“How far did you get with Lucy after I left the room?” Mike asked.
“She shut me down pretty quick,” I said. “I think she’s testing me, to see if I’m really going to do the right thing.”
“How so?”
“She said she was hungry and tired and felt dirty and had nothing more to say to me until I kept my word.”
“Your word? Lucy’s challenging that?” Mike said.
“She wants her old case dismissed, and I said I could do that.”
“Where is she now?”
“Maxine is glued to her,” I said.
My paralegal had worked with me for three years since graduating from college. She was as good as any prosecutor at evaluating cases and she had a heart of gold that made her a favorite of the survivors who passed through our offices.
“I set them up in the conference room with strict orders to Max not to let Lucy out of her sight. Laura ordered in sandwiches and drinks, then walked over to Broadway to buy some clean underwear and a couple of outfits at the Odd Lots discount store.”
“What’s next for Lucy?”
“A hot shower in the executive ladies’ room, a change of clothes, and a nap.”
“Then you’ll have another go at her,” Mike said.
“Over and over, till I get the story,” I said. “How’d you do with Helen’s phone?”
“The tech guys are on it. No big deal. They’ll pull up those texts later today and have the phone back to her before midnight.”
“Good. I’ll let Helen know,” I said. “Meanwhile, get on the phone to Brooklyn South Homicide and have someone take close-ups of all the photographs on the wall that Lucy might have seen. Email them to me and let’s see if she can pinpoint the one that set her off.”
“You think—?”
“I think maybe the reason she turned on you is that once she decided to tell me about the man who assaulted her—instead of telling any of the detectives at the squad—chances are it’s because she saw a photo of someone she recognized. Maybe one of the cops on the case,” I said. “It’s not very hard to connect those dots. Likely the guy she freaked out about had a badge and you’ve got a badge. Could be as simple as that.”
“A cop?” Mike said, glaring at me with his fists balled up against his waist. “Where are you going with this now, Coop? You’re saying some cop raped a fourteen-year-old kid, just because she’s going all weepy on you? You do believe that’s why she wanted me out of your office, don’t you?”
“Something set her off in the station house, didn’t it? An old photograph, probably cops from that command.”
“Yeah,” Mike said. “I’ll tell you why she got set off. The reality that a warrant was dropping that would keep her in the slammer for a few days. Have you checked her story with the aunt yet? And what do you really know about that case she testified in? Why would the NYPD have been involved?”
“The killer’s name in Lucy’s case is Weldon Baynes. Welly, he called himself, if you want to see what I ‘really’ know about it,” I said, crossing my arms and sitting on the edge of the desk. “He was from Athens, Georgia, before he set out on his odyssey to kill black men, including her companions, Austin and Buster.”
“Where did his overload of hate come from?” Mike asked.
“You’ve known enough bigots. Baynes was probably taught to hate his entire life, I’d guess. I don’t know what the psychobabble was about his history, or I just don’t remember that. All that’s certain, I think, is that he wanted to start a race war—ignite some local fires and hope they’d spread across the country.”
“But always targeting black men with white women?”
“Always. The couple in Fort Tryon Park had just left the Cloisters museum. They were both graduate students in art history at Columbia, not lovers,” I said. “You know how deserted it can be up there on the Heights.”
Mike and I had handled a murder case that involved the Cloisters early in our professional partnership. The museum housed a spectacular collection of medieval art that had been gifted to the city, along with the parkland of Fort Tryon, by John D. Rockefeller, Jr.
“That pair just got lucky?” Mike said. “I wasn’t working Homicide then. Maybe that’s why I’m not calling it up.”
“Those two got very lucky, and that’s an understatement. The sniper took several shots but missed the young man completely and got away clean. He was only linked to the other murders by the bullets, which the FBI compared because of the location—a public park, again—of the attempted murder.”
“So NYPD cops were assigned.”
“From our Hate Crime Task Force, with some experienced Homicide cops thrown in by each of the cities, including us, who partnered with FBI agents. Call Lieutenant Peterson—he’ll tell you who was on the national team from our force,” I said. “Get some names and we’ll try to match them to the photos from the Brooklyn squad room.”
