Cold Hit

by Linda Fairstein

  An hour later, Harry Trenta walked into Roosevelt Hospital and asked to be treated for an injury to his private parts that occurred, he told the nurse, when he fell out of bed. She examined what she described in her notes as a “shredded penis”-a condition completely inconsistent with a fall-and contacted the local precinct to ask whether anyone had reported a recent attempt at a sexual assault.

  As is often the case, we count on the stupidity of the perpetrators to make our jobs easier. In this instance, that kind of slip had not yet occurred. Mike didn’t expect us to get lucky now.

  “Someone else can take care of that end of it. I did check out Santa Fe. Marina Sette got back there yesterday afternoon. The airline can probably confirm that for us. In any event, my guess is that she was airborne when that call was made to the squad asking us to come to the gallery. So either she’s a part of this-phoned from the plane or had someone else place the call for her-or whoever set it up knew she was unreachable all afternoon and that’s why her name was used.”

  In the hours since Mike had arrived at the hospital, I had also brought him up to date on the contacts Mercer had told me about yesterday. Mike had made appointments to see Preston Mattox and Varelli’s apprentice, Don Cannon, on Monday, but I also knew that he would not step outside the doors of Saint Vincent’s-no matter how long it took-until he could see Mercer.

  Again Mike was pacing. “Your faithful pal Mickey Diamond has a new one for his Wall of Shame.” The Post reporter papered the small pressroom in the courthouse with his frontpage stories. “News radio’s already calling this one ‘Slaughter off Tenth Avenue.’ No doubt they’re gonna run that poor girl’s puss all over the tabloids. What a waste of a life-she was just in the wrong place at exactly the wrong time. This guy is a monster.”

  Mercer had been in surgery for more than four hours at this point. Mike and I were running out of things to distract us. Every half hour brought a new wave of detectives who came by-to console, to pray, to offer blood or whatever aid was needed. The mayor and police commissioner had given their sound bites from the hospital lobby, urged all the citizens of New York to keep Mercer in their prayers, and moved on.

  When two men in green scrubs that were stained like my suit entered the room smiling, Mike embraced me before they could speak. “Your partner’s going to make it,” one surgeon said. “We’ve just-”

  “Well, what the hell took you so damn long to let us know?” Chapman asked. “We’d like to be with him.” He was walking to the door while the surgeon was still talking, and I knew he was fighting back tears that he didn’t want me to see.

  “Mr. Wallace is still in the recovery room. Give him another couple of hours there, and when he gets to intensive care, one or two of you can be with him briefly.”

  Mike did not turn his face to me but said that he was going down the hall to call Mercer’s father and give him the good news.

  “I’m Alex Cooper. I was with the detective when he was shot. What was-”

  “The bullet missed his heart by less than half an inch. Lodged in a bone just above it. But there was a huge amount of internal bleeding that posed an even greater danger. I think we’ve got it all taken care of, but the next few hours will be rough.” He looked at his watch. “It’s almost four o’clock. Why don’t you go out and grab some lunch? Give the nurses a little time to get your friend settled in.”

  “We’ll be here for a while, Doctor. I think we’d like to see Mercer before we do anything else.” Mike and I weren’t moving until we could be with him.

  I thanked them for their work and they left me alone in the small room. I lowered myself onto a chair, put my head in my hands, and thought of all the promises I had made to God in these past few hours of things I would do differently and better if only Mercer came out of this okay. Every part of me ached, and I tried to relive the day, thinking of what might have happened had the two of us not gone to the gallery. The throbbing in my head was now a constant, and when it intensified, it reminded me of the sound of the morning’s gunshots. I could not even imagine the physical pain that Mercer experienced when the shot ripped through his chest.

  I reached into the paper bag and removed the cell phone, dialing Battaglia’s home number. I was relieved to get the machine and not the person. I didn’t need another rap on the knuckles, and I just left him the good news about Mercer and told him I’d be staying with a friend overnight.

