Linda Fairstein: Likely To Die

McGraw was moving at twice his usual speed, which I guessed-from his repeated glances at the two-and-a-half-inch heels I was wearing-was an effort to leave me behind in his wake, so he’d have a few minutes alone with his lead detectives before I got my nose into things. But his three-pack-a-day cigarette habit was no match for the aerobics of my regular ballet lessons, and the Chief was so short of breath when we reached the med school elevators that I was tempted to suggest he stop off at cardiology on our way up to the neurosurgery department. Like a lot of his colleagues, McGraw didn’t remember that Ginger Rogers did all the same things Fred Astaire did in those great old movies-except that she did them going backwardand wearing heels the height of mine.

When the doors opened, the three of us got on and I pressed six. I tried to chat up the young detective and give his boss a chance to recover, but he was stone-faced and uninterested in offering any information while McGraw was in earshot. It was a relief to reach the floor and see the familiar faces of the Homicide Squad’s B team, one of the four units into which its workers were divided, gathered in the lounge. Shirt sleeves rolled up, fresh steno pads with notes scribbled on them in every hand, coffee cups scattered on each table surface, and bodies storing adrenaline to pump them through the days and nights that would inevitably follow-barring some lucky break in the case that might solve it sooner.

My arrival prompted a range of reactions from the guys. A few friendly salutations by name from those who were pals of mine or had worked other cases with me, a couple of grunts accompanied by “Hello, Counselor,” from those who were indifferent to my participation, and two who ignored me altogether.

McGraw’s robot whispered something into his ear and the pair continued on past the lounge to a door halfway down the hall, after the Chief signaled me to wait for him out here. George Zotos, a detective whose work I had respected for years, chuckled as he walked over to talk with me. “Chapman’s gonna have trouble sitting down when McGraw gets through with him. Last thing he wants here at this hour is a D.A.-and a dame, no less. The Commissioner’s been at a conference in Puerto Rico and is flying back ‘cause of this. Chief’s got to meet him at Kennedy at noon with every fact in hand, and preferably with a killer ID’d. Sit down, have some coffee, and I’ll go get Mike for you. He’ll bring you up to speed.”

He offered me his own brew, light with three sugars. I screwed up my nose at the sweet smell and asked if there were any containers of black around. George pointed to the cardboard box with half a dozen unopened cups in it and I found one with a B penciled on the lid, which was lukewarm but strong enough to get me started.

By the time McGraw let Chapman out of the room to find me, I had slugged down two of the cups, thumbed through the morning tabloids that had been left on a couch in the corner, and rehashed the basketball game with several of the men. I learned that the room the Chief had been taken to was the office of the deceased, where she had been slaughtered and left for dead, although she had not been found until many hours later. There were no obvious suspects and no easy leads, no trail of bloody footsteps heading to the laboratory of a mad scientist with a homicidal streak. This team was settling in for the long, tedious professional job that each of them loved, with assists to follow from the forensic crews in the medical examiner’s office and the criminalists who would pore over every fiber and substance placed in their steady hands.

“Whew, Blondie,” we could all hear Chapman exclaim as he started back up the hallway to the lounge, “the sight of you first thing in the morning turned that man into a beast. There’s no accounting for taste, huh?”

Chapman was in his element. While I would spend parts of every day wallowing in the emotional aspects of this woman’s loss and wondering who would miss and mourn for her, Mike was ready for the chase. He liked working the murders because he didn’t have a breathing victim to worry about-while aiding the recovery process of such a victim was the feature I valued most about dealing with survivors of sexual assault. It was so much more rewarding than homicide cases, where all we could hope to do was avenge the death of the deceased by caging up a killer who would spend his empty days testing the weaknesses of the system. Without any means of restoring the human life that had been lost, there could be no such thing as justice.

I watched Mike walk toward us, pleased that whatever McGraw had said to him had not wiped that trademark grin off his face. His shock of black hair was uncharacteristically messy, a sign that what he had seen during the night had disturbed him. I knew, even though he wasn’t aware of it himself, that he ran his fingers through his hair constantly when something upset him more than usual. His navy blazer and jeans, the dress style he had adopted while at Fordham College fifteen years earlier, were the equivalent of a uniform for Chapman and set him apart from most of the brown- and gray-suited members of the elite Homicide Squad.

“Let’s sit over in that corner so I can tell you what I got here,” he gestured to me, hoping for a bit of privacy within the open area of the lounge. “D’you hear any news this morning? This break on the air yet?”

“I had WINS on the radio on my way over here. Not a thing. The garbage strike and union negotiations are still the lead story. Followed by the price tag on Princess Di’s latest gift from that Saudi prince.”

“That’ll give us a few hours. You get video?”

“Sure. Bannion will be here himself to do it.” I had called the head of our technical unit at home to make certain we’d get the best job done. “He promised to be here by eight.”

“Here’s what we got. Gemma Dogen-female, Caucasian.” Mike was flipping his steno pad to the front page, but didn’t need to look at his notes for the basics. “Fifty-eight years old, but I gotta tell you,” Chapman editorializing now, “that was a good-looking old lady-”

“Fifty-eight isn’t exactly old, Mikey.”

“Well, she was no cupcake, kid. When I think sex crime, I think a young, attractive woman who gets-”

“That’s one of your problems: you think with your own personal, private parts. And they’re probably no bigger than your brain.” Rape cases, especially when the assailant is a stranger, rarely have anything to do with sexual acts as we know them in consensual settings. It’s a hideously violent crime in which sex is the weapon chosen by the offender to control, degrade, and humiliate his victim. Mike knew all of that as well as I did.

“Anyway, she was a very fit, very strong fifty-eight-year-old who put up a good struggle. Medical doctor. Divorced, no kids.”

“Who’s the ex and where is he?”

“As soon as somebody tells me, I’ll let you know. I’ve only been on this a few hours more than you and we didn’t get a lot of help in the middle of the night. Most of her colleagues and the staff have just started coming into the building during the past hour so I expect to get some more answers soon.”

I nodded as Mike went on talking. “From the scene in her office, the personal side looks pretty sterile. No family photos, no dog or cat snapshots, no handmade needlepoint pillows with cute proverbs and initials. Just rows of textbooks, dozens of file drawers with X rays and medical records, about thirty plastic models of the brain-and what used to be a fairly attractive Oriental rug that’s now bathed in blood.”

“Who found her?”

“Night watchman was going around just before twelve, last check of the floor. He’d been through that corridor twice earlier and heard nothing. This time, he said there was a moaning sound. He’s got a master key, opened Dr. Dogen’s door, and called 911, right after he threw up-fortunately for the guys from Crime Scene, in the hallway.”