“He’s got a special way with words, Mike. Just charmed me right back to the office.” I reached up and kissed him on the cheek. “Thanks for picking me up.”
“Never learned to travel light, did you?” he said, taking my oversize duffel and large wheeling bag from me.
“You might want to dump the sign. Madame Gil-Darsin will be coming through right behind us. She’s having her ‘Do you know who I am?’ moment with customs.”
“Sweet. She might do better if they don’t know.”
“I take it the DNA match is today’s update?” I said as we headed for the exit.
“Confirmed by the lab this morning. The
Post
hasn’t tweaked yet to half how good the guy’s mojo is, Coop.”
“What do you mean?”
“We just picked up the surveillance tapes from the hotel. He had another woman with him for a nooner that same day. The card swipe clocks her arrival, and she left—hair all tousled and clothes messed up a bit—just after two
P.M.
, a few hours before he jumped the bones of our vic.”
“You know who she is?”
“They’re working on it. We should have her ID’d by morning. Meanwhile I’m fielding all the calls from the senior set. Everybody wants to know Mo’s secret.”
“Secret what?”
“The man is fifty-eight years old. He had a tryst at noon and was loaded for bear again at five. Don’t you listen to those ads, Coop? If it lasts more than four hours, give your doctor a call.”
“Beside the Viagra jokes, is any serious work getting done on this case?”
“Wait till you see the war room McKinney’s set up,” Mike said, grabbing my arm as we reached the curb, then letting go to point out Kali, being rushed to a waiting limo by the pair of bodyguards who’d met her inside.
“Any real progress?”
“Hey, Sunday’s take from the media and the defense sympathizers was that a sexual assault could never have happened. MGD was rushing to meet his daughter and catch a flight. The accuser must have made the whole thing up. The old ‘he said, she said’ crap. Today’s DNA results level the playing field, don’t they? Now he can’t claim nothing happened or that he wasn’t there with her, can he? The perp’s legal eagles have to shift their argument to consent.”
“Here’s where it really gets ugly, Mike. Now the defense will want us to believe that she asked for it.”
“You must have come lights and sirens all the way from Paris,” Pat McKinney said when I entered the conference room with Mike shortly before seven o’clock Monday evening. He was standing at the head of the long table, flanked by the team of prosecutors and investigators he had patched together to work on the case. “Welcome back.”
“Thanks.”
“You want to take over the hot seat? I’ll step aside.”
“You’re in charge, Pat.”
The lawyers and cops seated between us were studying the interplay. McKinney ruled by fear, often mocking the young assistants who reported to him. I never understood why Battaglia tolerated that kind of leadership, so I worked hard to keep our personal animosity from spilling into public view.
“I guess that’s it, Mr. Chapman,” McKinney said. “You wanted to play taxi driver and bring Alex to us, but now I think we don’t need your services any longer.”
Mike didn’t have a real role in this investigation or any reason to argue with McKinney. “I got places to go, people to see,” he said, with his hand on the doorknob.
“Sit yourself down over there,” Mercer said to Mike. He pointed to an open chair next to June Simpson, one of the best senior prosecutors in the Trial Division. Someone had convinced McKinney that neither he nor his girlfriend Gunsher could handle a trial that was difficult to any degree, and although June didn’t have a sex crimes background, she was a great choice for the team.
“Getting crowded in here, don’t you think?” McKinney said.
“I want Mike in this,” Mercer said, his deep voice underscoring the sense of control he exercised when he was in charge of matters on the police side. “I want his ideas, his experience—”
“Of course,” McKinney said, “a team misogynist to give us some balance on the victim’s story. Now, why didn’t I think of that?”
Ellen Gunsher laughed, June Simpson and the two paralegals cringed, the Sex Crimes assistant—Ryan Blackmer—just looked wide-eyed at McKinney, and Mercer smacked his palm on the table, causing everyone to jump.
“Catch you later, Detective Wallace,” Mike said, waving to Mercer as he backed out the door. “And, Pat, if you think leaving your wife for some stolen moments with the yellow rose of Texas here is a gift to the women’s movement, you’re not firing on all cylinders.”
