Entombed (39 page)

"I picked this up when
I was waiting for the list of names this afternoon. Look at the
delegate speaking at the December meeting on trade sanctions."

The man in the
photograph looked remarkably like the composite drawing, except that he
appeared to be in his mid-sixties. The hairline and round-shaped face,
even the size of the nose and outline of the lips were identical to the
rapist's physiognomy. The skin color was the deep ebony that witnesses
had described.

"Who's your friend?"

"Sofi Maswana.
Representative to the United Nations from Dahlakia."

"Enlighten me, Mercer."

"Like Eritrea, it was
once part of Ethiopia. Broke off in the nineties and became an
independent republic. Northern Africa, on the Red Sea, prized for its
pearl fisheries."

"And Mr. Maswana?" I
asked.

"He's downstairs with
his number-one son, waiting to talk to us."

"I'm impressed. That's
why all the guys look so wired out there?"

"They know something's
up," Peterson said. "They haven't seen the pair yet."

"What do you know?"

"Maswana's a perfect
gentleman," Mercer said, flipping open his notepad. "He's got business
degrees from the University of London-don't go smirking there, Alex-and
the Sorbonne. Sixty-eight years old. Been in the diplomatic corps for
almost thirty years and has been posted here for six."

"What's the address?"

"Town house on East
Seventy-fourth Street, between First and Second Avenues."

"I hope our profiler
likes that for a 'jeopardy center.' Couldn't be better. What does he
know at this point?" I asked.

"By four-thirty, INS
confirmed visa information for other family members. There's a wife who
splits her time between here and home, and five kids, all in their
twenties. Three sons, two daughters. They've all come and gone from the
States over the years. I got an agent to meet me at Maswana's office in
the Secretariat building so I didn't have to use any ID that linked me
to Special Victims. I thought immigration questions would be less
threatening than telling him we were looking for a serial rapist."

I liked the sound of
this. My adrenaline was pumping, just like the detectives who paced in
the adjacent room. "Good start. What did he tell you?"

"The agent explained
to Maswana the latest updates in airport security procedures for United
Nations personnel. The government's working on a form of identification
to create an express VIP service for all diplomats who've submitted to
extensive anti-terrorist screening procedures. Then, it seemed natural
we had to take him through the family members step by step."

"Was he cooperative?"

"One hundred percent.
Help the good old USA, and grease the wheels to get through the airport
more speedily. Mrs. Maswana, he told us, is here until April. Both
girls are at college, one at Princeton and one at Georgetown."

"And his sons?" I
asked.

"The youngest one is
named after him. Sofi, Junior. He's twenty-three. Goes to graduate
school at Harvard but he's been home since Christmas, doing an
independent study project. Went back up to Cambridge just this past
weekend, but Mr. Maswana will make him available for anything we need."

"Timing is
everything," I said. "It puts him in the 'hood for the recent series,
but he's a bit young for the 'scrip, especially going back to the
earliest cases. How about the two older ones?"

"The middle son,
David, is the one who's here with the father tonight. Twenty-seven
years. He works in a family export business run by an uncle-Dahlakian
pearls-on Fifth Avenue, near the diamond district. He's been in and out
of town lots of times in the past five years."

"That fits with the
subway stop on Fifty-first Street," I said, thinking of the MetroCard
and the Forty-seventh Street hub for wholesale jewels that had
stretched to the surrounding blocks.

"He's twenty-seven,
lives at home with Mom and Pop. He's the spitting image of his old man.
I'm not jumping to any conclusions but he looks awfully, awfully good,
Ms. Cooper."

"How about his big
brother?"

"Comes and goes as
well. He'll be thirty on his next birthday. Has a wife back home, with
twin daughters. Mr. Maswana says that Hugo's involved in private
banking, but he hasn't been in the States since a brief visit last
summer."

"Did you check that
out with INS?" the lieutenant asked.

"It fits what they've
got. All the Maswanas are present and accounted for, except Hugo."

"And he wasn't here
when the pattern started up again, even according to the computer
records, am I right?" I asked.

Mercer nodded.

"How'd you take the
next step? How'd you tell Mr. Maswana you wanted to talk to his son
about a criminal case?"

"When we'd come to the
end of the general questioning, the INS agent and I stepped out for a
minute. I checked with the lieutenant, who already had a team sitting
on the town house, in case our subject was inside. So I went back in to
the ambassador and told him the truth. I'm sure he wanted to put out my
lights, but he was the model of diplomacy. Quiet, dignified,
restrained. If the kid's inherited anything of his character, then I'm
wrong to suspect him. Maswana said he'd produce his son at the precinct
as soon as he could locate the young man, and he kept his word."

"So what's the plan?"
I asked.

"Bring David up here.
If we get really lucky, he spills his guts," Peterson said. "Otherwise,
you try to develop some probable cause. Worst-case scenario, he sucks
on a coffee cup, we keep him under surveillance tonight, and this time
tomorrow we've got our DNA results."

