Linda Fairstein
Devil's Bridge
Book 17 in the Alexandra Cooper series, 2015
For Michael Goldberg
Sway with me
All detectives might be called investigators, but not all investigators can be called detectives. Investigators need a trail of facts which might eventually lead to a successful conclusion of their inquiry. If there are no investigative leads to pursue, then they are finished. This is where a detective comes in-a person who can paint a landscape he has never seen from inside a darkened room, which is actually the crime scene. That’s the difference between the craft and the art.
Former chief inspector, Scotland Yard
COOP
ONE
“Are the People ready for trial, Ms. Cooper?” Judge Fleming took off her glasses and pointed them in my direction.
I was slower than usual to get to my feet, stalling for time as I waited for another prosecutor from my office to walk into court with information that would determine my answer.
“Actually, Your Honor, I’d be grateful if you would put this matter over until tomorrow.”
“That wasn’t your attitude yesterday when you were urging me-pushing me, actually-to clear my calendar so we could start jury selection this afternoon.”
“I’m sorry, Judge. Something was brought to my attention this morning and I’m trying to ascertain the truth of the facts before I move the case to trial.” I started the sentence by facing the court but had turned my head to the back of the room, trying to will the door to open.
Gino Moretti could barely suppress a smile, sensing my vulnerability. “We’re ready to proceed, Judge. My client is eager to get on with clearing his good name,” my adversary said. “Alex has twisted her neck so many times this afternoon that I figure she’s either looking over her shoulder for a stalker, or she’s waiting until the guys in the press room get wind that she’s about to start performing for them.”
“Cut me a break, Gino,” I said, turning my attention back to the bench.
“Coop hates playing to an empty house, Judge.”
Judge Fleming knew that a convicted rapist was in fact stalking me, and had been since his escape from a psych facility months earlier. Raymond Tanner was not actually on my mind in the secure surrounds of her courtroom, but he’d been a tremendous source of anxiety since he had threatened my life in August.
“What did you say about your client’s good name?” Fleming asked, replacing her glasses and scrolling through the rap sheet attached to the arraignment papers in her file.
“Just that the sooner he can clear himself of these ridiculous charges-”
Fleming didn’t brook nonsense in her courtroom. “Antonio Carlito Estevez. Nice enough name. Going to be pretty hard to clear it, though, Mr. Moretti, no matter what happens with this case. Looks like nine misdemeanor convictions, a murder rap that he beat-”
“He was innocent, Your Honor. He didn’t beat anything.”
“A conviction for manslaughter and-”
“That was a YO, Judge.”
“The fact that he was a youthful offender doesn’t change much, Moretti. Just meant he wasn’t a predicate felon when a jury found him guilty of second-degree assault four years ago. It explains why he did such a short stint for such a serious crime.”
Antonio Estevez gave Janet Fleming his iciest stare. But she met it head-on and returned it with an equally frigid gaze. It was a look I had seen many times on the face of this former Legal Aid attorney who’d been appointed to the bench a decade earlier. She was tougher on perps than most judges who’d come up as assistant district attorneys.
“Can we bring the panel in, Your Honor?” Moretti asked.
“Have you and Ms. Cooper exhausted the possibility of a plea for Mr. Estevez?”
“The only offer is a plea to the charge,” I said.
The top count of the indictment was Sex Trafficking, a crime-added to the New York State Penal Law less than a decade ago-with a maximum penalty of twenty-five years, the same level of punishment as first-degree rape.
“You like the cold, Mr. Estevez?” Fleming asked, waving her right hand at the stenographer, telling her to go off the record and stop recording the proceedings.
“You don’t have to answer that,” Moretti said, catching the move.
“’Scuse me?” Estevez cocked his head and smiled at the judge.
“I see you’re born in the Dominican Republic, moved to Miami, which is where you served time.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Gino Moretti leaned over and whispered into his client’s ear. Estevez brushed him away.
“Dannemora’s where you’re going to end up, if Ms. Cooper is right,” Fleming said. “Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora-not that they correct many of the guys I send there.”
“Let’s have this on the record, Judge,” Moretti said, rising to his feet and tapping his pen on the old oak counsel table.
Janet Fleming shook her head at the stenographer. “I’m just trying to make progress before the jury panel gets here, Gino. Trying to talk plea. Get a disposition.”
“Not happening, I promise you. Ms. Cooper’s got her holier-than-thou posture going on.”
Fleming leaned in and talked straight at Estevez. “They don’t call that prison Siberia for nothing, Antonio. Rubs right up against the Canadian border. I get a chill just thinking about you being holed up there till you’re fifty years old.”
“I’m glad you’re thinking about me, Judge, is all I got to say,” the defendant said, almost leering at her. “I didn’t do nothing wrong.”
“Can we please-?” The conversation was going in a bad direction.
“Stay seated, Ms. Cooper,” Fleming said, holding her arm out toward me. “Clinton is full up with guys who didn’t do nothing wrong, Antonio. It’s a helluva lot warmer in Shawangunk. They have special classes for men like you.”
The prison in Shawangunk was one of the few with a sex offender program, but Estevez-who was also charged with physical assault-had refused all plea discussions that involved accepting sex offender status, and I wasn’t caving to anything less.
“What you know about men like me?” Estevez asked, jabbing his finger in the air, toward the judge. The smile disappeared and a hint of his temper was about to boil to the surface.
Gino Moretti grabbed his client’s arm and flattened it on counsel table.
“Ms. Cooper says you abuse women,” Fleming went on, flipping through the eight-count indictment. “She says you take pimping to a new level.”
“I’m on the record now, Your Honor,” I said, standing up to address the court. “What I say has no relevance. Those are the charges against Mr. Estevez. I get your point, Judge. I’ll move the case to trial.”
“She don’t know shit about me,” Estevez said, now focusing his anger on me as the court officers moved closer to surround him. “I got a wife; I got a baby-”
“No more, Antonio,” Moretti said to him. “Keep your mouth shut.”
“You just wait and see if that bitch who ran her mouth shows up to testify. She took back everything she said about me. The lady DA knows that.”
Janet Fleming stuck her glasses on top of her head. “So you’re stalling this operation till you figure out whether you’ve got a witness or not, Ms. Cooper? Any truth to that rumor?”
It wasn’t unusual for victims who’d been threatened by a perp to change their minds about their willingness to testify in open court by the time the case came to trial. Tiffany Glover had texted me three days ago that she no longer wanted to cooperate, but just yesterday Mercer Wallace-a detective from the Special Victims Squad and one of my closest friends-found her and brought her to my office.