Victims (28 page)

“All right, Mike,” he said flatly. “You’ve been holding back the main whatever, right? Your ace. You’ve been trying to figure out when to deal it. Now’s the time. Do it.”

“For the old man’s own reasons—he’s got a young protégé down in the M.E.’s—he wants the request for a ‘corrected’ autopsy report to come from you. Just a phone call to him, upstate. Just a ‘Hello, Doc.’ So then the young guy who does the correction will know he’s got a friend.”

No surprise showed, because Cordovan was not surprised. Or shocked. Quietly, softly, tensing for the worst, he asked, “And why would I make such a phone call, Mike?”

The transcript of Angelo Stone’s call to 911 was devastating. As the two men listened to the tape, Arthur, puzzled, squinting, leaning forward, trying hard to catch the words that were lost in the sounds, gasps, coughs, inappropriate laugh sounds and high-pitched squeaks which became more and more urgent, turned to Stein.

Mike Stein leaned over and switched off the tape machine. He handed the folded transcript of the telephone call to Cordovan, pointed at a line of type, switched the machine back on.

The Chiefs face went dead white as he read and listened.

“No, please, you must listen to me. There is a terrible thing happening right out in the middle of the street. This man, he has a knife, oh please, lady, he’s hurting her...”

The operator’s voice, which was hard and flat and uninflected at first, became both demanding and sarcastic.

“Is this some kind of joke you’re playing, sonny?”

“Oh, no, I’ll try to speaker slower, clearer...”

Through his gasping, through his frantic attempt at control, Angelo Stone did, in fact, give the details of the attack on Anna Grace, as it was happening. He gave his name, his phone number, his address, the exact location of the attack that was, at the moment, taking place outside his window on Barclay Street in Forest Hills.

The 911 operator discounted his information completely. Because his voice sounded like a cross between Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck.

“Let me talk to your father. Or your mother. Right now. Or are you alone in your apartment, sonny?”

“I’m alone. What difference does that make, oh look, lady, I know it’s hard to understand me. I can’t help that I get... Lady, I have C.P. and—”

At no time was the operator’s voice less than loud and clear. Her sound was deadly.

“You have C.P.? What’s that stand for—Communist Party? You a Communist? This what they tell you to do for fun? Tie up emergency lines?”

“Cerebral palsy... palsy! For Christ’s sake, lady, listen—”

Righteousness and indignation from the 911 operator.

“Don’t you take the name of the Lord in vain. And listen, you little... maybe you think this is funny, calling 911 and pulling this stunt. I can hear your friends laughing in the background, and I’ll tell you this: don’t you
dare
call 911 again, don’t you dare. Because you want to know something? We have ways of tracing calls and we put people in jail who...”

The Chief of Operations stopped reading the transcript at that point. The tape was nearly over. The boy had tried desperately to get help for the victim, who all during the conversation with the 911 operator was being slashed and stabbed and mauled by Paul Mera. And was then left to die.

“I had to play it a few times to get the kid’s words down, Art. The operator—well, no problem hearing her. In print, Art, the whole conversation is devastating. Here’s this kid, doing what you people have been telling people to do, what the Crime Witness Responsibility Bill is all about, and here’s this kid—on the phone with 911. Jesus.”

Cordovan loved the New York City Police Department with the intensity he has reserved for his dead wife, his murdered son and his present marriage. With all its weaknesses, its mistakes, its problems, he loved it. The Department had sustained him in tragedy and he loved it for its strength, its camaraderie, its cohesiveness despite the everlasting in fighting and shifting and wheeling and dealing among all the diverse departmental groups. When essential, ranks closed tight and protectively. He loved the Department in a way no outsider could ever really understand. He suffered for every mistake, because the Police Department’s mistakes were exposed, examined and judged in public by forces that knew nothing, really, about the pressures, the unstated, unwritten, uncontracted-for demands upon the very soul of the policeman. As one would protect a family member from outside dangers, Cordovan’s instincts were to protect his Department, whenever and however he could.

Without looking at Mike, he held out his hand. “Gimme the old man’s number.”

