“Was that unusual?” Rocco asked.
“Jean didn’t really keep tabs on her. Says she sometimes stayed overnight-Jean has no idea with whom-when she had late meetings on the north campus and the buses stopped running. But they had no reason to sync up with each other. They weren’t close.”
“Did Lydia call Jean?” Mercer said. “Try to reach her?”
“Not once,” I said. “So the first night, and even the second one, weren’t unusual. Jean thought it was strange that she hadn’t come home by last evening-when we know she was found dead. Then she saw the photograph online this morning and called in.”
“My dog’s got better friends than that,” Pug said.
“They weren’t tight, is all. Different lives, different lifestyles. The shared apartment was simply a matter of financial convenience.”
My phone had been vibrating in my pocket throughout my conversation with Jean Jansen. It started again, and I removed it to see who was calling.
“It’s Battaglia, guys. Let me take this.”
I put the phone to my ear and plugged the other one with my forefinger so Rocco and the team could go on talking.
“I guess your desk can be recycled to another member of my staff, Alex.” The tone in the district attorney’s voice was clipped and curt, not the syrupy one he used at political fund-raisers. “You seem to have taken up residence at the Waldorf.”
“I thought you’d be pleased that I freed myself up to be on top of these murders twenty-four/seven.”
“Pleased, perhaps, if I knew what was going on up there.”
“What don’t you know?” I asked. “We’re actually working out of Grand Central now, because of the third homicide yesterday.”
“I had to find out from the papers that she was only a college student. Tragic.”
“Paul, we didn’t get the call identifying her till this morning. You had everything I did by the time I went to sleep.”
“So that’s the bad news. Give me something good.”
I was tempted to say that fortunately, for him, she was foreign. He had not lost a voter. But I suppressed the temptation. “Nothing yet. The roommate just gave us a bunch of leads.”
“How fast can you get here?”
“Here?”
“I’m at City Hall, Alexandra. Or are you just waiting at the terminal for the next body to drop? The mayor’s asking me questions I can’t quite answer.”
“I can be-”
“Tell Chapman to shoot you out of a cannon, for all I care. Lights and sirens, whatever it takes.”
“I’m on the way.”
“You’re already too late. Scully and his team-the lot of you-should have had this wrapped up already. Now the feds are looking to divert the president’s train on Sunday.”
THIRTY-THREE
“The mayor wants you to come in, Alexandra,” the district attorney said to me, faking a smile as he held the door open for me.
“I thought we were going to wait for Commissioner Scully,” I said, smoothing my wrinkled shirt and concerned about the impression jeans would make in this formal setting.
“He wants to talk to you first, as long as you’re here. I told you he’s got his priorities all screwed up.”
Paul Battaglia couldn’t hide his contempt for the new mayor. During my entire twelve-year tenure as a prosecutor, a brilliant, creative, if not somewhat idiosyncratic chief executive ran City Hall. He had been respectful of the DA and our staff and had a truly collaborative relationship with his much-admired police commissioner.
The new regime was proving to be a crapshoot. Too many campaign promises that made no sense except to curry favor with voting blocs, and meddling into a pending civil lawsuit that undermined long-standing police procedures-setting off a frenzy of picketing against the new mayor by the detective union.
“C’mon in, Alexandra.” He motioned to me to sit opposite him, in a chair beside Battaglia. He held out his hand and reintroduced himself to me. I’d met him after the resolution of the murders in Central Park two months earlier. “Scully will be here any minute. I just wanted your take on something before we get started on these horrific crimes.”
“Certainly, sir. I’d like to apologize for my appearance. The cops and I have taken on the somewhat dusty veneer of the terminal regulars.”
“Dress-down Friday. No worries,” he said. “Look, Alex-may I call you Alex? I wanted to ask about a case you’ve been handling. Nothing inappropriate, nothing off the record. I’d just like a better understanding of what makes it a crime.”
I looked at Battaglia, who seemed to have caught the same vibe I did. Someone to whom he owed a political favor was pushing for the mayor to intervene on the Gerardo Dominguez case.
“Oh, Christ. Don’t play with me, Mr. Mayor,” Battaglia said. “You’ve got us here for a much more important reason. It’s almost five o’clock. First day in four without a murder and we’ve only got seven hours till midnight. Don’t sandbag me with this bullshit.”
The mayor feigned surprise. “Sandbag you? You’re a lawyer, Paul. I’m not.”
“Then what business did you have stepping in the middle of a ten-year-old lawsuit? You’re lucky you still have a police officer willing to walk a beat for you.” Battaglia stood up and walked to one of the tall windows overlooking City Hall Park. “Whose dirty work are you doing now?”
“Not fair, Paul. You know better than that. I don’t have a pony in this race. I’m just asking questions. What’s the basis for your case, Alex?”
“It’s not my case anymore. I don’t think I should be speaking about it.”
“Really? I’d just like to know when it’s against the law for me to be thinking about something really evil, and then getting arrested for it. What’s the tipping point?”
The mayor looked like a goofy, overgrown kid. He couldn’t have been more disingenuous, but then, he’d apparently formed his judgments about the workings of the city’s criminal justice system by watching bad movies and TV shows.
“You can tell him, Alexandra,” Battaglia said.
Someday I wouldn’t be working for a bureaucrat-even one I admired as much as Battaglia on most days-for whom I’d have to toady up from time to time. Someday I’d be free to tell the mayor that I thought he was a total asshole.
“Yes, sir,” I said. “I think you have a teenage daughter, Mr. Mayor. Don’t you?”
“I do.”
“Suppose this-this man who has a different set of values than you do-”
“He’s entitled to those, isn’t he?”
“He certainly is. No problem for me there,” I said. “Suppose in between doing a Web search for recipes that involve the use of chloroform and then buying a Taser online, suppose his next search is for the name of your sixteen-year-old daughter-”
“Let’s leave my daughter out of this, shall we?”
“Sure, sir. Let’s make it somebody else’s daughter. It’s always somebody else’s daughter when you don’t want the reality to seem quite so immediate,” I said. “So Keith Scully has a teenager, too. And she might be harder to find than a girl who lives in Gracie Mansion. Everyone knows where to find that one.”
The mayor wasn’t amused. But it wasn’t my purpose to amuse him.
“So the guy with the odd thoughts searches out the name of the police commissioner’s daughter. Then he goes one further, trying to find out her address and which high school she attends. All pretty easy stuff to do.”
“It is.”
“Then his next e-mail to one of his fetish-friends talks specifically about what the best way is to kill a teenage girl.”
The mayor appeared to be uncomfortable. “Still not a crime, is it?”
“No, sir. I just think it’s a bit reckless, a bit out of control. But I’m still with you. No prosecution,” I said. “Now, may I ask what your favorite restaurant is?”
“I’m a Brooklyn kid. Why?”