Terminal City (Alex Cooper)

by Linda Fairstein

  “You’ve got it all. I’ll be working out of the Waldorf for the next few days. I’m going to grab Ryan Blackmer to second seat me on this.”

  “Regular updates, okay?”

  I walked out the door, told Rose where I’d be, and headed across the corridor to my office. Laura Wilkie, my longtime secretary, was already fielding calls.

  “I guess you never made it to dinner with your law school buddies last night, did you? I saw you behind Scully on the late news.”

  “Slight detour on the way to the restaurant.” Five of my closest friends from the University of Virginia tried to meet once a month. Tales from the civilized lands of mergers and acquisitions, corporate litigation, estate planning, and mogul management were occasionally trumped by an intrusive felony.

  “Did you ever get fed?”

  “Watered is more like it. I’ll survive.”

  “You’ve already got some messages,” Laura said, following me to my desk and handing me the slips with numbers written out. “And Mike, too. You must be glad he’s back in town.”

  “Over the moon,” I said. I knew my dry delivery would disappoint Laura, who was Moneypenny to Mike’s droll James Bond imitation.

  “Guess I’ll keep my nose out of that one,” she said. “Do you have plans for the day, after the nine thirty court appearance?”

  “Setting up shop with Mercer and Pug at the hotel. Could you please hunt down Ryan and see if he’s available to work with me on this case? And ready me a folder to take along when I leave. Ask Catherine and Marisa to check cold cases for a throat-slitting rapist, maybe someone who sketches ladders on the bodies.”

  “A fireman? A house painter?”

  I groaned.

  “Just trying to be useful.”

  “I count on that. Tell them, too, to start checking SVUs in all the big cities for anything like this. A guy who might conceal a body in a piece of luggage.”

  “I didn’t see that fact in the Times.”

  “Keep up with the tabloids online. They’ll get the best leaks.”

  “Will do.”

  “Check with McKinney’s secretary. Find out when he’s back from vacation.”

  My direct supervisor, chief of the Trial Division, was a prickly colleague named Pat McKinney. A total ass-kisser to the district attorney, he was most often found at my back, ready to plunge a knife if he thought I was being favored by the boss.

  “You’re good for two more weeks.”

  I smiled at Laura. “That’s a relief.”

  I gathered the case file and got on my way to the thirteenth-floor courtroom of Judge Alvin Aikens. He’d been newly appointed by the governor and was still feeling his way through the practicalities of his judicial role, after more than two decades as a Legal Aid attorney.

  The large room was practically empty when I walked in at 9:25 A.M. The defendant, Gerardo Dominguez, was seated in the front row beside his mother. He was dressed in a dark suit and tie. Like many of the psychos I had prosecuted for sexual assault, the thirty-two-year-old looked benign and respectable when not searching cyberspace for his prey.

  I took my seat at counsel table in the well of the courtroom. My adversary, David Drusin, was also prompt. He slapped his client on the back and ushered him to the defense table. I took Dominguez’s measure, since it was the first time I saw him in person, and turned away only when he met my stare with a smile.

  “All rise,” the chief court officer said. “The Honorable Alvin Aikens entering.”

  Aikens took the bench, signaling us to be seated. He appeared still to be self-conscious in his black robe, tugging at its folds as he pulled his chair into place.

  “Ms. Cooper, Mr. Drusin. Good to see you both. You’ll forgive me if I haven’t quite found my groove yet.”

  “Just so long as you don’t let the district attorney walk all over you, sir. Those spikes she’s got on can leave quite an impression on your rib cage.”

  “Mr. Drusin doesn’t tread so lightly, either, Your Honor. I’m sure we’ll all do fine.”

  “Shall we call the case into the record?”

  The clerk leaned back in his chair. “People of the State of New York against Gerardo Dominguez.”

  “You may sit down, Mr. Dominguez,” the judge said. “Counsel, would you two like to come up and discuss this with me.”

  Drusin started to move to the bench.

  “Actually, Your Honor,” I said. “I’d like all of this to be on the record. No disrespect intended, but it’s not the proper case for a sidebar.”

