The court officer opened the door and the jurors straggled in. From the way most of them glanced at me, I knew they had heard the news about Paige. I couldn't fault them, despite the court's instructions. Several were holding folded newspapers. One of the tabloid headlines was written in bold-faced type above a photograph of the earnest young woman from the Dibingham Partners annual report:WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION-SLAIN.
The judge apologized to the panel for the inconvenience, reminded them of the now ridiculous admonition not to read press accounts involving the case and its witnesses, and excused them until Wednesday morning. I looked straight ahead to avoid making eye contact with any of them as they filed out of the room.
Mike Chapman was sitting in my chair, feet up on my desk, gnawing on a bagel, when I dragged back downstairs to my office.
"Good morning, sunshine. You look like you're in need of a turn in your luck. Ah, the wonders of the automated fingerprint identification system," he said.
"Fingerprints? Where?"
"Queenie's apartment. The lifts we got off the plastic toilet seat. This one'll please you."
"Just give me his name. I'm too whipped to guess."
"Little Miss Sweet Sixteen. Your snitch Kevin Bessemer's child bride, carrying her old mink coat."
"What?"
"Tiffany Gatts herself was inside Queenie Ransome's apartment."
18
"In case you were searching for the lowest common denominator between the two women who were killed-Queenie Ransome and Paige Vallis-looks like the computer found it for you. And I do mean the lowest," Mike said. "Killing that old lady for a long-dead rodent? Kevin Bessemer and Tiffany Gatts."
I remembered the initials on the lining of Queenie's coat: R du R. "Why didn't it cross my mind that the mink could have been hers? R as in Ransome."
" Ras in Robelon," Mike answered me. "Her initials still don't fit the monogram. Why would you think someone living on social security in a Harlem tenement was likely to be the owner of a Parisian-made fur coat, I don't know. We need to talk to that kid."
"Did you check with Corrections? Is Tiffany Gatts still in jail?"
"Yep."
"Who's got her case?"
"Nedim. Will Nedim. Trial Bureau Thirty."
"Call him for me. Tell him to get the girl's lawyer over here as soon as possible. We need to put in an order to produce Tiffany this afternoon, if he can do it that fast. Let's see whether she rolls over and gives us Kevin Bessemer when we tell her she's a suspect in a murder case," I said.
"Usually I'm not so dense. I get lost in the forest, I can follow the trail of bread crumbs to get me out of the woods," Mike said. "Tripping's in Rikers for raping Paige Vallis and beating his own son. Kevin Bessemer's his cellmate. Bessemer waits until the eve of trial and decides to be a snitch against Tripping. On his way to see you, Bessemer stops for some nooky with Gatts, and they're both gone with the wind. Ransome is found dead. Gatts is locked up. Paige Vallis testifies. The Tripping kid disappears. Vallis is killed. But for the life of me I can't think of anything to connect Queenie Ransome to the Vallis girl. You got any bread crumbs to put on my path?"
"Sure. That's why we're going to lean on the weakest link. Get me Gatts. Kevin Bessemer is the only person linked to both cases."
By two o'clock, Mike Chapman, Will Nedim, and I were sitting in my conference room with Helena Lisi, counsel for Tiffany Gatts. I had laid out the new evidence that placed Gatts in the apartment of McQueen Ransome. Lisi had given permission for her client to be picked up from the Women's House of Detention and brought to my office so the two of them could talk about what we had discovered.
When detectives arrived with the handcuffed Gatts, we stepped out of the room so Lisi and the teenager could confer privately.
"Lisi's your vintage, no? Same age?"
She had started at the Legal Aid Society, defending indigent prisoners, shortly before I joined Battaglia's staff more than a decade ago. "Yeah. She and her husband opened their own firm a few years back. Remember him? Jimmy Lisi? They handle mostly low-level crimes, here and the Bronx."
"Hookers and humps?"
"Yeah. Not exactly who you'd hire if Battaglia had you in his sights in a major investigation. Fine for a few nickel bags of dope and a stolen fur that should have been in mothballs," I said.
