Chapman looked up. 'What'd he have to say about all this?'
Foote lowered her head. 'He didn't even come to New York. Not then, or later. He had just remarried, which engaged most of his emotional interest, and seemed to believe that Charlotte would show up eventually, when she needed his money or his help. He thought it was just a gimmick to get his attention.'
'Anybody check out her room?'
'Yes, the detectives from the precinct. Undisturbed and unremarkable. Her credit cards were never used, her bank account was never tampered with-'
'Make a list, Coop, when you do your subpoenas for Dakota. Let's get bank records, credit card information, and phone records for Voight, too. Her computer still around?'
Foote shrugged. 'I imagine when the semester ended in June that all of her belongings were shipped back to her father in Peru, but I'll check that for you.'
'And line up some of her classmates for Monday, some of the kids that she lived near in the dorm or hung out with in class. The former boyfriend, too.'
Recantati knew that he was in over his head. 'Can we slow this down? I think you're making some quantum leaps here that will serve no good.'
'Welcome to the real world, Professor. Wake up these it-can't-happen-here nerds and make them get involved in all this. You do it, or I will.' Chapman slapped his steno pad against the palm of his hand to drive home his point.
The sharp buzz of the intercom startled me. Foote's secretary's voice came through the speakerphone intercom. 'Professor Lock-hart is here for his four o'clock meeting with you. He thinks you might want him to join you now.'
'No, no. Tell him I'll leave him a message and reschedule for early next week.' She turned her attention back to us. 'What else do you need by Monday?'
I spoke before Mike could. 'Every detail about every criminal incident that has occurred on this campus and to your students, whether here or wherever they're living in the city.'
'That's hard to put together quickly. There's no, well…' Recantati was stammering.
'I guess you're not familiar with the Cleary Act, Professor?' I asked.
This was Sylvia Foote's territory, and she stepped in to spare Recantati the embarrassment of his ignorance about an important administrative function. 'We're in the process of putting together that information now, Alex. I can certainly give you whatever reports and referrals we have.'
'Then we'll see you here, on Monday. We've each got a beeper,' I said, handing my business card to both Foote and Recantati. 'If you need us for anything at all, or want to bring something to my attention, just give a call.'
As we walked out of Foote's office, her secretary told us that Detective Sherman and his partner from the Crime Scene Unit were on their way up to Dakota's office. Mike nodded to me to follow him up the staircase to watch them get to work.
'So what's the Cleary Act?'
'About fifteen years ago, a student named Jeanne Cleary was raped and strangled to death in her dormitory at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. The bastard who killed her was also enrolled at the school. He was a drug addict with a history of deviant behavior who had broken into her room to burglarize it while she was sleeping. Her parents fought a long, tough battle to get federal legislation to make it mandatory for every campus official to report the statistics of criminal occurrences at their schools.'
'At least it gives the applicants an idea of what the problems are at each college.'
'That's the point. It's got to be in all the admissions literature, so families making decisions about where they're sending their kids can assess the risks. What kind of security measures the school has, how it handles crime reporting, what kind of disciplinary measures the administration enforces-all that sort of thing.'
'Does it work? Do any good?'
'It's a great idea, but I haven't seen one school anywhere near this jurisdiction that reports it accurately. Not Columbia, not NYU, not Fordham, not FIT. Do you know there are more than twenty college campuses in Manhattan alone, from those large universities down to small commercial colleges that just have a single building? I can give you ten criminal complaints a year taken from students who report to the local precinct or to my office for every one you'll see in the numbers supplied to the government-and to the parents-by the schools. They all want to fudge it.'
The door to Dakota's office was open and Sherman was beginning to document everything in sight with his camera and flash.
'Get a shot of that bulletin board on the wall by the window, Hal. And watch your mouth-I got Cooper with me.'
'Hey, Alex, how goes it? Understand Kestenbaum's got a hush-hush preliminary finding of a homicide on this broad. So much for the accidental death theory they were floating last night, I guess. Tough break on that verdict last week in the case from the bus station. Sorry the stuff we came up with wasn't too helpful. Helen took the loss pretty hard.'
One of my assistants had just had a not guilty verdict the previous Thursday. Her victim had been beaten in the face so badly that she was unable to identify her attacker. The fact that thousands of people a day passed through the Port Authority terminal made it impossible to get a clean set of fingerprints from the corridor in which the attack occurred, and the circumstantial case had been too weak for a jury to believe in.
'Cooper trains her troops not to look at an acquittal as a loss, Hal. Just figure Helen came in second place… right behind the defense attorney. Most other jobs, that gets you the silver medal. No harm in that.'
'What do you want me to do after I dust these surfaces?'
'I want copies of as much of the paper as you can give me. Originals if it's not worth trying to lift prints off this stuff.'
Sherman removed the gum from the wastebasket with a pair of tweezers, slipping it into a small manila envelope and labeling it with the date and number of the Crime Scene run. 'I'll drop the copies off at your office. Gotta get to midtown. Just had a double homicide called in. Guy in a Santa suit did a stickup at a doughnut shop, using a ten-year-old customer as a shield. The owner had a licensed pistol. Plugged Santa and one of his aging elves before they could make it back into their getaway sleigh.'
'Best of all possible dispositions, eh, blondie? Case abated by death. Perps blasted into the great hereafter- God's own Alcatraz-by a law-abiding citizen just trying to make a living. Give the doughnut man a kiss for me. You gonna make it to the party later, Hal?'
'Depends on whether the good guys or the bad guys are winning. Have one on me.'
It was the night of the Homicide Squad's annual Christmas party, and although our moods were not festive, Chapman and I wanted to be there for a while to wish our colleagues some holiday cheer. Darkness had enveloped the city early, and the temperature had dropped substantially during our hours at Foote's office. I pulled on my long gloves and raised the collar of my coat as Chapman held open the front door of the building and we trudged uphill toward Broadway to get the car. Tiny white lights decorated the trees on College Walk and candles rested on windowsills in some of the dorm rooms.
As the motor idled, I watched the groups of college kids, seemingly oblivious to the bitter cold, making their way from classrooms to living halls to dining facilities. There were bunches talking on the great steps of Low Memorial Library, which was festively adorned with a giant wreath, and I imagined they were making plans to meet at parties or nearby bars and apartments. It wasn't much of a stretch to recall the feeling of invincibility in that period of my life, the sense of security the academic community offered-the endless possibilities of youth, fueled by intelligence and energy.
Yet one year ago, the Columbia campus had been rocked by the death of a talented and popular athlete, found in her dorm room with her throat slashed, killed by another student she had been dating, who threw himself in front of a subway car hours later. That followed the similar killing of a brilliant law student the preceding year, also by a former boyfriend who had stabbed her repeatedly.
I began to think of all the cases I had handled with students from schools throughout the city and to make a mental list of what the relationship was between victim and offender, so I could pull the files and examine the facts. For the students at King's, the illusion of the sanctity of the university setting was about to be shattered.
'Want to stop by my place and relax for a bit before we head to the soiree?' The party was held at the Park
