“Yeah. Carol Goodwin.”
“She’s here, Alex.”
“I told her I couldn’t see her this week. She knows I’m on trial.”
“She really sounds desperate.”
“Did you call around the unit to see whether-”
“Catherine and Marisa are both interviewing witnesses. Nan Toth is lecturing at Columbia Law School. You said Goodwin needs somebody senior, right? I couldn’t find anyone else,” Laura said. “Anyway, she only wants to talk to you.”
Our pioneering Sex Crimes Unit had forty lawyers, most of them with caseloads so heavy that they were often on trial or evaluating new matters.
I looked at my watch. “She can’t be much more desperate than I am at this point. One fifteen. Okay, I’ll see what this is about. I’m out the door at three thirty to meet Mike and Mercer.”
Laura ushered Carol Goodwin into my office. “I’m sorry to do this to you,” she said, sniffling and reaching for my tissue box as she sat down. “Just show up, I mean. But I’m getting frantic about this investigation, and the detective from my precinct just doesn’t care. He hasn’t done a thing for me.”
The twenty-eight-year-old woman worked in private banking. She was intelligent and well-spoken, but obviously high-strung, and I doubted that the time she had spent in counseling for an eating disorder during college had completely cured the problem. She was several inches shorter than I and rail thin, nervously fingering the strap of her designer handbag while I shuffled through a file cabinet for her case folder.
“I don’t think that’s fair, Carol. They’ve been working with you on every angle of this for two months.”
“Then how come they haven’t caught the guy? What if he-what if he hurts me before they do? I’m the one at risk here. They need to be taking this more seriously.”
“Why don’t you calm down? There’s no point discussing any of this when you’ve got yourself wound up in such a state.”
Carol Goodwin had been referred to me by a victims’ advocacy group. She was reluctant to press charges when she first encountered her stalker, but once I’d offered to monitor the case, she had agreed to cooperate with the detectives to try to nail him. The man she described to us had taken to following her from work once or twice a week, showing up at events she attended for business purposes, sending her menus from restaurants she frequented that arrived in her mail a day or so after she had been to one of them, calling her in the middle of the night from phone booths in her neighborhood-all the activity following a note that had been slipped under her door one night this spring, with the words I’LL GET YOU cut out from a newspaper and pasted onto a textbook photograph of a corpse.
“You think this is easy, living in fear all the time? Have you ever been the victim of a crime?”
I needed a high-maintenance witness right now like I needed my wisdom teeth extracted without anesthesia. It wasn’t my practice to talk about my personal problems with them, either. I had stories that would make Goodwin’s silent stalker seem like her best pal.
“My update from the detectives only carries me through last weekend. I apologize for that, Carol. I’ve been on trial with a murder-”
“Is that what it’s going to take to get your complete attention, Ms. Cooper? Would you prefer that this man murders me?”
I stood up from my chair. “I think you’ll be happier dealing with one of my colleagues, Carol. I’ve obviously let you down. I’m going to reassign your matter to someone else in the unit who can devote the time you require to it.”
“No, no. That’s not it. I really want you to handle my case yourself.” She stretched out her arm to me. “I’m sorry-it’s just that I’m losing control and I feel so helpless all the time. My counselor told me to trust you. Please don’t give up on me.”
I sat on the edge of the desk, scanning the file. “You still have no idea who might be doing this?”
“I can’t seem to help the cops with that at all,” Carol said, shaking her head. “I was sure it was my ex-boyfriend-the guy who broke up with me two years ago-but they’ve ruled him out.”
The man she referred to had married and moved to Connecticut. The police reports detailed his whereabouts on the dates in question, and the investigators excluded him unequivocally. His physical characteristics matched the description of the mystery man-but so did those of millions of other five-foot-nine-inch, sandy-haired white men with an average build.
“What brought you here today?” I asked the questions but could barely concentrate on the woman’s answers. No matter how many times the detectives had followed her to and from her office or planted themselves undercover at evening social encounters or meetings, the stalker never appeared. I was so focused on the Quillian connection that I knew I had given Carol Goodwin short shrift.
“Last night. It happened again last night, and whoever answered the phone in the detectives’ squad didn’t want to do anything at all for me.”
“What time last night?”
“Ten thirty. I had stopped in the corner deli to get some milk for my coffee. He-he, um-he was waiting for me outside the door.” She blew her nose with a tissue. “He looked so menacing, like he was going to attack me this time.”
“What did you do?”
“I ran back inside and used the phone in the rear of the store to call the precinct.”
“Did he have a weapon?”
“I don’t know, Ms. Cooper. I didn’t get close enough to find out.”
“Did he follow you in? Did the counterman see him?”
She looked down at her shoes. “No. He said he never did.”
“That’s too bad. It would be useful to have another witness.”
“Why? Why is that? Because you don’t believe he was there?”
“Of course I believe you. It would be helpful if someone else could confirm an identification-it always is-once we get the guy.”
Her voice quivered as she seemed to lose control again. “Well, how the hell are you going to get him if the police don’t even respond to my call? How?”
“Carol, are you aware of what happened in midtown last night? Do you know there was an explosion? People were killed? Every precinct in the city had to direct manpower to the scene, can you understand that?”
“So my case means nothing to them, right? I’m the bottom of the pecking order, aren’t I? You think the newspapers won’t be interested in that? You think I can’t get some reporter to do a story on how this has impacted me both emotionally and professionally?”
“Tell your story to anyone you think will help you, Carol,” I said, rising again, aware that I’d be losing points on the sensitivity scale today. “Threats don’t work very well with me, so now I’m going to suggest that you leave and let me get back to business. You got home safely, didn’t you?”
“I had to wait in that damn place until one of my neighbors came in and walked me home. I guess the police wouldn’t have cared if I had to stay there all night.” She got up from her chair and fumbled in her bag to find lipstick to apply.
“That’s a silly thing to say, Carol. They’ve been very concerned about this. I’ll give the cops a call, but I think you’ve got to cut them a break about last night. Where are you going now?”
“Back to work.”
“Would you be more comfortable if I had one of the detectives from the DA’s squad give you a ride?”
“Yeah. That would be great.”
“Then have a seat in the waiting area, okay?”
I led her out past Laura’s desk and returned to my office, closing the door behind me. I dialed Steve Marron in the squad, one flight above me. “Steve, have you got twenty minutes?”
“Every time I give you twenty you manage to turn it into an hour. Five hours. Ten.”
“Come on down. I need you to drive a witness to her office on Wall Street. Tell Joe Roman to stand outside our building entrance and get a good make on the young woman who’ll be coming out with you.”