"Give me a pair of sharp scissors and some elocution lessons, I could make Helena Lisi a contender."
Lisi was short, squat, and pushing forty. She had drab brown hair that hung in straggly clumps below her buttocks, pinned in place from the front by a black velvet headband. Her accent called up some remote part of Brooklyn, and was aggravated by a dreadful, constant whine that cut through me like a saw.
"I'll take her just the way she is," I said. "If she had any more serious clientele than she's got, and she couldn't plead them out before trial like she does ninety-nine percent of the time, I couldn't make it through from opening to summation. The voice just wears me down."
"You think Helena is pelican division?" Mike asked. He'd had a running gag for years, creating something he called the CPD-Chapman's Perpetrators' Dictionary-filled with street lingo for criminal justice situations. Lawyers appointed by the court were selected from a panel monitored by the Appellate Division of New York's Supreme Court, and the word "appellate" had become universally bastardized by defendants, who referred to it as the "pelican division."
"An arraignment and criminal-court plea with Helena Lisi would probably fit fine in Mrs. Gatts's budget. Check with Nedim. I'd guess the mother paid for a private lawyer for her little girl."
We were interrupted by Laura, my secretary, who told me that the judge's clerk wanted to speak with me. I picked up the phone on a nearby desk and punched the extension. "Hello? This is Alex Cooper."
"Judge Moffett asked me to give you a call. Dulles Tripping's foster mother just phoned. The boy is back at home, safe and sound."
"What a relief," I said, resting my forehead in my hand. "Thank God that's been resolved successfully. Any idea where he's been?"
"Upstate with friends is all we've been told. Moffett's going to give you a few more days. He's putting the case over until next Monday-a week from today. He wants the boy to settle in at home, and then you can arrange your interview for the end of this week, when he's had a chance to calm down."
"Thanks so much. Has the judge told Peter Robelon yet that he's going to allow me to interview Dulles? And the boy's lawyers?"
"Hey, Alex. Between the two of us-are we off the record?"
"Sure."
"Well, don't get your hopes up. I overheard him talking to Robelon about the kid."
"When?"
"Just now. Peter Robelon called to make sure that Mrs. Wykoff got through to Moffett with the news. I heard him say that the mistrial was a lock. He's giving you the extra time to humor you, and to get some kind of transition set up for Dulles, so that he's not returned to his father without controls and some kind of monitoring in place. But don't knock yourself out on your research, Alex, 'cause there's not a prayer in hell that Moffett is letting you go forward with your case."
"Thanks for the heads-up," I said. Good news, bad news.
Helena Lisi stood in the doorway. "May I come in?"
Chapman stood and pulled up another chair. "Take a number."
"I don't need to sit, Alex. I've advised Tiffany not to cooperate with you." Lisi's voice scratched like fingernails on a chalkboard.
"I'm really surprised. You've explained the new evidence to her? You told her she's looking at a murder charge?"
"D'you tell her that if Coop sends her up the river for slaughtering an eighty-two-year-old woman, P. Diddy'll be Puff Great-Granddaddy by the time she sees daylight?"
"I don't look at it that way, Detective. You don't have anything on Tiffany. She and her mother used to live on the same block as the deceased. Any of the kids will tell you she was in and out of Ms. Ransome's apartment all the time, just like the rest of them. Tiffany
carried her groceries, helped her with laundry-"
"I'm talking a fresh set of prints, Ms. Lisi. Not old, not smudged."
She ignored Chapman and kept talking to me. "Actuarially, Alex, McQueen Ransome's life expectancy wouldn't have been-"
"What did you just say?" Mike asked.
"I said that if you look at an actuarial table for African-American women in the United States, living below the poverty level, you'll find that the average life span-"
"That is the single most stupid remark I've ever heard in my life," Mike said. "You're gonna stand in front of a judge at Tiffany Gatt's arraignment and ask for bail because Queenie would have dropped dead someday anyway? I'd like to take that hideous hank of hair you use for toilet paper and wrap it around your throat for about ten minutes, nice and tight so you can't breathe too good. Maybe when I let go it'll open up some of the arteries that are supposed to be feeding your brain."
