no invasive tests or procedures be performed until his return to New York at the beginning of next week. Just observation and lots of rest.
I called Sarah to tell her the news and ask her if she could spend Friday afternoon “visiting” with Mo. Then I phoned Bergdorf’s personal shopping department and ordered a mocha-colored vicuña robe, to be delivered to the neurological floor the next day-“You’re our devil in disguise-stay well, with love from your pals-Mike, Mercer, and Al.”
Gina Brickner waited until I hung up the phone before she came in with her legal pads and a cassette recorder. She looked miserable.
“Laura told me you’re leaving at noon, but you gotta hear this tape before you go. I got an indictment on that Columbia University frat party rape last month. The 911 tape was just delivered this morning, with the printout.
“Jessie Pointer, the victim, told me she’d only had one or two beers that night. Said she was cold sober by the time she got back to her girlfriend’s dorm room to make the call. I played the tape-Alex, she’s so damn drunk that she’s hiccuping all the way through it.”
“Unbelievable.”
“It gets worse. Every time the 911 operator asks for a response address, Jessie can’t answer the question. She can’t remember the name of the dorm. Then the dispatcher wants the telephone callback number in case the address she finally came up with was wrong. Jessie gives her six digits, and then the two of them keep arguing over whether phone numbers have six or seven
figures. I can’t believe how intox’d she sounds.”
“Get her back in here tomorrow. Read her the riot act. Make her listen to the tape. Tell her she’s got one chance-and only one chance-to correct her story. And she’ll have to admit to the jury, at the trial, that she wasn’t honest with you or with the cops about her condition.
“I’ll never understand why some of these women lie about the circumstances leading up to the attack but then expect us to believe that everything else they testify to is true. This isn’t a goddamn game-it’s people’s lives at stake. We’re here to help them, and they think we’re stupid enough not to know how to find out what really went on. If she wants us to salvage the rape case, every other detail she tells you has to be confirmed.”
Nothing infuriated me more than the real victims who compromised their own cases by trying to shade the events. The few who did it made everyone more skeptical of the scores of legitimate victims who followed in their footsteps.
By the time I had finished returning the calls and reassigning interviews, Mercer had arrived to pick me up.
“Beep if you need me, Laura. We’ll be at the morgue.”
9
MERCER WORKED HIS DEPARTMENT CAR around the yellow bobcats and backhoes at the construction site on First Avenue, a block south of the entrance to the blue and gray building that housed the office of the medical examiner. He parked at a meter after letting me out to climb over a curbside mound of frozen ice to get onto the sidewalk.
“Look at that fool,” Mercer said, pointing across the street at Chapman. “Man’s never owned a winter coat.”
Mike was coming from the deli across the street, seemingly oblivious to the bitter cold in his blazer and open-collared denim shirt.
I waved in his direction and he hoisted a large shopping bag, pointing to it as he called out to us, “Lunch.” Mercer looked at me and shook his head. Neither one of us was as at home in the morgue as Chapman. It was commonplace for members of his squad to be present for the autopsy procedure, while those of us who worked on sexual assault cases were fortunate enough to deal with survivors-wounded but living and breathing.
“Forget the front door,” Chapman shouted, as I started up the stairs to the building’s entrance. “C’mon. Kirschner’s still in the basement.”
I had never entered on the Thirtieth Street side so I followed Mike and Mercer around the corner and down the block to the parking bay where ambulance and emergency service trucks disgorged their bodies. A police officer checked our identification as he admitted us through the wide doors and we started down the sloping ramp toward the autopsy rooms.
Mike saw my eyes fix on the painted green walls as we walked; they were pockmarked at about waist level where large chips were missing. It was especially noticeable when we reached the bend at the bottom of the incline and turned to the right to go down another twenty feet.
“I know, I know. You’re ready to give the place a paint job and redecorate. Forget it. That’s the way it’s always gonna be, Blondie. They unload the body onto a gurney at the top, then somebody gives it a shove down the ramp. It bounces off the side a few times, hits the corner, and caroms around and down to the bottom. Believe me, the patient doesn’t feel a thing. You don’t need a candy striper to walk the stretcher down the hall.”
“Sensitive motherfucker, isn’t he?” Wallace murmured.
Mike led us into a small conference room at the far end of the corridor. It held an eight-foot-long table, a dozen chairs, a chalkboard, and wall-mounted clips all around the circumference to display X rays and photographs.
Before Mercer and I could take off our coats and sit down, Dr. Chet Kirschner joined us in the room.
We had worked together on a number of occasions throughout the five years since he had been appointed to the post of Chief Medical Examiner by the Mayor and I always welcomed his calm and dignified mien as much as I valued his professional judgment. Chet was tall and razor thin, with dark hair, a quiet voice, and an engaging smile that was rarely exercised during the discussions of his daily procedures.
