Cold Hit (40 page)

“What’s there?”

“Man checked himself into the local hospital this morning. He’s got an infected wound in his groin that’s festering away. Told the E.R. staff that he had an accident on a construction site, but the X rays show there’s a bullet inside. Right now the Jersey troopers are holding him. Could be that Mercer hit the bull’s-eye after all. Patient matches the description of Anthony Bailor.”

It pained me to admit that Pat McKinney might be right about anything, but there was no point in my asking Mike to go along with him on the ride to New Jersey. If Anthony Bailor was the person under guard in a hospital, then it was likely that he had been the gunman who had aimed at me, shot Mercer, and killed the young receptionist in Chelsea on Sunday. I had no business being anywhere near him.

“What’s your plan?”

“To get my ass down there to Piscataway before that pair of clowns from Major Case find out about it.”

Physicians were required by law to report gunshot wounds, and some clever detective in the town where Bailor sought treatment, recognizing that there were no open cases in his jurisdiction in which anyone had claimed to have injured an assailant, had the great sense to notify police in the tristate area about the suspect’s appearance.

“It looks good?”

“Yeah, the guy’s a transient, a walk-in. Used a common name but has no I.D. to back it up, and gave a phony address — a street that doesn’t exist, in a neighboring town. Fits the physical scrip of Bailor. Elsa, she’s all yours for the next fifteen minutes. Loo got a uniformed detail from the North to ferry you around and keep you safe till I come back this evening.”

There was no point arguing. Mike wasn’t going to undercut Battaglia’s direction that someone escort me from place to place. “Should I keep working on trying to find Caxton?” I asked.

“Yeah, as long as you do it from behind your desk. If you get a lead on where he is, we can confront him tonight or tomorrow morning. What you could do, in the meanwhile, is let these cops take you to Denise’s new gallery on your way downtown. See if you can charm Daughtry into telling you what he found out last night about Lowell Caxton’s exodus from the city. You may do better with him if I’m over the border, Coop. Maybe you could coax him into letting you look around the storage area.”

“Remind me what I’m looking for, exactly. The Vermeer? The Rembrandt?”

“Maybe I’ll have a better idea of that after I talk to Bailor.” He looked at his watch. “Give me an hour to get out to Piscataway, and another hour to talk to him, then I’ll either beep you or call Caxton Due looking for you.”

“Meet you at Mercer’s room when you get back tonight?”

Mike was distracted. “Suppose you were Deni and you had something — a painting, in all likelihood — that someone else wanted. Where would you hide it?”

“Let’s begin by recognizing that she had more options than most of us could even imagine. And who’s she hiding it
from
? I mean, if it’s Lowell, then I doubt she’d have it at home or anyplace they use together. If it’s Daughtry, then she wouldn’t hide it at their gallery. Depends, in part, on who she’s avoiding, don’t you think? It would help to know that first.”

“Forget who it is. What
I’m
thinking is, if it’s any kind of artwork, she could have hidden it in plain view, if you know what I mean. She could have had Marco Varelli undo any restoration. He could re-create the cover of a restored painting, or obscure a masterpiece. She could hide something like that in a warehouse, and if she treated it casually, maybe nobody would pay it any attention. You’d need
her
eye,
her
knowledge,
her
tutor. Maybe Deni could even carry it around in a shopping bag and nobody’d think twice of it. Maybe what’s at the heart of this case is one giant optical illusion, Coop.” Mike’s idea wasn’t altogether crazy.

“So I’ll crank up the search for Lowell, stop in to schmooze with Brian Daughtry and scan the gallery’s warehouse at the same time. Will I jinx things for you if I buy a bottle of champagne to open at Mercer’s bedside when you come back from checking out Anthony Bailor?”

“Dom Pérignon. But you gotta promise that I can be the one to break the news to him. If you get over there before I do, don’t even raise his hopes. I’d hate for this to be a false alarm. If it’s the real deal, I want to tell Mercer myself.”

Mike was ready to take off. “Great to meet you, Elsa. Keep an eye on blondie till the precinct cops get here.”