"You want me to advise my client to cooperate with someone who talks to me like this?" Helena asked. "Her mother already thinks you're railroading her daughter, Alex."
"Fingerprints in the deceased's apartment and Ms. Ransome's coat on her back. It's a compelling combination," I said.
"What about the coat? The lady was hardly aristocracy. Explain to me how Ransome's name matches up to the monogram in the coat."
I couldn't.
"Maybe she bought it at a secondhand shop," Mike offered.
Helena Lisi ignored him. "I told Tiffany everything. She doesn't want to talk to you and that's all there is to it. Can you get her back to Rikers before dinnertime so she doesn't miss a meal?"
I followed Helena across the hallway and into the conference room, where a female detective and her partner were guarding the teenager. As I entered the room to give them instructions to return the prisoner for lodging, Tiffany clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth, letting out an audible "tssssh" at the sight of me. She murmured to her keepers, "What the bitch want?"
I told the team to get started back to the jail. As they directed Tiffany to stand up and placed the cuffs on her, she kicked against the table leg with the toe of her sneaker.
"I ain't got nothing to say to you, so don't be bothering my lawyer again, you hear?"
"Tiffany," Helena said, flicking her hair off her shoulder, "don't speak another word."
"I can say whatever I want. She don't control me. I don't want to be in her office, I don't want her to be in my face-"
"Stop talking, Tiffany," Helena said. "I want you to be quiet right now."
"Shit. My mother paying you, lady. Don't you tell me to shut up. You working for us now."
"I'm asking you to be quiet, Tiffany, because I know what's best for you. I'm your lawyer."
"Yeah, but that bitch ain't," the girl said, jerking her head toward me.
"There's no reason to be saying anything," Helena again cautioned her agitated client.
Tiffany looked up at me as the detectives tried to pull her along. "You can't prove no murder case on me, sweetheart. By the time I got to that ol' lady's house, she was already dead."
19
"How many times have you heard that one before? 'I was counting on killing Queenie, but she was already dead when I got there,'" Mike said, mocking the girl.
I didn't dismiss Tiffany Gatts's denial as easily as he did. "It's one thing when you get that kind of statement thrown at you from somebody who's been through the system a few times. This kid's just flailing around like she's been hung out to dry. Maybe it's the truth."
"Don't go all soft on me, blondie."
"No danger of that. But she must have convinced Helena in just those ten minutes in the conference room that there was nothing to worry about on a murder charge. Helena didn't even try to cut a deal or offer to flip the kid."
"So maybe Tiffany waited outside on the stoop while Kevin Bessemer went into the apartment and killed Queenie. That still fits with the old lady already being dead when she got inside. She's playing with you, Coop."
Laura opened the door. "Were you expecting anyone from the FBI?"
"No."
"Two agents here. Say they need to interview you."
I waved them in. An attractive young woman in a smart gray pinstriped suit was accompanied by an older man. He looked like a central casting hire for a federal agent, while she looked like she had stepped out of the pages of a fashion magazine.
"Claire Chesnutt," she said, extending a hand to each of us and palming her identification for us to examine. "This is my partner, Art Bandor."
Chesnutt explained that they were assigned to try to identify the man impersonating the late Harry Strait, and needed to interview me about him.
"I don't know very much."
"We understand that. If you don't mind, it would be important if we separate you two for this conversation. You saw him, too, didn't you?" she said to Chapman.
"Let's go into the conference room," I said to her. "Mike can use my phone while he's waiting his turn."
I walked Chesnutt and her silent partner back across the hall and told them everything I could remember about my conversation with Paige Vallis.
"Did she tell you how she met the man who called himself Strait?"
"No."
"Did he ever show her any ID?"
"I have no idea. Not that she mentioned to me."
"Why did she believe he was CIA?"
