Terminal City (Alex Cooper)

by Linda Fairstein

  “One more thing,” I said, stepping back into the elevator with the Metro-North guard. “Our killer was in this elevator shaft, so you’d better hurry up with that list of key-holders you’re looking for.”

  “How can you tell?” Mike asked, doubling back to study whatever I was looking at. “He didn’t drop anything. There’s nothing on the floor.”

  “Where’s the best place to look for prints in an elevator?” I asked.

  There was the clear outline of a fingerprint on the call button of the old cab, right on top of the letter D, which would have taken the man down. We didn’t need powder to bring its detail into focus. It was patent—obvious to the human eye—not latent.

  “My bet is that it will match the profile of the man who cut himself in the suite at the Waldorf Towers.”

  Mike was trying to push me aside so that he could see the smudge himself. “What if anyone else pushed the same button after that? Impossible to get a clean lift.”

  “No one can get in this elevator,” the guard said. But I wasn’t listening to him.

  “This one’s in blood, Mike. Get someone from the squad over here to lift it ASAP. It’s a fingerprint highlighted in the blood of the man who killed Corinne Thatcher, and it’s giving us his escape route.”

  THIRTY-ONE

  The three of us practically raced back to Grand Central in the afternoon heat, moving south on Park Avenue, caught in the early exit of many professionals also heading to the terminal for their weekend getaways.

  Rocco Correlli was waiting for us in the stationmaster’s office. We took over Don Ledger’s desk after learning that he was resting comfortably at New York University Hospital and would be released after twenty-four hours of observation.

  “I need you in the next room, Alex.”

  “Sure. What’s up?”

  “The Tsarlev girl’s roommate just got in. We need you to calm her down and get the story.”

  “Of course. Was Ryan able to reach Corinne’s parents and brother?”

  “Yeah, but so far there’s no obvious connection. Not by age or neighborhood or school or job. Total disconnect.”

  “That only fits if he’s picked them at random, Rocco,” I said, “and there’s way too much overkill for that to be.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Rapists rape. Over and over again when they get good at it. They don’t usually kill unless it’s a grudge against a particular vic they know, or the woman resists the attack, the guy goes nuts and ups the force.”

  “No resistance from a woman like Thatcher, who’s been drugged.”

  “Not to mention a master plan with three murders perfectly orchestrated.”

  “Three, so far.” Correlli was constantly popping candy in his mouth in place of sucking on a cigarette inside the terminal offices.

  “Tell your guys to keep working with Ryan Blackmer. They’ve got to drill down a few levels to find the common denominator. Feed him whatever they get so he stays on top of it,” I said. “Where’s the roommate?”

  “C’mon,” he said, walking me out to an even smaller office a few doors down.

  He knocked and opened the door. A sullen-looking young woman was sitting at a small table with her head on her crossed arms as though napping. She lifted her head when I stepped inside.

  “Hi, I’m Alex Cooper. Thanks for coming into the city on such short notice.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “I’m an assistant district attorney. I work on sexual-assault cases with the police. And on homicides.”

  “Like SVU?”

  “What?”

  “Like the TV show. The Special Victims one.”

  “Yes, except this is real.”

  “Way cool. I love that show.”

  “I’m so very sorry about your friend. About Lydia.”

  She rubbed both eyes with her fists and yawned at me. I thought she’d been crying, but she was only tired. I didn’t know why the lieutenant thought she needed calming down. She didn’t seem the least bit agitated. “We weren’t really close or anything, but thanks.”

  “What’s your name?” I pulled out the chair opposite hers and sat down.

  “Jean. Jean Jansen.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Nineteen.”

  “Do you mind if I ask you some questions about Lydia?”

  “Sure. But I don’t know that much.”

  “Do you go to the same college as Lydia?”

  “Yeah. Westchester Community. It’s a two-year school.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “My family lives outside of New Haven now, but I grew up in Yonkers, so I wanted to come back here to go to school.”

  “You have a lot of friends from this area?”

  “Sure.”

  She was slightly overweight, with pudgy arms extending from the T-shirt she was wearing that proclaimed her love for the Kings of Leon.

  “You shared an apartment with Lydia, is that right?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “So you must have been somewhat friendly.”

  “Friendly, yeah. But not like good friends. My roommate from first semester didn’t come back to school, so we got together on Craigslist ’cause I needed someone to split the rent.”

  “I see.”

  “What can you tell me about her?”

  Jean Jansen was picking the remains of an iridescent blue polish off her nails. “Like what do you want to know?”

  “You understand that Lydia is dead.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Murdered,” I said, hoping to get the girl’s attention, even though she’d heard the story on the news. “Her throat was slit, Jean, from ear to ear.”

  She never took her eyes off her stubby fingers. “Gross.”

  “That’s all you have to say about it?”

  “I mean, I’ll go to the funeral. It’s just totally gross she died like that.”