  Jake was booked on a seven-fifteen evening flight back to LaGuardia, the same reservation that I originally had. I couldn’t find him on the Vineyard, so I left a message on my machine there and one at his apartment, telling him about the shooting and asking if I could stay with him for a couple of days.

  Mike came back about fifteen minutes later with coffee for both of us and a deli sandwich. “Wanna split this?”

  “No, thanks.” My stomach was still roiling. “I need to apologize for snapping at you on the phone on Friday.”

  Mike’s appetite was directly related to his spirit. He opened his mouth wide to get around the hero, which was stuffed with ham and provolone, lettuce, tomato, and onions. He garbled a “Never mind” through the food. “I know you’re full of crap, blondie,” he said when the first three mouthfuls had been thoroughly chewed. “Hey, you think I haven’t been through this before? You just spent half a day praying over Mercer’s soul, probably had to swear you were even gonna be tolerant of me in the bargain.” He winked at me and shoved the sandwich back in his mouth.

  “So, I spent yesterday reading Omar Sheffield’s file.” He was able to concentrate again. “He was really a pro at that scam. Whole bunch of complaints against him to the prison warden. Lowell Caxton may have been right. Looks like Omar hung with the jailhouse lawyers. Pulled a lot of the divorce cases directly out of the Law Journal. One opinion, the judge even wrote which private school the two kids attended. Omar lifts the name of the school from the judge’s decision, threatening that he could have the kids picked off on the sidewalk as they came down the steps after class. Wife went nuts, blaming the husband. All along it was Omar, with the aid of the honorable jurist.”

  “Didn’t anybody arrest him for aggravated harassment?”

  “Nope. Worst I can see is that he got box time.” Put in solitary confinement for twenty-three hours a day, denied use of the library and any mail service. “Added a few months against an early parole.

  “But the warden told me there’s an even bigger problem now, with the Freedom of Information Act. Prisoners write to agencies like the Board of Elections, and because of the law they can ask for and get the home addresses of anyone they want. One guy just used it to get the new address of the ex-girlfriend he’s been stalking for six years. I’m telling you, the lunatics are really running the asylum when it comes to the criminal courts.” The last sentence was muffled by the remains of the sandwich and by Mike licking the mustard off his fingers before wiping them with a napkin.

  “Any record of Denise Caxton in the visitor log?”

  “Not that they’ve found yet. But I gotta go through it myself. Maybe she didn’t even use her own name. Meanwhile, you given any thought to where you’re gonna be spending the next few weeks, when you’re not at work?”

  I nodded my head. “I’ll stay at Jake Tyler’s apartment. Maybe you can swing me by my place so I can pick up some clothes.”

  “I’ll get somebody to do it. I’m not leaving here tonight.”

  There was no point in suggesting that Mike do otherwise. He would be at Mercer’s side throughout the critical hours, no matter how long they turned out to be.

  It was almost six o’clock when a nurse came to tell us that she would take us to the intensive care unit. “He’s sleeping now,” she said. “Doctor said you wanted to see him. Then I’ll take you to a place where you can be more comfortable.”

  Mercer had been placed in a cubicle directly opposite the nurses’ station. I could hear a gaggle of monitors beeping before we reached the entrance to his room, which was guarded
by two plainclothes detectives. I stood in the doorway and looked at his long frame, which filled the hospital bed completely. There were tubes coming out of his nose and intravenous lines attached to his forearm. He didn’t move or respond at all to the sound of Mike’s voice saying, “Hey, buddy,” as he lifted the sheet that covered Mercer’s chest to expose the bandaging there and stroked him gently on the blade of his shoulder.

  “That’s a lot of anesthesia he’s got to sleep off,” the nurse said. “I’ll come get you in a bit. There’s a room right over here.”

  She led us down the hallway and we resumed our vigil with the families of several other critically ill patients. Mike couldn’t stand the company and the prattle of the anxious people. “I’ll be in with Mercer.”

