Death Dance (2 page)

"No. Cara turned on the CD player and we started listening to
the soundtrack from the show. Selim came back into the room and handed
us each a drink. He offered a toast to our friendship and we clinked
our glasses together."

The young woman rested her elbows on the desk and cushioned
her head in her hands while I asked her how much of the cocktail she
drank.

"Three sips of it, Ms. Cooper. Maybe four. I swear I didn't
have any more than that."

"Any marijuana?"

"No. I mean he had some in the apartment—he offered
me a joint that he took out of a drawer in one of the tables, but I
didn't smoke any."

I needed her candor. The blood and urine that had been
collected by the nurse-examiner would confirm her answer.

"Did he smoke?"

"Not in front of us. Not that I saw."

"What's the next thing you remember?"

"There was no next thing. That's the last memory I have,
really. I felt dizzy and weak—so weak that I tried to stand
up but I couldn't. The room started spinning and then it was dark.
Completely black. That's all I know." Jean pushed herself upright
again, looked at her nail—the bed red with irritation from
her biting—and then back at me.

"Until… ?"

"Until I woke up this morning."

"In the living room?"

"No, no. No. I was in one of the beds in the other room.
That's what's so strange about this, Ms. Cooper. I was dressed in my
nightgown, my clothes were folded neatly on top of my suitcase," Jean
said, dropping her head back in her hands and lowering her voice. "And
I ached. I ached terribly."

"I need to know where it hurt. Exactly where you felt it."

Jean Eaken didn't lift her head. She rubbed her lower abdomen
with one hand.

Mercer and I both knew what she meant, but that wouldn't be
specific enough for the purposes of the law. "On the outside of your
body?" I asked, speaking softly.

"No. Inside me. Like someone had sex with me. Too much."

"Do you remember having intercourse with Selim? Do you think
you might have consented to it after you started drinking
with—"

Jean flashed another look at me as I gently challenged her and
cut me off abruptly with a single sharp word. "No."

"Tell me what you did this morning, Jean."

"I was frozen. I didn't know what to do. At first I couldn't
even remember where I was. I looked at my watch and saw that it was
eleven thirty in the morning. We'd had the alarm set all week for
seven, but I didn't even hear that go off. I got out of bed—I
was still a little dizzy—to lock the bedroom door. Selim had
been working rotating shifts—different hours all week. He
told us he had to work sixteen hours today—eight a. m. to
midnight—but I was scared he might still be there. Then I
woke Cara up."

"Where was she?" I asked.

"In the other bed. Same as me—dressed in her
nightgown and her jeans and sweater all folded up neatly. She was
sleeping so deep, I had to keep shaking her to get her up. She didn't
remember anything, either. She started crying, so first I had to calm
her down. It was my idea to get dressed and go over there to the
hospital."

"That was the best thing you could have done, Jean. Very
smart."

"But the doctors haven't told me anything."

"We won't let you go home until they've explained their
findings to you," Mercer said, watching Jean nervously twist and
untwist the same plait of hair.

"Did you leave your things at Selim's?"

"Are you crazy? I never wanted to see that guy again. We
brought our suitcases with us."

"The glasses you drank from," I said, "did you see them in the
apartment this morning?"

"I didn't look around. I just wanted to get out of there as
fast as possible."

"Did you have any reason to go into the kitchen, to put things
away or clean anything up?"

"No. That's his problem."

Even better. It meant there was a shot that we might get lucky
and still find some inculpatory evidence if Mercer and I could get
going on this.

"I know it's been a long day for you, Jean. Just give us a few
minutes to put things together and we'll be back," I said, stepping out
of the room behind Mercer, who had picked up the cardboard evidence
collection kit that had been prepared by the nurse-examiner at the
hospital. We were in the hallway of the quiet corridor that Special
Victims shared with the Manhattan North Homicide Squad.

"How long will it take to get the tox screening back on
these?" he asked, referring to the slides and plastic bottles inside
the compact box.

In addition to the traditional testing of fluids and stains
recovered from a patient's body during the emergency room treatment of
a rape victim, the latest kits required samples be taken of blood and
urine for the most refined testing, as assailants used more
sophisticated methods to overcome their prey.

"Seventy-two hours, if they jump us to the front of the line."

"I'm sending this whole thing to the M.E.'s office, to
Serology?"

"It starts there," I said. Mercer knew that our medical
examiner's serology lab did most of the analyses we needed.
"Unfortunately, if there are any exotic drugs involved, it'll go out to
a private lab and take even longer."

"Damn. I hate to give this bastard a three-day pass. We'll
even have the DNA results by this time tomorrow."

"DNA tells us next to nothing in a case like this. We know
they spent the night in his apartment. We know the docs recovered semen
specimens from both women. None of that's a crime unless he used
force—"

"No sign of that," Mercer said.

