“Because of his ethnicity. Just that?”
The father was silent. He avoided making eye contact with Mercer.
“Or was he ever violent toward Corinne? Did she mention any inappropriate behavior?” I asked. “I mean when she broke up with him.”
The choice of separation by one partner is the leading cause of violence in a dating relationship, when the other one doesn’t want to end the connection. Repeated efforts by the victim to escape the escalating attacks led to fatalities with astounding frequency.
“Nothing like that.”
“Do you know what he does for a living?” I asked.
“I—I don’t.”
“Was he ever in the military?” Mercer asked, with mounting urgency.
“I wouldn’t know,” Thatcher said. “But look here, why are you so interested in the man she dated?”
“We have to check into everyone in Corinne’s world,” I said. “Friends, coworkers, people she might have been intimate with.”
The likelihood that a young woman was killed by someone she knew—rather than a stranger—was tremendous.
“I’ve met the man our daughter was dating,” Thelma Thatcher said softly, lifting her head.
“You’ve what?” her husband said, practically shouting at her.
“His name is Paco.”
“When did this happen?” Bill Thatcher asked.
“In the spring. I came into the city to have lunch with Corinne.”
“You know how I felt about this. You betrayed me, Thelma. You’ve made a fool of me.” Thatcher’s face turned beet red as he tried to restrain his anger.
“What can you tell us about him?” Mercer asked.
“That Corinne liked him very much. That he was quiet and didn’t speak a lot,” she said.
“Details,” Mercer said. “We’re going to need as many details as you can give us, Mrs. Thatcher. We’d like to try to find him tonight.”
“You need to call my son. He has more information than I do. I just remember Corinne telling me she had ended the relationship because her friend—because Paco—was angry. That he was angry all the time.”
Bill Thatcher looked more puzzled than Mercer and I. “She told you all this?”
“Why was he angry?” I said. “Did Corinne tell you the reason?”
She nodded her head up and down as more tears streaked her cheeks. “Paco’s brother had come back from Afghanistan. He lost both legs. His tank was blown up by an IED.”
“That’s a good reason to be mad.”
“He didn’t hurt her, Mr. Wallace.”
“But she told you Paco was always angry.”
“That was her world, Detective. Good people, but many of them damaged, many of them struggling, many of them deeply unhappy. This boy wasn’t taking out any hostility on my daughter,” Thelma Thatcher said. “He directed his anger elsewhere.”
“Do you know—?”
“Paco’s brother isn’t a citizen of this country. He joined the army to fight in this war and came home without his legs and half his face missing. Corinne told me she couldn’t get her friend to focus his—his venom, she called it—into something more constructive. Paco’s anger, according to Corinne, is directed at the president of the United States.”
ELEVEN
“You can’t be that unhappy to see me,” Mike said.
“Perfect end to a truly miserable day,” I said, closing the door to the conference room of the morgue shortly before 7:30 P.M. “You here to top it off?”
Mike’s feet were up on the long table. He had obviously been examining autopsy and crime scene photographs. Mercer and I had just put the Thatchers in a patrol car for the ride home. I didn’t imagine there would be much conversation on that long, sad drive.
“The commissioner thinks I’m presidential material. I mean, not presidential but—”
“I wasn’t confused for a nanosecond. He’s asked you to be part of the task force when the feebies show up.”
“Scully heard that the dead girl’s wacko ex—”
“Nothing to suggest Paco is wacko, okay?”
“What did you feed her that’s got her snapping at me, Mercer?”
I raised my arms and held them out to both sides. “You guys talking about me? So very sorry. I’m just out of sorts ’cause I’m so distressed about Mrs. Chapman’s health.”
“Relax, Coop. She’s doing much better.”
I looked for the slightest sign of deception or discomfort in Mike’s demeanor but saw neither.
Mercer didn’t skip a beat. “I called Corinne’s brother. He’s got—”
“Do you mind giving us a few minutes, Mercer?” I asked.
