Coop had installed an electronic keypad a few months back, after the last time she had left her keys in the office. I knew the code and tapped out the four numbers that unlocked the door.
“Yo! Alexandra Cooper,” I said, stepping into the foyer.
Silence.
“Coop?” I didn’t think about it often, but I was the only person in her world who called her Coop. To everyone else she was Alex or Alexandra, the formal name she liked best.
The master bedroom was off to the left. I walked in and glanced around. The king-size bed was made up with the Porthault sheets that she loved-a trust-fund luxury, not affordable on a DA’s salary. It was as neat as a pin.
That didn’t tell me anything. Coop was religious about making her bed. She did it as soon as she-as soon as we-were out of it, even before she showered. She liked the feeling, she’d told me not long ago, of getting into the crisp, cool, high-thread-count cotton percale sheets at the end of a difficult day.
I walked to the bed and stroked the pillow on her side. I leaned over and sniffed the case for the scent of her Chanel perfume but couldn’t make it out.
She wouldn’t like me snooping around her apartment without reason, and I wasn’t sure that I had a good one. I was still conflicted about the change in our relationship-not because I didn’t love Coop, but because I worried that the gap in our backgrounds was too enormous to overcome.
I looked on the night table for messages or notes. She was an inveterate scribbler-a compulsive list maker, a hoarder of paper with sentimental expressions of affection, a woman with a deadly memory for detail who nevertheless left reminders to herself for every chore that needed tackling. There were no notes or lists needing action today.
There was a postcard from her best friend from college, Nina Baum, on top of the dresser. The two corresponded that way every day of the week.
Taped to the mirror was a photograph of Coop and me ripped from one of the tabloids. It was taken after the confrontation at Grand Central Terminal, when I escorted her off a railroad car that had stopped for us on 125th Street. I had covered her shoulders with a blanket and held her close to me with an arm around her. It was a night that had broken down the barriers between us, and Coop liked the photo-despite the terror in the hours before it was taken-because she said she liked what my embrace represented.
There was a white wicker hamper in the dressing room between the bed and bath. Coop’s loyal housekeeper would be here on Friday.
I lifted the lid and looked in. There was underwear and lingerie and a pale pink cotton shirt, but none of the clothing she had been wearing when I left her at Primola.
Her shoe fetish was a bit ridiculous. She rarely wore the same ones two days in a row. I looked at the lineup of heels but didn’t have the faintest recollection of which ones she had been wearing the night before.
I passed the guest room on my way back to the foyer, and that was undisturbed. I swept through the living and dining rooms, but nothing was out of place or suggested a visitor. The den was neat, too, and in the kitchen there was not even an empty cocktail glass in the sink.
My last thought was the hall closet, to see if any outerwear was gone. The weather reports last night suggested a drop in temperature. But the camel-hair coat was hanging in place.
I dialed Catherine’s number and she picked up after two rings. “You got anything?” I asked, trying to sound neither annoyed nor anxious.
“Battaglia backed off, so I let it drop,” Catherine said. “He’s got a meeting with the governor about decriminalizing marijuana. Alex caught a break.”
“But you still haven’t heard from her.”
Catherine hesitated briefly before answering, but I caught the hitch in her voice. “No.”
“You cool with that?”
“Yes, actually. I am.”
“Okay,” I said. “Okay.”
I turned to look around once more before leaving the apartment.
“I mean, after you and I talked, I called Vickee. They were sitting together before Alex left the restaurant,” Catherine said.
“What am I doing here, playing twenty questions?” I asked. “This conversation is like pulling teeth.”
“Maybe you should talk to Vickee.”
“I’m talking to you now, Catherine. Is there something you want to tell me?” I had the sense, actually, that there was something she didn’t want to tell me.
“Vickee thinks Alex was really peeved. That Vickee set her off, without meaning to.”
“Who walked Coop out? Last to see her? Was it Vickee?”
“No,” Catherine said. “She wouldn’t let anyone walk her out.”
“Figures. Stubborn to a fault.”
“She said Giuliano would put her in a cab.”
“Got it.” I could talk to him if I couldn’t get straight answers from Coop’s team. “I’m at her apartment now. I don’t think she ever came home last night.”
A bit too much hesitation, again, before Catherine spoke. “You might want to talk to Vickee before you get yourself more wound up, Mike. I think Alex had a plan to hang out with some friends.”
SIXTEEN
“You want me to give Ms. Cooper a message when I see her?” Vinny asked.
“No, thanks, pal,” I said, walking out of the lobby. “See you.”
Coop didn’t owe me explanations for any of her behavior at this point in our relationship, and I shouldn’t have been disappointed that she didn’t let me in on her social plans. I had more important business waiting for me at the squad office. My job had always been my first priority. I needed to keep it that way.
Lieutenant Peterson had made it into his Manhattan North command from Rockland County before I had motored uptown from my pad with a slight detour to Coop’s apartment.
He was a chain-smoker, and grandfathered into the department by such long service-or so he thought-that he gave no mind to nonsmoking rules inside police buildings.
His ashtray already had four butts in it by the time I went into his office. “Sorry you had to come in, Loo. Wish you had been there with me so you could have seen this for yourself.”
Peterson was old-school. He hated it when I put my feet up on his desk, but that was the kind of mood I was in. He had no use for foul language either, so I opted for my physical comfort.
“What do I look like to you, Chapman?”
“Excuse me?”
“Do I look like a clown?”
“No, sir.” I took my feet down immediately. Peterson was one of the men in the department for whom I had total respect.
“I’m not talking about your feet. I’m talking about your work, Chapman,” the lieutenant said, pulling on another cigarette. “I’m talking about your mouth. I get the feeling you just think I’m your rodeo clown.”
“What-?”
“You think my job is to keep the men in headquarters at bay every time you get thrown off a bucking bull. I ought to just run around with a clown suit on, making sure you get yourself out of the arena before you get gored to death.”
“You know that’s not so, Loo. You know I think the world of-”
“Keith Scully’s getting fed up with you, too. What’s the story on the Wilson scene?”
“Sure. Nine-one-one call comes in. Vic’s daughter, totally legit, finds her father’s-”
“Fast-forward.”
“You want details, I thought.”
“Scully trusts you to get the investigation right, Chapman. It’s the human intercourse you screw up to a fare-thee-well.”
More than you have any idea, Loo.
“Tell me about Shipley,” Peterson said. “How and when he got there. Every word he said, and more important what you said to him.”
I spent the next fifteen minutes reconstructing what I could of the conversation.
“That’s all there is? You square with me?” the lieutenant asked.