“Your team leader here was almost flopped to a foot patrol in Bed-Stuy for trying to pull strings and get the case fixed, instead of upgraded to the Homicide Squad,” I said. “Somebody in the chain of command was watching out for him. He tends to step out of line, James.”
“My sister never made any such calls,” Stern said.
I didn’t know at the time who had made them, but I bet we could prove it now, with phone records and email traces.
“But your brother-in-law was the prisoner?” Prescott asked. “It actually was one of Alexandra’s cases?”
“I had no idea who the prosecutor was, sir,” Stern said. “I only went to the arraignment because my sister begged me to. I did it for her, sir, and for her kids. But I never showed up at any trial.”
“You can hold to your affirmative action stance, James,” I said, “or you can excuse the detective and I’ll answer your questions, but Jaxon Stern and I are not going to fly in the same airspace any longer.”
I could see James Prescott weighing his political future. I could count the seconds as he looked at each of us.
“Why don’t you excuse yourself for a while, Detective?” Prescott said to Jaxon Stern. “I’d like to talk reason to Alexandra so we can move on and solve this damn case.”
Prescott was in my corner on this one, maybe thinking I still had a future if I came out of this investigation unscathed. I guessed the news that I would not be on the governor’s short list to be the interim DA hadn’t yet reached the street.
TWENTY-ONE
“Thanks, James,” I said. “You can’t begin to imagine how it unhinged me when I put Stern together with the case I handled last year. It made his animosity toward me crystal clear.”
Prescott was seated at his desk. He stood a Redweld on its side and lifted the flap. The label facing me had my name on it, typed in all caps. It was already a pretty thick folder.
“I heard he was tough, but I don’t believe there was any conflict involved,” Prescott said. “It just seems to be the man’s style.”
“You’re not taking him off the case, after what I just told you?”
“Try to remember you’re not in charge, Alexandra.”
“I’m fine with that. You feds have a way of screwing up all on your own,” I said, keeping my composure. “We run a much cleaner operation. If any cop dared to undermine a case one of my guys was working on—”
“I heard you the first time,” Prescott said. “We have a lot of work to do before you testify and I’d like to get started.”
“Is there anything new you’d like to tell me about?” I asked.
“Nothing breaking our way yet,” he said, removing a stack of photographs from the folder and placing it in front of him.
It wasn’t hard to guess what the pictures were. I settled back in my chair.
“That’s bound to change, sooner rather than later,” I said.
“I did get some material from Commissioner Scully yesterday afternoon that I’d like to start with,” he said.
They were the still shots from the fashion show Monday evening—the ones Vickee had brought to dinner last night. Everyone involved—including me—was trying to figure why Battaglia made a mad dash to the museum, and they were hoping a replay would offer the missing clue.
I had wanted Jaxon Stern off my ass for more than one reason. This was my opportunity to set the record straight.
“Before you do that,” I said, “I’ve been in such a—well, such a state of confusion—and I was so crushed by Stern’s manner the other night—that I’m not sure I got all the facts out in order.”
“Really? I think of you as so compulsive about the way you organize yourself.”
“I’m sure he got it all down,” I said, “but you have to understand the trauma to me of witnessing Paul Battaglia’s death, of having him collapse onto me—and I’m not sure Stern had an ounce of the empathy the situation required.”
Prescott listened without responding.
“I just want to be sure it’s all clear,” I said. “The questioning started just a couple of hours after the murder.”
“What do you think Stern missed?” Prescott asked.
“You can appreciate that I didn’t know where he was coming from when he started the interview with such antagonism,” I said.
“Go on.”
“I know I was running on fumes then. You must realize that, don’t you?”
“Give me an example, Alexandra.”
“I’m sort of fuzzy on whether or not I talked about the day Battaglia showed up at my apartment,” I said, wearing my most earnest expression. “He actually crossed paths with me on the street, on my way home.”
“We have that,” Prescott said. “I’ll get back to it when I reach that point in the prep.”
“Good,” I said. “Then I wasn’t as addled as I feared.”
“Let’s get on with it.”
“I must have talked about the Reverend Hal, didn’t I? Hal Shipley, and his curious influence on Battaglia?” I asked. “I mean, I’d been keeping that pretty close to the vest, which is the way the DA wanted me to play it—”
“You told Stern and Tinsley about Shipley,” Prescott said, interrupting me. “When I’m ready for more detail on that issue, I’ll come back to it.”
“Sure. I understand.”
I needed to put George Kwan’s name on the table before Prescott did. I had to have a reason for not disclosing his meeting with Paul Battaglia to Detective Stern when he had me jumping all over the place at the morgue interrogation.
“I guess they made notes of my last sighting of the district attorney, too,” I said.
Prescott flipped the pages of notes that must have been the first night’s interview of me by Stern.
“Near your apartment,” he said, nodding as he looked for the reference.
“No, no. Those were two separate occasions,” I said, as evenly as I could, shaking a finger at him.
Prescott studied what I assumed were the lines Stern had written when he questioned me.
“Explain that,” he said.
“Like I told the detectives, I was walking down East Seventieth Street, coming from the Met, I think, when I heard Battaglia’s bodyguard—”
“Not that one,” he said. He was getting short with me. “There was a later time?”
“Yes, like I told the detectives, a day or so after that, Mike Chapman and I were on our way to interview a witness in the Wolf Savage case,” I said.
Prescott was flipping the pages back and forth, looking for this notation—in vain.
“Which witness?” he asked.
“A man named Kwan. George Kwan.”
Prescott wouldn’t give me the satisfaction of looking up, but he stopped flipping pages. I couldn’t tell whether he would challenge my recollections.
“You recognize his name?” I asked.
“Go on, Alexandra. Just go on.”
“We had met Kwan at the Savage offices and wanted to ask him some more questions—apart from the family. So Mike and I went to the town house, on East Seventy-Eighth Street, I think it was.”
Now I knew he was bluffing, pretending to be following along with me on Stern’s notes by running his forefinger across the page.
“Yes?” he asked. “And you got in?”
“No, no. It’s just like I told Stern and Tinsley,” I said, with a wan smile. “At least I’m pretty sure I did.”