The Kills

when I thought about our future, and the barriers that had presented themselves in the past, that I made myself anxious.

I closed the door behind him and settled down on the sofa for the evening with Thomas Hardy and the D'Urbervilles. The bleak Dorset landscape and the workings of the malevolent forces of the universe suited me beautifully.

Monday morning, I left the house early for the dreaded trip to my office, to prepare for the fallout when news of Vallis's death spread, and to go before Judge Moffett.

I kept my door closed until I went to the courtroom, researching the law on-line. I didn't find what I needed. When I got upstairs, the scene was not what I expected. Tripping, Robelon, and Frith were again seated at counsel table. They all looked relaxed and calm. Behind them was Graham Hoyt, and next to him were the lawyers for the hospital and child welfare agency.

Now, however, the two rows behind them were filled with courthouse reporters. I knew that the tabloids had connected the TriBeCa murder with the fact that Paige Vallis had been on the witness stand in the case, but my guess was that Robelon had invited them to come and watch him secure a dismissal of the charges against his client. I had hoped to put this matter to rest out of the glare of press coverage.

Judge Moffett was the last to arrive. The media had always been fair to him, and he would play with them to get himself some favorable ink. He took the bench and began by making a statement in open court about Paige Vallis's murder and the great coincidence that she had spent her last day testifying before him.

'Do you have an application, Mr. Robelon?' Moffett asked.

'Yes, Your Honor. At this time, on behalf of my client, I move to dismiss all the charges against him. We are, obviously, entitled to a mistrial. I had been looking forward to the now-impossible opportunity of cross-examining Ms. Vallis. Not only do we mourn her death, but we regret that this deprives Mr. Tripping of the chance to completely exonerate himself.'

Robelon's grandstanding went on for ten minutes. The judge asked me to respond. I rambled more than I intended, talking about the rape charge first, disagreeing-most respectfully-with the court's conclusion that Vallis's death was coincidental to the trial, and making the point that she was not the sole victim in this matter. There were still counts in the indictment-assault and endangerment-that referred to the missing boy.

'What's the solution, Ms. Cooper?' Moffett asked facetiously. 'I'm supposed to move to strike an entire direct exam? Just ask the jury to forget what they heard and move on to your other witnesses? You got law on it?'

'No, sir. I haven't been able to find a single case on point. I'd like some time to-'

'You don't need time. You need a miracle,' Moffett said, looking to see how many of the reporters were taking down his repartee.

'We had open issues on the table. Dulles Tripping is still missing-'

Robelon stood and interrupted me. 'Mr. Hoyt and I can give you an update on that. The boy is fine. He's upstate with friends. We're happy to arrange a meeting with Ms. Cooper so she can speak with him herself as soon as we get him back here.'

Graham Hoyt was standing behind Robelon and winked at me, as though to confirm he had brokered that deal for me to see Dulles.

'May I have a few hours to consult with the head of our Appeals Bureau?' I asked. The most brilliant legal scholar in our office was John Bryer. Whenever our shoot-from-the-hip trial dogs got into trouble in court, the fastest solution was to call Bryer. If anyone could fashion a creative solution to keep my case alive, it would be he. 'I might want to submit papers-to write on this, Your Honor.'

'Write, schmite. Knock yourself out, Ms. Cooper. I'll give you two days. We'll be back here Wednesday morning. Call my clerk if there's any law on your side. Bring the jury in, Mac.'

The court officer opened the door and the jurors straggled in. From the way most of them glanced at me, I knew they had heard the news about Paige. I couldn't fault them, despite the court's instructions. Several were holding folded newspapers. One of the tabloid headlines was written in bold-faced type above a photograph of the earnest young woman from the Dibingham Partners annual report:WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION-SLAIN.

The judge apologized to the panel for the inconvenience, reminded them of the now ridiculous admonition not to read press accounts involving the case and its witnesses, and excused them until Wednesday morning. I looked straight ahead to avoid making eye contact with any of them as they filed out of the room.

Mike Chapman was sitting in my chair, feet up on my desk, gnawing on a bagel, when I dragged back downstairs to my office.

'Good morning, sunshine. You look like you're in need of a turn in your luck. Ah, the wonders of the automated fingerprint identification system,' he said.

'Fingerprints? Where?'

'Queenie's apartment. The lifts we got off the plastic toilet seat. This one'll please you.'

'Just give me his name. I'm too whipped to guess.'

'Little Miss Sweet Sixteen. Your snitch Kevin Bessemer's child bride, carrying her old mink coat.'

'What?'

'Tiffany Gatts herself was inside Queenie Ransome's apartment.'

18

'In case you were searching for the lowest common denominator between the two women who were killed- Queenie Ransome and Paige Vallis-looks like the computer found it for you. And I do mean the lowest,' Mike said. 'Killing that old lady for a long-dead rodent? Kevin Bessemer and Tiffany Gatts.'

I remembered the initials on the lining of Queenie's coat: R du R. 'Why didn't it cross my mind that the mink could have been hers? R as in Ransome.'

' Ras in Robelon,' Mike answered me. 'Her initials still don't fit the monogram. Why would you think someone living on social security in a Harlem tenement was likely to be the owner of a Parisian- made fur coat, I don't know. We need to talk to that kid.'

'Did you check with Corrections? Is Tiffany Gatts still in jail?'

'Yep.'

'Who's got her case?'

'Nedim. Will Nedim. Trial Bureau Thirty.'

'Call him for me. Tell him to get the girl's lawyer over here as soon as possible. We need to put in an order to produce Tiffany this afternoon, if he can do it that fast. Let's see whether she rolls over and gives us Kevin Bessemer when we tell her she's a suspect in a murder case,' I said.

'Usually I'm not so dense. I get lost in the forest, I can follow the trail of bread crumbs to get me out of the woods,' Mike said. 'Tripping's in Rikers for raping Paige Vallis and beating his own son. Kevin Bessemer's his cellmate. Bessemer waits until the eve of trial and decides to be a snitch against Tripping. On his way to see you, Bessemer stops for some nooky with Gatts, and they're both gone with the wind. Ransome is found dead. Gatts is locked up. Paige Vallis testifies. The Tripping kid disappears. Vallis is killed. But for the life of me I can't think of anything to connect Queenie Ransome to the Vallis girl. You got any bread crumbs to put on my path?'

'Sure. That's why we're going to lean on the weakest link. Get me Gatts. Kevin Bessemer is the only person linked to both cases.'

By two o'clock, Mike Chapman, Will Nedim, and I were sitting in my conference room with Helena Lisi, counsel for Tiffany Gatts. I had laid out the new evidence that placed Gatts in the apartment of McQueen Ransome. Lisi had given permission for her client to be picked up from the Women's House of Detention and brought to my office so the two of them could talk about what we had discovered.

When detectives arrived with the handcuffed Gatts, we stepped out of the room so Lisi and the teenager could confer privately.

'Lisi's your vintage, no? Same age?'

She had started at the Legal Aid Society, defending indigent prisoners, shortly before I joined Battaglia's staff more than a decade ago. 'Yeah. She and her husband opened their own firm a few years back. Remember him? Jimmy Lisi? They handle mostly low-level crimes, here and the Bronx.'