  “But there’s no room-”

  “I’ll make room. I wanna talk to him.” He shot me a look that had the same effect as adding the word “alone” to his statement and walked away.

  It was impossible to drag my thoughts away from the day’s events. I was trying to ignore my pounding headache, and as I covered my eyes with my hands, I didn’t notice the approach of the two men who planted themselves in front of me.

  “Alexandra Cooper?”

  I looked up as they palmed their gold shields and identified themselves. “Sean Iverson and Tom Bellman, Major Case Squad,” one of them said, pointing first to himself and then to his companion. “We’d like you to come downstairs with us. Hospital director’s given us a room to do interviews in. Just need to go over everything with you.”

  I stood up, gesturing toward the hallway. “But I’d like to be here with Mercer. We’re waiting for him to-”

  “We’re not going very far, Alex. We’ll get you right back up here when he comes around.”

  “Why isn’t Homicide working on this?” I hadn’t moved at all, and both men appeared to be annoyed. I knew I was getting paranoid, but I wanted detectives who knew me and loved Mercer to be working on this shooting.

  “C’mon,” Iverson said, turning his back on me. “They’re not gonna give something like this to one of your pals. Chief of detectives brought us in on it.” He looked over his shoulder and smiled at me. “He even mentioned that you might be difficult.”

  “I’d like to have Detective Chapman with me, if that’s all-”

  “And we’d rather not have him, if it’s all right with you. He wasn’t there, it’s not his case, and we’d like to handle this our way, okay, Miss D.A.?”

  Clutching my paper bag, I obediently followed the pair down the quiet hallway to the elevator bank and downstairs to a small office with a plaque on the door that read Security.

  For almost three hours, Iverson and Bellman grilled me about everything that had gone on since my return to Manhattan from the Vineyard the previous morning. I had done this myself to thousands of witnesses in my ten years as a prosecutor, and I was as impressed as I was exacerbated by their demand for precision and detail. Over and over again they pushed me to recall every physical twist, movement, footstep, direction, and sound that had been made or taken in the gallery that morning with Mercer. I strained every one of my senses to re-create the scene exactly, certain from their implacable expressions that I was failing some kind of test that they were giving me.

  When Iverson closed his notepad and stood up, I looked at each of them the way witnesses had looked at me so many times, wanting to know if the answers supplied had been good or correct. And I kept my mouth shut, knowing that neither man could give me that assurance.

  “Tommy’ll take you back up to intensive care, Alex. That’s it for now, but later in the week we’ll have to get you over to Twenty-first Street with us. Walk us through the place, okay?”

  “Sure. Anything you need.”

  Detective Bellman and I had nothing to say to each other on the way upstairs. He escorted me around to Mercer’s cubicle and shook my hand as he said good-bye. Mike had pulled a desk chair from the nurses’ station into the niche next to the bed, with his back to the door. He was leaning forward, his hand on one of Mercer’s, and he was speaking in a low voice. I could hear him naming friends they had worked with and knew that Mike was telling war stories and reminiscing, just chatting at his silent partner. The position of Mercer’s body had not changed at all since I had first seen him several hours ago.

  “Hey, Mercer,” Mike said, “Coop’s back.” Now addressing me, “Where you been, blondie?”

  I told him about the interrogation. “These dicks must’ve worked her over pretty good, Mercer. She looks like shit. I just wish you could open your eyes right now and take a look at her. I oughta borrow one of your intravenous tubes, man-run a little Dewar’s through it and give her some juice. Who’s the team?”

  “Iverson and Bellman.”

  “Dammit, Mercer. Get your ass outta that bed. I wouldn’t let those two lightweights handle a bad check. They treat you okay, Coop?”

  I shook my head up and down.

  At about midnight, a policewoman from the Sixth Precinct came up to the nurses’ station with a few containers of hot soup for Mike and me.

  I walked it back over to Mercer’s room. Mike was standing now, and I could hear him saying something about an administration.

  “What are you talking about now?” I asked. “Can I spell you for a while?”

