"You work in the shop, too?"
"Six days a week. I get down there at eight before we open and stay late most nights to do all the paperwork. We're closed on Sundays."
"And Emily Upshaw, what's your relationship been with her?"
"She's my best friend, Detective." Teddy's eyes welled up with tears again. "She's been my very dearest friend for almost a decade."
"How'd you meet?"
He paused. "Fifteen years ago. At an AA meeting."
"Alcoholics Anonymous? Since when did they start holding sessions in a bar on York Avenue?"
Teddy flashed a glare at Mike. "I didn't make it, Mr. Chapman. Neither did Emily. That's why we got along so well."
"Take me through it."
"I was new to the whole twelve-step-program idea. We were a small group, meeting in a church basement on Lexington Avenue late in the evening so those of us who worked long hours could keep up. Emily was doing really well then. She had a steady job at a woman's magazine doing some editing, in addition to her writing."
"Did you see her outside the meetings?"
"Not at first. We'd sometimes walk home together. She was very smart and I liked to listen to her talk about her work. She was always interviewing someone interesting."
"You bonded right away?"
"It was just a few months and then her schedule changed completely. She had a good offer from a travel magazine. The only problem was that it required her to be on the road a great deal of time. She started to miss meetings. Lots of them."
"There's hardly a place you can go that doesn't have a branch of AA," I said.
"True. But the reality was that Emily couldn't manage it. She assured herself that she could skip a session every now and then, but traveling offered too many temptations. There were time changes that left her jet-lagged and more resistant to squeezing in a meeting. There were minibars in the hotel room and expense accounts to charge them to. There was that beverage cart on the airplanes that pulled right up next to her seat. So we fell out of touch for a while."
"No contact at all?"
"Not for almost four years. By that time she had been fired from the magazine and was ready to try AA again. I had just lost my partner to AIDS and was pretty desperate. Emily and I kind of reinforced each other through some of our darkest hours. From that point on we've been really close."
"So when did you fall off the wagon?" Mike asked.
"September twelfth, 2001. One of my sisters worked for the Port Authority. My shop was just six blocks away from the World Trade Center and I tried to get there-"
"You don't have to explain that one, Teddy." Mike was still fighting his own demons from that tragic day. "And Emily?"
"She hung in till about a year ago. She'd lost another job and run through most of the small inheritance her parents had left her. I loaned her some money, of course, but she really struggled to make a living. Three strikes, she kept telling me. She was out."
"What did she mean by three strikes?" I asked.
"This was the third time she'd busted out of the program. The usual alcoholic's denial. Emily just convinced herself it wasn't meant to be."
"So we know about the second and third times she tried. Do you know anything about the first?"
Teddy thought for a minute. "It was right after college. She'd been drinking and doing drugs since she was a teenager. Cocaine mostly. One of her professors introduced her to a self-help group like AA. I know she was clean and sober for a couple of years. She did some really good writing then and published a few serious pieces."
"But lapsed?"
"Yes. She got into a relationship with one of the young men in the program. Something that happened when they were together just scared her to death. I don't know why-that's just the expression she always used. Emily used to say she liked it better being drunk and alone than living with a coke-snorting madman."
"That's what she called him-a madman?"
"Exactly."
"You know his name?" Mike asked.
"It was Monty, I think. I don't know whether that was his first or last name. But I'm pretty sure it was Monty."
"Ever meet him?"
"No, no, Detective. Emily never saw him again. He was someone she ran into in the program, the first time she was in rehab. She was a kid, right out of school. She moved in with him and they lived together for a while, but once they broke up she wanted no part of him."
"Because?"
"I never got into that kind of bedroom talk with her. I don't know whether it was the sex or the drugs, or some other problem he had."
"Were there any men in her life since then?"
"No one significant that I'm aware of. Friends, but nothing more serious."
"How often did you see Emily?"
"Well, we talked almost every day. We tried to have dinner together once or twice a week. Like last night, just something casual in the neighborhood."
"Did you speak with her yesterday? Was she alarmed about anything, or did she have any plans to meet someone before joining you?" I asked.
He shook his head. "No. I was too busy to talk when she called the store. She just left a message early in the day telling me what time she'd meet me for burgers at Hudson Bay. Around midnight, she said."
"But she didn't show. So what'd you do?"
"Naturally I was concerned. I called several times," Teddy said, looking at Mike for confirmation. "You must have heard the messages I left on her machine, didn't you?"
"Concerned about her safety?"
"No, not that," he said quietly. "I was afraid she might have started drinking at home. Maybe blacked out. Sometimes when she binges I worry-sorry, I mean I worried that she was going to wind up in the hospital, without any coverage to pay for the treatment." It usually took weeks for people to talk about the dead in the past tense.
"You had a spare key?"
"Yes. We had each other's keys, in case of emergency. Not this kind, of course."
"Has she got family?"
"Not in New York. Two sisters back home in Michigan." He leaned back and covered his eyes with his hand. "Lord, I guess I have to be calling them today, too. I'm not sure I can deal with it all."