  “Jesus, Alex,” Drusin said, slapping his palm on the table directly in front of his client. “Why does it always have to be hardball?”

  The court stenographer threw up her hands. “What is it, guys? Are we on or off?”

  “On, please. This isn’t hardball, Mr. Drusin. It’s just that there will be no secrets on this one.”

  “What have we got here?” the judge asked.

  “It’s an arraignment. It’s an unsealing of an indictment on the charges of Conspiracy to Commit the Crime of Kidnap in the First Degree and Illegal Access of a New York State Database.”

  “Just a chance for Alex to grandstand, sir. I’m sure she’s alerted the press hounds to be here any minute now.”

  “I arranged your client’s surrender, didn’t I? No media, no perp walk. Totally under the radar. There’s not a prayer of a reporter showing up here.”

  “What’s the fuss, then?” the judge asked. “Sounds like serious enough charges. Let’s get Mr. Dominguez arraigned and then you two can go at it.”

  The clerk read the charges from the indictment, now public record. Dominguez pulled on the collar of his shirt and shifted his feet. When asked how he pleaded, he opened his mouth and practically shouted, “Not guilty.”

  “Are you requesting bail, Ms. Cooper?”

  “Yes, Your Honor. We’re asking for one hundred thousand dollars.”

  “Have you lost your mind, Alex?” Drusin said, now feigning total outrage. “Judge Aikens, my client is a police officer.”

  “What?”

  “He’s a cop. Gerry’s a cop. Ten years on the job.”

  “Suspended, as of the unsealing of this indictment, Judge. Suspended without pay.”

  “He’s got roots in the community, then, wouldn’t you say? Family?”

  David Drusin flung his left arm in the direction of Dominguez’s mother. “Right here in court with him. He’s got an eighteen-month-old baby to support. His father’s sick—”

  “The baby lives with him? He’s got a wife?”

  “Mr. Dominguez has a lovely wife, Your Honor,” I said. “Unfortunately for him, she’s the complaining witness in my case. She has the baby and she’s in a very safe place for the moment, but I’d like the bail set to ensure his return to face these charges.”

  “What’s the allegation, Ms. Cooper?”

  “Judge,” David Drusin jumped in. “I’ve got to object. There’s no need to make a spectacle of this man. May we approach?”

  Alvin Aikens motioned for Drusin to step up, but I held my ground. “The courtroom is empty, but for the defendant’s mother, the arresting officer, and some stragglers from the rest of your calendar. Both the district attorney and the police commissioner have asked that all of our remarks be recorded.”

  Aikens didn’t know which way to go. “What are you charging? Where are the coconspirators, Ms. Cooper?”

  “Mr. Dominguez is a sexual sadist, Judge. He has been seeking advice online and then communicating with two others who were arrested last evening—one in Westchester County and the other on Long Island—about how to abduct, torture, rape—”

  “Don’t say it, Alex, okay?” Drusin interrupted. “You sound nuts. Leave it off the record for now.”

  “Wait a minute. Your client’s trolling online f
or live victims to boil in oil and I’m nuts?” I said. “Judge Aikens, what Mr. Drusin would rather whisper in your ear is that Dominguez was conspiring to rape, kill, cook, and eat the women he targeted.”

  The judge took a deep breath, Dominguez clasped his hands together and looked at his shoes, while behind me I could hear his mother sobbing. Most perps had a family full of collateral victims.

  “Are you serious?” Aikens asked. “You think you can prove this?”

  “Your Honor, Alba Dominguez was one of her husband’s intended victims. It is she who found the evidence on their home computer, in Washington Heights. Hundreds of photographs of dead and mutilated women—”

  “He’s a police officer, Judge. They’re crime scene photos.”

  “The defendant walks a beat on the Lower East Side. They’re not his work product, if that’s the angle you’re taking. There are scores of pictures of women being sexually assaulted, there are chats—we have all the transcripts of them—that have sickening details of what these three men planned on doing, and there are even recipes that involve the preparation of human meat.”