  “Know how they say people in a coma can hear you? Well, if that’s true and he’s only sleeping off some gas, I’ll be getting through to him before too long. I just want mine to be the first voice he hears. Remember my dictionary? I’m going through it with him now. Used to make Mercer so mad-especially if all the other guys were laughing when I did it-he’d be ready to punch me in the face.”

  Chapman always joked that he was going to sell a reference book to compete with the O.E.D. -the Oxford English Dictionary. He called it the C.P.D. - Chapman’s Perpetrators’ Dictionary -and he thought it should be printed and issued to every rookie in the department.

  He took his seat by Mercer’s side. “I’m only halfway through the A ’s. ‘Administration’-that’s when a woman gets her period.” Then he launched into an imitation of the highpitched voice of a female witness. “‘But Detective Wallace, I couldn’t let him do the nasty to me. I was on my administration last week.’

  “ ‘Athaletic.’ Used interchangeably with the word ‘ epileptic.’ ‘Officer Chapman, you can’t go arresting my brother. He be having an athaletic fit right now.’

  “ ‘Ax.’ What you do uptown with a question. ‘Officer, let me ax you this…’ You ever know anybody Irish or Jewish or Italian who axes questions, do you?”

  “Alex, are you in here?”

  Mercer’s frail voice came at us from the other side of the bed, his eyes still closed, his head still facing toward the wall, and his words barely audible. Mike bounced up from his chair, grabbed Mercer’s left ankle-which seemed to be the only part of him not hooked to any kind of medical device-and started kissing the sole of his foot. I answered “Yes,” and we both bent over to get close enough to hear Mercer speak.

  His lips pulled together to form a smile. “Will you get that racist son of a bitch out of this room?”

  23

  “Cold hit, Coop.” I had just stepped out of the shower a few minutes after seven o’clock on Monday morning, and Jake handed me the telephone to take Mike Chapman’s call.

  “On what?”

  “Bob Thaler just called. He said they got a match on the semen found on the canvas tarp that was in the back of Omar Sheffield’s station wagon-the one that Denise Caxton’s body had been wrapped in. Did it through the data bank.”

  “Cold hit” was the slang term that scientists used to describe what occurred when a computer made a successful comparison between DNA samples, linking a piece of forensic evidence to an actual human being.

  The detectives did not have to submit names, latent prints, mug shots, or vouchers for hours of overtime legwork in order for this technology to work. The computer’s ability to make a cold hit t
ook only an instant.

  Thaler was the chief serologist at the Medical Examiner’s Office and had helped to pioneer this technology. The data bank had been established by the New York State legislature, and there were data banks in almost every state by the late 1990 s. New York’s was slowly being filled with the genetic fingerprints-DNA developed from a single vial of blood- taken from every prisoner in the state convicted of sexual assault or homicide. Like their latent print counterparts, these unique codes were becoming an invaluable tool in the solution of cases of rape and murder.

  “Who’s the match?” I asked.

  “Anton Bailey. Convicted of larceny three years ago up in Buffalo. Did half of a four-year sentence and was released to parole eight months back.”

  “Then why was he in the data bank?” His blood would not have been taken for a crime like larceny, a nonviolent theft.

  “That’s just it. He wasn’t in the New York base. Thaler had the Feds run it interstate and, sure enough, got a hit in the Florida data bank.” The Sunshine State had passed the legislation before most other parts of the country. “Seems like Mr. Bailey had gone by a different name down South-Anthony Bailor. And Mr. Bailor did some hard time back in Gainesville. Put away at eighteen, for almost twenty years. Rape in the first degree.

  “So it looks like Anton Bailey is the man who sexually assaulted Denise Caxton.”

  “And killed her.”

  “Talk about cold hits,” Mike said. “If this isn’t a straightout sexual assault gone bad, then someone must have hired old Anton to do Deni in. That could be the coldest hit of all.”

  “Now all we need to do is figure how and where he came into this picture.”