Teddy continued to tell me about his friendship with Emily as Mike walked out of the room. He returned with a cotton-tipped swab and broke into the conversation long enough to ask the nervous witness if he minded rubbing the inside of his cheek for a sample of his DNA.
"Why do you need this?"
"Just routine. Have to run it against all the samples we find at the crime scene."
Teddy looked back and forth between us but seemed too cowed to question our authority. He poked around and handed Mike the slim wooden stick.
"Ever been arrested, Teddy?"
"Twice. Driving under the influence." His mood was now alternating between grief-stricken and surly. "I suppose you'll want to fingerprint me, too."
"I will, actually," Mike said. "There's bloody fingerprints all over the bedroom. We've got to eliminate yours. See if any of them don't match yours or Emily's."
Mike left the room again to voucher the swab and package it for the lab.
Teddy put his elbows on the lieutenant's desk and leaned forward as though to whisper to me. The whites of his eyes were shot through with red lines, and the tremor in his hands-probably DT's rather than anxiety-was more pronounced.
"You'll do me a favor, won't you, Miss Cooper?"
"If I can."
"You'll see Emily, won't you? I mean, at the morgue?"
"Well, I don't necessarily have to go there on this case, but Mike will certainly-"
"No, you must. You must promise me you'll go." He stopped talking and took my hands in his own. "Mr. Chapman will think this is crazy, but you have to make sure that Emily is dead. Really dead."
Spare me one more flaky witness, I thought to myself. The friend he had found eviscerated on her bed, a carving knife impaled in her back, had no more chance of breathing again than Ted Willia
ms.
I squeezed Teddy Kroon's hands. "I'm not sure I understand. You want Emily to be dead?"
"No, no, no. What I mean is that Emily made me promise that if something ever happened to her, I'd make absolutely certain that she was dead. It terrified her more than anything."
He was agitated now, and I tried to calm him. There was no rational way to do that when I thought of how dreadful her last minutes must have been, but he didn't sound rational anymore either. "Most people are frightened of death, Mr. Kroon. This attack tonight was so quick, so cataclysmic-"
"Not death. It's burial before death that haunted her."
"Premature burial? That's what Emily was worried about?"
"Exactly, Miss Cooper."
I pulled myself away from him and stood up. I may not have seen the body bag on its way to the morgue, but I had seen the blood-drenched crime scene. "That's a promise I can make to you, Mr. Kroon. You have my word you won't have to worry about that. The medical examiner's office is the best in the country- Emily's in very capable hands, and there's no question that she's dead. This isn't fiction we're dealing with, so you need to get hold of yourself."
Teddy Kroon leaned back and rubbed his eyes with his hands. He laughed for the first time since I had come into the room. "You're right, Miss Cooper. Too much Poe. I guess Emily had an unhealthy obsession with Edgar Allan Poe."
13
"I'm telling you this murder and the skeleton behind the brick wall are connected," I said, after Teddy Kroon left the station house. "A skeleton is found in the house where Poe once lived. Buried alive, in all probability. You blab it to the press and it winds up in the headlines on a slow news day. Twenty-four hours later, Emily's dead. And her scene is manipulated to look like the elusive Silk Stocking Rapist just escalated out of control. Emily Upshaw's death has nothing to do with our East Side serial rapist."
"What's the link, Coop?" Mike's feet were on the lieutenant's desk and I was slumped back in a chair opposite him when Mercer returned to the room. It was after 6A.M. "She liked Poe? There's not a literate adult in America who grew up without reading him."
"An obsession with premature burial? C'mon," I said.
"You weren't creeped out the first time you read that story? It's impossible to forget those images. The lever in the family vault that throws the iron portals back, the padded coffin with a lid and springs, the rope attached to the big bell, fastened to the hands of the corpse. Living inhumation, isn't that what he called it? Nothing so agonizing on earth. I must have been twelve or thirteen but I didn't sleep for weeks."
"Mike, we're talking about an intelligent adult. Not likely she was spooked for the rest of her life by a short story she read in grade school. Something happened to her, you heard what Teddy said. It's related to some bad experience with a guy she met in rehab who was a madman. About twenty years ago. It's only a madman who would have entombed a young woman alive, too. Straight out of Poe, in the basement of the very house he lived in."
"You're going 'woo-woo' on us, Coop."
"The guy reads in the newspaper that we found the skeleton. The same day's paper has the story of the return of the Silk Stocking Rapist. Emily was some kind of danger to him," I said, my mind racing to think of reasons why, "so he killed her. I think it makes sense."
"So, now what do you want us to do? I know, let's dig up every building foundation in New York City. You think we got buried bones all over town? Or this lunatic only comes out of the blue once every quarter of a century to murder somebody? A bit unusual for a serial killer, isn't it?"
"Find that guy, you solve both cases."
"This bagel is hard as a rock. That's the best you could do for me?" Mike asked, slathering the remaining half with cream cheese.
"I'm with Alex on this one," Mercer said.
"What a stretch. You think DCPI is gonna go with that kind of long shot? Don't ever tell them it's a brainstorm from the mind of Alexandra Cooper," Mike said. "They're likely to flop you back to street patrol in Harlem for taking your cues from blondie."
