“Probably,” I said, pushing back my chair to get up. “It’s not like him to call himself. At least Rose will tell me what it’s about.”
I walked down the corridor and crossed through the secured entrance to the executive wing. Rose barely looked up from her desk, her expression as tight as I’d ever seen it. That signaled to me that there was no point asking her about the district attorney’s mood. I hadn’t been summoned for a casual chat.
When I entered Battaglia’s office, I was surprised to see Manny Chirico sitting across the table from him. “Good morning, Paul,” I said, looking from one of the men to the other. “Sergeant Chirico.”
“Sit down, Alexandra.”
I did.
“I understand this character Raymond Tanner is on the street. A case you lost, I see.”
“Yes, sir.”
“One completed rape earlier this morning, one attempt earlier this week, and possibly a murder.”
“That’s right.”
“What’s he got against you?”
“That I tried the case against him, I guess. Who better to hate than the prosecutor?”
“But you did a lousy job,” Battaglia said, with the straightest of faces.
“Thanks, boss. You might tell him that when you see him. I think he finds the psych hospitalization terrifically confining when he thinks he can get away with so many more rapes on the outside. Especially since he must think, like you do, that I did a lousy job.”
“You okay with the bodyguard?”
“I guess it’s necessary.”
“Scully called me on it late yesterday. Wish I’d heard about the situation from you,” the DA said, “but it seems like a sound idea.”
“Then I’m okay with-”
“So long as it’s not Mike Chapman.”
I met his stare head-on. “It’s not, Paul. Anything else you want?”
“Don’t get up yet, Alexandra. The sergeant tells me he’s been dealing with a problem of Chapman’s all week.”
“Just like you have, boss.”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s why you and McKinney were so happy to dump the Central Park homicide in my lap. Jessica Pell’s on the warpath, she’s obviously had your ear about me, and you’re taking her seriously. Without the courtesy of letting me be heard.”
“Don’t ever forget who runs the show here, Alexandra. Why the hell shouldn’t I be taking the judge seriously?”
“Because she’s crazy,” Manny Chirico said. “I’m telling you, Mr. Battaglia, she’s dangerously off-balance.”
I exhaled, realizing that Chirico was actually on Mike’s side. Maybe he had a good purpose in coming here, forcing Battaglia to look at the two threats-one against Mike and the other against me-as a single package.
“What’s your point?” the DA asked Chirico.
“I’ve had a week to think this through, puzzle the pieces, pull together some information before the judge meets her noon deadline and makes her demands of you and the commissioner.” The sergeant was well respected by his men, with a great career as an investigator in the detective bureau. “I think I know how you feel about Alexandra, Mr. B, and there’s no way I’m giving up Chapman to a lunatic, no matter how bad a slide his love life took.”
He opened a file folder and placed a sheaf of photographs in front of Battaglia.
“What are these?”
“Raymond Tanner. They’re eight-by-tens of all the photos of him, from the standing shot at the time of his arrest in the case that Alex tried to his most recent from psych city.”
There were at least eight pictures in the pile. Battaglia studied each one and passed it along to me. I knew the arrest photo and had introduced it into evidence at the trial. It showed Tanner standing in Central Booking, next to the measure on the wall that recorded his height at six-foot-one. The tattoos that snaked down both sides of his arms from beneath his white T-shirt were already in place-a bodyscape of violence featuring guns of all shapes and sizes and knives that dripped blood from their tips.
But there was, as yet, no writing on the backs of Tanner’s hands, which hung by his sides in the first photograph.
The next four were taken at the facilities in which he was incarcerated as a result of the NGRI verdict. One pair was from the infamous Clinton psych ward, in which Tanner stood-first a full-body shot from the front and then from the back-with his long-sleeved shirt on. The next was with the shirt removed, showing some of the art on his chest and his back, including a brightly colored dragon whose tail curled around his torso while flames shot out of its mouth.
Eighteen months later, at a facility midstate, the same photos-facing the camera and away-showed a new sketch across the span of his upper back. It was a crudely drawn pit bull, black and white, with drops of blood on his bared teeth. The word BUSTER was printed below the dog. But still there was no lettering on Tanner’s hands.
The next pair of photos marked the prisoner’s admission to Fishkill’s mental facility, from which his brutal forays into the city began.
I looked at his hands, which again were unmarked. The first shot was unremarkable because of his clothing; the second showed that a red-caped black-figured drawing of a devil had been squeezed in between the pit bull and the old dragon. Some jailhouse artist had misspelled Lucifer-LOOSIFUR-under the tattoo.
The last photo was dated just days before Raymond Tanner absconded after his taste of freedom during work release. Battaglia looked at it without comment-I had no idea whether any of the images made an impression on him-and passed it to me.
“Here it is,” I said to Manny Chirico. “For the first time you can see the words.”
“What?” Battaglia asked. “What are you trying to tell me?”
“See that? See the words KILL COOP?” Chirico said, grabbing the picture from me and handing it back to the district attorney. “That’s the tattoo on Tanner’s hand.”
“I’m aware of that.”
“Look at the date, Mr. B. That picture was taken on May 8th. Did you notice that the image was not in any of the previous photos?”
Battaglia wouldn’t acknowledge that he hadn’t tracked that feature. He reached a hand out toward me, and I passed the stack back to him.
“They’re taken periodically, Mr. B, to enter information in the databanks, whether it’s about tattoos or scars or nicknames or prison events.”
“I’m following you.”
May 8th. I was frantically trying to attach a significance to that date. My birthday was April 30th-just one week earlier-and that was shortly after Mike told Jessica Pell he’d be spending time with me that night. I wanted to know where Manny Chirico was going with his theory, and I desperately wanted him not to trip up in front of an unforgiving Paul Battaglia.
“And May 8th,” Chirico said, “was while Tanner was obviously still at Fishkill, but allowed to come into the city for work release.”
“It’s also the Feast Day of St. Victor the Moor, Sergeant. What’s your point?”
Chirico extracted the next group of papers, half an inch think, from another folder. “Think about it, Mr. B. Assume that Raymond Tanner hated Alexandra, especially during his trial. She was the face and voice of the prosecution, standing in the way between him and a free ride.”
“But she didn’t get the verdict she wanted, Manny.”
“Even worse. To the perp who hears the words ‘not guilty,’ he thinks he ought to walk out the door. Get out of jail free. Instead, he’s freezing his ass off in a prison on the Canadian border. And who does he have to blame? Alexander Cooper. She’s the reason he’s there.”
Battaglia stared at the photo showing Tanner’s tattooed hand. “So you think it would have made more sense for him to have had the KILL COOP branding done when he was most enraged? When they slammed the cell door on him?”
“Makes much more sense, Mr. B,” Chirico said. “He’s had lots more people to hate than Alex since he went behind bars. So that’s why I’ve run everyone who’s currently in the psych ward with Tanner starting April 1st.”