Linda Fairstein - Death Dance

Steve Maron and I were still in his office half an hour later when Mercer and his team of detectives walked into the squad room. He was holding the arm of a man whose hands were cuffed behind his back.

Mercer led his prisoner into the barred holding cell, unlocked the cuffs, and told him to take a seat on the wooden bench against the wall. The sullen suspect was about five-foot-eleven, looked to be in his early thirties, had short brown hair parted neatly on one side, and large dark eyes that swept the room as though he was trying to figure out who each of us was and why he had been brought here.

"Dr. Sengor, I presume?" I asked Mercer, as he crossed the room to talk to me in Maron's office, our backs to the larger room.

Mercer nodded.

"And probable cause to go with him?" I asked.

"Check out the boxes," he said, closing the door and pointing at the cartons that the other two detectives placed on Maron's desk. I opened the lid of the large one and saw a blender and three dirty drinking glasses. Two of them were coated with residue that streaked their sides and bottom.

"Where were these?"

"On the kitchen counter. The sink was full of dirty dishes."

I lifted the top off the shoe box next to the carton. Pills. Dozens of pills. All of them in vials with prescription labels or sample cards from pharmaceutical companies.

Mercer removed a glassine envelope from his pants pocket. In it was an empty pill bottle. "This was sitting beside the bourbon the girls brought him last night. See what those red letters say next to the warning symbol?"

I twisted the bag and looked at the highlighted print. "Avoid alcohol while taking Xanax. Alcohol increases drowsiness and dizziness."

Mercer picked out one of the samples from the shoe box. "You don't have to read the fine print on this to find out what we already know-an overdose of the drug causes unconsciousness. It's up to you to make the charges stick, Alex. I just couldn't walk out of that apartment without cuffing the bastard."

"I'm asking you to remand the defendant, your honor. I don't think there's any amount of bail that's sufficient to ensure his return to face the charges in this case."

I hadn't counted on standing in front of Harlan Moffett in the arraignment part on a Saturday morning at eleven o'clock. He was too senior to have drawn that duty, but the court officer told me he was covering for a young judge who had taken ill during the night. The case I had tried in front of him last year still haunted me, and it was a sure sign of bad luck for me to be stuck under his thumb again with a new matter.

"Alexandra," he said, chuckling at me, "don't give me a hard time today, okay? Bad enough I had to give up my first golf date of the season, now you're gonna go overboard on some cockamamie rape allegation? Remand is for murderers. He's a doctor, this guy. Am I right?"

Moffett smoothed the thinning gray hair that framed his lined face. He was short, and liked to place his elbows on the bench before him to pull himself up straighter and taller. He lifted the yellow-backed felony complaint while Sengor's court-appointed lawyer, Eric Ingels, answered, "Yes."

"Sengor Selim?"

"Selim Sengor," I said.

"Whatever. Thirty years old. Nice-looking boy. I got a grand-daughter who can't get herself a steady guy to save her life. What kind of name is Sengor? If he was Jewish, I might parole him to her custody and take him home with me."

"You know what, judge? I'm going to step back to counsel table. I'd like this entire application to go on the record."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, Alexandra. Mr. Ingels, don't get on this lady's bad side, I'm telling you right now," Moffett said, tapping his fingers on the railing in front of him. He pushed up the sleeves of his robe and started to play with his pinky ring. "Stay right here for a minute, sweetheart, while we talk this out."

I didn't want this conversation to happen at a bench conference any more than I wanted to be held in contempt by a judge who had never made the effort to understand the nature of sexual assault nor to address "lady lawyers" appropriately.

Eric Ingels had been catching cases for Legal Aid this morning and had been tossed Sengor's matter when the papers were docketed by the court clerk.

"Whaddaya got? I mean for real," Moffett said. "You got a witness?"

"Two of them."

"What do they say?"

I repeated the stories that Jean and Cara had told.

"The doctor, he make any admissions to you?"

"He refused to talk to me when they brought him into the squad this morning," I said.

"Aha! Maybe I should try the same tactic sometime. I'm the judge-I can't even control my own courtroom when Alexandra here gets a hard-on for some miscreant," the judge said, talking to Ingels. He turned his attention back to me, drawing his handkerchief from his pocket to wipe the remains of cream cheese off his chin. "So how are you going to prove your case?"

"The toxicology will confirm that Sengor drugged the women."

"How long is that going to take?"

Nobody would even open the evidence collection kit until Monday morning. "I should have preliminary results by Wednesday."

"Judge," Ingels said. "You can't possibly hold my client that long on Ms. Cooper's speculation. He's a physician who-"

"Who has been in this country for three years, whose entire family lives abroad-in Turkey-and who has the means and opportunity to flee this city the minute you let him loose."

"You honestly think this guy is going to run home to the land of black veils and burkas when he's got college kids knocking on his door for a slumber party-coming all the way from over the border- just asking to be shtupped?" Moffett asked.

My adversary laughed, so Moffett carried on. "Miss Cooper has no sense of humor about these things. Imagine her on a date? First time a guy makes a pass she probably whacks him across the face. No wonder she's still single."

I turned and walked back to my position in the well of the courtroom. The stenographer put down his magazine and poised his fingers over the keyboard.

"For the record, your honor, I'm repeating my request for the remand of this defendant."

"So how do you get a first-degree rape charge with no force, missy?"

"Missy" me and "Sweetheart" me again, you moron, so it's recorded in black and white and I'll whip these minutes right over to the judiciary committee. Moffett had barely squeaked by them the last time he was up for reappointment.

"Incapacity to consent, judge. The defendant rendered them physically helpless by administering a drug without their knowledge."

"Your honor," Eric Ingels said, "there's no evidence that my client gave these witnesses any drugs. Half the young women in America are on some sort of antianxiety medications."

"Yeah, Alexandra. How do I know your girls didn't pop the pills themselves? Just because they don't remember taking them doesn't mean anything. Maybe they were too drunk to recall it."

"Neither of these young women was on any sort of medication, prescription or recreational. They did not voluntarily ingest the Xanax. That's what makes this a crime. They weren't drinking heavily and they weren't drunk. Even the defendant admitted-"

"To you?"

"No, judge. We did a consent recording with one of the victims."

"I thought he didn't admit anything." The cheap garnet-colored stone in Moffett's ring looked like a giant wart on his gnarled finger as he waved it in my direction.

"Not to me. But he acknowledged to one of my witnesses that he knew she had not been drinking much alcohol."

"This drug, what does it do to them? It's an aphrodisiac?" The judge was smiling now, twisting the ring round and around his finger. "They should have tried to stay awake."