The NYPD's deputy commissioner of public information would have to advise his boss on this decision. News of a murder on the Upper East Side was a story with legs. Give out an essential clue that might only be known to the killer-the use of actual silk stockings instead of cheap panty hose-and it might blow the chance to score solid points when it came time to interrogate suspects. But if Mike was right and the original serial rapist had escalated to murder, not warning people about this more frenzied attack could prove to be a fatal error.
"The commish is screwed either way. Letting everyone think this new kill is part of the task force operation gives us more wiggle room to work the case quietly," Mercer said. "The murderer will think he's got us duped."
"Mind if I finish this?" Mike asked, reaching over and taking the food Teddy Kroon had left behind. Murder rarely affected Mike's desire for something to chew on. "You know I hate it when Mercer sides with you. But this time, just on some nitwit literary hunch? It almost takes my appetite away."
"It's not her hunch."
"What then?" We both looked at Mercer. His chair was tipped back against the wall, but his long legs were planted firmly on the floor.
"The teeth. It's the skeleton's teeth," he said.
"How so?"
"Well, Andy Dorfman gives us an age on those bones that wouldn't be so different from Emily Upshaw's age today-forty-three years old-if the other woman had lived. And her teeth suggest that in the last few years of her life she spun out of control-like a drug addict or alcoholic who didn't get any medical or dental attention."
"You two are beginning to scare me," Mike said.
Mercer ignored him. "The skeleton lady and Emily Upshaw- we know she sucked the bottle a bit too much way back then- might have moved in the same small world."
"Yeah, well, that's like telling me it's a quarter of the population of this or any other big city. Dope, alcohol, people who are scared of the dentist's drill. Both of you are leaping to conclusions that seem pretty absurd."
I looked at my watch and yawned. "What do you say we carry this discussion forward on Monday, when you get an autopsy report on Emily? Mercer and I have to finish up in the grand jury and file our John Doe indictment on the rapist. And Mike, can I ask a special favor? No leaks this time."
"Nevermore, blondie. Nevermore."
The Nineteenth Precinct was only a few blocks from my apartment. Daylight was just beginning to break on this next-to-last morning of January as I walked home at about 7A.M. Sanitation trucks blocked the cross streets as they loaded huge piles of green plastic trash bags into their bellies, gypsy cabdrivers honked to get my attention as I jaywalked across Third Avenue, and what was left of the snow and ice that skirted my path was now coated in soot. The doormen were huddled in their long uniform coats, with hats and gloves, grudgingly opening the door to let me in. I picked up the Sunday paper from the mat in my hallway, went inside to undress and climb into bed.
I slept until noon. After I had called Battaglia to alert him about the murder of Emily Upshaw and the question about whether it was part of the recurring rapist's pattern, the rest of the day was a lazy mix of reading the Times, catching up with friends and family by e-mail and phone, and rearranging my closets. There were empty spaces and shelves where Jake had kept clothes and toiletries and books, and I tried to fill the gaps-constant reminders of the breakup-with things of my own that I had moved back then to make room for him.
On Monday morning, a light dusting of snow fell as I hailed a cab to go down to the office. I spent the first hour drafting the indictment of the Silk Stocking Rapist for Laura to type, so that it could be signed by the foreman of the afternoon grand jury and filed with the court. Brenda Whitney, in charge of media relations, came in to discuss all the relevant facts so that she could prepare a statement for Battaglia to release to the press. Since there was not yet an arrest, I needed an unsealing order to make the news public. Completing the essential paperwork
was as time-consuming as prepping the case.
"Got time for a headache?" Alan Vandomir asked as he knocked on my open door shortly after ten.
"Another one?"
"A little lighter than what you were dealing with all weekend." Vandomir was one of the best detectives in Manhattan's Special Victims Squad and I liked working with him. "I want you to hear this story-we'll make it as quick as we can."
"Bring it on."
He walked to the waiting area across the hall and returned with a teenaged girl dressed in a lavender velour warm-up suit and chewing on some sticks of red licorice. Vandomir motioned her to one of the chairs in front of my desk and sat next to her while he introduced us and got her to start talking.
Seventeen-year-old Darcy Hallin told me she was a high school student on Staten Island and had been dating a classmate for the first half of senior year. She was tall and big-breasted, with frizzy blonde hair. She went into the details of their sexual relationship, which included the assurance that they had protected sex. Most of the time.
"Last month I missed my period, and then I started getting sick and stuff, so when I told my boyfriend about it he said he had an uncle who could solve the problem."
"How?"
"That he was a doctor. That he would-you know-take care of things for me. So Friday I went to his office."
"Where?" I asked, to make sure that whatever event brought her to me was something over which I had jurisdiction. "In Manhattan?"
"Yeah. But I don't know the street. Somewhere in midtown," she said, smiling at Vandomir and waiting for him to agree with her. "Right?"
"What happened at his office?"
"First thing he did was make me undress."
"Was there a nurse in the room, or any kind of assistant?"
"Just Dr. Foster and me."
"Did he give you a gown to put on?"
"No. He told me to take all my clothes off and put them on a chair."
"Have you ever had a gynecological exam before?"
"Nope."
"Did the doctor know that?"
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