Fairstein, Linda - Final Jeopardy (36 page)

“When you’re done there, will you come on up to Eighty-second Street?
They’ll be starting with the line-ups, so there’s no need to rush. I’ll beep you to call it off if he’s not talking. The guy’s a predicate, so maybe he’s smart enough to keep his mouth shut. Give me a call if you get anything hotter than this, okay?” Predicate felons criminals with records of convictions for serious offenses often were savvy enough not to make admissions that would help sink them before a jury.

I ran out the door and had jumped into a taxi by the time I got to the corner of Worth Street, prepared to creep along the Drive uptown at the height of rush hour to get to my apartment. I brushed past the doorman, skipped the mailbox, waited with several of the neighbors to get on the elevator, and was inside my bedroom and stripping off my work clothes in seconds. I changed into a pair of jeans, a tailored shirt, and a blazer for the long evening of sitting on coffee-littered desktops and making notes while propped against dusty file cabinets. No need for a pocketbook I clipped my beeper onto my belt and stuffed cash into my jacket so I could send out for food and soda for the crew working on the case throughout the course of the evening.

My turn-around time was less than twenty minutes. I thought about calling David’s office to see if he had studied the faxed version of Cordelia Jeffers’s letter, but when I looked at my watch and saw that it was a few minutes after seven o’clock, I didn’t want to risk calling just as Jed arrived to meet with him. Instead, I left a message on David’s home machine, explaining where I would be for most of the evening and that I would try to reach him orne if I had any free time at the station house.

I went back downstairs and out onto the street, grabbed a yellow cab and directed the driver across the Eighty-fifth Street transverse to Columbus Avenue, and got out at the corner of Eighty-second to walk the short distance to the Twentieth Precinct. The uniformed cop at the front desk stopped me as I entered the building, so I identified myself to him and walked up the two flights to the Special Victims Squad, which had come to feel like my second home during the past few years.

Every felony sexual assault that occurred on the island of Manhattan was referred to this little outpost of seasoned professionals.

When I reached the landing, I pushed open the heavy fire doors that separated the ugly brown-tiled stairwells from the dilapidated office space of the thirty-year-old squad.

The place was electric with the activity that accompanies a break in a major case. Detectives in every shape, size, and color had been pulled in from days off and borrowed from other details to help round up victims, witnesses, and the stand-ins or fillers needed to be the ringers in the line-up array with the defendant. Every shirtsleeve was rolled up, every collar was open, and the handful of ties I could see were unknotted and worn in the loose crisscross fashion on of the detective world. esti “Hey, Wallace, Cooper’s here,” I heard a guy I didn’t es as recognize call out in the direction of the sergeant’s office. 3gger Mercer appeared in the door frame and waved me ;r the in. I started to offer my congratulations, but he talked best over me.

“The captain is really pissed off. Stay out of h her his way.”

“At me? What did I do? I just got here.”

“He did not like your order about the perp walk. Thinks you’re just doing that so that Battaglia can get the press release instead of the PD. He’s mad at me for letting you know about it so early didn’t want me to call you till we’d wrapped everything up tonight.”

“What a fucking baby he is. I can’t believe you gave me up on that.

When is he going to learn that it’s just the wrong thing to do at this point in the case? That’ll be like the last pattern he messed up.
Didn’t want to call us for a search warrant so he gets the suspect to sign a consent. The judge threw out the whole thing all the evidence said once he was cuffed and asked for a lawyer, he couldn’t consent to anything. C’mon, what’s been going on since you called me?”

“First I had to accompany Mr. Mont va leto the men’s room so he could relieve himself. There’s a fuzzy birthmark on his thigh all right, just to the southeast of his penis, the way Katherine Fryer had described it.”

“Great. Get a photo of it before he gets to Riker’s and somebody tells him to paint it green.”

“Already done. Now, we’ve also got most of the people we need. The couple from the attempt this morning, they’re here. We reached Miss Fryer. Detective Manzi just left to pick up the first victim, and the third one’s on her way in from Westchester with her daughter. She moved out of town after the rape. I think we’re only missing one. No answer at her house, so we may have to do her down at your office next week.”