He accepted the scrap of paper without looking at it; slid it into the pocket of his cashmere cardigan.

“Here,” Mike said, “here’s the tape, Art. It’s the only copy. Except, of course, for the official copy of 911 that you guys...”

Cordovan slowly raised his face, the blank, bland expression accepting his part of the conspiracy.

“What official copy are we talking about?”

They held it between them for a moment, then Mike Stein nodded.

When the journalist held out his hand at his departure, he was surprised by the tight, long-held pressure of his friend’s grasp. He was held by the hard fixed stare that seemed to be looking right into his soul.

“Hey, Art, c’mon, kid. We’ve been through too much together, you and I. Hell, we took on the whole goddamn United States Army and we vindicated your son...”

Cordovan dropped his hand and took one step back, his eyes studying the effect of his words, which were hard, sharp steel bullets.

“And now we’re quits, Stein,” he said. “I hope it was worth it to you.”

C
APTAIN O’CONNOR MADE SURE
that everyone had a corrected copy of the death certificate in the name of Anna Grace. As extra confirmation of the mistake, he also provided them with the erroneous death certificate made out in the name of one Maeve Wendell, age eighty-seven, of Queens Boulevard. She had expired, unattended by a physician, the morning after Anna Grace’s death. As required by law, she had been autopsied.

“This lady, without a mark on her body,” O’Connor told them, “according to the first death certificate, was full of stab wounds, slash marks, et cetera. They were shifting bodies around, autopsy notes and findings were sent to the wrong boroughs—it was some mess. More than just these two mistakes were made. So, this clears up the incorrect death certificate. Anna Grace did indeed die of massive internal bleeding due to a microscopic puncture of the left ventricle which resulted in said massive internal bleeding. All in line with the external wounds on her body, most of which were slashes. Only two of the eighteen wounds were actually of any significant depth. And this old lady, Maeve Wendell, died of a cerebral aneurysm.”

He glanced around the room for reaction, questions, statements, anything. He came back to Miranda Torres. She sat with her case file on her lap, her hand holding a report.

“Detective Torres, do you have a question?”

“Captain, in reviewing the case file, I reread the statement given to me by the lady doctor, Dr. Ruggiero, where Anna Grace worked. About her concern that Ms. Grace was having a clinical problem with her brain: a possible tumor, she said. And, Ms. Grace left the hospital early that night, complaining of severe headache and—”

“And all of that is academic, isn’t it, Detective Torres? What possible difference can any of that speculation have now?”

“Last night I telephoned Dr. Ruggiero. To ask her a few things about the medical condition of Anna Grace. Based on the original death certificate and on her statement to me.”

O’Connor looked over the tops of his glasses at Miranda.

“Why?”

“Out of curiosity.”

He waited, then, “Yeah? And? So?”

“Dr. Ruggiero said that I had been mistaken. That at no time did she ever mention to me, even by implication—I am reading from my notes of last night—that Anna Grace had any such problem. She stated she did not know what I was talking about. She seemed—upset.”

“Yeah? So? Wait a minute. Do you have a signed statement from Dr. Ruggiero? Did she sign anything confirming your interview with her?”

“I have no signed statement from her. I have only my report of the interview. Since she was not on duty the night of Ms. Grace’s death, and since I do have the statement of the doctor who was on duty, to the effect that she left early because of a severe headache—No. I have no signed statement from Dr. Ruggiero about Anna Grace’s possible brain condition.”

“All right. Then none of this is pertinent, is it? None of this goes before the grand jury. I thought I made it clear that we are here to discuss the presentation of the case to the grand jury so that we will all be at our best when that nerdy Sonny-Boy Waters, Queens County’s newest assistant district attorney, comes over here to bust our chops.”

He scanned his notes, then looked up and said, “Miranda, what? Is there something else you want to say about this?”

“Yes, Captain. I called Dr. Ruggiero this morning. I thought maybe last night she’d had a difficult tour and it was not a good time to talk. She told me not to call her again. That I would be wasting my time. I spoke to her at her home number. She said she’d resigned from St. John’s Hospital. She had a new post.
An important new post.”

