“Excuse me,” said Seaver, “I don’t understand why you’re talking to me. If there’s no investigation-”
“Oh, yeah, but see, Detective Seaver, the thing is, even though there’s no investigation, you’ve been investigating. That’s what sort of threw us.”
“I have?” Coolly said, but Marlene saw his throat working.
“Uh-huh. You went down to the M.E.’s files and flashed your D.A. squad ID and pulled three sets of autopsy records and told them that it was part of an investigation.” Guessing, but who else could it have been?
Seaver had to clear his throat. “No, I didn’t.”
Marlene breezed on, as if he hadn’t spoken. “Yeah, and we thought it was kind of strange that it was you, considering the nature of the autopsies. The dead people, I mean. We thought, hey, if they thought there was something phony about the suicides, and if they thought that Dr. Selig had somehow screwed up in calling them suicides, why would they involve the very detective who arrested these kids? And probably interrogated them at the precinct. Or maybe it was just a funny coincidence.”
Seaver was trying to assemble a shit-eating grin on his sallow face, but the pieces kept getting lost. “I really don’t know what you’re-” he started, but Marlene continued:
“Yeah, actually, you do. And we also contacted Tom Devlin at Internal Affairs. He’s not interested in the suicides, because the M.E. said they were legit, but he was real interested in a gypsy cab shakedown racket up by the Two-Five, until he got orders from the D.A. to stop it, because it was part of a bigger investigation, a bigger investigation that does not seem to exist. Very peculiar. You wouldn’t have any perceptions you’d care to share with me on any of this, would you, Detective?”
Seaver licked his lips, which looked raw and much chewed. “No, you lost me there. Look, I don’t really see where I can help you, and I got things I have to do, so-”
“No problem,” said Marlene cheerily, “I appreciate the time, and as a matter of fact, I have stuff to do too. But, you know, I’m sure we’ll be running into one another again because, as I’m sure you know, as a professional detective, that when somebody’s put together a really fancy scam, they always leave a few threads loose-hey, we’re all human, right? You can’t think of everything. But when somebody else starts to pull those loose threads, it’s really hard to keep the whole thing from coming unraveled. Now, whoever put this together figured that Dr. Murray Selig would be the one pulling the threads because, you know, between you and me, Detective, two of those kids were murdered in custody-the suicide findings don’t bear a second look-so, the thinking was, get rid of him and you’re home free. And, really, it should have worked out fine. They had no way to figure that Selig would hire just the lawyer who had a wife whose friend was an investigative reporter investigating the mysterious deaths of a couple of gypsy cabbies, and that they would all put their heads together, and the whole thing would come unglued. By the way, pounding on Ariadne Stupenagel was a serious mistake, because it confirmed that the gypsy shakedowns were serious enough to kill somebody for. Another little pull on the tangle. In fact, I would say that in a little while all the principals in this scam are going to be running around like maniacs looking for some kind of a deal, and I would also say, speaking as an attorney now, that the very first person to come clean about the thing would get the best deal going. Wouldn’t you agree, Detective?”
“I wouldn’t know,” said Seaver. His color was bad, and he seemed not to be able to stop swallowing.
Marlene rose. “So long, Detective Seaver. Call me if you think of anything that might be useful.” She left him staring at her back.
It was a good while before he was able to begin stabbing a familiar number into his phone with shaking fingers.
“Twins?” Karp exclaimed.
“Yes, each with a little heartbeat, and didn’t I need a drink when I heard it, and wasn’t I a good girl not to have one?”
Karp shook his head and stared wonderingly at his wife. “Did you find out? I mean, girls, boys, mixed…?”
“No, Memelstein offered to do a sonogram, but I said that if God wanted us to know that stuff in advance, He would have supplied us with little glass portholes.” Marlene sat down in the bed. “My God! We’ll have three children!”
“We can afford it,” said Karp practically, sitting next to her. “Or will, if we win this case.”
“Seaver has three kids,” said Marlene musingly. “There was a picture on his desk. Three kids, no wifey. Probably a divorce. Maybe he’s got money problems. It’s probably why he went into it with Jackson, the shakedowns. The guy doesn’t seem the type; I mean, a little easy graft, but nothing heavy-not murder, anyway. He’s coming apart behind it.”
Marlene filled Karp in about her interview that morning. “Will he crack, you think?” he asked.
“Maybe. When the hounds start getting closer. Which I will endeavor to arrange. Jesus, three kids!”
SIXTEEN
In examining notionally hostile witnesses, Karp had found that a kindly tone and punctilious courtesy answered better than the showy browbeat favored by many in his profession, unless, of course, he thought some jerk was trying to slip a whopper past him, in which case he could adopt a mien that could blowtorch paint. That lacking, he had learned, a civilized manner kept the judges happy and prevented any unwanted sympathy for the witness stirring in the breasts of the jury. Most remarkably, it also made most witnesses less hostile. Considerations of policy are almost never as strong as the natural human desire for respect and kindness.
Beyond this, the present witness, Assistant District Attorney Marsha Davis, inspired actual sympathy in Karp. Davis was a tall woman in her late twenties with a well-cut head of dark hair framing an unfortunate large-nosed face, short on chin and equipped (as if to make up for that deficit) with what seemed like more than the usual number of large, equinoid teeth. Ms. Davis had been the A.D.A. in People v. Ralston, a homicide case brought to trial in the previous year. According to Bloom’s memo, Ms. Davis had complained that Dr. Selig had failed to return numerous telephone calls, that he had been insulting to her at a meeting in his office, at which another doctor had been present, and that he had not appeared in court when he should have, although he had been given four weeks’ notice of the appearance, his failure to appear having disrupted the Ralston murder trial.
During the course of her testimony this morning, Karp had charmingly drawn from Ms. Davis that Ralston had been her very first homicide case, that she had received no specialized training in prosecuting homicides, and that she was unfamiliar with the practical operations of the medical examiner’s office.
“Ms. Davis,” said Karp, “how many assistant district attorneys are there working felonies?”
“I don’t know. Maybe three hundred, something like that.”
“Three hundred. And how many chief medical examiners are there?”
She narrowed her eyes: a trick question. “One.”
“Do you think it’s reasonable to expect the chief medical examiner to be at the beck and call of every assistant district attorney?”
“No, but …”
“For example, was there ever a time in your career where the lack of contact with the medical examiner’s office impaired the prosecution of one of your cases?”
“No,” said Davis, and seemed mildly surprised at her answer.
“Thank you. Now, you have indicated that three days before the trial in Ralston was due to start, you called Dr. Selig’s office and told his secretary that you wanted him in court at nine-thirty on Monday, January 13, and that his secretary called you later in the day and said that Dr. Selig had a conflict and could not be there. What was your reaction to that?”