“Everybody in separate cubbyholes?”

“Yeah. We’re using the juvenile room and the detective squad on the second floor. None of the witnesses will see any of the others before the line-up. I’m telling you, you’ve got us all pussy-whipped, Cooper.
We’re doing this exactly the way you want us to,” Mercer laughed.

It was important that the victims who were going to view the array were separated before the identification process. In the old days, I had watched many of them cross-examined about the police procedures. When brought to the station house in the same patrol car or kept in the same waiting area, the conversation invariably turned to the only thing the women had in common: their assailant.

“What did your guy look like?”

“The man who raped me had a mustache.”

“My attacker had an accent.”

“No, I think mine was taller than that.” The defense could argue to the jury that the witnesses recollections were enhanced by each other’s descriptions, and it became difficult to tell what each woman remembered before she talked with the others. It took three times the manpower to escort each one in individually, and every empty closet in the building became a holding place for a nervous witness before the procedure got underway. But it would all hold up in court.

“How do the stand-ins look?”

“See for yourself. You can take a peek in the viewing room. Glad it was such a beautiful evening not like last night’s rain. Lots of mopes hanging out on street t on corners who’re happy to help out for ten dollars from the stic captain.” Most of the time the cops scoured parks and playgrounds ?ge to find reasonable facsimiles of the suspects similar size, the weight, skin color, hairstyle. Drug treatment centers and homeless shelters were also good places for fillers, eager her to get the ten spot for a guarantee that they wouldn’t be arrested for a crime, even if they were picked out by the victim. A couple of hours’ work, standing in the room with the perp and holding a number in front of their chests, and then walking out with the funds for a bottle of Thunderbird or a couple of vials of crack.

The squad had a regular line-up area, which consisted of two separate rooms, connected by a ‘two-way mirror.“

Montvale and five stand-ins would be in the larger one, with a couple of detectives standing inside the door to monitor his behavior and make sure he didn’t say or do anything inappropriate. He would be allowed to pick his position one through six and each man would hold a large square sign depicting his number in front of his chest.

All the men would be able to see as they faced forward was a large glass mirror, reflecting the image of the array.

Mercer, each witness, and I would be in the small room on the other side of the glass. We would take the victims in one at a time, darken the room, step them up to the glass and ask them to look at the men, who could neither see nor hear them. From our side, the mirror functioned as a window. Each woman would examine the array and tell us whether or not she recognized anyone in the room, and if so, what number identified him.

I stepped inside to check out the assembled group of skells.

“Nice going. I hope none of these guys walk out of here when I’m leaving tonight. Wait a minute, Mercer.

Number three. Make him go to his locker and change out of his uniform pants and shoes, will you. It’s a dead giveaway.“

In typical fashion, one of the fillers was a cop from the Twentieth Precinct. But once the Legal Aid attorney saw the photograph of the line-ups, he would argue that detectives had placed him there on purpose, still in half of his uniform, to make the selection even easier for the women.

Mercer yelled into the open door of the other room.

“Yo, number three. You got jeans and sneakers in your locker?

The fashion director wants you out of those brogues and your nicely creased navy blue pants. Move it.“

“I tell you, he’s as frightening-looking as those other guys you got off the street.”

“They can’t all be as good-looking as I am, Cooper. You want to see Montvale?”

“Yeah. Might as well.”

We walked down the hallway, past the captain’s closed door, and stood in front of the small cell which held a single prisoner. William J.
Montvale was sitting on the narrow wooden bench that ran across the back wall of the barred area. His arms were crossed, his legs were outstretched and apart, and his face broke into a wide smirk when he saw us approach.

“Is this my district attorney, Mr. Wallace? The one you been promisin‘ me? You’ll excuse me if I don’t stand, won’t you, ma’am, but I’m havin’ myself a very bad day.” I had my look and turned to walk away, as Montvale called to Mercer, “She’s better-looking than that fat pig who tried my case in Jersey, but I bet she’s no Marcia Clark. What d’ya think, Mr. Wallace?”

