“They’re going to go into overload pretty quickly. It’s a long list, between Alex’s investigations and the hundreds that have gone through the unit under her watch. I assume, Paul, that you can give us all the backup we need on tracking down connections?”
“Certainly.”
“Great. It all feeds up to the chief of detectives. Every bit of it. I’ve got to have one go-to man who knows everything,” Scully said. “TARU is in charge of all tech equipment. Phones, laptops, social media. They’re surfing twenty-four/seven for posts and tweets and anything related to the stuff that just got hacked on Wednesday. Drew Poser said it best the other day-Alex Cooper has no more secrets. Not professional, not personal.”
My cheek was so raw from biting that it had started to bleed. I could taste the blood when I swallowed hard.
“That brings us to Detective Chapman.” Commissioner Scully fixed his eyes on me and everyone followed suit, except Mercer, who still had his back in my face. “Nobody knows Alex Cooper better than Mike Chapman.”
Battaglia couldn’t conceal his scowl.
“I don’t have ten detectives as good as Chapman,” Scully said. “But the tabloids are going to have a field day with this angle.”
“Don’t tell them,” Battaglia said.
“It’s out there, Paul,” Scully answered. “It’s all over the courthouse.”
“It’s got nothing to do with this investigation,” Ray Peterson said. His e-cigarette was a poor excuse for the real nicotine he craved. “They’re both single adults. You know I don’t like scandal, but that’s not what this is.”
“I’m with you, Ray. I just haven’t figured out whether to be up front with the reporters or let them think they’re surprising me and go with it a few days down the road, when they’re looking for a piece to give the story legs.”
“Do I get to be heard on this, Commissioner?” I asked, trying to keep my voice level. “I don’t know what’s worse. That you’ve got an attitude that we won’t have Coop back for days, or that my only use is to be ‘legs’ to titillate the public when the Post is out of red meat.”
“Bottle it, Chapman,” Scully said. “I’m getting to you.”
I didn’t move a muscle. I didn’t want to give Dr. Friedman the satisfaction of reacting.
“Antonio Estevez,” Scully said. “I’m putting Major Case in charge of this one. Not the trafficking part. Finding that Aponte girl, checking out the guys who work for him, locating any vehicles, and making whatever the connection is to Hal Shipley.”
“My people started that on Wednesday afternoon, when the case blew up in Alex’s face,” Battaglia said.
“Your people don’t seem to get the urgency of all this, Paul. They knock off at cocktail hour most of the time. We’ll run it from headquarters, and you,” Scully said, pointing at one of the Major Case men, “you’re the man in charge.”
The detective acknowledged the assignment.
“What about Shipley himself?” Lieutenant Peterson asked.
Scully turned to Paul Battaglia first. “When this session breaks up, you and I need a private sidebar about the reverend, okay? I’m hearing things I don’t quite understand.”
The district attorney said, “Certainly,” but he was clearly unhappy to do it.
“Chapman’s got the Wynan Wilson homicide to wrap up-and he’s got to be interviewed for that-and then there’s this possible link to Estevez, too. Reassign Wilson to anyone in your office, Ray,” the commissioner said. “You’ve got a prime suspect in the girlfriend-what’s her name?”
“Takeesha Falls,” I said, pissed that Scully was taking the case away from me.
“I’m not doing this-I’m not superseding you-because of the mayor’s chief of staff and Shipley’s complaint,” Scully said, turning from the lieutenant to me. “I promise you that, Chapman. The lieutenant can stick anyone out there to find Ms. Falls. The case seems pretty open-and-shut. But I’ll need you available for every question that comes up on Alex. We’ll need you to think for us the way she does.”
“You taking me off the street, too?” I asked, pressing my forefinger against my lip to make sure no blood was visible. I didn’t want it to show any more than I wanted to reveal my inappropriate aggression.
“No. Not if you follow commands. You and Mercer and Jimmy North-you three can take orders as well as use your best instincts. You’ll be part of the task force, okay? As long as you can compartmentalize your very short emotional fuse.”
I looked at Scully and nodded in the affirmative.
“Bottom line, Alex Cooper is AWOL, and we’re going all-out to get her, am I clear?” Scully said. “First time it’s happened, and-”
“Actually, Commissioner, Alex did something like this once before,” Vickee said.
All eyes turned to her, except for Scully, who slapped the table in front of the district attorney. “Nobody told me that.”
“I didn’t know,” Battaglia said.
“It wasn’t nearly for this many hours,” Vickee said. “I didn’t remember it until I got home last night. I called her secretary, Laura Wilkie, on my way down here and she confirmed what I thought. It was a Friday and Alex just skipped out for the day with no notice to anyone. So there could be precedent for this, although way too much time has gone by now.”
That would explain why Vickee hadn’t mentioned it when she drove off after stopping to see me last night. It didn’t explain why she hadn’t brought it up until right now.
“It was just a single day, two years ago, the only time Alex went off the radar screen without alerting Laura,” Vickee said. “By the point I had started to worry about her, late that night at the beginning of a weekend, she checked in with me.”
“What was that about?” Scully said. “I mean, before I send out all the troops, do you happen to know?”
“I don’t have a really vivid recollection of the cause of the whole thing,” Vickee said, trying to do a lateral to me. “Mike probably does.”
“Me? First I’m hearing of it.” I flattened both hands on the table and lobbed the ball back at her. “Thanks, Vick, for the vote of confidence.”
“Do you remember, Detective Eaton,” Friedman asked, “whether it was an argument between Alex and Mike, if she reported it to you then, or something else he had done?”
I was as curious about Vickee’s response as the doctor.
“They’d just worked a big case together. Mercer was involved, too,” Vickee said. “It all ended on Governors Island, with a serial killer-and a particularly savage scene, even for those of us who deal with this kind of brutality on a regular basis.”
“And Mike?” Friedman asked. “Did he-?”
“I didn’t do anything to her, Doc.” I could see Friedman twisting thoughts of extreme violence around in her brain. “I swear on her life.”
“I think, Mike, that the fact that you didn’t do anything was the problem,” Vickee said, addressing me directly while everyone around the table looked and listened. “Alex was devastated by that-by the scene she had witnessed with Abreu’s victims, by the fact that Mercer was injured by a sting grenade, remember?”
“All too well,” I said. Mercer had been knocked unconscious-and temporarily blinded-when a military grenade was detonated just feet from him by the murderer.
“And then her own close call with the killer, inside the fortress,” Vickee said, lowering her voice. “Alex wanted-well, intimacy and…”
“Intimacy? Look me straight in the eye, girl, and tell me that again. There was a little something between me and Coop at that point, Vickee,” I said. “It’s called the Atlantic Ocean. She had all the intimacy she wanted with a certain Frenchman at that particular moment.”
“That was an escape for Alex. Not the real deal, Mike. If it wasn’t affection she craved from you, it was certainly empathy.”