  “We’re trying to find out why someone would want to kill Lydia,” I said. “So if my questions spark any sort of answer that might help us—no matter how crazy it seems to you—just tell me what you’re thinking.”

  “Okay.”

  “The police found Lydia’s student ID, but there were no other papers with it. Nothing that tells us any more about her.”

  Jean was silent.

  “Well?”

  The girl looked at me. “Well, what? Was that supposed to be a question?”

  Score one for the Sullen Teens team. I wanted to light a fire under her, but it didn’t seem likely I could ignite it.

  “When did Lydia move in with you?”

  “It was February. A couple of weeks after the second semester began.”

  “Did you share a bedroom?”

  “No. The place is small, but we each have our own room.”

  “Did she have a computer?”

  “The cops already searched the place. Tore her room apart looking for stuff,” Jean said. “Lydia had a laptop, but it isn’t there. Neither is her phone. She took them with her when she went.”

  “Went? Went where?”

  Jean Jansen shrugged. “To get herself killed, I guess.”

  I sat straight up, surprised by the young woman’s nonchalance.

  “You think that’s what Lydia did? Get herself killed?” I asked, spacing those last three words and barking them out, for emphasis.

  “I mean, I don’t really know. I don’t want to be here, Ms. Cooper,” she said, showing emotion for the first time. Unfortunately, it was about herself. “My boyfriend is already so pissed off that I called the hotline.”

  “Why? What you did has helped us enormously. It’s going to prove a huge benefit to Lydia’s family.” I’d save the boyfriend’s problem for a later question.

  Jean l
ooked at me quizzically. “Oh, really? Where’s her family?”

  “We know she’s a foreign student. We were hoping you could tell us about them. About where Lydia is from.”

  “All I know is what she told me, and we didn’t talk that much. I know she’s from Russia.”

  “That’s a good start. Do you know what part of Russia?”

  Jean flaked off a good-sized piece of nail polish, which landed on the floor next to my sneaker. “I can’t remember that, if I ever knew.”

  “We want to call her parents before they see this on the news or on the Internet. We could send the local police to her house, and it would be a much more humane way for them to learn about this tragedy.”

  “That’s a good idea. But you’ll have to find her computer to figure out where her parents are. I know she Skyped with them every week or so.”

  “Okay. That’s helpful,” I said, even though the laptop and cell phone were not among the trophies the killer seemed to have saved. Pictures of prey—especially attractive young women—were usually what these perps held on to, and the ID card with Lydia’s photograph was evidence of that. “How about her friends? Do you know who she socialized with?”

  Jean shrugged again. “We didn’t even go to class on the same campus, Ms. Cooper. All my courses were in Yonkers, and hers were in Peekskill.”

  “Did she have a car?” I asked, thinking of another place to look, another way to track Lydia’s movement in the last days of her life.

  “No way. She didn’t have much money. Lydia took the bus to school, then she worked after class in a coffee shop, I think it was. Took the bus home. Never brought anybody with her.”

  Jean Jansen had gotten most of the blue polish off her nails. Now she was concentrating on expanding the hole in the knee of her denim pants, twisting and pulling at the loose threads.

  “Never?”

  “Maybe once or twice. But she didn’t like my music, so she usually went into her room and closed the door. And my boyfriend didn’t much like her—I mean, like he thought she was very snobby—so that was fine with us.”

  “Your boyfriend, what’s his name?”

  Jean paused for several seconds. “I’ve gotta ask him if he wants me to tell you. He doesn’t want to be involved in this, really.”

  That’s not a choice he’s going to have. “Then help me with a few other things. Did you think she was snobby?”

  Jean looked at me when she answered. “Lydia thought she was smarter than me. High and mighty, a bit. Sometimes I felt it was ’cause this was a second language for her, stuff came out kind of stilted. She usually said what was on her mind, though, which could be kind of annoying.”

  “Can you give me an example?”

  Jean pursed her lips. “Like she was always on me about my weight. You—you’re skinny like she is, Ms. Cooper. Like she was, I mean. Maybe I don’t want to be that way. Maybe I’m happy with how I look. But she was always telling me I couldn’t keep food that she thought was junk in the apartment. That I ought to join a gym. Sometimes she’d even throw out food that I’d left in the fridge, and when I’d call her out on it, she’d say it had gone bad and smelled. Which wasn’t true, by the way. That kind of thing.”

  So far, nothing I’d heard gave rise to a motive to murder.

  “I’m sorry she did that, Jean,” I said. “The couple of times she brought people home, do you remember who they were? Men or women? How recently?”

  “I know there was another Russian girl who was in one or two of Lydia’s classes. She came over a few times. I could hear them laughing a lot from the other room. They’d been Skyping friends back home. You should find her.”

  “Good idea,” I said. “We’ll try to do that. No guys?”

  “Lydia has a boyfriend in Russia. You’d better talk to him, too. She wasn’t dating anyone here, as far as we could tell. She brought one or two guys home, but they were just friends. They stayed for an hour or two and then they left. You know what I mean? Nobody spent the night with her.”