The other detectives in the room began to react: a few cigarettes were lit, lukewarm coffee was gulped from stained containers, Tic-Tacs were popped into dry mouths.

No one, including her partner, knew where this seemed to be heading or why.

O’Connor stared at her for a minute, then said, “Okay, Take a break. Fifteen minutes. Nobody leave the neighborhood, okay, gentlemen? Stretch your legs. Miranda, you want to talk privately or you want your partner here?”

Miranda looked troubled and didn’t answer. Dunphy shrugged: hell, no problem.

When they had all cleared out, Miranda leaned forward on the edge of her chair and spoke quickly and earnestly.

“If they had mixed up her autopsy report with the victim of a gunshot wound, or someone who had drowned or died of natural causes or in a car crash, very well, mixups happen. But, Captain, what would the odds be, do you suppose, that Anna Grace’s cause of death should be listed as something that had been discussed with me, in detail, by her doctor? It was the very reason she had left early—the severe headache, a sign, given her history, of potential trouble that might lead to the very cause of death given in the first certificate.”

O’Connor stared at her without expression. Then he put out his hand impatiently for her report of her interview with Dr. Ruggiero the day after Anna Grace’s murder. He scanned it quickly, remembering certain passages. Finally he looked up.

“Well, it does add up to what the Indian doctor said: ‘It is written.’ It sure was written for Anna Grace to die that night.”

“One way or the other,” Miranda said, softly insistent.

O’Connor was not a man who went out of his way to look for trouble. There was enough controversy and danger on any given day to occupy all of his energies, intelligence, creativity and instinct for survival. The girl across the desk from him was probing deeply, and the further she probed, the darker and more confused things looked.

“Miranda, are you suggesting some sort of conspiracy? Are you suggesting that for some reason or other, through an act of criminal collusion, someone at the M.E.’s Office was prevailed upon to change the death certificate?”

“If Anna Grace did die of an aneurysm—”

“Detective Torres, I fully understand all the various implications.
All of them.
And there are many. More than would be normal in a more normal case. Of collusion. Or whatever.”

“Captain, I went a little further. Relative to Dr. Ruggiero. I made certain inquiries. She is on a terminal leave from St. John’s. As of September fifteenth, she has a new job with the United States Health Services. A high executive position at a great deal more money than she has been earning.”

“You have been busy.”

They let it sit there. He rubbed his lower lip and studied her wounded face: insulted sensibility. By now, with more than six years on the job, with the kind of exposure she’d had to the real world, the life below the surface, he was surprised, touched, that her feelings were very genuine.

“Exactly what is it that you suggest be done, Detective Torres? Let’s say, this being the best of all possible worlds, where all good things and true can be accomplished by the pure in heart. What would you like to see done?”

Without hesitation, she told him. “Another autopsy of Anna Grace’s body. Witnessed by a disinterested party.”

“I see. Anything else? I mean, where would you like the investigation to go from there?”

“If the first report was correct, Paul Mera could only be charged with attempted murder. It might then change his stories about the other three murders. I feel sure he’s confessing to ensure that he is accommodated with the kind of protection he wants. And then, using the leverage that he no longer is considered a special prisoner, we might be able to make some connection between him and Maria Vidales and the two stewardesses who were murdered. I think that’s the direction that should be taken. And—”

“And
I
think that I have indulged you for about fifteen minutes too long.” He leaned his elbows on the desk, gestured brusquely to the men in the doorway to wait until he signaled them back into the room. “Detective Torres, you’ve been up a lot of hours going over all of this. Making phone calls. Telling yourself a whole lot of theories and possibilities. And fairytales. You can do all the theorizing you want: on your own time. And keep it all to yourself. You’ve told me, now forget it. You got that? We will go with what we’re here to do, which is to get you people ready for the assistant district attorney and his presentation to the grand jury. That’s it. Is that clear?”

She raised her head, her chin tilted too high and her stare containing anger, cold and furious contempt, and suddenly, a certainty of knowledge. He felt accused.