“She’s not on a jaunt, Captain,” I said. “Trust me on that one.”
“You the one filing the report, Ray?” Abruzzi said to Peterson. “I need a name.”
“It’s me,” I said, trying to get the captain’s attention.
“I need a next of kin. Does she have family or-?”
“Her family doesn’t know yet,” I said.
“You better check with them before you put me through hoops, gentlemen.” Abruzzi shook his head. “Maybe there’s a reunion you don’t know about.”
“You want me to help with a list for tonight?” Peterson asked.
“I know where her crib is. Start there, I guess.”
“Mercer and I have been to the apartment. Everything’s in order,” I said. “Nothing from the doormen, either.”
Abruzzi squinted and stared at me. “You been inside or you just asked them?”
“In case you don’t know it, Captain,” Peterson said, “Chapman’s been dating Alex. That’ll be a factor in how this whole thing goes forward.”
He tilted his head and looked at me again. “Hats off to you, Chapman. You the latest in a long line of unsatisfied customers?”
There was no point in wasting my energy by belting the man temporarily in charge of Coop’s well-being.
“You got an alibi?” he said, jamming a stick of chewing gum in his mouth as he smiled at me, happy to work his way under my skin.
“Dead man with a hole in his head where his brains used to be,” I said. “It’s worked for me before.”
“Maybe she just wanted a night off,” Abruzzi said. “Everyone except the lieutenant knows you’d be hard to take on a regular basis.”
“True enough, Captain. I’m no prize. Good thing whoever’s waiting up for you isn’t allergic to that musk crap you’ve poured all over yourself. She might gag on it while she’s chowing down on your-”
“Cut it out, Chapman,” Peterson said.
“Did you know, Cap, that musk comes from the Sanskrit word for testicle?” I said. “And I didn’t even have to learn that on Jeopardy! One whiff of the stuff and it was pretty obvious.”
“I got all the plate numbers,” Mercer said. He had planted himself at an empty desk and done something constructive while I churned about Abruzzi’s reaction. “That’s a way to get started. Three SUVs registered to Shipley’s Gotham Center and one to Antonio Estevez.”
“I read about this Estevez character in this morning’s paper,” Abruzzi said, directing his comments to Peterson. “What does Shipley have to do with Alex Cooper?”
“Nothing,” I said. Nobody was going to get in the way of my tryst with the reverend. “Mercer pulled it up for me ’cause it has to do with my homicide.”
“I think the most important thing at this point is Antonio Estevez,” Peterson said. “He pulled some very sophisticated stunts to get out of his trial, and they involved hacking into the computer files in Alex’s office.”
“What about this Tanner mope?” Abruzzi asked.
“Street bum. Crazy like a fox, but I don’t think he has the connections from inside the can, just hours after his arrest, to have someone lined up to do harm to the DA,” Peterson said. “Down the road it might be a different thing with him. No question he’d like to see Alex dead.”
It had been one thing to hear threats from time to time about cops or prosecutors when they were sitting in your presence, but really different when the subject of the conversation was out of range, presumably in danger.
“I’m taking Estevez,” Mercer said. “That’s an evil dude. I wouldn’t put anything past him.”
“Have you got a command log that goes back a few years?” Peterson asked Abruzzi. “Get one of your two guys to hammer it out tonight. Check whether anyone who’s been trouble before is in or out of jail.”
“Sure. One of them can run things from here. The other is good to go with Mercer.”
I knew they’d try to shut me out of this investigation. I wasn’t surprised. But I could still get Jimmy North to come out with me and take a stab at Shipley after Peterson signed off. There was still a legit connection to Wynan Wilson’s homicide that had to be explored.
My phone rang and I practically slid off the desk to get it out of my pocket and answer it.
“Chapman.”
“Listen, Mike, it’s Bowman.” The detective from TARU who’d been looking for Coop’s cell phone.
“Whaddaya got?”
“Nothing good. Looks like her last communication was a text around ten something last night. She called for an Uber car service, and a driver responded. His name is-”
“Sadiq. Yeah, we got that.”
“Well, you ought to look for him. There’s no receipt, no end-of-job survey.”
“We’re past that point, Bowman. Where is she?”
“I got no idea, Mike. It’s that kind of situation. She’s not talking to anybody. Nobody at all.”
“Pings, Bowman. You got any pings? Everything with you is a situation,” I said, ranting into the phone. “What’s Coop’s situation? You tracking the GPS on the phone? You must know where it is.”
“I can’t tell you where it is. Last trace of the phone, best I can make it out, was just north of the 85th Street Transverse, in the middle of Central Park.”
TWENTY-TWO
“You know what you’re doing is going to bring out all the rug rats you’re trying to keep from knowing about Alex, from finding out she’s lost in space?” Mercer said. He had rolled over the curb and parked the car on the sidewalk of Fifth Avenue, just to the north of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
I got out and slammed the door. “I can’t tell if you’re just playing devil’s advocate or if you’ve forgotten you’re my best pal. You’re saying no to every idea I come up with.”
“I’m trying to focus you on getting the right kind of help for her,” Mercer said, “and doing that without getting yourself a paid vacation in a nuthouse.”
I crossed the transverse entrance and started into Central Park. It was twelve thirty in the morning. When I lost the light of a streetlamp, it was as though I was off to trek in the woods.
“You’re either with me or not,” I said.
Casual park regulars were home and tucked tight in bed. There would be a couple of dog walkers, some afraid-of-nothing runners, scores of homeless people, and an occasional stray. The roadways were closed to vehicular traffic.
“I’m always with you, Mike. Even when you go off the charts.”
“I’ll start searching,” I said, turning on the compact high-beam flashlight that Abruzzi had given me before we left the station house. “You wait on Fifth for Emergency Services.”
“You know what you’re looking for?”
“Everything.”
“I don’t have to remind you how many cases Alex has prosecuted that took place in-”
“In this park? No, you don’t,” I snapped. She had sent countless sex offenders to jail for attacking nannies pushing strollers and environmentalists in the Ramble, and dragging joggers off the reservoir path as well as the paved walkways. Two homicides-one in the Ravine and one linked to the Indian Cave-had been headline cases for months at a time.
“The lieutenant is calling in a team right now to work with Alex’s crew from the office to pull every perp she’s put away and check their parole status,” Mercer said.
“I heard him. I’m not one to sit in front of a computer screen if I can do something more useful. Neither are you.”
“Tanner’s stalking ground was this park.”
“I’m telling you Tanner’s not in my scopes at the moment,” I said. “This would take a perp with the means to launch a major operation.”
“Estevez could do that. So could Shipley. But neither one has a link to this location.”
“So it’s a scam to throw us off track for a while,” I said. “Maybe we’re being gamed. That’s what the judge accused Estevez and his lawyer of doing. Gaming her. Tell the guys from ESU to use their floods to light up the area north of the transverse like a Christmas tree. No piece of paper, no kind of debris, is unimportant. Tell them to bag it all.”