  “Did you meet them, these guys? How recently were they at your apartment?”

  Jean gave the question some thought. “One of them was here about a month ago. Like in the middle of July.”

  “So maybe he knows something about her. Do you know how we can find him? Was he also a student?”

  “She introduced me to him. I know he doesn’t go to our school, because he told me that himself. Lydia and I were in summer school classes, but he looked a little older, and he told me he didn’t go to college.”

  “Was he Russian, too?” I asked.

  “How am I supposed to know?”

  “Did you hear his name, Jean? Did he speak with any kind of an accent?”

  She yanked on another long string and her plump kneecap popped through the gaping hole in the denim. “Just normal is what he sounded. Like from here.”

  “Okay.”

  “They were fighting. Arguing really. Not fighting.”

  Jean was giving this part of the conversation more thought. She stopped playing with her frayed dungarees and looked at me.

  “How do you know that?” I think she sensed my heightened interest in her answer.

  “Because it was the night of the All-Star Game,” Jean said. “You know what that is?”

  “Yes. Yes, I do.” The Midsummer Classic marked the symbolic middle of the Major League Baseball season. It would be easy to put an exact date on the night, if it proved to have any significance in the case. “Could you hear the argument?”

  Jean laughed. “The problem was my boyfriend couldn’t listen to the game because this guy got so loud. He was all like screaming at Lydia.”

  “Do you know what he was screaming about?”

  The girl turned serious again. “Not really.”

  “Tell me, Jean,” I said. “You must have heard something. Some of the words.”

  She was slow to respond. “I think the guy was trying to get her to do something with him. Maybe for him, not just with him. He was yelling that she was wasting her time.”

  “What time? With school?”

  “Not with school, no. They weren’t arguing about school.”

  “What, then?”

  Jean put her elbows on the desk and her head in her hands. “I am so screwed,” she said. “My boyfriend is going to go ballistic about this.”

  “The detectives will explain everything to your boyfriend. Nobody’s going to let you get bothered for talking to us,” I said. “Why were they fighting?”

  “Lydia is—well, she was—all into causes and stuff. Belonged to organizations, she told me, back home and then here.”

  “Political organizations? Is that it?”

  “No. Not like that. She was—what do you call it? An actionist?”

  “An activist? Do you mean activist?”

  “Yeah. For Lydia, it was all about animals. She couldn’t stand seeing animals suffer.”

  “I don’t know who can,” I said.

  “Not just cats and dogs, though. Like all kinds of animals. Lydia told me her mother had been arrested once, back home in Russia. Went to jail because she broke into some laboratory and saved the chimpanzees from the scientists. I mean, like lecturing me that I didn’t stand for anything. That’s why she joined this group.”

  “Is it a club at your school?”

  “Are you kidding? These people aren’t just students.”

  “Does the group have a name?”

  “It must, but I can’t remember it.”

  “Was it PETA?” I asked. “People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals?”

  “Nope. It wasn’t that. I don’t know, Ms. Cooper. I think it was something with the word ‘liberation’ in its name.”

  “Were they planning violent acts, Jean? Is that what you don’t want to say?”

 
; “No way. Lydia was all about nonviolence. It was just saving the creatures. I showed the cops the poster on her wall. It says FREE THE ANIMALS. EXPERIMENT ON ME.”

  “Okay. That’s a good start. That gives the detectives something to work with,” I said. “Did Lydia have animals? Did she have any pets?”

  “She rescued a couple of dogs in the spring. But we’re not allowed to have any in our apartment, so she got them all to good homes, like with other students.”

  “So why was this guy fighting with her if she was doing decent things with her life?”

  Jean shook her head, looking as though she hadn’t thought of it that way before. She almost whispered her answer. “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

  “I think you know more than you’re telling me, Jean. I bet you heard what the guy said.”

  She took a few more minutes to think, pulling her cell phone out of her pocket to look for messages. “Look, could I go soon? I’ve got to be home in time for dinner.”

  “Or what, Jean? What will happen to you?” I said. “Lydia’s dead. You ought to think about what I’m asking you.”

  “The guy must have been some kind of nut, Ms. Cooper,” Jean said. “He used to be in this animal group with Lydia. Like they were buddies, saving their monkeys and chimpanzees and baboons back in the spring. Then something switched off in him, like he was crazy.”

  “Can you explain what you mean?”

  “Only that he was yelling at her that night, during the baseball game. He told her he didn’t care about animals anymore. That it didn’t matter what scientists did to them, if they were cruel or not. That they weren’t people, so what was the difference.”

  “But you said he had something else he wanted her to do for him, right?”

  “Yeah. He kept saying he had a more important plan.”

  “This is really good, Jean. You’re helping us out here,” I said. “And what did he say the plan was?”

  “That’s the part I couldn’t hear, ’cause of the television being on and all that. Or maybe he was just being more quiet when he talked to Lydia about it. The walls are sort of paper-thin, so you can hear way more than you want to.”