“Guess I’ll keep my nose out of that one,” she said. “Do you have plans for the day, after the nine thirty court appearance?”
“Setting up shop with Mercer and Pug at the hotel. Could you please hunt down Ryan and see if he’s available to work with me on this case? And ready me a folder to take along when I leave. Ask Catherine and Marisa to check cold cases for a throat-slitting rapist, maybe someone who sketches ladders on the bodies.”
“A fireman? A house painter?”
I groaned.
“Just trying to be useful.”
“I count on that. Tell them, too, to start checking SVUs in all the big cities for anything like this. A guy who might conceal a body in a piece of luggage.”
“I didn’t see that fact in the Times.”
“Keep up with the tabloids online. They’ll get the best leaks.”
“Will do.”
“Check with McKinney’s secretary. Find out when he’s back from vacation.”
My direct supervisor, chief of the Trial Division, was a prickly colleague named Pat McKinney. A total ass-kisser to the district attorney, he was most often found at my back, ready to plunge a knife if he thought I was being favored by the boss.
“You’re good for two more weeks.”
I smiled at Laura. “That’s a relief.”
I gathered the case file and got on my way to the thirteenth-floor courtroom of Judge Alvin Aikens. He’d been newly appointed by the governor and was still feeling his way through the practicalities of his judicial role, after more than two decades as a Legal Aid attorney.
The large room was practically empty when I walked in at 9:25 A.M. The defendant, Gerardo Dominguez, was seated in the front row beside his mother. He was dressed in a dark suit and tie. Like many of the psychos I had prosecuted for sexual assault, the thirty-two-year-old looked benign and respectable when not searching cyberspace for his prey.
I took my seat at counsel table in the well of the courtroom. My adversary, David Drusin, was also prompt. He slapped his client on the back and ushered him to the defense table. I took Dominguez’s measure, since it was the first time I saw him in person, and turned away only when he met my stare with a smile.
“All rise,” the chief court officer said. “The Honorable Alvin Aikens entering.”
Aikens took the bench, signaling us to be seated. He appeared still to be self-conscious in his black robe, tugging at its folds as he pulled his chair into place.
“Ms. Cooper, Mr. Drusin. Good to see you both. You’ll forgive me if I haven’t quite found my groove yet.”
“Just so long as you don’t let the district attorney walk all over you, sir. Those spikes she’s got on can leave quite an impression on your rib cage.”
“Mr. Drusin doesn’t tread so lightly, either, Your Honor. I’m sure we’ll all do fine.”
“Shall we call the case into the record?”
The clerk leaned back in his chair. “People of the State of New York against Gerardo Dominguez.”
“You may sit down, Mr. Dominguez,” the judge said. “Counsel, would you two like to come up and discuss this with me.”
Drusin started to move to the bench.
“Actually, Your Honor,” I said. “I’d like all of this to be on the record. No disrespect intended, but it’s not the proper case for a sidebar.”
“Jesus, Alex,” Drusin said, slapping his palm on the table directly in front of his client. “Why does it always have to be hardball?”
The court stenographer threw up her hands. “What is it, guys? Are we on or off?”
“On, please. This isn’t hardball, Mr. Drusin. It’s just that there will be no secrets on this one.”
“What have we got here?” the judge asked.
“It’s an arraignment. It’s an unsealing of an indictment on the charges of Conspiracy to Commit the Crime of Kidnap in the First Degree and Illegal Access of a New York State Database.”
“Just a chance for Alex to grandstand, sir. I’m sure she’s alerted the press hounds to be here any minute now.”
“I arranged your client’s surrender, didn’t I? No media, no perp walk. Totally under the radar. There’s not a prayer of a reporter showing up here.”
“What’s the fuss, then?” the judge asked. “Sounds like serious enough charges. Let’s get Mr. Dominguez arraigned and then you two can go at it.”
The clerk read the charges from the indictment, now public record. Dominguez pulled on the collar of his shirt and shifted his feet. When asked how he pleaded, he opened his mouth and practically shouted, “Not guilty.”
“Are you requesting bail, Ms. Cooper?”
“Yes, Your Honor. We’re asking for one hundred thousand dollars.”
“Have you lost your mind, Alex?” Drusin said, now feigning total outrage. “Judge Aikens, my client is a police officer.”
“What?”
“He’s a cop. Gerry’s a cop. Ten years on the job.”
“Suspended, as of the unsealing of this indictment, Judge. Suspended without pay.”
“He’s got roots in the community, then, wouldn’t you say? Family?”
David Drusin flung his left arm in the direction of Dominguez’s mother. “Right here in court with him. He’s got an eighteen-month-old baby to support. His father’s sick-”
“The baby lives with him? He’s got a wife?”
“Mr. Dominguez has a lovely wife, Your Honor,” I said. “Unfortunately for him, she’s the complaining witness in my case. She has the baby and she’s in a very safe place for the moment, but I’d like the bail set to ensure his return to face these charges.”
“What’s the allegation, Ms. Cooper?”
“Judge,” David Drusin jumped in. “I’ve got to object. There’s no need to make a spectacle of this man. May we approach?”
Alvin Aikens motioned for Drusin to step up, but I held my ground. “The courtroom is empty, but for the defendant’s mother, the arresting officer, and some stragglers from the rest of your calendar. Both the district attorney and the police commissioner have asked that all of our remarks be recorded.”
Aikens didn’t know which way to go. “What are you charging? Where are the coconspirators, Ms. Cooper?”
“Mr. Dominguez is a sexual sadist, Judge. He has been seeking advice online and then communicating with two others who were arrested last evening-one in Westchester County and the other on Long Island-about how to abduct, torture, rape-”
“Don’t say it, Alex, okay?” Drusin interrupted. “You sound nuts. Leave it off the record for now.”
“Wait a minute. Your client’s trolling online for live victims to boil in oil and I’m nuts?” I said. “Judge Aikens, what Mr. Drusin would rather whisper in your ear is that Dominguez was conspiring to rape, kill, cook, and eat the women he targeted.”
The judge took a deep breath, Dominguez clasped his hands together and looked at his shoes, while behind me I could hear his mother sobbing. Most perps had a family full of collateral victims.
“Are you serious?” Aikens asked. “You think you can prove this?”
“Your Honor, Alba Dominguez was one of her husband’s intended victims. It is she who found the evidence on their home computer, in Washington Heights. Hundreds of photographs of dead and mutilated women-”
“He’s a police officer, Judge. They’re crime scene photos.”
“The defendant walks a beat on the Lower East Side. They’re not his work product, if that’s the angle you’re taking. There are scores of pictures of women being sexually assaulted, there are chats-we have all the transcripts of them-that have sickening details of what these three men planned on doing, and there are even recipes that involve the preparation of human meat.”
“We’re talking thought control here, Your Honor. Alexandra Cooper is the standard-bearer for what men are allowed to think? If that’s the case, it’s going to be a pretty restricted airspace, because her view of sexual norms must be as healthy as someone who’s lived a lifetime in a cave,” Drusin said, thoroughly wound up in his spin. “Maybe Ms. Cooper doesn’t understand that men-that men, uh-like to fantasize, and in the privacy of his own home, my client was fantasizing…”