  “We’re talking thought control here, Your Honor. Alexandra Cooper is the standard-bearer for what men are allowed to think? If that’s the case, it’s going to be a pretty restricted airspace, because her view of sexual norms must be as healthy as someone who’s lived a lifetime in a cave,” Drusin said, thoroughly wound up in his spin. “Maybe Ms. Cooper doesn’t understand that men—that men, uh—like to fantasize, and in the privacy of his own home, my client was fantasizing . . .”

  With Mike Chapman’s latest episode of lying to me, I was beginning to think that there was some truth to my inability to understand men.

  “When one of his coconspirators was arrested last evening, at his security job at a shopping mall in White Plains, the man assumed he was meeting with a Dominguez victim-in-waiting, rather than the female undercover agent who showed up,” I said. “That defendant brought to the engagement a Taser gun, rope, a meat hammer, duct tape, and cleaning supplies in his backpack. That’s taking fantasy to a new level, Judge.”

  “These are death fetishists, Your Honor,” Drusin said. Apparently, he thought his argument would help his client’s case. “It’s just fantasy role play, and the tools—none of which are illegal to possess, I might add—just bring a little spice to the stories they tell each other.”

  “Alba Dominguez thought her husband was serious enough about his plans to kill her, and to make good on his threats to boil her body in a pot of oil after dismembering her, that she took their baby and fled to relatives who live on the West Coast before reporting this to our office. She had the additional fear of not being able to call the local precinct because her husband is a police officer. She came directly to us instead.”

  “Your Honor, my client’s record with the NYPD is unblemished. He’s had commendations for bravery, he’s taken the test for promotion, and at the base of all this is the fact that he just wants to clear his name and get his job back. He wants to be a cop.”

  “He was a cop, Mr. Drusin. What he wants is to be a cannibal. Maybe a cannibal cop.”

  “You’re way out of line, Alex Cooper,” Drusin said, turning to see if any reporters had entered the courtroom. “I mean, that comment is just screaming to make you the poster girl for tonight’s headlines. Is that what you want? Dragging my client into the gutter with you?”

  “Tonight’s headlines are taken, David. Some girl who wasn’t quite as fortunate as Mrs. Dominguez didn’t get away from the guy who was fantasizing about doing her harm. Your client won’t even be a footnote in a crime story.”

  “Hold off, you two,” Judge Aikens said, banging his gavel repeatedly. “You just asked me to set one hundred thousand dollars bail, Ms. Cooper, am I right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The defendant’s mother’s sobs rose up again over the sound of my voice.

  “I think that’s inadequate, actually, for the facts that you’ve laid out and the idea that coconspirators have been identified and arrested. I’m going to set bail in the amount of two hundred fifty thousand, and of course there’ll be an order of protection for the wife and child, in the event he posts that bail. How much time do you want for motions?”

  “You can’t prosecute people for their thoughts, Alvin. I mean, Judge Aikens. Have you lost it, too? That’s what she’s trying to do here. Next time some poor slob thinks about getting an erection, Alex’ll probably slap cuffs on him. That’s what we’re coming to?”

  “It sounds like Ms. Cooper thinks she can prove that your client took the overt steps necessary to go from thinking about criminal activity to committing a crime.”

  “Man, Alvin, it didn’t take you long to go over to the dark side. Six months ago you would have been standing right where I am, making these arguments even more ferociously than I am.”

  “Don’t make this personal, Mr. Drusin. Not toward your adversary nor to me. May I have dates for a motion schedule, please?”

  “Set whatever dates you want. I’ll have a motion before you by Friday asking you to dismiss the indictment. You remember the First Amendment, Judge, or did you leave your copy of the Constitution in your desk back at Legal Aid? You might want to get ready to give some thought to that one. And don’t think out loud because Alex will try to control your decision.”

  “Did you hear me say I don’t want this to get personal, Mr. Drusin?” the judge asked.

  “Tell that to Alex. To Ms. Cooper. It’s all personal to her.”

  I shook my head. David Drusin didn’t like to lose.

