Outrage (4 page)

The only thing rocking his boat at the moment was the impending court battle to make sure that Jabbar served his sentence of life without parole in New York and wasn’t whisked off by the feds into a witness protection program in exchange for information, thus escaping punishment. Even if he could keep Jabbar in a New York state prison for the rest of Jabbar’s life, Karp was still torn over whether the punishment fit the crime. He thought back to some of the discussions he’d had with several of the senior members of his staff over whether to pursue the death penalty for Jabbar.

There was no doubt in Karp’s mind that Jabbar had deserved the death penalty—the victim had been cruelly tortured for hours before her execution, which had itself been painful, horrific, and slow. However, there’d been other considerations. One was that there was no evidence to prove that Jabbar knew
about, or participated in, the victim’s torture—one of the aggravating factors necessary to warrant the death penalty. And two, witness testimony and the evidence clearly showed that the terrorist Nadya Malovo actually wielded the murder weapon; Jabbar had been more planner, facilitator, and cheerleader than executioner.

This had not stopped Karp from prosecuting the anti-U.S. firebrand imam. For his role, Jabbar was just as guilty in the eyes of the law as Malovo. But when deciding whether to seek the death penalty, Karp had to weigh the possibility that jurors would make a distinction between Malovo and Jabbar.

On the one hand, it wouldn’t make a difference; if they found Jabbar guilty but refused to vote for the ultimate punishment, Jabbar would automatically be sentenced to life without parole. However, in the past there had been death penalty cases in which jurors knew that a conviction might subject the defendant to an execution they didn’t believe the defendant deserved specifically because he or she wasn’t the “real killer.” Jurors finding themselves in this position sometimes balked at rendering a guilty verdict. And all it took was one holdout for a hung jury.

Unwilling to take that chance in this case, Karp knew he had to be satisfied with the life-without-parole sentence … as long as it was served in New York. However, if he got the chance, Karp knew he would pursue the death penalty against Malovo, the always elusive, daring, and vicious assassin. She’d been apprehended in Manhattan by U.S. Marshal Jen Capers after murdering one of his star witnesses, Dean Newbury, near the end of the Jabbar trial. But for the moment, it looked like he
wasn’t going to get the chance to prosecute her in a New York City courtroom. She was locked away in a federal maximum-security penitentiary awaiting trial on a variety of federal charges and he couldn’t get at her.

The situation made him uneasy on a personal level, too. Malovo had a grudge against him and his family, and he’d be able to keep better tabs on her if she was locked up in New York.

In the meantime, the Karp-Ciampi household was in a state of flux. His wife was casting about for “something fulfilling” to do as she contemplated the last of their children leaving the home in a couple of years. An attorney herself, she’d recently successfully represented “Dirty Warren,” the vendor operating the newsstand in front of the Criminal Courts Building at 100 Centre Street. He had been charged with murder in Westchester County. Flush with victory, she was considering taking on the occasional case in which she felt an injustice was being perpetrated; however, she wouldn’t take on cases in Manhattan to avoid any perceived conflict of interest with her DA husband.

Meanwhile, his daughter Lucy’s summer nuptials had been postponed—apparently indefinitely. The reason given when Lucy showed up suddenly in New York from her home in New Mexico was that her fiancé, Ned Blanchett, had been called away on “business,” which was code for an assignment with the antiterrorism agency they both worked for. However, Karp had been told by his wife that Lucy was having second thoughts about getting married.

On a brighter note, their twin sons, Isaac and Giancarlo, were at long last going to have their bar mitzvah, a rite of passage
that had been interrupted and delayed by a seemingly constant stream of “mayhem,” as Marlene referred to it. Although a couple of years beyond the usual age for the ceremony, they were now aiming at late summer/early fall.

The boys were currently working on a Jewish history report that the rabbi of the bar mitzvah class was requiring, as well as the traditional reading of the Torah. Karp was pleased that they’d decided to interview his friend Moishe Sobelman, a Midtown bakery owner, about his horrific experiences as a prisoner in the infamous Nazi death camp at Sobibor, Poland.

Karp leaned forward and pressed the button on the intercom again, smiling as he did at Marlene, a petite beauty with dark curly hair who carried herself with a grace and charm that still enraptured her husband. “Send her in, I guess,” he groused good-naturedly. “And thank you, Darla.”