He looked at Mike before he answered me. “You can have whatever you want, Alex, but this doesn’t seem like the time—”
Mike took his feet down and sat up straight. “I’ve got no secrets from Mercer, kid. You got a beef with me, shoot.”
I stared straight at Mike. “If you don’t mind, Mercer. Five minutes.”
He turned and saluted me before walking out of the room.
“Don’t go acting all crazy on me, Coop.”
“You know I adore your mother, Mike,” I said. “My father helped you get her the best doctors, the best care when she was first diagnosed. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for her.”
“And she’s coming along fine. I just told you that.”
“You also told me that she’s in ICU for a few more days of observation.”
Mike’s expression didn’t change. “Like I said. So what’s got you so smoked up about my mother, Coop?”
“Just the fact that I went to visit her in the hospital—”
“Whoa. No visitors but family.”
“Excuse me. She always says I’m just a shadow away from family. I went to say hello to her this morning—just a smile and to blow a kiss—perk her up a bit. Funniest thing is, she wasn’t there. Not this morning. Not this week.”
“So—”
“So your bullshit is wearing thin with me, Detective Chapman. I don’t care that you make a fool of me, but just give it to me face-to-face. Are we done?”
Mike was talking over me. “What hospital did you go to?”
“What does that matter? She wasn’t there.”
“Where?”
I was overtired and overwrought, practically wringing my hands to keep them from flailing while I talked. “Lutheran. The Medical Center.”
“Well, that’s the problem.”
“No, I’m obviously the problem, Mike. What is it? Margaret’s always been treated at Lutheran. Why are you being so—so evasive? It’s about us. It’s about me, isn’t it? It’s not about your mother at all.”
“I got no issue with you, Coop.”
“Then what?”
“Don’t go crying on me, okay? Just dig those two chunky central incisors—the uppers, right there in the front of your mouth,” Mike said, stepping toward me and grabbing my shoulders tightly. “Just dig those two big teeth into your lip. Thatta girl. Bite down.”
I looked at Mike. I wanted him to put his arms around me and explain the long absence and the nonsense about his mother.
“Not here, Coop, okay? I know that look in your eye. Don’t even think about it,” he said, releasing me and taking two steps back, running his fingers through his hair. “Not in the morgue, okay? Creeps me out to think about even touching you while we’re a hairbreadth away from an autopsy table.”
“I wasn’t thinking about touching you.”
“Sure you were,” he said, flashing that irresistible grin. “You wanted a piece of me, didn’t you?”
“Where is your mother? Would you just tell me that?”
“You never heard of HIPAA Security Rule?” Mike said, still clowning around.
“HIPAA, my ass. I’m not violating Margaret’s privacy by asking where she is.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Just your privacy, Mike. Am I violating that?”
“Li
sten to me for a minute, Coop,” he said, turning dead serious on a dime, leaning on his arms on the table between us. “When are you going to understand that I would sooner stick a shiv between the fifth and sixth ribs on the left side of my chest cavity than—”
“You mean, the place where most people have a heart? Are you able to say the word ‘heart’?”
“—than hurt you. Do you get that?” he asked, jabbing a finger toward my face. “Will you ever get that?”
I inhaled and looked down at the table. “I don’t think you’d do anything—intentionally—to hurt me.”
“What did you just say?”
“You heard me.”
“It’s not enough for you, is it?” Mike said. “For Christsakes, we’re in the morgue, Coop. My testosterone kind of chills down in here. It’s about all I can give you right now.”
I picked my head up. “Then just tell me where Margaret is.”
“Margaret is under a doctor’s care. You want to see her on Sunday? Come to church with me.” Mike had taken his mother to Mass whenever he could for as long as I’d known him. “We let heathens in.”
“Can I visit with her?” I asked, softening my tone.
“Course you can.” Mike walked around the end of the table and stood face-to-face with me. “Sometimes you just have to trust me, kid.”