“You think I’m snitching on some detective who’s probably retired to the Outer Banks by now, enjoying his pension and sucking on his second margarita this very minute, when we don’t even know what this kid’s story is? When she’s calling the shots and you’re eager enough to fall for that,” Mike said, running his fingers through his dark hair, rather than pounding his fists on my desk. “Get yourself another rat, Ms. Cooper. Get yourself some misfits from Internal Affairs.”
I walked to my chair and picked up the phone. “I’ll run down Lucy’s story,” I said. “I promise you that. Right now, though, she has the benefit of the doubt.”
“Of course we give her the benefit of the doubt, once she opens up and tells her story,” Mike said, headed for the door. “But you know I’m not going to start attacking men—cops, no less—who haven’t been accused of anything.”
“It’s my job to get that story, and I have to use whatever tools are available to do so,” I said. “Lucy reacted to something she saw in a photograph? Then I need to see that photo, too.”
Mike’s hand was on the knob, his back turned to me.
“And you, Detective Chapman, are a mandated reporter of child abuse under the Family Court Act of the State of New York,” I said. “Walk out my door and you’ll be in very hot water.”
“The only two temperatures you know, Coop. Very hot and boiling,” Mike said, facing me again. “That’s why you’ll never be district attorney. You’ve got no thermostatic control for your attitude adjustment.”
“I’ll never be DA. because it’s a job I don’t want. Going around to all those party clubhouses and making deals or promises that an honest prosecutor shouldn’t make. Rubber chicken dinners and christenings and bar mitzvahs for the kids of high-rolling donors every weekend? I couldn’t stand a life like that,” I said. “That’s why I’ll never be DA.”
I held up my forefinger to my lips. I had dialed information in Illinois to find a number for Lucy’s aunt.
“Don’t try to shush me up by lifting your finger,” he said. “That’s rude.”
“You’re really steaming, aren’t you?” I said, waiting for the directory assistance robot to connect me.
“Nothing like a rush to judgment, is there?”
“Hey, it’s you who brought Lucy Jenner over here to me. So that I could help her, the way I remember it.”
The ringing was interrupted by an outgoing message on an answering machine, asking me to leave the reason for my call. “Hello? Hello. My name is Alexandra Cooper, and I’m trying to reach Hannah Dart. I’m an assistant district attorney in New York City. There’s nothing wrong—nothing at all—but we’re just trying to help find residential placement for your niece, Lucy Jenner.”
Mike had turned his back to me and was shaking his head.
I paused. “Lucy gave me your name as next of kin, and if you could get back to me as soon as possible, and let us know that she is welcome to stay with you for a while, it would allow us to—to—well, to get her on her way.”
I ended the call with a thank-you and left both my office number and my cell.
“What if the aunt says no?” Mike asked.
“Then I get to plead with whoever the judge is about tossing the warrant and letting her out anyway. I think the circumstances of her original victimization will trump some nonsensical petty thefts,” I said. “Are you making that call to Brooklyn for me?”
“You get the facts first.”
“You’ve suddenly got a dog in this fight, Detective Chapman?” I asked, pushing back from my desk. “You have a thing for this white supremacist?” I asked. “Welly’s your man?”
“Don’t be a jerk, Coop. I brought Lucy here to you because I agreed with the lieutenant that you might be able to help her. You’re the one who’s dreaming up some story about a cop—or maybe some cop—when you haven’t done anything to verify where Lucy is going with this story.”
“I know that she’s alone in this world, so far as I can tell, and she was trustworthy enough for the feds to make a case stand up with her help when she was just a kid.”
“Let me go down the hall and get her,” he said. “If she makes sense, I’ll do whatever is right.”
“Let her sleep for now,” I said, throwing my hands up in the air. “Truce, Detective. I’ll give the aunt two hours to return the call. It’ll take that long for the Trial Division assistant to draw up the papers on the warrant. The aunt sounds responsible enough, according to Lucy, to give me some background and perspective.”
“See you in two, then,” Mike said, checking his watch before he opened the door.
“Where are you going?”
“My job is to catch murderers, Coop, or don’t you remember that?”