“You’re welcome, Mr. Karp,” his receptionist said with a tone that indicated she would have rather told the visitor to take a hike.

The door to the office opened and a tall, redheaded Valkyrie in a lime-green dress blew into the room like a force of nature. “Very funny, Karp,” Ariadne Stupenagel said, rolling her eyes at Marlene. “You really know how to make a girl feel welcome…. Oh good, I see that your only redeeming feature—your wife—is here.” She crossed the room and embraced Marlene, giving her a kiss on each cheek that left a smudge of her trademark crimson lipstick.

Marlene laughed. Loud, abrasive, and one tough investigative
journalist, Stupenagel had been her roommate in college at Smith and they’d remained friends ever since. She reached for the reporter’s left hand, whistling at the diamond ring perched there. “That’s some rock,” she said. “You and Gilbert set a date yet?”

Karp groaned loudly, drawing glares from the two women. Gilbert Murrow was Karp’s office manager. He kept his boss’s appointment calendar, tried to steer Karp away from political pitfalls, and handled most of the administrative duties so that his boss could concentrate on his office’s efforts to mete out justice to the guilty and ensure that the unjustly accused would be exonerated. Bookish, pear-shaped, balding, and four inches shorter than his fiancée, Murrow had surprisingly won the heart of Ariadne, who by her own estimation had amorous relations with the Fidel Castros of the world if it helped her get a story.

The reporter held the ring up to be admired. “It is a beaut, isn’t it? The poor dear probably had to save for a year, considering the wages his miserly employer”—she gave Karp a sharp look—“pays him for all his hard work and loyal service. We are thinking a winter solstice wedding.”

“Then there’s still time for Gilbert to recover his senses,” Karp said hopefully.

“Watch it, buster, I know where you live,” Stupenagel answered, turning back to Marlene. “And don’t worry, honey, I also know
lots
of good-looking, eligible, and civil men, should some unfortunate accident befall your husband.”

After a little more of the pointed but friendly verbal jousting that was the hallmark of the relationship between Karp and
Stupenagel, the three sat down. A freelance writer at the moment, Stupenagel wanted to pen a feature story for the
Gotham City
weekly magazine, tentatively titled “New York’s Number One Crime-fighting Couple.” Karp had cringed at the concept, and only Stupenagel’s blatant appeal to his sense of fair play and Marlene’s intercession had convinced him to go through with it. He’d been a little surprised that Marlene had been willing to do the interview—she’d never been one to seek publicity—but he was sure that Stupenagel had twisted her arm using whatever means she had available.

Of course, he’d set some boundaries. He wouldn’t discuss open investigations or current cases, except in the most general terms. Nor did he want her writing about his children except in passing.

The interview lasted nearly three hours. They discussed several of his most recent cases, including that of a college professor who’d killed her children because she said God told her to, a famous theater producer who murdered an actress and tried to claim she committed suicide, and, of course, the case against the Harlem imam Sharif Jabbar. They also covered several terrorist plots that, despite being outside the realm of their “official duties,” Karp and Marlene, as well as other members of their family and friends, had a hand in thwarting.

Finally, Stupenagel appeared to reach the end of her questioning by asking Marlene about the case of Dirty Warren and her possible new career as a crusading defense attorney/private investigator. After Marlene answered the questions, Karp pointedly looked at his watch. “Anything else?” he asked.

Stupenagel smiled. “Well, since I’ve got you here, I am working
on another story about unsolved murders in the greater New York area,” she said.

“This sounds like a story more for the police than the DAO, but go ahead,” Karp said.

“Oh, I’ll be talking to the cops, too,” Stupenagel replied. “But I’d like your opinion as the chief law enforcement official in Manhattan. To start, I think there’s something like ten thousand unsolved murders in New York City going back to 1985, and roughly two hundred more go cold every year. In fact, at a rate of six hundred or so murders a year, almost a third of them will go unsolved.”

“I’m aware of the statistics,” Karp replied. “More than half of all homicides committed are solved within a year; after that, the chances diminish. Still, with an overall clearance rate of about seventy percent, which last time I looked at statistics compiled by the FBI beats the national average by eight percentage points, New York’s finest are to be commended.”