“Hard to do when you go off the way you did for so long. Hard to understand.”
“What happened to the gray matter up there?” he asked, tapping the side of my head. “Asleep at the wheel?”
“Distracted.”
“Use your brain, Coop.”
“If I think too much, it takes me to a bad place,” I said. “It’s one thing to have a three-week rip, but then a vacation on top of that?”
Mike hesitated before speaking. “Scully’s giving me a big break, taking a real chance. You think I just disappeared on you? Is that what you think?”
“I don’t exactly have a choice, do I? Or has there been another temptress?”
Mike threw back his head. “Just because your peepers are green, kid, don’t fall into that trap and become some green-eyed monster. There’s no other woman. No competition.”
“What then?”
“Scully sent me on a mission, okay? If I tell you about it, I’ll have to kill you,” Mike said, grinning at me as he walked back toward the chair he’d first been sitting in.
“You’re killing me anyway.”
“Will you give me a week?”
I shook my head. “Tell me now.”
“No can do.”
“I see,” I said, walking toward the door. “I’m supposed to trust you, but you can’t—”
“It’s not me. It’s the commissioner,” Mike said, pivoting to cut me off at the door.
“Scully trusts me implicitly.”
“He thinks you have too many friends. That you gossip.”
“That I—I—?” That one was hard to dispute.
“We’ll have this all out, Coop. Believe me. Next week.”
“What about Saturday night?”
“We’re still on.”
“But you won’t tell me your secret?”
“It’s not mine to tell.”
“So your mother? That’s all some line you fed me?” I put my hand on the doorknob.
“Keep your temper under check, Coop. I wanted her out of harm’s way,” Mike said, gripping my wrist and pulling it off the knob. “Very same place I want you.”
TWELVE
“So you were starting to tell me about Corinne’s brother,” Mike said to Mercer.
“Yeah. He’s as broken up as you might guess. Pug’s going to talk to him. Corinne’s brother gave us all the contact information for Paco, as well as his family. Rocco’s got somebody going out to pick Paco up. Did you divine anything from the photographs, Detective?”
“Corinne’s not talking to me yet, Mercer.”
“Dead girl winds up in the very hotel where the president is coming to stay, and her ex-lover has a grudge against the top dog.”
“That’s a major leap to make,” Mike said, reaching for the remote control and turning on the television set hanging above the whiteboard across the room.
“Well, we’ve got a major case and nothing else that even smells like a clue,” Mercer said, throwing his pad on the table and pausing to look at the pictures. “Turn the volume down before you wake the dead.”
For as long as I could remember, Mike had an addiction to the Final Jeopardy! question on the popular long-running television show. The location didn’t matter—morgue or steak joint, crime scene or courthouse—he’d find a way to the nearest television and tune in to test his own bottomless well of trivial information against whoever was in his company.
The three of us bet against one another every time we were together. Mike’s strength reflected his deep knowledge of all things military—and, like me, great affection for old movies and Motown music. Mercer’s upbringing by a single father who was a mechanic at Delta Air Lines had infused him with a love for world geography and modes of transportation, even in the most remote locales. I had majored in literature before law was ever a career path I’d considered, so I knew a lot about works from Beowulf and The Decameron to the romantic poets and Victorian novelists.
“That’s Alex Trebek rattling the bones downstairs in the autopsy room. Not me,” Mike said. “And don’t tell me ‘not I’ again, Coop, like you’re always doing. I can see you’re in that kind of mood—grammar police on patrol.”
“I gave that business up while you were away. Can’t change the spots on this leopard, that’s for sure.”
Mercer laughed. “Wolverine. I told you wolverine.”
“I get the feeling I’m missing something here.” Mike unmuted the television as Trebek stood in front of the board with the final category.
