“So, how does that help?”
“Two possibilities. One is that someone did take her picture, recognizing Isabella Lascar, the movie star. The other,” I thought out loud, ‘is that she simply was captured in the frame of some photographs you know, people taking amateur shots of the scenery usually have bodies in the foreground, whether they intend to or not. Even if Isabella was trying to be incognito, she may be in somebody’s snapshots along with her weekend guest.“
“Which might give us a key witness,” said Mike, ‘and a motive, and maybe even a perp.“
”Call the chief. While you work the airlines, have him do this angle. There’s only one radio station on the island. WMVY great oldies, lots of Carly Simon and James Taylor, and all the local news, so everybody listens to it at some point. Do a public service announcement, immediately.
Urge anyone with film from the ferry at the end of last Week, with pictures of Isabella, to come forward, and if it leads to any information about the identification of her killer… then we get the police to offer a reward. There’s a shot at coming up with something. I’d even check the camera store near the ferry landing they do developing in several hours, and probably have the names and numbers of everyone who has brought film in to be developed during the past week.“
‘I’ll make a deal with you, Alex,“ Mike offered, as he threw out the remains of his sandwich and pushed away from my desk.
”You take care of these weenie-waggers here in Manhattan, and I’ll work with your Chilmark boys on the murder. This isn’t a bad way to begin. I’ll get started on it in your paralegals’ office and you keep occupied on your own cases.“
I sorted through the phone messages that had accumulated and gave most of them back to Laura, knowing they could wait till the next week. I kept the ones I wanted to handle.
Jed’s secretary had called. No way for him to leave Paris until the business meetings end on the weekend he’ll call me at home later and come straight from the airport on Saturday. Shit, I thought, not exactly the response I had craved. But I knew my own priorities when I was in the middle of a major investigation which had to come before any personal considerations, so I understood Jed’s position -1 guess.
Call Congressman LaMella’s office. They want to know our position on the legislative package changing the evidentiary requirement for child abuse cases. Better late than never. Gina Hemmings will call back from Part 82, where she’s on trial. The judge is about to charge her jury and she wants to know if you can cite any cases on whether the crime of ‘sexual misconduct’ is a lesser included count in a rape case. Well, I mused as my annoyance grew, once again Gina has avoided the burden of over preparation.
Ellen Goldman called to confirm tomorrow’s appointment. Battaglia had given her permission to do a big story on the innovative work of our Sex Crimes Prosecution Unit for the USA Lawyer’s Digest, the premier glossy legal journal. I had already spoken with her several times on the telephone and we were ready for the first interview.
She’s smart and pushy, but I’d have to move her back to next week. I knew she’d try to weasel Isabella’s death into the piece so I decided to call her back myself in an effort to show I was still in control. Slightly. I got her machine and left a message kicking our appointment back until Monday afternoon.
Sarah Brenner will wait for callback. Has a witness coming on Monday and doesn’t believe the story. Wants help breaking it down. Boy, am I in the mood to do that – I’d love to make someone else cry. Schedule that one for Monday morning.
Pat McKinney called to see if there’s anything he can do to help. Translation: he knows I’m miserable and the boss is pissed off, and he wants me to know that he knows.
Response: yeah, you can help me go fuck yourself.
CHAPTER 3
The rest of the afternoon passed slowly. I wasn’t able to concentrate on the brief I had to submit for the sodomy case I was scheduled to try in three weeks, and I was desperate to avoid unnecessary phone conversations. Sarah stopped by to discuss several new investigations that needed to be assigned, and to cheer me up with chatter about her baby.
The only phone call of interest was from Mercer Wallace.
He was pleased about Katherine Fryer’s input with the sketch artist.
“It’s the best one yet, Coop,” he told me.
“She’s really good on facial characteristics. She’s firm about the size and shape of the mustache, and you know how they all say he’s got bad skin? Well, she actually draws these big pockmarks and a deep set of creases down each side of his forehead. Swears that’s exactly where they are. I never had an illustrator as a victim before but it sure helps the sketch take on some definition.”
I knew exactly what he meant. The typical description started with witnesses saying they’re lousy at doing this, and that the guy was average height, average weight, average-looking, nothing distinctive about his appearance, and so on. I had a folder full of sketches of wanted rapists who looked like everybody and nobody. Try and display one to a jury and claim a resemblance to the defendant on trial and it was more likely to look like three of the jurors.
Not guilty.
Mercer went on.
“Better yet. She also thinks she made out a birthmark. Says she really tried to avoid looking at his private parts, but he kept sticking it in her face and she’s pretty sure he had a fuzzy area on his right thigh, ‘bout the size of a tangerine, two inches southeast of his equipment.”
Bingo. One of the few advantages afforded a rape victim in identifying her attacker is actually the intimacy of the crime. She gets to see anatomical parts rarely displayed in a bank robbery or mugging. And sometimes there are birthmarks or tattoos or surgical scars that a victim describes the day of the assault, and that a knowledgeable detective photographs the minute he has his suspect in custody. Mercer and I had our fastest conviction on a case when our witness told us the rapist had a tattoo of a spider on his penis. The jury only needed to see the Polaroid of that scorpion for about ten seconds before they voted to convict the defendant.
Then they spent the next hour eating lunch, because they didn’t want the defense attorney to think they hadn’t spent a serious amount of time deliberating about his client’s fate.
Once we had a lead on this suspect, Catherine’s description of the unusual mark would help sink him, especially if we didn’t get lucky with DNA testing.
Mike came back to my office shortly before five-thirty, as Laura was packing up to leave for the day.
“I don’t blame you for getting out of here,” he said to Wilkie.
“I bet you never knew how unpopular your boss was. I got a list as long as your arm here of people who’d like to get rid of her, and those are just the guys she’s prosecuting, who don’t even know her personally. Wait till I start with that crew.”
Laura laughed and said good night.
“I won’t see you tomorrow, will I?” she asked.
“No, but we’ll call you from the Vineyard. Have a good weekend and I’ll see you on Monday.”
Mike and I spent another hour going over the list of possible killers he had culled from my closed case files.
“You’ve prosecuted some sick puppies, blondie,” he mused as he shook his head over the long accumulation of names he had scrawled during the afternoon, with brief case descriptions next to each of them.
“Great cop you are. It took you ten years to reach that conclusion?”
“No, I mean, we mess with some ugly characters in Homicide. But your guys torture people who are alive and looking them right in the eye. And it takes them a lot longer to do it than a shooting or stabbing a couple of seconds in my cases and it’s all over. I never liked working sex crimes, making the victims talk about it in such detail, relive it. Seeing your screening sheets makes me remember why I hated it so much. Murder is easy you know how it happened, you just gotta figure out who did it. And you got no complaining witness to screw up your case with inconsistencies when you get to trial. C’mon. I’ll take you home so you can freshen up for lover boy.”