“Just don’t be all full of yourself,” Mercer said, “because you’ve got Zachary Palmer nailed on a first-degree rape that you can prosecute in this county.”
“‘Nailed’ is an overstatement,” I said. “But I think I have probable cause. I need to back up some of this information—like seeing if we can get the address of the apartment Zach lived in while he was teaching at NYU, and Lucy’s cell phone records if she or her aunt remember the carrier.”
We knew that Lucy needed a break from the intensity of the questioning. At one o’clock, Maxine came by to take her out for lunch, to a Chinese restaurant a few blocks away from the courthouse.
Laura ordered in sandwiches for Mercer and me as we continued to talk about what to do next.
“What’s your plan?” Mercer asked. “Do you intend to tell Zach he’s a target?”
“Not quite yet,” I said. “I have to see if I can get a presentation together to get in the grand jury this term.”
In New York County, grand juries sat for half a day, five days a week, for an entire month. But if an assistant DA couldn’t complete a case within that time, he or she had to withdraw it and start all over the next month. I feared we were too close to the end of the term to get it done.
“Would you do it NA?” he asked.
Non-arrest, Mercer meant.
“I’d have to do it that way,” I said, folding up the wrapper from my turkey sandwich to throw it out, taking a swig of my Diet Coke. “I’d be excoriated by the media for grandstanding or just trying to take down a political opponent if I dragged Zach out of a station house in handcuffs, and then couldn’t make a case.”
“But you have to give him notice, don’t you?”
I got up from my desk and started to pace the length of my office, back and forth. “Yes. I have to give him the opportunity to testify in the grand jury.”
“You want to step down from this and hand it to someone else?”
“Not a prayer of a chance,” I said.
“You don’t have to go mano a mano with him,” Mercer said. “It’s not a personal thing.”
“No, but it would be a sign of weakness that everyone seems to be looking for in me, now that I’m back.”
“Then you’ve got to stick with Lucy through thick and thin,” Mercer said. “This kid has picked herself up from the ashes and managed to soldier on. You can’t flip-flop on your decision to try the case down the line.”
“When have you known me to do that?” I asked, putting my hands on my hips and squaring off with Mercer. “All I have to deal with is the fact that, like her aunt told me, Lucy’s manipulative. She’s lied in the past and she’ll lie to us. That’s the one thing we can’t tolerate.”
“Chill, Alexandra,” Mercer said. “Let’s start with your wish list.”
I walked back to my desk and started writing on a fresh pad, as I spoke the order of play to Mercer.
“Decide how and when to tell Zach Palmer he’s a target,” I said. “Include an extra two days for him to get counsel, which will be a top dog like Lem Howell or Martin London.”
“Damn,” Mercer said. “That’ll be a test of wills.”
“Just be there to catch me if I fall,” I said. “I can draft subpoenas today. I’ll need all the police reports from Lucy’s arrest six years ago. I’ll need all the police and FBI reports from the Welly Barnes case—regarding Lucy and everyone else. Long-range issue will be mapping out the whereabouts of Lucy, Zach, Kathy Crain, and the other agents as they moved around the country.”
“You think you can get that evidence admitted?” Mercer asked. “The stuff he did to Lucy in Iowa and Utah?”
“I have to get it in,” I said. “It establishes the entire chain of events for Lucy to come to New York and be victimized here. It’s the reason Zach called her right before his wedding to see if all was good with her, making sure nothing would implode on his way down the aisle.”
“Search warrants?”
“Dicey, at best,” I said. “Lucy suggests that Zach might have souvenirs, like the photographs and notes, but that info is really stale at this point. He’s moved homes—to marry and now to divorce—and has had offices in a variety of places. I’d have to develop that from other witnesses, if they come forward, or if he talks to me.”
“What’s your smoking gun going to be?” he asked.
I laughed. “I haven’t found that yet.”
“You need something incontrovertible,” Mercer said, “to back up all the problems of time passed by and memories gone weak. You need the dude’s DNA on an old pair of Lucy’s jeans or a bloody knife of sorts.”
“Keep on keeping on, Detective Wallace. I don’t mind that you’re dreaming,” I said, “but I think we’ll be doing this one bare bones.”
“That may be,” he said, “but any juror who doesn’t melt when Lucy testifies would have to have a heart of stone.”
Mercer and I had been through this too many times together to know that what we wanted for our witness wouldn’t necessarily come to pass. Some would see the early years of contact the way Zach described it to Lucy—as a consensual affair, even though she was below the age of legal consent.
Still others would blame her for all of it. The Great Salt Lake seduction, the runaway bus trip to New York, the shoplifting of lingerie meant best for a tryst, the fact that she tracked her predator down and willingly went—alone—to his apartment, and her failure to make a more timely outcry than this week, when she was picked up by police on an old warrant. I knew what kind of ugly defense could be mounted against these charges, and while it took me the trust of a dozen jurors to convict, it would only take one person who blamed Lucy to hang the rest.
It was two thirty by the time Max delivered Lucy back to us. They had eaten at one of the delicious little restaurants on Pell Street, and Max had walked her charge all around Chinatown to show her the sights—as well as to relax her.
