“Where are you?” I asked, just after the door slammed. I had dialed the cell phone of Mercer Wallace, an SVU detective who was Mike’s best friend as well as one of mine. “I mean right this minute?”
“In Catherine’s office, just across the street. Prepping for next week’s trial.”
“How fast can you get over to me?”
“Hang up and you’ll see.”
I opened my desk drawer and took out the NYPD’s phone directory. It listed every precinct and specialty squad, as well as the names of the commanding officers.
I dialed Brooklyn South Homicide and waited for the number to ring ten times, before the call was picked up by the desk officer in the local precinct two flights downstairs.
“This is Alexandra Cooper, Manhattan DA—Sex Crimes Unit,” I said. “No one’s answering in Lieutenant Creavey’s office. Have you got a uniformed officer you can send upstairs to get a message to the sergeant or any of the guys? There’s some urgency to it.”
“No, ma’am. I’m afraid the best you can do is leave word with me.”
“But—”
“We had a male jogger down in Prospect Park this morning. No head. I’m talking really down, Ms. Cooter.”
“Cooper.”
“The entire squad is out on the case—looking for suspects as well as for the head,” he said, chuckling in the way that only old hairbags do who’ve been on the job for so long that they’ve lost the ability to filter their black humor from their conversations with civilians. “Most of my uniforms are crawling around the park, too. Good day to rob a bank.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. Thanks anyway,” I said, hanging up the phone.
Laura had returned from her shopping trip with a sandwich for me, which I nibbled at while I waited for Mercer.
I walked to her desk in the anteroom outside my door. “What’s up with Lucy and Max?”
“I’ve never seen anyone so happy to have showered and put on clean clothes,” Laura said. “Lucy told me she was up most of the night. So she was devouring her turkey sandwich between yawns, and anxious to put her head down for a while.”
“Could you find someone to give Max a break every now and then? Line up a few of the other paralegals.”
“Not a problem,” Laura said. “What time are you expecting to go to court on Lucy’s warrant?”
“Whenever the clerk calls and tells me our papers have been docketed. I doubt it will be before six or seven this evening,” I said. “I’m expecting Lucy’s aunt to return my call, and TARU to get back to me once they have all the texts off Helen’s phone.”
“Got it,” Laura said. “Have you thought about assigning someone else to do Lucy’s arraignment?”
“I’m going to handle it. Of course, I need someone to represent the other side, since Lucy was technically brought in as a defendant. So I’m about to call the Legal Aid supervisor to ask her to stand up on the case to represent Lucy when I offer to drop charges,” I said. “The time it would take me to explain the reason we’re moving to dismiss to anyone else, well—it’s just easier for me to do all the talking.”
“I understand,” Laura said.
“Why did you ask? Did Mike tell you to back me off away from Lucy Jenner’s arraignment?”
Laura Wilkie liked to think of herself as Miss Moneypenny to Mike’s James Bond. They flirted with each other constantly and I think she secretly harbored a wish to take on some dangerous foreign mission with him. This afternoon I was in the mood to send them off together to someplace far away from me.
“Not a word from Mike. Cross my heart,” Laura said with a smile. “It would just be a favor to me.”
“A favor? You don’t want me to spend twenty minutes at an arraignment?” I said, patting her on the back as I stepped away. “Stop mothering me.”
“Well, this could go into night court, and I just don’t think you need that your first day back.”
“Get a grip, Laura. I’m here and I’m firing on all cylinders.”
I heard footsteps and smiled at Mercer as he stepped into the doorway. “Who are you firing at? Anybody I know?”
“That could happen,” I said. “Was Catherine through with you?”
“I’m as prepped as I can be.”
“Great,” I said. “I’d like to pull you into a new matter. Come on in.”
I called out to Laura as we breezed past her. “Velvet gloves with Lucy when she wakes up. Get her whatever she needs or wants and tell her I hope to have it all wrapped up for her by evening.”
“Fine by me.”
I didn’t have to say any more to Mercer than the name Welly Baynes. Mercer had grown up in Queens, where his father had worked as an airline mechanic for Delta. He was one of the first African American detectives to make first grade, and had married a colleague named Vickee Eaton, who had risen through the ranks to a high-profile position in the department’s office of public information.
“Welly Baynes,” he said. “That man is evil incarnate. I thought he just liked to kill. I never heard any rape allegations.”
“No. Not that. For all the hate he dumped into this world, he didn’t do any of that, I don’t think.”
I explained how Lucy had come to be in my office earlier in the day, and what I had been told about her reaction to a photograph in the Brooklyn squad room.
“Mike can’t get you what you need?” Mercer asked.
“He wants me to get the facts straight, get the allegations from Lucy before I start trolling old photos for a rogue cop,” I said. “He didn’t want to rile up Lieutenant Creavey unless we have a viable witness, but Lucy is reluctant to tell me the story before I keep my promise to dump her warrant.”
“Can’t be hard to pull up who was on the Hate Crime Squad back then,” Mercer said. “I can help do that.”
“I want the photographs, or at least I want good copies of them, so I’m ready to get specific when I talk to Lucy later. I want all the investigative tools available to try to make her case.”
Mercer picked up my landline phone and dialed the squad number. When a cop answered, Mercer identified himself and asked him to transfer the call upstairs.
“It’s ringing,” he said to me.
“Be prepared for the headless jogger excuse.”
“Yeah, it’s already on the news. Full-on machete job,” Mercer said. “Very rough justice.”
Someone picked up the phone on the other end.
“Mercer Wallace. Manhattan Special Victims. I’m looking for Creavey.”
Whoever was in the Brooklyn office recognized Mercer and they exchanged greetings.
Mercer covered the mouthpiece with his hand and told me that Creavey was on his way from the park to a presser at city hall. “Tell Detective Walsh—Jerry—what you want.”
He passed the phone and I asked if he could take snapshots of the photographs on the squad room wall. Maybe in Creavey’s office, too.
“Which ones do you want? He’s got the president of the United States and the police commissioner hanging over his desk.”
“Not those,” I said, curbing my annoyance. “Those team shots with cops and agents in them. You know the ones.”
“Whoa,” Walsh said. “You don’t know Creavey very well, do you? He’s got this whole feng shui thing going on. Moves his photos around whenever he gets bored looking at the same old shit. I wouldn’t even take pictures of them without asking him.”
“Why don’t you call him on his cell and ask?” I said.
“Loo’s kind of jammed up today,” Walsh said.
“A phone call, Jerry,” I said. “My whole case might turn on a photograph you’ve got there. I’m not going to move them. I’d just like you to take photos of them.”
Mike was right. It wasn’t going to take long for me to get from being very hot to a boiling temperature.
“Stay tuned,” Walsh said. “I’m putting you on hold while I reach out to him.”
Ninety seconds waiting for Walsh to get back to me seemed like an hour.
“Lieutenant Creavey said he had a message for you, Ms. Cooper.”
“Really?” For a second I thought I was going to get what I wanted.
“Yeah. He said if it’s about some photographs that young lady he sent over to you saw last night—”
“Those are the ones.”
“Creavey said to get yourself a search warrant, Madame Prosecutor.”
“What?” I responded, trying to keep my cool.
Of course Creavey had seen Lucy Jenner react to someone’s picture on the wall of his squad room. Maybe that was part of his motive in shipping her over to me.
“And the lieutenant said you ought to start with some probable cause in order to do that, but then I’m preaching to the choir when I tell you that, aren’t I?” Jerry Walsh said, with a sharp edge in the tone of his voice. “The first thing you need is evidence of commission of a crime. Get all that, and then come on back with your search warrant.”