I called Laura to check my messages. There was a note from McKinney, who wanted to talk to me as soon as I got back to the office. I had a couple of hours to kill until I could expect to hear from Chapman about the identity of the man with the gunshot wound, and I had no intention of returning to Hogan Place until I knew whether this new development could turn the investigation around.

The more urgent message was from the sergeant at the Special Victims Squad, about a new case that had come in several hours ago. I phoned him immediately.

“What have you got?”

“Victim’s at New York Hospital. Twenty-six-year-old businesswoman from Georgia, staying at a hotel in town. She’s being treated for an inner ear disorder, comes to town to see a specialist. Woke up this morning but blacked out on her way out of the bathroom. She was able to call her husband back home, and he phoned the manager. Two hotel security guards got into the room and radioed for an ambulance. Then the older one told the second guy to go downstairs and wait for the EMS crew. He assumed the woman was unconscious, but she was just too weak to respond. In any event, he ripped her pajama top off and started to molest her. Finally she came around and was able to tell him to stop. Reported it to the ambulance driver as soon as she got inside and they closed the doors.”

“What hotel?”

“Would you believe the Sussex House?”

“On Central Park South?”

“You got it. She paid six hundred fifty-three dollars for the privilege of being abused by a member of the staff.”

“What do you need?”

“Her husband’s flying up from Georgia this afternoon. Can you get her interviewed and set up the grand jury, so she can get back home when the doctor releases her?”

“Absolutely.” I checked my watch. “I’ll go over and talk to her now — I’m just ten blocks away from the hospital. I’ll assign somebody senior to handle it. Need any help at the hotel? Are they being cooperative?”

“One of her girlfriends met us there to pack up her belongings. She’s the one who found the two buttons on the floor — ripped off the shirt of the pajamas.”

“Did you get the guy?”

“Yeah, but he’s not talking. Ponied up with a lawyer right away. Just doing his job.”

I called Catherine Dashfer to tell her about the case.

“I’m doing a hearing this afternoon in front of Judge Wetzel,” she told me. “But I’m free the rest of the week. If she’s released in the morning, just have her be in my office at ten, and I’ll put it right in the jury. We can have her at the airport by this time tomorrow.”

“Thanks a million. Would you do me another favor? Call McKinney for me and tell him I just got called out on a new case, and that I won’t be back until late in the day, okay?”

Elsa had ordered two salads from the local deli, and we were eating our lunch when a policewoman in uniform presented herself at the reception desk. I finished up before saying good-bye and heading off on my rounds.

Police Officers Brigid Brannigan and Harry Lazarro had been told that their assignment was to take me wherever I needed to go until they were relieved later this evening by another unit. On the short ride to New York Hospital I gave them a brief rundown on what had been happening in the Caxton case. The rest of the story they knew from newspaper accounts. One of
them
had been gravely wounded, and there was no more serious situation than that to a cop.

Brannigan got out of the car at the Sixty-eighth Street entrance to the large facility. “Want me to take you in?”

“I’m fine, thanks. This stop was just added to the itinerary, so I’m not expecting any trouble.”

From the information booth I called the emergency room, but Callie Emerson had already been treated and had been admitted for observation and tests concerning her inner ear imbalance. She was on 6 North, and the volunteer worker directed me to that wing.

When I reached her room, Callie was sitting in an armchair dressed in a hospital gown and answering questions from a physician and a resident. I explained who I was and why I was there. My purpose was not to question her in depth about the assault — since Catherine would do that in the morning — but rather to explain the proceedings to her and engage her cooperation. Witnesses and their families were always surprised to learn how much gentler the process had become with a specialized unit like ours, and how comfortable we could make the person who had been victimized.

I stepped back outside the room and waited for the doctors to finish their examination. When they were through, I returned and sat with Callie, telling her what would happen the next day and answering all her questions about the system. She and her husband should go to Catherine’s office, where the questioning would take place. The grand jury presentation would take less than ten minutes and the assailant would not be present for it, so she did not have to see him again or tell the story in front of him. After that, Catherine would be responsible for the motion practice in the case — presenting the court with information responding to defense requests for facts to which they were entitled. Three or four months thereafter, we would bring Callie back to New York for the trial, and with any luck Catherine would be working again in front of a jurist as sensitive and knowledgeable as Wetzel.