“Twentieth-Century Words,” the TV host said. He repeated the category, and as the three contestants picked up their pens to write the question down, Trebek reminded viewers that there were new words entering the lexicon all the time. “Your Oxford English Dictionary won’t help you with this one, I don’t think.”
“I’ll throw in my twenty bucks,” Mercer said, “but this has Ms. Cooper written all over it.”
“Just because the kid’s got a sharp tongue doesn’t mean she’s on top of all the street jive. I’m good for twenty.”
The category screen disappeared and was replaced by the Final Jeopardy! answer, right after I had agreed to join in with the guys.
The answer appeared in the giant blue-background box on the screen: COINED IN 1979, THIS WORD MEANS ROMANTIC ATTRACTION THAT RESULTS IN MANIC, OBSESSIVE NEED TO HAVE FEELINGS RECIPROCATED.
Mercer started to laugh again as Mike’s feet dropped to the floor with an exaggerated bang.
“How stupid could I have been, Mercer? Of course she knows this.”
“Don’t go there, Mike,” Mercer said, wagging a finger at him.
“I wouldn’t have the slightest idea what the word is or what Mike is talking about,” I said, picking up my case folder. “And now I’m really hungry and I need a stiff drink.”
The first two contestants drew blanks, as had I.
Mike pointed at the screen, as if trying to get the attention of the third player. “C’mon, lady. What is Coopster-itis? It’ll be in all the psych write-ups before too long. Emphasis manic. Emphasis obsessive.”
“None of you have this?” Trebek asked, then tsked them for not knowing the question. “Not even venturing a guess?”
“What is limerence?” Trebek said, repeating the word twice.
Each of the contestants groaned.
“Obsessive love, folks. An infatuation that’s not necessarily reciprocated,” the host continued. “Coined in 1979 by a psychologist named Dorothy Tennov,” Trebek said. “I guess that was a tough one.”
“I got to say, Coop, that’s a word right out of your playbook.”
“Never heard of it.”
&nbs
p; “But you live it, girl. Infatuation. Not necessarily reciprocated. Like first there was this investment banker type, then the newscaster dude, then the Frenchman with the frying pan.”
“You are so close to the fire, Mr. Chapman,” I said, “you might get scorched if you don’t keep your mouth shut.”
“Don’t knock my girl off her game,” Mercer said, crossing behind Mike as he tried to playfully muzzle him. “I need her positive energy beaming in on finding a killer.”
“So buy us dinner,” Mike said, flashing his best grin at me. “I’m all tapped out after being suspended without pay for three weeks. Oh, and then there’s the dimes I blew on the rest of the vacation.”
“Dinner it is,” Mercer said. “That’ll give Rocco’s guys time to get to the Bronx and see if they can bring Paco in for questioning. I can flip back down to talk to him after we eat.”
“Let’s shoot up to Primola,” I said. My favorite Italian restaurant was on Second Avenue near 64th Street, a ten-minute ride from the morgue and an atmospheric world away, part of the Upper East Side scene. The food was consistently good and the staff took great care of me and my friends. “I’m obsessing about prosciutto and figs and maybe a half order of pasta. Positively manic about it. My limerence for food is so much more rewarding than a romance.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Mike said.
“Now that’s a joke. You’ve probably sublimated more with food than anyone on the planet,” I said.
“Another twentieth-century word I’m not familiar with. Sublimating? What are you suggesting, exactly?”
“She sort of means you eat all the time instead of hooking up with the ladies,” Mercer said.
“Guaranteed less agita in chowing down,” Mike said. “Anyway, I don’t have my car.”
“Neither do I. Mercer’s the wheelman.”
The three of us said good night to the security guard and walked around the corner to Mercer’s car. I climbed into the backseat and rested my head. Mercer filled Mike in on our day, including my story about Raymond Tanner.
We parked near the restaurant and were greeted at the door by the owner, Giuliano. The bar was crowded and busy, packed with well-dressed Upper East Siders who liked the scene as much as they enjoyed the food.
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