We exchanged greetings and placed ourselves around the table while Mike went on unpacking his bag full of sandwiches and sodas.
“What I’m going to tell you is very preliminary, Alexandra. It will take some time to get lab results on the toxicology and the serological samples, so let’s just start-off the record-with the general picture.”
“Of course.”
“I got all four turkeys on rye, Russian dressing, okay?”
“Not right now, Mike,” I answered. The sterile surroundings, the faint aroma of formaldehyde, and the grim task ahead of us combined to suppress all thoughts of food or hunger.
Mercer and Chet also passed. Mike unwrapped his overstuffed sandwich and popped the top on his root beer while Dr. Kirschner took out a set of Polaroid photos of Gemma Dogen’s blood-soaked body and spread them on the table.
He looked up at Mike, who was crunching potato chips between bites of the sandwich, and grinned wryly as he said, “bon appétit.”
“There is no mystery abouthow the doctor died. As you’re all aware, there were multiple stab wounds-seventeen, to be exact. Several hit vital organs, including the wound that was probably the fatal one, which collapsed one of her lungs completely. The other lung was punctured as well.
“The repeated blows, most of which were quite deep, caused massive internal bleeding. It was intraabdominal and intrathoracic. There were a few superficial cuts on the anterior surface of the body, but most were thrusts that didn’t miss.
“She was stabbed in the back as well as the front. Clearly a frenzied attack-far more strikes than were necessary to cause her death. Any one of a number of these would have done the job handily.”
“Defensive wounds?” Mercer asked.
I picked up a handful of the Polaroids to follow Kirschner’s commentary. I had seen Gemma Dogen’s face responding to camera flashes at the celebratory events caught in the photographs on her office shelves. Now I studied the same features-colorless, expressionless, lifeless-as they rested on the head support atop the autopsy table.
“None at all. But if you look closely at the Polaroids of her wrists, you’ll see some faint markings. They’ll show up much more clearly on the actual photographs we took.”
I found the two close-ups of Dogen’s lower arms and noticed the linear red discolorations.
“She was obviously restrained at some point, and I would presume that happened-along with the gag, which was left in place-beforethe stabbing began. I would doubt that she had any opportunity to resist the knife attack.
“The restraints might have been the same kind of material as the cloth the killer used to gag her. Twisted into narrow strips and wound around her wrists, they would have caused the marks that you see here but not have broken the skin.”
Chapman swigged a mouthful from his soda can. “D’you have a chance to look over that strip from the gag, Doc?”
“It’s in the lab now for analysis, but I saw it when they brought the body in. You’ll get a definitive answer later, but it looked to me like ordinary hospital-issue bed linen, cut into long pieces. Could have come from any patient room, supply closet, delivery service, or even the laundry.”
“Make a note for me please, Mercer. I assume the lieutenant has someone checking the laundry staff on the list with all the other employees, but I never even thought of all the types of deliverymen who are in and out of there every day.”
“They’re on it, Coop. Laundry, food, medical supplies, flowers, gift baskets, balloons-it’s endless. We’re talking at least several thousand transients.”
Chapman had wiped his hands and was standing over my shoulder, pointing out puncture wounds as I continued to sort through the snapshots. He asked Kirschner, “So if you had to reconstruct the events with what you know now, how do you figure it happened?”
“I can only speculate at this point, Mike. You know that. I assume whoever did this, whether it started as
a burglary, or a prowler looking for a victim, came prepared. He had the weapon, he had the strips of cloth, and he probably had a purpose.
“I’d have to guess that Dogen was surprised by the attacker and overcome immediately. That woman was in fantastic condition. The muscles in her thighs and calves could have been from someone half her age. The fact that there aren’t any defensive wounds on her hands suggests she never had the opportunity to struggle.”
“Any idea about what time the assault could have taken place?”
“Tougher than usual. Obviously, we know exactly what time she died, since it was after she was found by the watchman. Any doctor would tell you that she couldn’t have survived these wounds. I’m sure she was unconscious while the killer was still striking at her, and I’d also bet that when he left herhe had assumed she was dead. It’s one of those medical oddities that she hung on for as long as she did, whether it was thirty minutes or thirty hours.
“The collapsed lung gave out quickly and completely. The other one must have acted like a slow leak. Mike told me that you all thought at the scene that she may have come to for a brief moment and used up the remaining oxygen supply in an effort to move herself. It’s possible.”
“With enough energy to drag her body across the room to the door?”
“My clinical answer to that would have to be no. But every day we see impossible things happen when the body is in extremis. Yes, Gemma Dogen might have summoned the strength for one last shot at saving herself. There’s no medical explanation for it. Absolutely none.”
“Chet, did Mike tell you about the, well, sort of squiggle on the floor where the body was found? I mean, in the blood.”
Mike was still behind me as I spoke and tousled my hair to indicate his dismissal of my idea.
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