She seemed grateful for the overview and willing to participate.

“Were you examined in the emergency room?”

“Fortunately, I wasn’t raped. So they didn’t do an internal exam. They were more worried about my physical condition — that my blood pressure had dropped so dramatically and my vital signs were weak.”

I knew from my conversation with the sergeant that the attacker had put his mouth on Callie’s breast and sucked on it.

“Did anyone look at your chest?”

“I’m not sure. There was so much going on when we got here — I just don’t know.”

“Would you mind going into the bathroom and looking at yourself in the mirror?”

When she emerged, she was nodding her head. “There’s a large discoloration on my skin, where his mouth was. And there are a few scratches on my breastbone, which might have happened when he was ripping at the buttons.”

“I’m going to ask one of the nurses to come and look at you again, if you don’t mind. I’d like her to note those marks on your medical chart. And Laura, who’s one of our photographers, will take a few pictures of them tomorrow morning.”

“They seem so minor.”

“Even so, Callie, they corroborate exactly what you said this man did to you. It will be very useful for you at the trial.”

We talked for a while longer before I thanked Callie, reassured her about what a good witness she would be, and left the hospital.

The patrol car was waiting for me in the parking circle off York Avenue.

“What’s next, Miss Cooper?”

I checked my watch. It was almost an hour and a half since Mike had left for Jersey, and I was trying to control my curiosity about his encounter with the man who might be Bailor.

“Before we go to Chelsea, why don’t you just swing by 890 Fifth Avenue? It’s not too far out of the way. I want to check with the team that’s watching an apartment there.”

In ten minutes we were in front of Lowell Caxton’s building. There was an unmarked detective car parked next to the awning. I got out to talk to the men sitting inside, both of whom were eating hot dogs and drinking root beer. They worked with Mike at the Homicide Squad and were annoyed at being stuck on such an uninteresting post.

“Nothin’ happening here. Doorman says it’s business as usual with Caxton. This guy only does days, so he don’t know what time Lowell came home last night. But his chauffeur picked him up a little before eight this morning. I had him call up to the maid, too. She says Caxton’s due home sometime after seven o’clock this evening. You and Chapman planning to come over then?”

“Yes, unless you see something else we should know about earlier. Have you got my beeper number?”

“No, but I got Mike’s.”

“He’s not with me today, so why don’t you write mine down, too?”

The surly fat one in the driver’s seat took another bite from his tube steak and handed me the paper napkin that had been draped over his knee. I tore off the corner with the mustard stain on it and wrote down the number to hand back to him. He was as likely to call a D.A. with a hot lead as he was to run in the next marathon.

“Any other traffic in or out we should know about?”

“If you know a Mrs. Cadwalader on three, she’s either turning tricks on the side or she’s runnin’ a halfway house for retired hockey players. She’s got action comin’ and goin’ every twenty minutes, and most of her company’s sportin’ half their teeth and bowlegs. And there’s a schnauzer on five with a very weak bladder, so he’s out here peeing on my front tire once an hour, courtesy of his housekeeper, who’s carrying a pooper scooper looks like it’s made outta sterling silver. And she’s got a great ass — the housekeeper, not the schnauzer. Now, are you gonna sit here and watch us watching them, or are you gonna find some way to make yourself useful to Mr. Battaglia?”

Brigid Brannigan was leaning against the patrol car and opened the door for me to get in the backseat. She looked crisp and cool in the police uniform, and her neat auburn ponytail set off her fine features handsomely. “I used to think
I
had a hard time, breaking in as a prosecutor with all these tough old dinosaurs in my department who thought handling homicides was only a man’s prerogative. I bump into a guy like that one, and I bet you could tell me stories about what it was like for you to come onto this job that would make my experience seem like a cakewalk.”