“Okay, children,” I said. “Let’s all get in the sandbox and hunker down together. Looks like we have a long haul ahead. Mike, why don’t you stay and—?”
“I’m on again at midnight. Mercer can pick my brain whenever he chooses. I’m outta here.”
Mercer didn’t need to speak his contempt for Pat McKinney. His expression said it all.
“June, would you ask my secretary to call the DA?” Pat said. “He wants to be in on today’s briefing.”
As June Simpson stepped out, I walked to one of the open spots at the table, sat down, and introduced myself to the paralegals I hadn’t met. Mercer passed me the case folder he had prepared for
me with copies of all the police reports, medical records, employment history, and media clips.
“Was the victim in today?”
“Yeah,” Mercer said. “We had her all day yesterday, what with the first report to uniform, then interviews with the outcry witnesses at the hotel.”
“Treated?”
“Sexual assault forensic examiner at Bellevue. Plus a victim advocate who explained everything to her. That’s when I got called in.”
“Does she have a name?” I asked.
“Blanca. Blanca Robles,” Mercer said.
It was illegal in New York for law enforcement personnel to release identifying information about a rape victim to the public. The American media wouldn’t tag her by name. It was the first time I’d heard her name, and I rolled it off my tongue. Within hours, the European press would print it, and if they could come up with a photograph of Blanca, they would use that as well.
“Who interviewed her today?” I wanted to hear Ryan’s name. I wanted to know it had been anything except a group session.
McKinney barged right in. “Ellen and I talked with her. Ryan sat in. One of the paras took notes. And Mercer, of course. I didn’t get the idea to bring June in on this till just a couple of hours ago.”
“Five on one? Not the way we usually make our witnesses comfortable.”
“You know how it is on these major cases, Alex. Nothing goes according to plan. I needed to explain the process to her and tell her what we expect of her this week. The tabloids are hounding her like crazy. They’ve already found out where she lives. The Witness Aid Unit is working with Safe Horizon to relocate her.” McKinney was talking as though he did this kind of victim advocacy all the time, rather than his administrative duties.
“The interview. Pedigree and case facts. Ryan did that, right?” Rape cases were like no other kind of crime. You were asking a woman to reveal facts about the most intimate kind of trauma
forced on her, when often she had never spoken of such acts to anyone outside her personal relationships. There was an art to doing this work well, and while we hand-selected and trained our unit assistants, not all prosecutors had the manner to bond patiently—yet firmly—with rape victims and get the full story of what occurred.
One side of Ryan’s lip pulled back. He wanted to answer me but didn’t dare with McKinney driving the discussion. “I let Ellen do it, actually,” Pat said. “Woman-to-woman kind of thing.”
“Ellen? Really?” I looked across the table at McKinney’s lover. “I didn’t think you’d ever spoken with a rape victim before.”
“She’s done some of the most difficult work in this office, Alex. She’s—”
“It’s not the same thing, Pat.” The gender of the cop or prosecutor didn’t matter a fraction as much as his or her sensitivity to the specific issues, an ability to connect to the victim and earn her trust in eliciting nuanced details. “Did you use our screening sheet to get the background and pedigree?”
“I didn’t know there were screening sheets until Ryan gave me one. But I’d already started my questioning, so it was too late,” Ellen said.
The screening tool had been developed when the unit was founded by my predecessor, and it had been fine-tuned over the last two decades. It provided a pretty thorough means of getting information from a witness, including prior arrests, psychiatric history, drug use, any other history of sexual assault—which sometimes colored the way a victim responded to the incident at hand—and a detailed primer that resulted in giving the assistant DA an arsenal of facts before the case debriefing even began.
“We can get whatever information you want tomorrow if you think it’s so important, Alex. Blanca’s a damn impressive witness, I can tell you that,” Pat said. “No question about what happened in that hotel room. Are you skeptical already?”
“Of the accuser?” I asked. “Not at all. I’ve just come from a part
of the world which views these crimes and our system very differently. The French are up in arms about the arrest.”
“What else do you need to know?” Ellen asked. “I mean, she’s obviously a very religious person. She’s widowed, with a teenage daughter. Soft-spoken and demure. Wait till you hear the story of what happened to her in Guatemala during the civil war there. It’ll break your heart.”