"I'm sorry," I said to Chesnutt. "I never had the opportunity to explore these questions with her."
What the agent wanted most was a physical description. I closed my eyes to try to re-create the visual of the man I had seen in the rear of the courtroom. I was giving a description of the generic white male of average height and build. "Again, I apologize. Somehow it's always so embarrassing to be on the reverse side of this process."
Chesnutt had a nice manner. "I know you didn't have much of an opportunity to make an observation. You don't need to explain."
"How much of a problem is this identify-theft stuff?"
"It's becoming a bigger and bigger issue for us, since the Internet has made it so much easier to do, but it's been around forever. Used to be, people checked cemetery headstones for birth and death information, then created documents to go with the name of someone who was dead and buried. Now we get guys hacking into files or accounts on-line, getting everything from social security numbers to credit card information. They don't even have to leave home to do it."
"Why Harry Strait?" I asked. "What kind of work did he do for the CIA?"
Chesnutt smiled at me. "Frankly, I don't know."
Even if she did, she certainly would not have told me.
"Has someone tried to impersonate him before this?"
"Unfortunately, Ms. Cooper, I'm here to ask questions. Not answer them."
I took her card, in case I remembered any other details, and switched places with Mike Chapman.
"Don't get comfortable," Laura said. "Battaglia wants you." Scooping up the phone messages from her desk, I kept on walking, into the executive wing. Rose Malone signaled me straight in to the Boss.
"Sit down," he said, removing the cigar from his mouth. "First thing I want to know is how you're handling this. The girl's death, I mean."
Battaglia's exterior was ironclad. It was rare he engaged in a conversation about emotions, but he was keenly aware of the personal toll this job could take when a tragedy hit close to home. Occasionally, when I needed it most, he responded with a question or piece of advice that suggested he knew exactly the depth of my own turmoil.
"Maybe I'll stop second-guessing myself in a couple of weeks. Right now it's tearing my guts out. Paige Vallis's death, the prospects of the boy's future-it's all ugly. You get anything for me?"
"Promise me you'll watch out for yourself, Alex. When this is resolved in a week or two, take some real time off and-"
"I've just had a two-week vacation, Paul."
"Hardly. Prepping for trial. Why don't you and Jake get out of town fo
r a while?"
I nodded my head. Battaglia had such a sixth sense about people, and now I knew he was fishing to see whether our relationship had stabilized, to check on whether I was getting the appropriate support on the home front. "Good idea, boss. You hear back from the DA in Virginia?"
The cigar was wedged back in place, and the conversation was carried on out of the other side of Battaglia's mouth. "No question that case file his assistant sent you was whitewashed. National security and all that bullshit. You wonder how some of these guys get elected in the first place."
He looked down at notes he had scribbled during a telephone conversation with the prosecutor about the burglary case during which Paige Vallis had confronted the intruder in her father's house.
"Let's see," he went on. "The man who was killed was named Ibrahim Nassan."
"The cops told me that Saturday night."
"Egyptian-born. Twenty-eight years old. Been in the States less than two years."
"Was he really al Qaeda?"
"He spent some time in one of the training camps. Only way they know is that they searched his apartment after his death. Rented a single room in a boardinghouse in Washington. Pretty bare, except for a computer. Found some e-mails that connected him to some other known terrorists, but nothing to indicate active involvement in any trouble here in the States."
"Any family?"
"No," Battaglia said. "One of those kids who came from an upper-class background. Parents were merchants, father was educated at Oxford. Rebelled somewhere along the way, for no obvious reason."
"So, this intrusion into Paige's father's house is really linked to the work Mr. Vallis was doing for the CIA?"
"Well, they never established that, either. An educated guess. You know nothing was taken during the burglary, right?"
"Yeah, 'cause the perp never got out of the house," I said. "Do they know what he was looking for?"
"They claim not to have any idea." Battaglia shuffled his notes and kept reading. "Victor Vallis. Career Foreign Service. Sounds like he'd been posted all over Europe and the Middle East."
The Kills Page 16