It was going to be a pleasure to send Montvale up on the river. stic In the background the phones were going like crazy.

So me cop who owed a favor had undoubtedly leaked gger news of the arrest to a reporter and calls were coming in r the faster than they could be answered. best “Can we get this thing underway?” Mercer asked one her of his teammates, who was coordinating the arrival of everyone we needed.

“I’d like to get these women out of here before the news trucks sit down at the door like vultures.”

“Ready to go. We’re just waiting for you to get Montvale in the room.”

Mercer left me and went back to pull the defendant out of his cell. His wrists were cuffed behind his back and Wallace had one of his own enormous hands wrapped around the rapist’s upper arm, leading him with a firm grip into the area with the five stand-ins. He was whispering in Montvale’s ear, telling him as I had heard him do so many times that if he moved one motherfucking muscle or did so much as cross his eyeballs after Mercer uncuffed him and while those women were looking through the window, he could expect to be sporting a new asshole before the end of the evening.

While I stood outside the room, Mercer offered Montvale his choice of numbers for the line-up. He selected the fourth position, and all of the other men switched the cardboard figures around at Wallace’s order and held them on their laps as they were asked to sit in a row of chairs. The instructions were that upon command, the group would rise to their feet, each man would approach the mirror one at a time and face it directly before turning his profile to the viewer, and then they would return to their chairs and be seated.

Wallace stationed two of his teammates in with the prisoner, took several Polaroid photographs of the array to use for the pretrial hearing, and called to his sergeant to bring us the woman who had been attacked earlier this morning. I waited for her in the hallway outside the captain’s office, then quietly introduced myself to her and explained the procedure that would follow.

“I’d like you to come into this room with me and Detective Wallace.
Please don’t be scared, we’ll be right next to you. You’re going to look at six men through a glass window. You can see them and hear them, but they cannot see you, I promise. We’ll turn out the lights and I’ll ask you to take a good, close look. I’d prefer that you don’t say anything to us until after you’ve seen each of them up close. Then I’ll just ask you three or four questions, and it will be all over. It won’t even take two minutes. Are you okay?”

Mrs. Jeter appeared to be a few years older than I was. She was understandably tense and nodded in compliance as I went through the steps.

“Can’t my husband be with me?”

Mercer was gentle and reassuring.

“In a minute, ma’am, we’ll have you right back to him. But he’s a witness, too, so each of you has to do it separately. I’ll be right beside you.
Nobody’s gonna hurt you.”
She let us lead her into the small viewing space and I stood her near the window as Mercer switched off the lights. She gave a slight gasp:
“Oh my, it’s so dark, and reached out to grab onto my hand as she peered into the glass. I let her hold it and rested my other arm on her orne shoulder to offer comfort. As the six rose to their feet and the first one walked esti toward the mirror, I could see Mrs. Jeter’s eyes scanning es as the row.

“My God, I see him it’s number four. That’s ogger the man who was in my apartment this morning, that’s ;r the him.” Her hand squeezed mine as though they were being best crushed together by a steamroller. h her She was perfect. She knew exactly who she was looking for and didn’t even have to wait for the motley crew to parade in front of her one by one.

Wallace asked her to go through the rest of the process anyway, and to study each of the men as closely as possible.

She did, but kept repeating, “I don’t have to I know it’s him.”

As Mercer took her out the door on the far side of the room, so she wouldn’t intercept her husband or the women who had not yet viewed, she reached up and kissed him on his cheek, telling him how grateful she was that he had made the arrest so quickly.

“I’m a very lucky woman, I know that. And thank you.”

He turned and gave me a thumbs-up.

“The first hit is always the best. Nice and solid coming out of the box. We got him, Coop. Let’s keep going.”

I backed out of the room and motioned to the sergeant to send Mr. Jeter up to us. An old uniformed cop who looked as if he could count the minutes to retirement and had been assigned to man the telephones walked through the rear of the squad.

“You had a couple of calls since you got here, Miss Cooper. I didn’t know you was up here.”