“I understand that,” Deirdre said. “The newspaper stories say you’re on leave, and beside that, I can’t imagine any reason the murder case would reach into the WCS or the zoo. I appreciate that you’re thinking of us for the bigger picture.”
We were good. No matter what came after this, Deirdre Wright could truthfully say that I had not represented to her that I was working with the feds on the DA’s shooting.
“Happy to,” I said.
She glanced at my companions, showing she was not to be trifled with. “Are you all on leave?”
“Just keeping an eye on Ms. Cooper,” Mike said, running his fingers through his thick dark hair and giving Deirdre his classic Chapman grin. “We work with her, and since she and I were both eyewitnesses to the shooting, we’re laying low for the week. Mercer’s our bodyguard.”
Deirdre responded to the word “bodyguard” by sitting up straight and losing her smile. I had the feeling that when people looked at me now and knew who I was, they would see the words DEATH GRIP written across my forehead in scarlet letters.
“Did you have a chance to work with Paul Battaglia when you helped Animals Without Borders organize the dinner in his honor?” I asked.
Deirdre had her hand on a small stack of folders, color-coded and tabbed by subject.
“I only met the DA twice,” she said. “If you’ve ever planned one of these charity dinners—or been honored at one—you sort of know the drill.”
“Start from scratch,” Mike said. “I’m a novice.”
She pulled out the red folder from the bottom of the pile. “First, the executive committee of their board comes up with some nominees for the annual award. That happens about a week after the annual dinner is over.”
“You plunge right into the next year?” Mike asked.
“Yes,” Deirdre said. “You can’t imagine how much planning one of these events takes—from selecting the venue, choosing a date that works for everyone involved, finding an honoree acceptable to the committee, growing the guest list, collecting the money, and choosing a speaker who can keep a crowd awake and not walking out the door before the coffee is served. We all take a week off—I’m the liaison between the two groups—then we dive right in all over again.”
“Was Battaglia the unanimous choice of the committee when he was honored—what was it—two years ago?” I asked.
Deirdre opened the red folder, then looked up at me. “Do you really need this kind of detail to plan a memorial?”
“She can’t help herself sometimes,” Mike said, leaning forward with clasped hands on the table, trying to bond with Deirdre—loosen her up a bit. “It’s the investigative gene in her DNA. Kind of drives Mercer and me crazy, too.”
Deirdre responded to him and returned the smile with a wide one of her own.
“We’re trying to distract her for a few days,” Mike went on, as though I wasn’t in the room. “Hey, if she thinks she can solve the murder case at the same time as she can do good for her old boss, what’s the harm? There are snakes around every corner, out on the street and right here inside your park. We like to cut Coop some slack.”
“No harm at all,” Deirdre said. Now she was looking at me more like I was a mental patient than a killer.
She flipped through a sheaf of papers. “They’ve got a really tough board. Not just smart and rich and prestigious, but men and women who take wildlife conservation more seriously than anything else. Sure they’re patrons of the arts and they’re captains of industry, but this zoological park—and do not, Alex, whenever it is that you make your remarks, refer to it as a ‘zoo,’ okay?—this zoological park is the center of their universe. It drives all their efforts worldwide to save species and to save wild places.”
“Why can’t you call it a zoo?” Mercer asked.
“From the time this place was founded,” Deirdre said, “the word ‘zoo’ was frowned upon. It referred to small places—like our Central Park facility—where animals are kept in cages and not allowed to roam free.”
“But at first, even here—” Mike started to say.
“Yes, but that was never the plan for these two hundred sixty acres,” she replied. “It was always to be a place where animals could roam freely, with a habitat re-created to resemble the homes they were taken from. A park—which sounded far more dignified to our founders than a zoo. It has only reached this great level of sophistication with modern technology. If you haven’t visited the park lately, I’m going to insist that you take a tour.”
“We’d love to do that,” I said. I reached to the center of the table and grabbed a pad and pencil. “Thanks, too, for reminding me about the importance of the wordage. You held me to it—not referring to this place as a zoo—in Battaglia’s dinner speech, and I would have forgotten how important it is by this point in time.”
I jotted down the words “zoological park,” as Deirdre watched me write. I wanted her to know I was on target, concentrating on a memorial tribute, not searching for clues. She seemed to appreciate my expression of gratitude.
“So what you asked was whether Mr. Battaglia was the board’s unanimous choice,” Deirdre said. “I’d prefer you keep what I’m about to tell you just between us, as background.”
“Of course we will.”
“He was not.” Deirdre looked at her notes and laughed. “Not even close.”
Mike looked at me and my eyes opened wide. Was it possible someone knew, two years ago, of Battaglia’s association with a private big-game hunting preserve?
“Someone objected to Battaglia because they didn’t think he was sincere when he did the work on Operation Crash?” I asked.
“Oh, no,” Deirdre said. “That’s the case that had most of the board in his corner. From the perspective of our work, it was a unique and powerful piece of public service. I’m skimming my notes and I see there were complaints about making a politician the honoree. You know, there are people who didn’t vote for Paul Battaglia.”
“Not many,” Mike said. “Eight terms, and most of the time no one ran against him.”
Deirdre turned a page. “Then there’s the problem—voiced by many—that when you honor a public servant, you can’t raise nearly as much money as you can with a corporate leader.”
“That’s certainly true,” I said. The staff prosecutors didn’t make enough money to chip in for fifty-thousand-dollar tables or bid on twenty-five-thousand-dollar auction items. It always worked better to bestow the award on the CEO of a Fortune 500 company and let his underlings fill the ballroom with equally wealthy sycophants or rivals.
“But, just so I don’t head off in the wrong direction when I’m writing this,” I said, “there was nothing in your vetting that turned up opposition material to Battaglia on the wildlife issue itself?”
“Of course not,” Deirdre said.
“Like if the man was off herding elk into his garage and shooting them,” Mike said, “you would have known about it?”
Deirdre thought he was funny. “You’re kidding, right?”