Linda Fairstein - Entombed

The cop on the security desk was the only person in the lobby of the DA's office when I pushed through the revolving door at seven-fifteen. There was a lot of catching up to do. Getting in ahead of the troops would allow me two hours of work with no phone interruptions, and the added advantage of not having to see everyone's expression of surprise as they passed me in the hallway, back on the job at Hogan Place.

The routine business of the sex crimes unit had gone on under the meticulous watch of my deputy, Sarah Brenner. The in-house cold case experts, Catherine and Marisa, had left memos detailing the eight DNA hits that came back from CODIS in a single week, solving crimes committed as far back as eight years ago. The line assistants-forty of them who specialized in this sensitive work- had responded to crime scenes and hospital beds dozens of times, interviewed scores of witnesses at their desks, and answered "ready for trial"-the three magic words that jump-started the process of jury selection-on six felony sexual assault indictments.

I read all the new screening sheets, which summarized the facts of the cases for me, so that I could get a sense of every assault and each assistant's caseload. We had been working around the clock to stop the Silk Stocking Rapist, to identify Emily Upshaw's killer, and to put some flesh on the entombed skeleton in order to learn her backstory.

In the movies, cops and prosecutors working the big case never seemed to have to worry about other old or new business. In fact, burglars still climbed up fire escapes and raped sleeping victims, women who separated from abusive partners were stalked and assaulted as they left their jobs, college students were preyed on by peers who plied them with alcohol to make them more vulnerable, and children were molested by pedophiles in places they should have been most safe-their homes, houses of worship, and school grounds.

When Laura arrived at nine, I spent half an hour with her, dictating correspondence, listing phone messages for her to return, and organizing memos to be filed. The first paper to go out was a subpoena faxed to the protocol chief at the UN, to be followed by a hand-delivered original. In lieu of an appearance by 2P.M. at this afternoon's grand jury, he could make the home addresses of the requested representatives available to Mercer Wallace.

The morning filled up as Sarah and I reviewed the new cases and she advised me of the direction each was going, and the assistants who wanted to discuss their investigations rolled in and out in response to Laura's summons.

Mercer called me from the protocol office at 1:45. He was holding the list of residential addresses. "We're talking more than thirty countries," he said. "It looks like eleven of them fit nicely inside our geographic range."

"Is the lieutenant on board?"

"Yeah. He went to the top on this. The chief of d's is pulling in guys from the street crime unit to sit on each house starting with today's four-to-twelve shift." Those cops patrolled in plainclothes and unmarked cars, usually saturating high crime areas, without the obvious labels of the distinctive blue and white RMPs to give them away.

"Any other ideas?"

"Next call is to INS, to see if we can get pedigree information on all the family members who have visited or lived here." That would have been impossible to do a few short years ago, before the Immigration and Naturalization Services had computerized their systems.

"Great. Battaglia wants to conference everything we did last week at four. Tell Laura to pull me out if anything develops," I said. "And, Mercer, you hear anything from Mike?"

"I've left some voice mails on his cell, just rambling and telling him what we've been doing. No callbacks yet."

Pat McKinney walked into my office at 3:55. He told the assistant with whom I was working to come by later on and said Battaglia had asked him to pick me up. The meeting was long, as I had expected. Battaglia was a detail man, always wanting to have the most current theories of major investigations so that he could repay media favors by planting discreet leaks when he thought they were reliable enough to release.

"I don't care what time of night, Alex. You get anything connected to the UN, I'm the first to know."

"Of course."

"And the rest of the week?"

"We've got to go back to some of the people we talked to briefly-Gino Guidi, Noah Tormey, the men at the Botanical-"

I must have missed a signal from McKinney to the district attorney.

"That reminds me," Battaglia said. "Ellen Gunsher goes with you on some of that, okay? You're down Chapman, and he's the source of some friction there. I want Ellen to get some exposure on this. You got guns involved in the professor's shooting, you got the ex-cop who killed a kid with a gun. Ellen rides with you."

I smiled and told him that was fine before he dismissed the two of us.

"You must have delivered big to get that included in your package, Pat. Battaglia telling me to partner up with your girlfriend. What's your secret? You doing more than just lighting his cigars these days? Moved on to wiping his fingerprints off a murder weapon that you've hidden somewhere?"

He ignored me and pushed open the door to the men's room. It was his favorite way of ending our conversations.

Laura was gone, but she had taped a message on the tall head-rest of my desk chair:

Mercer's on his way to the 19th squad. He wants you to meet him there.

It was already close to six o'clock. I closed up my office and went out in front of the courthouse to hail a cab for the rush hour ride to Sixty-seventh Street.

I flashed my ID at the officer on the desk and before he could scan it, the sergeant called over his shoulder, "They're waiting for you on the second floor, Miss Cooper. Go right on up."

I'd spent many fruitful hours in the squad room over the last decade. I'd interviewed crime victims, interrogated suspects, puzzled over facts with detectives, and napped on the hard wooden bench behind the bars in the holding pens when short evenings had turned into long overnights.

Lieutenant Peterson looked up as I opened the door. He put his finger against his lips before I could greet him or the half dozen detectives standing around, and motioned me to follow him into the captain's office.

Mercer was behind the desk, ending a telephone conversation. He handed me a copy of the sketch of the Silk Stocking Rapist-I knew the image as well as I knew Mercer's features-and then gave me a copy of the official United Nations newsletter with photographs of recent receptions and conferences.

"I picked this up when I was waiting for the list of names this afternoon. Look at the delegate speaking at the December meeting on trade sanctions."

The man in the photograph looked remarkably like the composite drawing, except that he appeared to be in his mid-sixties. The hairline and round-shaped face, even the size of the nose and outline of the lips were identical to the rapist's physiognomy. The skin color was the deep ebony that witnesses had described.

"Who's your friend?"

"Sofi Maswana. Representative to the United Nations from Dahlakia."

"Enlighten me, Mercer."

"Like Eritrea, it was once part of Ethiopia. Broke off in the nineties and became an independent republic. Northern Africa, on the Red Sea, prized for its pearl fisheries."

"And Mr. Maswana?" I asked.

"He's downstairs with his number-one son, waiting to talk to us."

"I'm impressed. That's why all the guys look so wired out there?"

"They know something's up," Peterson said. "They haven't seen the pair yet."

"What do you know?"

"Maswana's a perfect gentleman," Mercer said, flipping open his notepad. "He's got business degrees from the University of London-don't go smirking there, Alex-and the Sorbonne. Sixty-eight years old. Been in the diplomatic corps for almost thirty years and has been posted here for six."