Even the aches that Jean described could be consistent with
consensual sexual activity if it was vigorous or prolonged—or
infrequent, since she had told Selim she did not have a current
boyfriend.

"Or he spiked their drinks to render them unconscious. nowhere
without the toxicology," I said.

"How do you want to take it from here?"

My deputy, Sarah Brenner, had stayed behind at the DA's office
to draft the search warrant with the facts Mercer provided to her, and
she would take it before the judge who was sitting in night court to
sign while we set the rest of the operation in motion.

"I'll work up the conversation for Jean to have with Selim," I
said, "but I don't want her to make that call until your team is
stationed outside the door of his apartment. His shift ends right
around now and he should be home within the half hour. The minute Jean
hangs up, I'll be on the phone to you and you'll go in with the
warrant. If her questions raise his antennae, I don't want him to have
a chance to clean house before you get there."

The glass-paneled door with the gold-and-black
lettering— homicide—opened from within and Mike
Chapman called out to Mercer Wallace. "Your witness is getting antsy in
here. She wants to know when you and Coop are gonna move on the perp."

I walked farther down the hallway to greet Mike, whom I hadn't
seen in several weeks. I smiled at the sight of him back in his natural
habitat in the Homicide Squad—his thick shock of straight
black hair, the long, lean body, his personal uniform of navy blazer
and jeans. All that was missing was the infectious grin that had been
good to bring me out of every dark situation and mood I'd faced in more
than a decade that we had worked together.

"Hey, stranger. When did you come on?"

"Doing steady midnights. I'm not sleeping much, so I might as
well have a place to hang out."

"When Mercer and I finish up in another couple of
hours— around two a.m.—why don't we take you
downstairs for something to eat?" I asked.

Mike walked to his desk, seated himself with his back to me,
and put his feet up while he examined his notebook. I paused at an
empty cubicle next to his and started writing the lines I wanted Jean
Eaken to deliver to Dr. Sengor.

"I'm sticking here," Mike said. "Just got a scratch I got to
sit on."

A scratch wasn't a formal report of a crime, but rather a
notification to the NYPD of an unusual circumstance.

"What's so serious you'd pass up the greasiest bacon and eggs
in Harlem with me?" I tried to tease a familiar smile out of my
favorite homicide detective and still-grieving friend.

"Right up your alley, twinkletoes. There may be a swan on the
loose. Lieutenant Peterson has me on standby."

"What are you talking about?"

"Ever hear of"—Mike looked down at his notes to get
the name—"Talya. Talya Galinova?"

"Natalya Galinova." The world-renowned dancer who commanded
more curtain calls in a month than most performers would ever know in a
lifetime was as famous for her artistry as for her ethereal looks and
regal bearing. "She's starring with the Royal Ballet at Lincoln Center
this week."

"Well, sometime between the second act and the curtain calls
tonight, she pulled a Houdini. Me and the loo got other plans for the
weekend than breakfast with you. Personally, I'm hoping your missing
swan doesn't morph into a dead duck."

"Hello, Selim? I didn't wake you up, did I? It's Jean."

"Jean? Where are you?"

We were sitting in a room with two phones, one of which was
attached to a digital recorder, so that I could listen on an extension
as my witness confronted her assailant and give her direction in case
she needed it. It was now twelve forty-five in the morning.

"I'm at the Port Authority, waiting for—"

"You were supposed to be on a three o'clock bus this
afternoon, weren't you?" Selim's English was heavily accented as he cut
Jean off before she could answer.

"Yeah, except Cara and I were a bit sick today. Nauseous and
dizzy. We just couldn't face a ten-hour bus ride."

"But you're still going tonight, aren't you?"

"Nothing leaves for Toronto until the morning."

"You want to come back here? I'm still up. I haven't been home
very long. Wait at my apartment until then."

"Oh, no. I think I'm going to take Cara to the hospital. She's
really feeling bad and I think she should be examined before she
travels. I was wondering if—"

"You don't want to start with that, Jean," Selim said,
sounding almost angry as he raised his voice to get her attention. "I'm
a doctor. Tell me what her symptoms are and I can figure out if
anything's wrong. Probably something she ate. You'll waste too much
time waiting in an emergency room. You don't have any insurance
coverage in this country, do you? So it's going to be very expensive
for her."

He seemed to be scrambling for any ideas that would keep the
women away from a medical exam.

"We didn't eat anything unusual, Selim. Each of us had a
salad. And we didn't drink anything except bottled water until we got
to your place."

"Yeah, well, maybe there was something wrong with the salad.
Like it wasn't clean or the dressing had turned already."

"That's a good enough reason for us to go to the hospital.
Could be food poisoning. At least they can do blood tests there, can't
they?"