Death Dance (30 page)

"No, he tells me he's not. The apartment was hospital housing.
He claims they don't want him living there during his suspension."

"Fine. I'll be at my desk. Have him call my secretary on the
hour. She'll hook you in on a conference line."

I hung up and put Mercer to work. "Let's get TARU on this. How
fast can they set up a triangulated phone call?"

The Technical Assistance Resource Unit was the NYPD's small
crew of wizards who used state-of-the-art equipment to do everything
from video surveillance to wiretaps and intercepts.

"Five minutes, with a bit of luck. I'll get that going if you
give me Ingels's number. When Sengor dials in, you check caller ID and
I'll run with that, too. And get someone from the DA's Squad down here
to hook a recorder onto your phone. You'll want a tape of whatever he
says."

I called the squad commander, whose office was directly above
mine, and then stepped out of the way five minutes later so that Vito
Taurino, a detective I had worked with often over the years, could
attach a device to the telephone receiver that fed a minirecorder. As
long as one party to a conversation consents for a call to be recorded,
the law in New York allowed me to surreptitiously tape the incoming
call.

I dated and timed the header of the recording, sent Laura down
the hall so that Mercer could use her console to stay in touch with
TARU, and settled in to wait for the phone to ring. While Sengor and I
spoke, detectives would be trying to identify his location by reading
signals from cell satellite towers. If he stayed on the phone for
ninety seconds, they would know the very street corner on which he
stood.

"They're ready for you," Mercer said. "You're good to go."

"Give me a heads-up when TARU tells you they've made him."

Laura buzzed me from down the hall to tell me that Sengor had
called on my line, and that she had patched Eric Ingels into the call.

"Dr. Sengor wants to talk to you, Alex. Doctor? Can you hear
me? Ms. Cooper's on the line.**

The connection was bad. The crackling noise of the static made
it hard to hear Sengor when he said hello to me. There was no need to
recite Miranda warnings. The doctor wasn't in custody and his attorney
had requested the opportunity for him to talk.

"You're making a very big mistake, Ms. Cooper. I did not rape
these women," he said, barking each word into the receiver for
emphasis. "You have ruined my life, I want you to know that."

I wasn't the one slipping mickeys into the drinks of
unsuspecting women and then having sex with them while they were
unconscious, but that never stopped a perp from blaming me for his
problems. "Doctor, is there—"

"I have lost my job, I've lost my home, I've lost my
girlfriend, for what? What did I do? For what crime? You can't put my
name in the newspaper just for your own career, for your own ambitions.
It's
my
life you're ruining."

"Eric, if your client is calling just to harangue me about the
case, there's absolutely no point to this conversation."

"Hold on, Alex, hold on. Selim? Can you hear me? Explain to
Ms. Cooper what you told me, explain how the girls were doing drugs
before you got home," Eric said. "He wants to tell you what really
happened."

I looked at the second hand on my watch as Mercer stood in the
doorway, holding the cell phone while he waited for results from the
TARU detectives. I mouthed a question to him. "How much longer?"

"They're not getting a signal. Be patient."

"Miss Cooper? Are you listening to me? You know what would
happen to my family in Turkey if this is public? Terrible disgrace.
Disgrace to my mother, to my father—who is also a doctor. And
what? Because of the word of these two silly girls? I'm asking you as a
professional to drop this case. I've withdrawn from the hospital, no
one was hurt, and if you don't prosecute, I'll be able to keep my
license to practice medicine."

Sengor hit the right button. A license to an endless supply of
drugs to experiment on his victims. It wasn't a gift I was prepared to
put in his hands. He rambled on and on, while I looked to Mercer for
word of any results. We were going on four minutes and TARU had come up
blank.

"Talk to your lawyer, Dr. Sengor. There's no reason to go on
with this conversation. You can explain whatever you'd like to the
judge and jury."

The call was terminated after six minutes and I hung up the
receiver. Mercer was still on the cell phone, tryingto get an
explanation from the tech team.

"Did they have the right number?" I asked, checking the 212
area code and seven digits that I had taken down from caller ID against
the ones on Mercer's pad. "How come this works on TV and in the movies,
but when I need it, the system fails?"

"They had everything right. They were scrambling like crazy
trying to find the cell tower. The only problem is that your boy Sengor
was calling from out of the zone—that's why TARU couldn't
pinpoint his whereabouts."

"What zone? What do you mean, 'the zone'?"

"Sengor's calling from his father's home, Alex, in the old
country. Bet you didn't know the area code in Ankara, Turkey, is also
212."

Within the hour, Mercer Wallace and a backup team from Special
Victims were at Selim Sengor's high-rise building, a hospital-owned
residence on the Upper West Side. While I waited for him to get back to
me with news of when the young doctor had abandoned his home, I called
the hospital's general counsel, who'd been monitoring him since his
weekend suspension.

