Cold Hit

by Linda Fairstein

  “Yes, Alex. It’s affiliated with Saint Peter’s Hospital. It’s located in a large office building which houses all their clinics up on Amsterdam Avenue. This is actually run by the head of their Department of Psychiatry, so they treat the whole thing very seriously.”

  “Your victim?”

  “Her name is Flora. Very fragile twenty-two-year-old who lives with her mother in Flatbush. Met the defendant a couple of years ago when he was her psychology professor at Brooklyn College. She began to see him for therapy after the school year, but was smart enough to stop the sessions when he started coming on to her sexually.

  “Now, almost two years have gone by and she was suffering from depression. Found his number in the book, called him, and he made an appointment for her to come in to the clinic, where he told her he’s currently working. Said he still did therapy on the side.”

  I was taking notes as Patti continued the narrative.

  “Flora got to the office at eight o’clock on Tuesday night. Paid the therapist-his name is Ronald-for the session, and at the end he advised her that she needed to get a job, to engage herself in something serious. He offered her a position as a computer analyst at the clinic. Took out a contract for one year’s employment from his desk, signed it, and had her do the same.”

  I had dozens of questions to ask, but rather than punctuate Patti’s story, I would let her tell it and assume she would cover most of what I needed to know.

  “Finally, Ronald took the contract back and told Flora that he wouldn’t make his boss, the chief physician, enforce it unless she thanked him right now by performing oral sex.”

  “I am definitely in the wrong line of work,” Chapman mumbled.

  Patti went on. “Ronald waved the contract back and forth in front of her and kept repeating, ‘No blow job, no job.’ He reduced Flora to tears in about five minutes, and she complied with the condition. Meanwhile, in a few of the cubicles attached to Ronald’s module, people were sleeping-naked, of course, with monitors attached to measure their breathing, their blood pressure, their REMs, and so on. So when Ronald handed her back her half of the contract, he told her this was better than usual. He said that most of the time he stood there and masturbated while he watched the struggling sleepers try to find the Land of Nod.”

  Chapman was on his feet. “You mean these idiots are paying big bucks to have this frigging pervert get his rocks off watching them toss and turn? That’d cure my insomnia instantly. I’d like to tie him to a chair by his testicles and make him listen to lullabies for twenty-four hours. See how he sleeps. I don’t get it, Coop. This stuff you people work on makes murder look comprehensible.”

  “How’d she come forward, Patti?”

  “When Flora called Ronald yesterday to ask when she could start to work, he told her that there was no job because he really didn’t have any power to hire or fire employees. She stormed right into the clinic and showed the contract to the physician in charge, who said it was bogus. So she went directly to a pay phone on the corner and called the cops. I thought you ought to know about it before I did anything on the case.”

  “Good thinking.” Brownnosing worked with me almost every time. Patti knew that if we, as prosecutors, could direct the course of an investigation prearrest, we could usually build a stronger case for trial.

  “What’s to think about?” Chapman asked. “Cuff him and put him in the can, now.”

  “What’s the crime, Mikey? What does Patti charge him with?” I stood with my back to the air conditioner, trying to cool down as we talked.

  “Sodomy in the first,” Mike suggested.

  “I didn’t hear you describe any force, did I?” Patti shook her head in the negative in response to my question.

  “Public lewdness,” Mike spat out at me.

  “It’s not a public place. Ronald’s sitting right in his own office when he’s playing with himself. Expectation of privacy and all that,” I countered.

  “I told you murder is easy. You got a dead body, an unnatural cause of death, and it’s one kind of homicide or another. You girls gotta sit here and play Find the Crime.”

  “Here’s what you do,” I suggested to Patti. “Bring Flora in and get all the facts. See if you can make out a coercion charge. Try section 135.60 of the Penal Law, sub 9 – compelling her to perform an act which might be harmful to health, safety, reputation, et cetera.

