“No, thank you,” I said.
“You must be starving,” she said, continuing to play good cop as the tension between Stern and me mounted.
“Not even hungry.” I was growing more and more nauseated on an empty stomach, but not hungry.
“So the museum security guards gave you the all clear, is that right?” Stern asked.
“They did.”
“That’s when you and Wallace and Chapman walked out the door?”
I had to think. “It was just Chapman and me,” I said. “I don’t remember seeing Wallace at that point.”
“What did you do before leaving the museum?”
“Do? I didn’t do anything,” I said. “Chapman took off his jacket and put it over my shoulders. I remember double-checking with him about whether anyone was outside.”
Jaxon Stern leaned in toward me. “What did he say to you?”
“‘New York at night,’” I said, smiling despite myself and quoting Mike. “‘Only pigeons and perps on the street.’”
“You think that line is funny, Ms. Cooper? Is that why you’re smiling?”
“At the time, I did, Detective. In hindsight, nothing’s the least bit humorous.”
“Why did you ask Chapman that question?” Stern said. “About whether anyone was waiting on the street.”
I shrugged. “I didn’t want to be sandbagged. I didn’t want to be photographed by some lone paparazzo, waiting for a gala guest who had lingered behind the others,” I said. “Maybe waiting for the suspect that Scully just announced had escaped from the museum, hoping to get the money shot.”
“You’ve been a poster girl for the tabloids before. Tell me the real reason for your concern.”
“That was my only reason, Detective.”
Jaxon Stern tapped the tip of his forefinger on the desktop. He did it four or five times, with force. A pause, and then four more again. It was annoying and disconcerting.
“You knew Paul Battaglia was on his way to talk to you,” Stern said, lifting his finger to point it at my face. “That’s why you had Chapman on the lookout, wasn’t it?”
I had walked right into that one. That thought had not occurred to me at all.
“That’s ridiculous, Detective,” I said, throwing back my head and exhaling to blow off steam. “I had no idea that Battaglia was on his way to the museum. I still have no idea what he was doing there.”
Kate Tinsley stood up and started to pace, walking behind me and facing Stern. His eyes shifted up and down in her direction. They were trying to box me in, thinking they had me on the ropes now that my concentration was slipping.
“Well, I sure don’t have any idea why the district attorney was making his way up those steps in such a hurry,” Stern said, “but I’m willing to bet my entire paycheck that you do.”
“That would be a losing proposition for you, Detective,” I said.
“When’s the last time you talked to Battaglia before you saw him coming at you?”
“I was on a leave of absence, or did you forget that?”
“Now, why would that stop him from talking to you, Ms. Cooper?”
Damn. There was Battaglia’s bodyguard, who would eventually let out that the DA had dropped by to see me earlier in the week.
“A few days ago is when I spoke with him,” I said. “Saw him, actually.”
“Saw him, did you?” Stern said, picking up his pen to make a note. “Tell us about that. Did you drop by the office?”
I shook my head in the negative. “Not the whole time I’ve been on leave,” I said. “He was in his car. He stopped me as I was walking down the street to my apartment.”
“House calls,” Stern said. “Who knew the DA made house calls? Was he worried about your health, Ms. Cooper? Your mental health, that is?”
“He’d heard I was being drawn into a murder investigation,” I said, admitting the fact because it would be readily available to Stern and Tinsley. “And he wanted to remind me to keep my nose out of it.”
“We’ll come back to that, Ms. Cooper,” Stern said.
I had no doubt he would.
“Did you speak with him after that day?”
“No,” I snapped.
“You can take your time, Ms. Cooper,” Stern said. “Think before you blurt out a reply.”
“Nothing to think about, Detective. That was the last time we spoke.” It had been such an unpleasant conversation that I wasn’t clear how a follow-up would have gone.
“And he didn’t call you tonight,” Stern asked, “telling you he wanted to talk to you? Tell you he was on his way to the Met? Text you to wait for him?”
“No.”
“No point telling you that cell records and texts—well, they’ll all be subpoenaed in a homicide investigation like this,” Stern said. “Sometimes that reminder just jogs the memory a bit. Makes people remember a phone conversation that seemed so unimportant at the time.”
“I’m familiar with your technique, Detective,” I said. “I’ve used it with my fair share of witnesses. The ones I expect are lying to me, though. Not the honest ones.”
“You never know, Ms. Cooper, do you? I’ve been fooled by the best of them.”
“Don’t you hate when that happens?” I said, fumbling with a package of Twizzlers, bending the wrapped licorice sticks in half and then bending them back in the other direction.
“Did you see him again, after that drive-by?”
“No,” I said, just as quickly as I’d answered the question about the phone call. “Not until he came charging up the steps of the museum.”
Jaxon Stern made another note. “Like I said, take your time.”
“I didn’t see him again. No,” I said, firm and fast, holding my ground.
“You’re certain?”
“I’m sure,” I said, tired and angry at being challenged on every fact.
And then I remembered. Shit. I had spoken too fast.
“What’s troubling you, Ms. Cooper?” Stern asked. “You’ve got a funny look on your face.”
“That’s just my face, Detective, like it or not.”
I had seen Paul Battaglia after the day he had chewed me out in front of my building. Mike Chapman and I were together. I had seen Paul Battaglia but he hadn’t seen me.
“Tell us what you’re thinking, Ms. Cooper,” the detective said.
“About how much I want to go home. Can we get this over with soon?”
“Did you see the district attorney between the afternoon—was it afternoon?—when he dropped by to talk with you, and this past evening, just to be clear?”
“No, Detective,” I said. “I did not.”
I had looked Detective Jaxon Stern in the eye and lied. I had a clear choice to tell the truth, about sitting with Mike Chapman in his unmarked car and spotting Paul Battaglia coming out of a town house on the Upper East Side, but I deliberately chose not to tell the truth.
My heart started racing again. I knew why I didn’t tell Stern about the sighting. Mike was the only other person who’d witnessed it, and at the time, both of us had been puzzled about why Battaglia was at the location where we’d seen him. I didn’t know whether that moment had any significance in this investigation, but I wanted the chance to talk to Mike about that before I gave it up to Jaxon Stern.