Linda Fairstein - The Bone Vault

No point asking him how he knew. He’d be only too happy to regurgitate the details. His fingers tapped excitedly on the conference table behind him and his mild overbite looked like it had grown into fangs overnight.

“Paul, I’d like to-”

But Battaglia seemed content to let McKinney play out his hand. “Your pal Chapman was a bit out of control last night. Tried to push the Crime Scene Unit to drag themselves down to the ME’s office to take photos in the middle of cleaning up a job at a triple homicide in Midtown. Chief of D’s had to call me at three-thirty in the morning to referee the decision.”

I had no idea that some other sensational crime had occurred after midnight.

“Jeez. And I know how you hate to be bothered at home about anything job-related.” More than half the legal staff of six hundred lawyers were on felony call at any given point in time, and all of the supervisors knew that being beeped and contacted twenty-four hours a day came with the territory. Most of us welcomed the opportunity to have input on case actions that would affect the way they would later move forward through the system. McKinney was an exception to the rule. He lived without an answering machine, didn’t give out his beeper number, and punished all but his handful of pets who dared to find him once he left his office.

“I hated having to say no to something you were working on, Alex. But we had a real serious investigation going on, not some cute publicity stunt.”

Battaglia usually couldn’t stand that kind of bickering. There was no point defending my actions in front of McKinney. But I had insisted that Chapman get the sarcophagus photographed before it was removed from the back of the truck at the morgue and was incredulous that my own colleague had prevented such critical documentation of the findings.

“Paul, may I talk to you about this alone?”

“Not until I return the phone calls I’ve got here.” He flapped a stack of messages at me. “I’m trying to understand why the press found out this happened before I did.”

My face reddened. “Boss, I’ve talked to no one about this, except-”

“Just find out who the girl is, where she was when she was killed, some reason for anyone to want her dead, and then we’ll figure out what to do with this mess you’ve created for me.”

“I’d like you to understand that I had Jake’s word that he would not tell anyone about the case.”

I tried to convince myself that I believed what I was saying, but Battaglia wasn’t even interested in my denials. “Maybe McKinney’s right about this. You can’t be expected to keep confidences while you’re personally involved with a newshound. We should leave you off some of these high-profile cases.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but McKinney spoke over me.

“This might be the perfect place to start.”

“What did you do to that pitiful-looking kid who’s sitting in the conference room crying?”

“Get away from my office before Pat McKinney sees you talking to me or I’m dead.”

“That case anything I should know about? She the girl who was attacked outside Port Authority last week?”

I grabbed Mickey Diamond’s sleeve and dragged him to the top of the stairwell opposite Laura’s desk. TheNew York Post courthouse reporter was trolling for stories and he had come to the wrong place at the worst possible moment this morning. “You do remember, don’t you, that it’s against the law for me to identify a rape victim to you?”

Diamond had been a fixture at 100 Centre Street for more years and more tabloid headlines than anyone could remember. Our public relations director was headquartered a short walk down the corridor from my office, and Diamond hung out in her anteroom when he wasn’t watching trials, trading tales with reporters from the other papers in the pressroom on the ground floor behind the information rotunda, or making up stories out of whole cloth to keep his byline lively.

“Is she crying in spite of you or because of you?”

“Somebody ought to put a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on the entire eighth floor, meant only for you. Just stay here a minute. I need your help. Did you call Battaglia this morning?”

“What for? I got that triple from last night with the transgender victim and the two thugs who were three-card-monte dealers on the Deuce. Right in front of one of the Disney theaters.”

Forty-second Street-the Deuce, in perp parlance-had undergone a major face-lift during my tenure in the DA’s office, but it still attracted sharks who preyed on the tourists who flocked to that neighborhood. “My editor wants to know if the deceased was shtupping Minnie or Mickey, but I didn’t think to bother your boss with that.”

“That’s all you’re working on?”

“Unless you’ve got something sweeter.”

“Nothing yet. But somebody leaked a breaking story and Battaglia’s blaming me. I need you to check with everyone in the pressroom, keep your ears open, be discreet-”

“I was with you until you got to that part.”

“Then forget I said it. Just listen. You’re going to hear something interesting later on. That much I can promise you. Find out for me who had it first. Find out where it came from.”

“I’m gonna give you a source when you won’t even give me a clue about that bawling little adolescent you got in there?”

“You’re going to give me a direction. I don’t need a name, I need to get out of the sinkhole I’m in right now.”

“What’s in it for me?”

“You got any space left on the wall of shame?” Diamond had wallpapered the courthouse pressroom with his page-onePost headlines. He turned every human tragedy and violent crime into an alliterative eye-catcher or tasteless punch line to help sell the tabloid rag. Unfortunately, the work of my unit had provided a rich source of material.

“I might have to cover up some of your old cases, but they’re turning yellow anyway.”

“Get me what I need and I can assure you you’ll be so busy for the next couple of days that you won’t know what hit you. Meanwhile, get lost before McKinney eyes the two of us together.”

“Give me a hint.”

I pushed at Diamond’s shoulder and pointed down the stairs. “Go see Ryan Blackmer. He’s taking a plea this afternoon on the case with the oral surgeon who sexually abused a patient after he gave her nitrous oxide.”

“Today? I already have my piece written. ‘D.D.S.-Dentist Desired Sex.’ Would have been a cover story if the triple hadn’t happened.”

“Where’s Cooper?” McKinney’s voice echoed in the stairwell. I heard Laura tell him that I had gone to the ladies’ room and would be back in a few minutes. Diamond waved over his shoulder and trotted down to the seventh floor.

“Tell her I want to know whose side she’s on. She’s got some witness out here crying and the kid’s mother is complaining that Cooper was going to give her a lie detector test and take her away from home. What kind of crap is going on around here? This office hasn’t used a lie detector since 1973. I want to see her immediately.”

I waited until I could hear McKinney’s footsteps walking away from my office and crossed back to find Vandomir standing beside my desk. “When did you come up with this tactic? You oughtta patent it. Worked like a charm on Angel,” he said.

“Remember those old Dick Tracy cartoons that were called ‘crime stoppers’? My favorite was the one that said the best lie detector was the threat of a lie detector. I haven’t yet met the teenage girl who isn’t afraid of a needle. I just designed the most unpleasant-sounding imaginary machine I could think of, wait until I catch them in the first concrete fabrication before I describe it, and then give them an hour to decide which is worse-the big needle or ‘fessing up. I’ve never had to wait more than fifteen minutes.”