  “Also, there’s a good chance he’s been holding himself out as a doctor or some other licensed position at the clinic. Figure on next Wednesday-that’s my calendar day, so I’m free to go with you. You can have a search warrant prepared and ready by then. We’ll have a couple of guys from the squad take us up to the clinic, and we’ll go in that morning with the warrant. That way we can seize all his personnel records, Flora’s files, his appointment book, any documents he has on his walls- with credentials that can be checked out-and any other information you can develop during your interview with Flora. No one will be on notice that we’re coming, so none of the records will be destroyed. Let’s keep this one quiet. No need to embarrass the legitimate part of this operation at Saint Peter’s, okay?”

  Patti picked up her folder and was gone. I found my list of topics I needed to update Battaglia about and added this one to it. I had to remember to ask his executive assistant, Rose Malone, whether he had accepted the invitation I heard he had received to be Saint Peter’s Hospital Humanitarian of the Year, for his charitable work on behalf of underprivileged kids.

  “Don’t you have anything to do?” I asked Chapman after I told Laura to get Ryan Blackmer over to see me. Mike was lifting things up from the piles on top of my desk and reading them. Some were complaint reports and investigation updates, others were personal notes and messages.

  “Nothing till the autopsy this afternoon. I was hoping you’d come with me to Forlini’s and grab a bite to eat. I’m always more content in the morgue when I’ve got a full stomach.”

  “I don’t have time to go out for lunch today. Call Kindler or Holmes-just get out of my hair for a while so I can catch up on everything here.”

  “Have you returned yesterday’s call to Jacob Tyler yet?” Chapman asked, fanning out a handful of messages from Laura’s telephone pad. “And does that one have anything to do with the fact that the white lace camisole you ordered is out of stock but will be shipped by FedEx as soon as-”

  I lurched across the desk and ripped the papers from Mike’s hand as Ryan entered the office.

  “Well, I can’t imagine that the underwear delivery would upset you, so there must be something about the call from the newscaster that has you jumping, Ms. Cooper. Go easy on her, Ryan, it’s been a long morning.” Mike always liked to tease me about my social life, but I hadn’t yet told him that I had been dating Jake and knew this wasn’t the right moment to explain the relationship to him.

  Ryan was as good-natured as he was competent, and for every serious case that he indicted, five or six more bizarre situations wound up on his desk. “You got any time next week to help me with an interview?” he asked me. “I’d really like your opinion.”

  “Sure, which one?”

  “Remember the Cruise to Nowhere you assigned to me? Four girls from Jersey celebrated their high school graduation by taking a weekend cruise,” Ryan reminded me. “Boarded the ship in New York harbor, then it sails out past Long Island for three days. I didn’t know there was anything that could float capable of holding the amount of liquor on board this thing. Or that any land-roving mammal could imbibe as much as these kids did and still be alive.”

  “I don’t remember any of the facts. Sorry, but I’ve been preoccupied with my hearings.”

  “The girls started drinking mimosas at breakfast Saturday morning. Stacey, the victim-and I am using that word loosely, Alex-got seasick and went down to their cabin to throw up for a couple of hours. Bounced back in the afternoon for some Bloody Marys and beer. Wine and champagne with dinner. Doesn’t remember anything after ten p.m. She w
as a bit surprised to find the ship’s magician in her bunk with her- starkers-when the ship pulled into the dock on Sunday morning. She’s screaming rape. And by the way, suing the cruise ship.”

  “The Love Boat, ” said Mike.

  “Well, that’s what her bunk mates say, but she’s insisting she would never have done anything like that if she were sober. Personally, I don’t even think we have jurisdiction if this happened more than three miles out of the harbor, but I know you believe in seeing everybody who makes a complaint.”

  For far too long, when rape laws prevented prosecutions and the system was not open to its survivors, women had no place to turn for justice or advocacy. One of our goals in setting up a special unit was to see all those women who wanted to report cases, and give them the appropriate guidance- whether their matter belonged in the criminal court or elsewhere.

  “Make an appointment with her for the Friday after next and have Laura put it on my calendar. Just give me all your witness interview notes before then, so I know where the inconsistencies are when we start talking to Stacey. Be sure you check with Laura on Thursday, ’cause if I’m still tied up with this new homicide, I’ll have to move you back a couple of days. And Ryan, what are you doing for lunch?”

