Linda Fairstein - Hell Gate

Mike turned the doorknob and followed us into the apartment. He adjusted the dimmer to brighten the hallway, then walked to one of the windows to take in the view.

“I’d say Salma landed on her feet, all right.”

“This place is too sterile, too impersonal, for my taste,” I said.

There was so much glass that there was little wall space in the living room to hang any art. But there were also no photographs-not even baby pictures-displayed on any of the tabletops or surfaces.

Mike looked at the wine bottle and two empty glasses.

“Can’t we take those for prints?” I asked.

“You’re always harping on me about getting a search warrant. You want to wake up some judge in the middle of the night and make your case, go for it. I don’t happen to have one in my back pocket.”

“A search warrant or a judge?”

“Neither, Coop.”

Mercer led him down to the bedroom and nursery, and I watched as they used their gloved fingers to open closet doors, look under the dust ruffle of the undisturbed king-size bed, and pull the handles of dresser drawers.

The master bathroom was perfectly neat. I could see that Salma used the same makeup that I did. The distinctive black-and-gold packaging with the C logo stamped in white was everywhere on the countertop and bath shelf.

“Tomorrow I’ll need to get a court order to get the baby’s DNA-and Ethan Leighton’s,” I said, making my checklist out loud while the guys looked for any minor sign of trouble. “I’d love to know who else claims to be the father.”

“You’re so far ahead of yourself with court orders and search warrants. Somebody has to report a crime.”

“Leighton’s up to his eyeballs in trouble, Mike.”

We retraced our steps through the living room to the kitchen.

“You beginning to feel any better?” Mercer asked.

“I’ve got no choice. We’re coming up empty.”

“Nothing out of place,” Mike said. “Plenty of milk in the refrigerator for the kid and food on the shelves for both of them. Not a dish in the sink. She gets triple points for being a neat freak.”

A long corkscrew wine-bottle opener with a carved wooden handle was resting on its side on the counter next to the sink.

Mercer pointed to it. “Maybe she was expecting someone who never showed, Alex. That could explain the wineglasses and the setup.”

The edge of a shiny black object was protruding from beneath the front of the toaster oven. Mercer saw it, too, but couldn’t slide his large fingers under to reach it.

I stuck my forefinger in and pushed out a razor-thin cell phone, small enough to fit in the palm of my hand and slimmer than a compact.

“Now, I don’t know anybody who would leave home at night with all this turmoil going on and not take her cell,” I said, fumbling with my latex gloves to pick up the lid.

“Hers?” Mike asked.

I pressed the button to light up the small screen, which showed the evening’s time and date. “I’ll figure that out next. Right now, all I can tell you is that whoever had it last got as far as punching in three digits, Mike. Nine-one-one. But they’re still in the display box, so it doesn’t look like the caller ever got to hit Send.”

“You may be sneaking up on some probable cause, kid.”

Mercer took the phone from my hand while Mike picked up the corkscrew opener.

“And I don’t think you’re going to like the vintage of the stain on the tip of this lethal weapon,” Mike said. “Here’s your scintilla, Coop. I’m guessing it’ll likely come up human blood.”

“You’re late, Alexandra,” the mayor said on Thursday morning. “You asked for this seven-thirty meeting and here we are.”

“I’m very sorry, of course.”

“It’s the hair thing with Coop,” Mike said, getting up from his seat to close the door behind me. “She doesn’t leave home until it’s perfect. Busy times like this, you never know when you’re going to get caught in a perp walk.”

I knew he was covering for me. Battaglia had refused to come back to City Hall for the emergency meeting I suggested to Tim Spindlis-he didn’t want to take direction from the mayor-but insisted on being briefed before I filled Vin Statler and Keith Scully in on last night’s events. I had lost ten minutes talking to him.

“Sit down, please,” Statler said, pointing to the chair next to Mercer. We were in the Blue Room-the mayor’s public receiving suite on the ground floor, resplendent with its ceiling medallions, rope molding, and wainscoting.

“It was actually my suggestion that we bring you in on this, Vin,” Scully said. The commissioner had been appointed by Bloomberg, but had done such an extraordinary job reducing the city’s violent crime statistics and improving the quality of the police force that Statler had kept him on. “You wanted to know more about Ethan Leighton’s lady friend.”

“Well, in the sense that there have been so many political scandals lately that this kind of nonsense is likely to trump the more important news, like the human trafficking story.”

“Why don’t you tell the mayor what happened after you left here,” Scully said to me.

It was just the five of us in the room, and I told the mayor everything from the autopsy results to our efforts to talk with-and then to locate-Salma Zunega.

Mike had the morning’s additional fact. The substance on the tip of the wine opener was indeed human blood. He’d had one of the precinct cops drop it off at the lab when we left East End Avenue shortly after midnight, and had stopped there to get that report on his way to City Hall.

“I’m struggling with whether to go public with this,” Scully said. “It’s going to bring more heat on Leighton and-”

“What’s wrong with that?” the mayor asked, tossing his head back so that we might not see his smirk.

“I don’t need an all-out manhunt if this woman just slipped away for a few days to catch her breath, but like Alex says, it’s unusual to leave home without a cell phone these days.”

“And it’s unlikely she was giving herself a manicure with the corkscrew,” Mike added.

“I’ve got Crime Scene going over her apartment now, Vin. I’d like to be ready to ramp up full bore on this if we get a break on where she is and what her condition is.”

“That’s fine with me.”

“What I’d like, actually, is to borrow the mansion,” the commissioner said.

“What? Gracie Mansion?” Statler raised himself out of the chair, striking a pose almost identical to the Charles Jarvis portrait of Thomas Jefferson behind him. “Impossible.”

“I just need it for a couple of days, Vin. Think about it. The girl’s apartment is right across the street. Once word gets out, the press will be camped on your doorstep anyway.”

Statler was angry now. “It’s not my doorstep. I don’t live there.”

“That’s my point. Let us use it to get started. Except for your occasional breakfasts or teas, the house sits empty most of the time. And I’ve got an entire police detail already in place there.” That was routine, since the mansion was the mayor’s ceremonial home. “What’s the harm? This whole thing may blow over if the woman just went back to Mexico for a week.”

“I don’t want any part of this run from the mayor’s office or Gracie Mansion. Do you understand that? It’ll just look like I’m out to get Leighton. And you-you, young lady. Haven’t you got your hands full with all those women from the ship?”

“I do, Mr. Mayor. I certainly do. But it will be days until most of them are settled in and physically examined and ready to be interrogated. I’m truly concerned about the disappearance of Salma Zunega.”