  “Some guy threatens her life—or at least she fantasizes about that, if I’m not mistaken—and because my client made one mistake in his distinguished career, Ms. Cooper gets this professional hard-on—”

  “Watch yourself, Mr. Drusin,” the judge said, pointing a finger at his friend.

  “She takes this professional hard line, Your Honor. That’s all that I was going to say. She goes after my guy for some imagined mind game just to punish him, making it look like legal eagling, because it personally affected her. My next motion is going to be to have you recuse her from the case, if she lacks the good sense to do that herself.”

  “I have no idea what he’s talking about, Judge.” I was getting short with David Drusin. He had no business making up nonsense to spin the court.

  “No idea, Alex?” Drusin said, stepping toward my table, wagging a finger in my face. “Raymond Tanner. That name doesn’t ring a bell?”

  That name was capable of stopping me cold, and Judge Aikens saw the freeze.

  “Who’s Tanner?”

  “A rapist, Your Honor,” I said. “A man I prosecuted several years ago, who—”

  “Who was found not guilty. Cooper’s been wrong on more than one occasion.”

  “Not guilty because he’s insane, Your Honor. He’s not only extremely dangerous, but he’s crazy, too. He escaped from a locked psych facility on a work release.”

  “And threatened your life, Ms. Cooper?”

  I had no idea what Drusin knew about Raymond Tanner or why his name had come into this. I glanced over at Dominguez and saw that he was sneering at me. In June, when Tanner attacked a woman in Central Park, he was sporting a bold tattoo on the back of his hand, inked for him in the psych ward, that read KILL COOP.

  “That’s the least of it. He’s on the loose and responsible for at least two rapes—maybe three—since June. This has nothing to do with the case before you, so I’d ask you to disregard Mr. Drusin, who—for the record—seems to be foaming at the mouth . . . and—”

  “You know damn well, Ms. Cooper, that Officer Dominguez did a stop-and-frisk in late July. That he did his job well, that he resisted racial profiling, and that he happened to let Raymond Tanner slip through his fingers. My client did the right thing, and because of that you and the department have
been out to get him.”

  “I have no idea what David is talking about, Judge.” I was stunned and started to move to the bench to get the Tanner information off the record.

  “You wanted this all preserved for the commissioner, Alex,” Drusin said. “You stay right where you are. No going sidebar on my client now. I’ll give you some words to think about.”

  I had subpoenaed Gerardo Dominguez’s personnel files from NYPD Legal. There was no mention of this stop in any of the papers.

  “There’s simply no truth to the connection that Mr. Drusin is trying to make.”

  “Calm down, Ms. Cooper,” Alvin Aikens said.

  “I’m perfectly calm,” I said, resting my left hand on the table to stop it from shaking. “Mr. Tanner has been the subject of an intensive manhunt by the NYPD. Someone at headquarters would have brought this to my attention immediately had there been a sighting of Tanner and a mistake by Officer Dominguez. And most especially if there was anything more sinister in this coincidental connection between the two of them.”

  “There she goes again, Judge. Another of her wild imaginings. The queen of would-be mind control,” Drusin said, fishing in his briefcase for a slip of paper. He found it and passed it to the court officer to hand to Aikens.

  “May I see the document, Judge?”

  “You have a copy for her, Mr. Drusin?” the judge was frowning at me now.

  “No, Your Honor. I didn’t think you’d take this nonsense seriously.”

  “It’s the two-fifty, Ms. Cooper,” Aikens said, referring to the name of the report officers must file after a stop-and-frisk that didn’t result in an arrest. “July thirtieth of this year, signed by Police Officer Gerardo Dominquez, after he detained one Raymond Danner, who was carrying some kind of pipe—not a per se weapon, not against the law to possess—that he dropped to the ground on the officer’s approach. Looks like Mr. Dominguez got the spelling wrong.”

  “How convenient for Mr. Danner.” I suspected that once the 250 form was entered electronically in the police data bank, the dots had been properly connected by other descriptive information—including the distinctive tattoo—and the point made that the dangerous escapee had been fortunate in his close encounter. “The pipe has long been Tanner’s weapon of choice. Unfortunately, this is the first I’m hearing about the stop.”