“How about the district attorney himself?”
“Battaglia? Better think again, Doc. Coop idolized him when she was a kid. Came to know that after thirty years in office he’s a politician-what a surprise-just worried about covering his own ass. Uses her and all his staff to take care of those needs. It’s amazing justice gets done as often as it does.”
“Good to know. I can take him off the list.”
“I hope somebody’s told you that Reverend Shipley may be mixed up in one of Coop’s big cases. This guy Antonio Estevez-the one who had her so upset this week-is probably linked to Shipley.”
“I hadn’t known that. The lieutenant did mention that you have Shipley in your sights. He and the mayor-you’ve got a thing about them.”
“Is that the medical term for it, Doc? A ‘thing’?” I pushed back from the table and started pacing up and down the room. “Shipley’s lower than dirt and the mayor’s an asshole. What’s his biggest accomplishment of the year, do you know?”
“Well, I-”
“He passed legislation that allows New Yorkers to keep ferrets as pets. Got that? And what was my first homicide after the law passed, Dr. Friedman? Death by ferret. Did you read about that one? A pet ferret bit the nose off a two-month-old baby. The nose first, and then the lips. The ferret-fucking mayor ought to be in jail, where he belongs, for causing the death of that child.” Dr. Ricky Friedman let me vent. She watched me as I walked back and forth, ranting about the politicians when all I really wanted to do was get back on the street and find Coop.
“Are you done?” she asked me.
I had taken an apple off the chief’s desk and was tossing it in the air.
“You’re a very angry man, Detective.” Dr. Friedman was frowning at me.
“Tell me something I don’t already know.”
“Are you often this way?”
“Ask the lieutenant.”
“I’m asking you, Mike. Peterson said nothing about this.”
“So you’re worried that this is what Coop has to put up with on a regular basis, huh?”
She forced a smile. “Inappropriate aggression, foulmouthed, violent-”
“I’m not violent, Doc. Not violent,” I said, trying to modulate my voice so I didn’t sound like a madman. “And what’s inappropriate here? The woman I love has gone missing. You haven’t seen what you think is aggression yet.”
“There could actually be good news in your behavior, Mike,” Friedman said. “Maybe this soft-as-a-marshmallow, sweet Alexandra-”
“I never said ‘sweet,’ did I? Don’t ever mistake Coop for sweet.” Jake Tyler had called her that, but it was too washed-out a word to describe her.
“What I’m trying to say is that maybe there’s a chance she decided you weren’t the right man for her after all. Perhaps she’s embarrassed and needs to step down for a while, or then again-”
“You’re not the first genius to think of that since the other night, Doc. Don’t pat yourself on the back quite yet,” I said. “What’s the other possibility?”
“Not a brilliant observation on my part, either, Detective. But if I wanted to get at you,” Friedman said, “if I wanted to cause you more pain than you’ve ever experienced in your lifetime, the way I might go about it-the way you weren’t vulnerable even two months ago-is by targeting Alexandra Cooper.”
“That’s crazy, Doc. You’ve got to be crazy to think that,” I said.
“You’ve probably made more enemies than she has, Mike. Maybe we ought to be looking for someone who’s got a grudge against you.”
TWENTY-FIVE
“What press inquiries have you had?” Commissioner Keith Scully took his place at the head of the table in his office at One Police Plaza at exactly 7:02 A.M. Behind him was his desk, the same one used by Teddy Roosevelt when he was appointed NYPD’s commissioner in 1895.
The deputy commissioner in charge of public information answered the question as others filled in around the conference table. “A few calls a couple of hours ago asking why there were floodlights in Central Park, but I put out the fire with one of those looking-for-an-alligator-out-of-the-sewer scares. Nobody seems to know about Alex Cooper.”
Scully motioned me to take a seat on the side of the long table, next to the end, where Lieutenant Peterson was positioned. The district attorney was on one side of Scully-shuffling in his seat to get a more commanding view of the group, clearly not used to being anything but the lead dog.
Mercer Wallace sat next to me, as though he could protect me from myself if I got out of control. Vickee Eaton sat opposite me. Captain Abruzzi didn’t seem particularly pleased to be in the mix, but the chief of detectives, beside him, had insisted on his presence. The young detective I’d asked Peterson to throw in-Jimmy North-was next to Vickee, introducing himself to her.
There were four men from Major Case, a sergeant from TARU, and another lieutenant from Aviation. I guess Scully was ready to pull out all the stops.
Dr. Ricky Friedman, my new keeper, took a backseat behind Vickee, so she could keep an eye on me and monitor all signs of my psycho-unsuitability.
“Thanks for coming,” Scully said. All his marine bearing was on display. He wouldn’t waste a minute on niceties. “The last contact any colleague or friend had from Alex Cooper was between ten and eleven P.M. on Wednesday. There’s a driver who claims to have seen her get into an SUV on East 65th Street at the end of that period. We’re checking him out, but we have no reason to think he’s not legit, and he has no criminal history. It’s now seven hundred, Friday morning, and we haven’t had the first sign or suggestion of her whereabouts.”
Everyone in the group looked grim. I half expected that Perry Mason moment when Coop walked in the commissioner’s door and the show ended.
“Where is she?” Scully asked. “And if someone has her-or had her-where and why?”
The district attorney started to speak. “I think-”
“I’m not looking for answers, Paul. I’m going to lay out the issues and then we can all address them,” Scully said, brushing the DA off with the back of his hand. “What do we tell the media, and when do we do that? Feed them a missing-prosecutor story before we have all our ducks in a row and the story-the search for Alex-takes on a life of its own.”
Some of the folks were jotting down notes, even though we were still dealing with the obvious before getting down into the weeds.
“How do we handle her family-her parents and brothers-and who is going to be the liaison for that task?”
“Her folks don’t know yet,” I said.
“Yes, they do, Mike,” Vickee said. “The commissioner asked me to call them late last night. They’re flying in today.”
“You should have told me,” I whispered to Mercer, but he was in Scully’s corner on this. He kept his back to me and signaled his disregard.
I didn’t think I could be more nervous than I was, but the idea of a face-off with the Coopers was daunting-even though my rapport with them throughout the years when I was just their daughter’s good friend had been great.
“The chief of detectives will be in charge of consolidating all the efforts that the department is undertaking, and this will be massive. Nobody flying solo, am I understood?”
We all nodded.
“Peterson already has men working with Battaglia’s Special Victims Unit and IT team. They’re running every perp Alex has prosecuted, starting with the most recent and going back in time. The ones in state prison-Correction is working with their visitors’ logs and phone records. Parole is giving him every sex offender who’s been released, in the same order. Who they’re living with and whether they’re reporting to SOMU.”
The Sex Offender Monitoring Unit had post-parole oversight of the alumni association of Coop’s bad boys. Some of the perps were loners, but most had tentacles to other criminal agents.