He smirked and tried to interrupt me.
“You’re just an amateur dick out of a cheap movie trying to play like the big boys,” I said to him. “Pretending you’re a grown-up who knows what he’s doing in a homicide case. And you, Detective Tinsley, must be trying to put on a good front and let this horse’s ass think he can bully me. You’re better than that, and I don’t believe for a minute that your cheesy smile is meant to disarm me.”
“Stop it,” she said to me.
“I’ve been bullied by real thugs, and you two don’t begin to scare me.”
“Sit down, why don’t you,” Tinsley said, “and let’s just get this over with.”
She had lost her smile in the process of walking me off my tantrum. I took my seat and threw back my head, staring at a chip in the paint on the ceiling to refocus myself.
“Give it your best shot, Detective Stern,” I said. “Skip the rights and move on.”
He played with his pen while he watched me blow off steam.
“Concentrate on the real victim here,” Stern said. “Paul Battaglia. Stop feeling so sorry for yourself. Word on the street suggests your head is so swollen, Ms. Cooper, that if you had indeed been the target of the shooter, you would have been hard to miss.”
“If there are as many words on the street as you seem to credit, you should have a short story under your belt by this hour,” I said. “You’d hardly need me.”
There was a sharp rap on the door before it opened. Mike stuck his head in and I covered my eyes with my hand so he couldn’t see how fired up I’d become.
“Here’s some caffeine,” he said to me, passing the soda can to Tinsley. “And some dinner.”
He threw me two packages of red licorice Twizzlers.
“So you all know, if you hear any wailing,” Mike said, “Battaglia’s wife just arrived. Dr. Palmer and some brass from headquarters are talking to her, before they bring her in to see the body.”
I looked across the desk at Jaxon Stern. “Would you mind if we take five minutes so I can speak with Mrs. Battaglia? I’d like to offer my condolences while I have the chance for a private moment with her.”
Mike Chapman spoke before Detective Stern could state his objection. “Keep on keeping on, you guys. You, Alexandra Cooper, are the last person in the world that Amy Battaglia wants to see right now.”
“Why me?” The entire scenario continued to spin out of control. Nothing I said or did seemed to be right.
“At the moment, Coop, Mrs. B is blaming you for the death of the district attorney.”
FOUR
“What did you see, exactly, when you stepped out of the museum and stood on the top of the steps?” Stern asked me.
Stern had raced through the events of the evening before, including the famed Costume Institute’s gala tribute to a designer named Wolf Savage. He had moved too quickly to get a thorough overview of the investigation into Wolf’s death that had had its finale on the runway. He was not as good a detail man as Sherman had pitched him to be.
“There wasn’t actually much to see at that hour of the night,” I said, rubbing my eyes with my thumb and forefinger, as though it would help me see that scene repeated more clearly. “Mike and I waited inside the lobby—in the Great Hall—so that I was out of sight of the reporters and photographers while the commissioner spoke to them from the front steps.”
“For how long did he talk?”
“Less than five minutes,” I said. “Maybe just three. Scully didn’t have a full picture of everything that had gone down. He just wanted to get the message out via the media that a big case had been solved, and one suspect was still on the loose.”
“Then you walked outside?” Stern asked.
“I remember waiting until the camera crews had dismantled everything and packed up the gear in their vans. In fact, security was in and out of the door, letting us know the group was thinning and encouraging us to wait until people were gone.”
“And the commissioner? You got him in your pocket too, Ms. Cooper? Didn’t he get some face time with you?”
“I’ve known Keith Scully for a decade, Detective Stern. He’s in nobody’s pocket,” I said. “He left me in good hands at that point, with Mike and Mercer. He’s well aware of what I went through last month.”
“Yeah, that’s right. I almost forgot. You were a kidnapping vic,” Stern said, flipping back through his notes. “Big news at the time. Full-court press by the department. Want to tell us about that now?”
“Another time, if it’s a yes-or-no question.”
I knew exactly what his interviewing technique was. I’d used it often with skittish witnesses who might be on their way to a breaking point.
Stern had jumped off questioning me about the confrontation on the museum steps at the moment of maximum impact in order to rattle me, to bring up an event that was even more personal, more stressful to me than Battaglia’s death: my own abduction and days of captivity by depraved monsters.
He would count on unsettling me with flashbacks to my kidnapping, and then bounce over to the shooting again, hoping the cutaway would upset any narrative I’d put together in advance of his arrival.
“Stay on the kidnapping, Ms. Cooper,” Stern said, ignoring the plaintive look on Kate Tinsley’s face. “You didn’t know the men who abducted you? It had nothing to do with one of your old cases, am I right?”
“Nothing.”
“Something to do with Mike Chapman?” he asked.
“Indirectly.”
“But you were already lovers by then, weren’t you?”
I looked over at Kate Tinsley and threw up my hands. “You know, in my own job,” I said, “I could say ‘objection’ and we’d all just move on to something relevant.”
“Yeah, but I could say ‘overruled,” Stern said, “and put the ball right back in your court.”
“Yes, Mike and I were lovers—are lovers now. Asked and answered, Detective. Why don’t you take your next shot?”
“Paul Battaglia put you on leave after the kidnappers released you, right?” he said, more than a dozen questions later.
“My shrink recommended the leave of absence,” I said. “I was in no condition to work on cases when I was discharged from the hospital.”
Stern hadn’t known about the shrink. He gave himself away by raising his eyebrows when I made the remark, and stopping to scribble a note in his pad.
“How long have you been seeing a psychiatrist, Ms. Cooper?”
“Not quite as long as I’ve been sleeping with Mike Chapman,” I said. “And his repressed sexual drive isn’t what brought me to therapy, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
Kate Tinsley bit her lip. Even Stern almost smiled.
“So, you’ve known Chapman since your first year in the DA’s office,” Stern said. “And you became intimate when?”
“Two months ago, Detective.”
“That could hold a record for foreplay, Ms. Cooper.”
“I’ll answer your questions, Stern, but filter out your nasty commentary,” I said.
“Why don’t you eat something, Ms. Cooper?” Kate said. “I can send out to the bodega on First for food that’s more nourishing than Twizzlers.”