“Yes, but many of the unsolved cases are the unusual ones,” Stupenagel said. “And by that I mean most of the time the killer and the victim share the same background, come from the same neighborhood, and are even the same race and approximately the same age. Black gangbangers shooting other black gangbangers. Not only do the killers have criminal records, their victims usually do as well. More often than not, the killer and victim knew each other; only about a quarter of all homicides are between strangers. And of those, most are the result of a dispute—somebody gets pissed off when someone cuts him off in traffic, pulls a gun, and shoots. Granted, stranger-to-stranger homicides have nearly doubled from what they were
fifty years ago, but still, if you’re not involved in criminal activities, your chances of being killed by a stranger in New York City are small.”

“You’re well versed in the statistics,” Karp said. He realized that the long preamble was leading to something, putting him on his guard. “So what’s your point?”

“I’m thinking more about the sort of unsolved cases that don’t fit the statistical pattern,” Stupenagel said. “Those are the ones that the public remembers.”

“Are you talking about any case in particular?” Karp asked, knowing that she was going there.

“Well, yeah,” Stupenagel admitted. “I’m thinking about the Yancy-Jenkins double homicide—the so-called Columbia University Slasher case—from last July. Somehow a killer got into the apartment of Olivia Yancy, killed and raped her, and also killed her mother, Beth Jenkins.”

“I’m well aware of the case,” Karp replied warily. “However, this is one of those ongoing investigations that are off-limits in this conversation.”

“Is it true your office has an ADA assigned to the case? One Raymond ‘Formerly Known as the Italian Stallion’ Guma?”

“Couldn’t tell ya,” Karp replied. “And why ‘formerly’? He’d resent that.”

“Couldn’t or won’t?” Stupenagel shot back. “And ‘formerly’ because that bout with cancer a few years back turned him into a gelding from what I hear.”

Karp rolled his eyes and said, “That’s out of bounds, even for you, Stupe. I thought you and Guma were old friends.”

“Hey, Guma dishes it out as much as he takes it,” Stupenagel
said. “He as much as told Gilbert that he boinked me back when we were both young and dumb. Now he’s just old and dumb, and he’s messing with my love life, so if I want to spread rumors about him, I will.”

Karp shook his head and said, “Let’s stick to the subject. As I said, the Yancy-Jenkins homicides are part of an ongoing investigation, and I’m not answering those questions. What else you got?”

“Are you familiar with the Dolores Atkins murder in the Bronx about a week ago?” Stupenagel said, and then shrugged.

“Only what I read in the newspaper, why?” Karp asked.

“Because the killer was another slasher/rapist, which I know are a dime a dozen in these parts. But just like in the Yancy-Jenkins killings, this guy also struck in broad daylight, and it appears that Atkins had just returned from grocery shopping, like Yancy. And the killer didn’t just cut her up and rape her; he tortured her and then took the time to clean himself up before leaving.”

“So, Ariadne,” Marlene said, interrupting, “what’s your angle here?”

“Well, I’ve been doing some digging and I think whoever killed Olivia Yancy and Beth Jenkins also killed Dolores Atkins,” Stupenagel said. “I think he already escalated, and I don’t think he’s going to stop.”

“What makes you say that?” Karp asked.

“Like I said, I’ve been doing some digging into a series of violent rapes—mostly in Manhattan, but some also in the Bronx and Brooklyn. Same description of the perp: slightly built, dark hair, brown eyes … maybe Hispanic … talks with an accent.
Talks his way into the apartment by offering to help the women with their grocery bags or, in the case of a couple of students, their books. Pulls a knife and rapes them.”

“You said he escalated,” Marlene said.

“Yeah. If it’s the same guy, and I think it is, the first couple of times he mostly threatened. Then he started hitting and kicking. Finally, there’s a case where he actually cut the victim’s neck—not seriously, but enough to draw blood. And according to the police accounts taken from the victims, he seems to get aroused by the violence.”

“You believe that he’s now gone from rapist to cold-blooded murderer,” Karp said.

“I do,” Stupenagel said. “It’s my understanding that the Atkins crime scene was even worse than Yancy-Jenkins, which I heard was pretty gruesome.”