  He brightened and looked back at me, waiting for the offer. “Take Chapman across the street and feed him. Stick it on my tab. I’ve got work to do.”

  “I’ll give you a call when we’ve taken care of Gertie, Ms. Cooper. Personally, I’m a little bit worried about you, though. I think your father’s right-listening to stories about all this sex and violence day in and day out can’t be very good for you. C’mon, Ryan.” Mike was almost out the door when he turned back and threw me the last question. “Whatever happened to romance? Doesn’t anybody believe in dinner and a movie anymore?”

  5

  Alex Trebek told the noisy crowd of prosecutors and cops packing “Part F”-the name affectionately given to the bar at Forlini’s, since at many points on a Friday afternoon it was likely to have more office personnel in it than most of the dozens of court parts across the street-that the Final Jeopardy category would be New York State History.

  I could see Chapman’s dark head positioned beneath the television that was hung in the far corner of the room, surrounded by six of the guys from Trial Bureau 50, celebrating the end of another workweek.

  “Get it up, blondie!” Mike shouted down the bar at me as I squeezed through friendly packs of coworkers who were reliving their cross-examinations and telling one another about their latest triumphs and travails. “How are you on the Empire State?”

  “I’ll go the usual ten,” I said, sliding into the space cleared for me by Ed Broderick and Kevin Guadagno. Dempsey had seen me arrive, too, and my Dewar’s on the rocks was already on the countertop.

  “All right, then,” Trebek continued, fighting for our attention over the noise of the jukebox and the banter of more than a hundred of law enforcement’s thirstiest troops. “The answer is: City that was the site of the largest Confederate prison camp during the Civil War.”

  I shook my head and rested it in my right hand, ready to acknowledge defeat, while I sipped my scotch with the left. Chapman was writing furiously on the back of a cocktail napkin. “I’ve been had. This isn’t a New York question-it’s military history,” I moaned.

  Mike Chapman had majored in history at Fordham College and amassed a limitless knowledge of battles, gunboats, warriors, and even the names of the stallions on which they rode. Our long-standing habit of betting on the Final Jeopardy questions-whether in the middle of a crime scene, a good meal, or a round of cocktails-had taught each of us to stay away from the categories that were the other’s strong points, and I was about to be taken down in front of my colleagues on Chapman’s principal strength-much to his delight.

  As the timer ticked and the theme music jingled on, my mind sped through lists of upstate names, but all I could think of were prisons to which my convicted rapists had been sent over the last decade-Green Haven, Ossining, Clinton, Auburn, and so on. Nothing conjured up the Civil War. Mike was singing an Irish ballad in my ear, confusing me further, and substituting the name of one of the grimmest institutions for the town in the classic song. “How are things in Dannemora?” he crooned as I tried to brush him away from me.

  Trebek picked up the card lying on the podium in front of the septuagenarian wallpaper hanger from Minnesota, saw that it was empty, and commented that it was too bad he hadn’t ventured a guess.

  “Take your best shot, Cooper?” Mike said.

  “What is Attica?” I asked, stirring the ice cubes with my finger.

  “ Bzzzzzzzz. ” Mike imitated the penalty buzzer as the show’s second contestant bombed with her answer, too. “What is Elmira?” he said, loud enough for everyone at our end to hear.

  The Stanford professor who had won on the show four days this week also had the correct answer, and was beaming no less proudly than Chapman as Trebek congratulated him and announced that his five-day total was $ 38,000.

  “Cooper’s got the next round, Dempsey. For me and everybody in Trial Bureau 50. Elmira, the flower of Chemung County. Treaty of Painted Post proposed there in seventeen ninety-one, to end the settlers’ war with the Iroquois. Wouldn’t expect you to know that, kid. But three thousand Confederate soldiers are buried there. Actually, called it ‘Hellmira’ during the war, ’cause the conditions were so bad. What’d you think they were going to ask, Coop-where’s Niagara Falls? Who’s buried in Grant’s Tomb? Too much time wasted at Wellesley with those Elizabethan poets and that Chaucerian crap you’re so full of.”