“Do you know whether she’s ever been the victim of a crime before?”
“Tomorrow, Alex,” McKinney said before Ellen could answer.
“What do you have on her medical history?” I asked, seeing a reference to a special housing situation in the police reports.
“
Mañana.
Get it? Everyone on this team has been working like a dog, so don’t come in here punching holes in the air like you could have done it better.”
“Good job, then, to all of you. That’s what I should have said first.” A half-assed job was more likely the reality, if I knew Ellen Gunsher’s work, but Blanca Robles had certainly convinced everyone who met her after the assault that it had occurred. Now we needed to get her in to the grand jury and through the gauntlet that had been stirred up by the frenzied media. “I look forward to meeting her.”
“Thanks, Alex,” Mercer said. “We all know what it’s like when a case breaks and you’re a million miles away and all you want to do is come back and work it from the inside with your buddies. I’m glad you’re here.”
June Simpson came back into the room. “Mr. Battaglia needs fifteen minutes.”
“Let’s take a break,” McKinney said. “Back at the table at seven-thirty, all your answers at the ready for the Boss.”
Paul Battaglia wouldn’t micromanage cases in his office—not even the big ones—but he was ruthless about the need to know any bit of intelligence that might connect to something he could use to manipulate a political situation. Ready with answers was exactly what everyone in the room needed to be.
My office was on the same corridor as the conference room. I nodded to Ryan, and he and Mercer ambled out to follow me there.
I went to my desk and sat down. I had missed only two business days, and my secretary had stacked the messages from Friday—a quiet day while I was in flight—along with the enormous pile from today, mostly related to the MGD case.
“I hated to break up your vacation, Alex,” Mercer said.
“Don’t even think about that. You know I’d go crazy over there second-guessing everyone anyway,” I said, smiling up at him, “except you and Ryan. Blanca’s good?”
“Real good. She had the docs in tears yesterday afternoon, telling them her life story.”
“Did you get everything you need from her?”
“We didn’t press too hard on Sunday. Her coworkers believed her, and they’ve known her for three years. Steady employment record. It wasn’t like some woman walking in off the street with no one to vouch for her. The medical team and advocates all thought she presented well.”
“I mean Ellen’s workup today.”
Ryan Blackmer had a great sense of humor. “May I be heard, Your Honor?”
“Sure.”
“It was the most pathetic interview I’ve seen in my six years here. Gunsher has no ear for fine-tuning, doesn’t understand that in a rape case it’s all in the details.”
“Did she let you get into it?”
“I’ve pranked her too many times. She iced me out.”
“Well, that changes in the morning,” I said. “You’re with me.”
“Awesome.”
“Did Gil-Darsin say anything at all?”
“Mike took him off the plane. He was sitting in the first seat on the aisle. Looked up when Mike showed the attendant his shield, sort of grimaced, and went along without a scene when asked to step off. Gracious, pleasant, not a word.”
“Miranda?”
“They read him his rights in the Air France boarding area. Drove him back to the city. Mike tried to schmooze him along the way but got nothing. When they reached the SVU offices and advised him he could make a call, he woke up his lawyer.”
“He already had a lawyer?”
“The suit who handles all his business matters. White-collar crime type, not street stuff. Good mouthpiece. I think his name’s Krovatin.”
“Gerry Krovatin? He’s first-rate. I’ve never gone up against him before. It’ll be a real challenge.”
“No, no, Coop. He’s conflicted out. Runs all the WEB matters internationally, so he can’t rep Baby Mo on this caper.”
“Well, that gives us some breathing time.”
“Rethink that one, Alex,” Ryan said, “because the black panther is roaming back in your sights. You want to see Ellen Gunsher’s knees wobble like jelly, you should have been at the arraignment when Lem showed up.”
The picture was coming into focus now. It was one thing for Mercer to want my help, but clear to me that Battaglia picked up the phone to order me back when Lemuel Howell III entered a notice of appearance with the court.
I let out a low whistle. “What a smart move. The Ivorian economist and rising political star represented by one of the top-tier trial lawyers in the country, who happens to be African American. Lem won’t just play the race card, he’ll have a whole deck of tricks up his sleeve.”