“You did really well this morning, Lucy,” I said.
“Does that mean you both believe me?” she said, lowering herself into the chair. “Are you going to arrest Jake? I mean, Zachary Palmer.”
“We do believe you and at some point soon he’ll be charged with these crimes,” I said. “Let’s just get a little more done today.”
It was details I needed most, and any facts that could be corroborated by independent evidence. The law no longer required the latter, as it used to do, but jurors wanted as much of it as they could have.
I broke down the visit to Jake’s apartment six years ago, second by second, word by word, and touch by touch.
Lucy was fading by four thirty and I understood why. “We can pick this up on Friday,” I said, figuring to give her the next day off. “The worst is over, I promise you.”
“How about my things?” she asked.
“You bet,” I said. “Where were we? I’m keeping the fake ID and the MetroCard and the train receipt, okay?”
“How about my money?”
I counted out the eighty dollars and passed it to her. “Then there’s this two-dollar bill,” I said. “Very neat. You don’t see many of those.”
“It’s my good-luck charm,” Lucy said, taking the bill from me. “At least, I used to think it was.”
“It will be again,” Mercer said. “Hang on to it.”
“Here’s the handkerchief,” I said. “It’s got your initials on it, I see.”
Lucy’s aunt had explained that to me on the phone. I wanted to see if she confirmed the same story, but mostly I was getting to the ring, and whether Lucy would admit it belonged to her cousin.
The handkerchief was dirty and worn, but when Lucy smoothed it out, you could see the embroidered initials—LJ—made with lavender thread against the white cotton.
“My mother made this for me, right before she died,” Lucy said. “I keep it with me all the time.”
“That’s a lovely keepsake to have,” I said. “Then there’s this gold ring. Where did you get this?”
“You’re not going to like my answer,” Lucy said, “but I stole it. It belonged to my cousin Callie. I guess I was just so jealous of her for having it that the night I ran away, I took it from next to her bed.”
“Actually,” I said, “I like that answer a lot. All we want from you is the truth, and that’s what you told us.”
I got up from my desk to walk Lucy to the door so that Max could accompany her back to the Streetwork facility. I was still holding the ring.
“Maybe you’ll have the opportunity to give this back to Callie,” Mercer said, pointing at it.
“Do you want to wear it now?” I asked.
Lucy shook her head. “When this is done, I’d like to try to mend things with my aunt and with Callie. It’s safer in your drawer, I think.”
“Smart idea,” Mercer said. “We’ll help you get back with your aunt when you’re ready. That’s the kind of thing I like to do.”
Lucy was wrapping the handkerchief around her fingers as we walked toward Max’s office.
“You’ll probably think this is stupid,” she said to me, holding her hand up in the air, “but this is the handkerchief I used to stop the bleeding when Jake cut me.”
“You mean—?”
“Yeah, ten years ago, when we made the oath. He nicked his fingertip and rubbed it into the bloody palm of my hand, like I told you,” Lucy said. “When I didn’t stop bleeding right away, I crumpled this up and made a fist.”
I stopped in my tracks. “May I see it again?”
“Sure,” she said. “If you look right over here, there’s still some of the bloodstain on it.”
“But you must have washed this hundreds of times.”
Lucy laughed. “Not so many as you think. I didn’t have a washing machine except when I was at my aunt’s house, and mostly I’ve been afraid that the lavender threads—see how pale they are?—would lose all their color.”
I was studying the faint pink tinge on a three-inch square of the handkerchief.
“Lavender was my mother’s favorite color,” she went on.
Then I pointed to the spot with my pinky. “You think this is blood?”
“I know it is.”
“Yours, and maybe some drops of Jake’s mixed in it?”
“Probably so.”
“Did you ever tell him about this handkerchief, way back then? I mean, did you tell him that it was very special to you because your mother made it for you?”
“I could have told him,” Lucy said. “But who knows if he’d remember?”
“Would you mind very much if I held on to this a little longer?” I asked. “I promise you I won’t lose it. It could be a very important piece of our case.”
“That old thing could be evidence against Jake?” Lucy said. “How my mother would have loved that. Do you think it’s something about the blood?”
“Well, if I’d gotten my hands on the handkerchief ten years ago, we’d be looking for Jake’s DNA mixed into that blood sample,” I said, with a new lilt in my voice. “And even though this stain is there, it’s sure to be contaminated by now.”
“So it’s no good?”
“It would have been ideal if you’d put it away right after you used it, and never touched it again until now.”
“That would have been impossible,” Lucy said.
“I like the reason you kept it with you. But Jake doesn’t have to figure that out. For all he knows, you left it in a drawer at your aunt’s house,” I said. “I might even tell him that.”
Lucy chewed on the corner of her lip. “I don’t understand why it’s okay for you to tell lies, but it’s wrong for me to do it.”
“Because I’m not going to lie to him, Lucy,” I said. “But a bloodstained handkerchief that a prosecutor could threaten to submit to a lab for DNA testing will make for a powerful bluff. And I’m always game for a bluff.”