  “I’m going back to the office, Mike. You want to talk autopsy before I go?”

  “You gotta be kidding. We got a table in the back room- we’re all having dinner together. Aren’t you going to stay for that?”

  “I’m taking a salad back with me. Honestly, I’ll be in the library all weekend. Just tell me what happened this afternoon.”

  Chapman and I walked out of the bar toward the rear of the restaurant and sat at an empty table for two. “Still no I.D. Dr. Fleisher makes her out to be about forty years old, and in very good health-except for that crater in the back of her head. No kids-never given birth. He was also right about the cause. Blunt force injury-dead long before she hit the water.”

  “Does he know what’s responsible for the laceration?” I asked.

  “You can start with the fact that this wasn’t a ‘slip and fall.’ Whatever she was hit with was hard enough to cause a skull fracture. Could have been a gun butt, a brick, a rock. Doubtful that it was a bottle or anything like that-no residue or fragments in the wound,” Mike went on. “The impact was probably a glancing blow, but it was so deep that the subcutaneous tissue separated from the underlying muscle fascia.”

  “And the internal exam?” I asked.

  “Fleisher didn’t find anything remarkable. Sexually active adult female. Only thing that will interest you is that there were abrasions on her upper thighs, close to the vaginal area.”

  “Nobody mentioned them last night at the scene,” I commented.

  “Doc said it’s typical with a body that’s been immersed in water. That kind of injury-scraping of the skin and removal of superficial layers-only becomes noticeable after the body has dried out,” Mike said.

  “Were those actually finger marks I saw?” I asked, wondering if the abrasions had been caused during an attempt at a sexual assault.

  “Looks consistent with that. They took lots of close-ups, so you can study them.”

  “How about rope burns from the ligature marks?”

  Chapman described the autopsy proceeding, in which Fleisher cut the skin directly under the wrist and ankle restraints, looking for that answer. “Not enough hemorrhaging to suggest she was alive when they tied her up,” he answered. “It was probably just the means of securing her body to the ladder, for the purpose of disposing of her. That’s it, except for the toxicological workups, which
won’t be ready for another week.”

  “Any reason to think there’ll be findings of significance?” I wondered.

  “Yeah, Fleisher thinks she’s had some problems with cocaine. He didn’t like the looks of her nasal septum. Could be just one more of those uptown drug deals gone sour,” Mike said. “She looked classy, but she undoubtedly liked to stick that sugar up her nose.”

  “What’s next?”

  “Gert just stays tucked in her fridge until somebody figures out who she is. Tomorrow morning, she’s out of the newspapers, and I start looking for who-done-it.”

  “Give me a call over the weekend if anything develops, will you?” I asked. “I’ll be down here most of the time, either in the library or at my desk.”

  “Don’t you want a ride home later?”

  “Thanks, no. I’ve got the Jeep right in front of the office. Ciao.” I said my “Good nights” around the bar, picked up my take-out salad, and walked the quiet block back to the office.

  It was after midnight when I locked up my files, rode the elevator down to the lobby, and drove home to park in the garage and drag myself upstairs to go to sleep. I played the messages left by friends on my answering machine throughout the day and evening, and made a list of calls to return at some point on Saturday. Most of my pals got out of the city on the steaming summer weekends-to beach houses they owned or rented, borrowed or shared-and I was just as anxious to get this court proceeding behind me so I could disappear to my home on Martha’s Vineyard for some rest.

  I bathed, ignored the usually appealing pile of magazines next to the bed, and read a chapter of The Ambassadors before falling off into a sound sleep. On Saturday morning I went over to the west sixties, where I took a two-hour ballet class with my instructor, William, who tried to remove all the knots that several weeks of courtroom tension had worked into my shoulders, back, and thighs. When I left the dance studio I headed directly downtown to the office, to continue researching and crafting my arguments for the complicated presentation I had to make on Monday.