"You're telling me you had no idea Sengor fled the country?" I
asked.

"I'm shocked, truly. We were beeping him two or three times a
day, and ten minutes later he'd return the calls.I talked to him myself
just this morning."

"I've got detectives on the way to the apartment. I expect
there are documents or papers left behind. Things that might help us
track his flight route, maybe computer records. He'll be on the run."

"I feel so embarrassed about this, Alex. You don't need to
waste time with a warrant. We'll consent to letting you in. It's
hospital property—I'll send someone from my office over to
meet the detectives right now."

"That would be a help. I think they're interviewing the super
and doormen first."

It was after five o'clock when Mercer called back. "We got
another collar."

"A new case?"

"Nope. One of our perp's buddies. Seems Sengor skipped out of
town over the weekend. Drove to Boston, flew out of Logan to London and
then home. You're probably right about the phony passport. This other
guy is also a psychiatric resident—maybe there's something in
the water in that department. Dr. Alkit's his name. Sengor gave Alkit
his hospital beeper and the keys to the apartment."

"So every time Sengor was beeped to check in…" I
said.

"You got it. Alkit called him in Turkey, and he phoned the
general counsel to report back, so they kept up the ruse that he was
still in town. Sengor apparently figures that if he isn't here in the
country, you can't go forward with the prosecution and there won't be
any press. He thinks the Turkish authorities won't find out about the
charges and he can keep his license to practice medicine over there.
Guess he's never heard of Interpol."

"Where'd you find this guy Alkit?"

"Your man in the counsel's office sent over an assistant to
authorize us to go into Sengor's apartment. Dr. Alkit was already in
the bedroom, boxing up some of his buddy's things. Next to the door,
packed and ready to go, was a carton of videos."

"Videos? What do you mean?"

"Home movies, Alex. Videotapes that Dr. Sengor made."

"Porn?"

"Worse than that. Sengor had a camera concealed in the
bookcase opposite one of the beds in his room. Just ordinary video
equipment propped up between two medical reference books. That's what
Dr. Alkit was dismantling when we arrived. I opened it up and whipped
the tape into his VCR. Sengor recorded himself having intercourse with
Jean Eaken."

"Oh, that poor woman. What does—"

"She looks lifeless. She's out cold, never moves a muscle.
It's hard to watch, Alex. It's like, like—"

"I've seen it before, Mercer. Like he's raping a corpse."

"Exactly. I'm taking the box of tapes, too. Thirty-nine of
them. Each one dated and labeled, some filmed here, some in Turkey. You
can tell those from the background shot and even the music playing on
the radio. If they're all the same kind of thing, you'll wind up with a
lot more victims."

"And Dr. Alkit? What are you charging him with?"

"Criminal facilitation—aiding and abetting Selim
Sengor in fleeing the country," Mercer said. The bail-jump violation
applied even to defendants who had been released on their own
recognizance, like Sengor. "Tampering with evidence. This tape puts
your doctor behind bars and locks the door for a long time. Alkit's
blubbering like a baby. Just trying to help his friend. For some
strange reason he feels these encounters wouldn't be crimes back home
in Turkey."

"They wouldn't be crimes because if anybody knew about them,
Dr. Sengor would be short his private parts. I'd better tell the
district attorney what to expect. Call me when you get to the precinct."

"Will do. I want to check a few of the other tapes, see if
they're similar."

"Be sure and have them duplicated first. I don't want the
originals compromised." The best evidence would require working from
copies of these tapes, so that stopping the footage, rewinding, zooming
in for close-ups, and all the other wear and tear wouldn't damage the
first—hand evidence of criminal conduct.

I called Rose Malone, Battaglia's assistant, and told her I
needed to see him before the end of the day.

"Be here in fifteen minutes. He'll be finishing up with the
asset forfeiture unit by then."

"What kind of mood will that leave him in?"

Rose had been the executive assistant longer than anyone could
remember and the best barometer of the district attorney's disposition
from moment to moment. "Right where you want him. The unit broke up a
drug gang and we get to keep about one point two million dollars that
was seized in the bust for our budget. He'll be smiling, no matter what
you have to tell him."

On the way into the executive wing, I stopped by the Appeals
Bureau to ask for assistance on briefing the DNA database issue, as
well as to check our extradition treaty with the Turkish government. It
didn't pay to engage with Battaglia unless one was fully prepared with
answers to the questions he was bound to ask. I was gossiping with Rose
about the latest office romances, always fertile ground in a little
legal village with a population of six hundred lawyers—most
wider the age of thirty-five—a support staff of many more
hundreds, and the regular presence of thousands of New York's finest
under the same roof every day.