Cold Hit

don’t you think? It would help to know that first.”

“Forget who it is. What I’m thinking is, if it’s any kind of artwork, she could have hidden it in plain view, if you know what I mean. She could have had Marco Varelli undo any restoration. He could re-create the cover of a restored painting, or obscure a masterpiece. She could hide something like that in a warehouse, and if she treated it casually, maybe nobody would pay it any attention. You’d need her eye, her knowledge, her tutor. Maybe Deni could even carry it around in a shopping bag and nobody’d think twice of it. Maybe what’s at the heart of this case is one giant optical illusion, Coop.” Mike’s idea wasn’t altogether crazy.

“So I’ll crank up the search for Lowell, stop in to schmooze with Brian Daughtry and scan the gallery’s warehouse at the same time. Will I jinx things for you if I buy a bottle of champagne to open at Mercer’s bedside when you come back from checking out Anthony Bailor?”

“Dom Perignon. But you gotta promise that I can be the one to break the news to him. If you get over there before I do, don’t even raise his hopes. I’d hate for this to be a false alarm. If it’s the real deal, I want to tell Mercer myself.”

Mike was ready to take off. “Great to meet you, Elsa. Keep an eye on blondie till the precinct cops get here.”

I called Laura to check my messages. There was a note from McKinney, who wanted to talk to me as soon as I got back to the office. I had a couple of hours to kill until I could expect to hear from Chapman about the identity of the man with the gunshot wound, and I had no intention of returning to Hogan Place until I knew whether this new development could turn the investigation around.

The more urgent message was from the sergeant at the Special Victims Squad, about a new case that had come in several hours ago. I phoned him immediately.

“What have you got?”

“Victim’s at New York Hospital. Twenty-six-year-old businesswoman from Georgia, staying at a hotel in town. She’s being treated for an inner ear disorder, comes to town to see a specialist. Woke up this morning but blacked out on her way out of the bathroom. She was able to call her husband back home, and he phoned the manager. Two hotel security guards got into the room and radioed for an ambulance. Then the older one told the second guy to go downstairs and wait for the EMS crew. He assumed the woman was unconscious, but she was just too weak to respond. In any event, he ripped her pajama top off and started to molest her. Finally she came around and was able to tell him to stop. Reported it to the ambulance driver as soon as she got inside and they closed the doors.”

“What hotel?”

“Would you believe the Sussex House?”

“On Central Park South?”

“You got it. She paid six hundred fifty-three dollars for the privilege of being abused by a member of the staff.”

“What do you need?”

“Her husband’s flying up from Georgia this afternoon. Can you get her interviewed and set up the grand jury, so she can get back home when the doctor releases her?”

“Absolutely.” I checked my watch. “I’ll go over and talk to her now-I’m just ten blocks away from the hospital. I’ll assign somebody senior to handle it. Need any help at the hotel? Are they being cooperative?”

“One of her girlfriends met us there to pack up her belongings. She’s the one who found the two buttons on the floor- ripped off the shirt of the pajamas.”

“Did you get the guy?”

“Yeah, but he’s not talking. Ponied up with a lawyer right away. Just doing his job.”

I called Catherine Dashfer to tell her about the case.

“I’m doing a hearing this afternoon in front of Judge Wetzel,” she told me. “But I’m free the rest of the week. If she’s released in the morning, just have her be in my office at ten, and I’ll put it right in the jury. We can have her at the airport by this time tomorrow.”

“Thanks a million. Would you do me another favor? Call McKinney for me and tell him I just got called out on a new case, and that I won’t be back until late in the day, okay?”

Elsa had ordered two salads from the local deli, and we were eating our lunch when a policewoman in uniform presented herself at the reception desk. I finished up before saying good-bye and heading off on my rounds.

Police Officers Brigid Brannigan and Harry Lazarro had been told that their assignment was to take me wherever I needed to go until they were relieved later this evening by another unit. On the short ride to New York Hospital I gave them a brief rundown on what had been happening in the Caxton case. The rest of the story they knew from newspaper accounts. One of them had been gravely wounded, and there was no more serious situation than that to a cop.

Brannigan got out of the car at the Sixty-eighth Street entrance to the large facility. “Want me to take you in?”

“I’m fine, thanks. This stop was just added to the itinerary, so I’m not expecting any trouble.”

From the information booth I called the emergency room, but Callie Emerson had already been treated and had been admitted for observation and tests concerning her inner ear imbalance. She was on 6 North, and the volunteer worker directed me to that wing.

When I reached her room, Callie was sitting in an armchair dressed in a hospital gown and answering questions from a physician and a resident. I explained who I was and why I was there. My purpose was not to question her in depth about the assault-since Catherine would do that in the morning-but rather to explain the proceedings to her and engage her cooperation. Witnesses and their families were always surprised to learn how much gentler the process had become with a specialized unit like ours, and how comfortable we could make the person who had been victimized.

I stepped back outside the room and waited for the doctors to finish their examination. When they were through, I returned and sat with Callie, telling her what would happen the next day and answering all her questions about the system. She and her husband should go to Catherine’s office, where the questioning would take place. The grand jury presentation would take less than ten minutes and the assailant would not be present for it, so she did not have to see him again or tell the story in front of him. After that, Catherine would be responsible for the motion practice in the case-presenting the court with information responding to defense requests for facts to which they were entitled. Three or four months thereafter, we would bring Callie back to New York for the trial, and with any luck Catherine would be working again in front of a jurist as sensitive and knowledgeable as Wetzel.

She seemed grateful for the overview and willing to participate.

“Were you examined in the emergency room?”

“Fortunately, I wasn’t raped. So they didn’t do an internal exam. They were more worried about my physical condition-that my blood pressure had dropped so dramatically and my vital signs were weak.”

I knew from my conversation with the sergeant that the attacker had put his mouth on Callie’s breast and sucked on it.

“Did anyone look at your chest?”

“I’m not sure. There was so much going on when we got here-I just don’t know.”

“Would you mind going into the bathroom and looking at yourself in the mirror?”

When she emerged, she was nodding her head. “There’s a large discoloration on my skin, where his mouth was. And there are a few scratches on my breastbone, which might have happened when he was ripping at the buttons.”

“I’m going to ask one of the nurses to come and look at you again, if you don’t mind. I’d like her to note those marks on your medical chart. And Laura, who’s one of our photographers, will take a few pictures of them tomorrow morning.”

“They seem so minor.”

“Even so, Callie, they corroborate exactly what you said this man did to you. It will be very useful for you at the trial.”

We talked for a while longer before I thanked Callie, reassured her about what a good witness she would be,