Mercer Wallace went
downstairs to bring David Maswana up to the squad, but the father was
not so easily separated from his son. The three of them entered the
cramped office in a row.

The lieutenant stepped
outside to make room and Mercer introduced me to the two men, who sat
opposite me across the captain's messy desk. I explained that I wanted
to question David out of Sofi's presence. The father was polite but
firm.

"Is my son under
arrest for anything?"

"No, sir, he is not."

"Do I need to get him
a lawyer?"

"No, he's not in
custody. You have my word on that. Of course, if you'd like to have a
lawyer present, we can certainly wait here until you've reached one."

Maswana checked his
watch for the time. "I'd prefer to get started. We have nothing to
hide."

"Then I'm going to ask
you to step out of the room. Lieutenant Peterson will give you a
comfortable place to-"

"I intend to sit right
here, Madam Cooper, beside my son."

It was too early to
start butting heads. "That's not going to work, Mr. Ambassador. You're
welcome to have a seat down the hall, but I will not conduct the
questioning in your presence. I'll be right outside when you two have
had a chance to decide what you'd like to do this evening."

No serious
interrogation of an adult suspect could be carried on with a parent
sitting next to him. If David were psychologically ready to unburden
himself about his criminal conduct, the company of his prominent father
and the rectitude of his upbringing would put the chill on any chance
of a confession. The entire dynamic changed when the target was alone.

I went out to the
squad room and gave Peterson some cash to order in a sandwich for David
and some coffee for all of us. Like the superstitious ballplayers who
left their pitchers alone on the bench between innings, none of the
detectives approached me to banter or offer suggestions. Mercer and I
huddled in a corner to discuss strategy.

Ten minutes later, Mr.
Maswana emerged from behind the opaque glass door.

"I shall accept your
rules, Madam Cooper. But I would ask you to suspend what you're doing
anytime David requests that you do."

"Of course."

Mercer and I returned
to the room, and while we were explaining the purpose of our
questioning, a uniformed cop brought in the package from the local deli.

I placed the sandwich
in front of Maswana along with a cup of coffee. Once he drank from the
container and left it on the desk, it would be abandoned property that
I could submit for DNA analysis before the end of the evening, without
the need for a search warrant or confession.

I opened the lid of my
coffee and sipped at it. "How do you take yours, David?"

He pushed the food and
drink away. "Nothing for me, thanks. I'm not hungry."

Mercer began by asking
some basic pedigree questions. The young man was nervous-he avoided
making eye contact, his voice had a slight quiver from time to time,
and he kept his hands clasped in his lap-but I would expect anyone to
be frightened in this situation.

When he talked about
his education, David made no mention of any schooling in England. "When
were you at Harvard?"

I wanted him to answer
with the year of his class, so that I could see if that slight accent
that Annika heard would surface in the same three letters as the word
"ass." He not only said that word, but the word "pass" as well, and
there was no hint of a British pronunciation.

Mercer worked David on
dates and times of year. He was vague about much of it, but then we
were talking about events that were quite remote in time. Statutes of
limitation had been written into our laws because people couldn't be
expected to account for their whereabouts five or six years after the
fact.

While Mercer did the
heavy lifting, I tried to measure the guy's responses. At times he
seemed earnest and as candid as he could be, and at moments when his
facial expressions seemed identical to the police artist's sketch, I
was ready to lock the door on the cell and throw away the key. The
brilliance of DNA meant that science would resolve any of our
uncertainty within twenty-four hours.

Forty-five minutes
into questions and denials, Peterson knocked on the door and smiled at
me, offering a pack of cigarettes, his lighter, and an ashtray. "I
forgot the captain got rid of his illegal paraphernalia a year ago, at
the mayor's request. We'll bend the rules for you a bit."

He had remembered the
cigarette butt recovered from the stoop in front of one of the crime
scenes. The perp was a smoker, and the remains he left on the desk
would be another easy source of DNA analysis, from saliva.

Mercer and I each took
a cigarette from the pack to make the activity inviting to our target.
David Maswana wrinkled his nose at the smell of the match lighting.
"Thanks. I don't smoke."

Maybe he didn't. Maybe
he was smart enough not to make the process of evidence collection any
easier for us.

At the end of an hour,
Mercer was ready to play hardball. The vague answers about recent dates
and times-those that would key into the January assaults-were
unacceptable. Mercer pressed for firm answers, for information
undoubtedly recorded in this generation's ubiquitous PalmPilots and
desktop calendars.

He asked David to
voluntarily give a DNA sample, to allow us to swab the inside of his
mouth with a Q-tips. The young man welled up with tears before refusing
the request, saying that he would ask his father about that before
leaving the precinct later on.

Then Mercer removed a
slip of paper from the folder. He turned it face-up and placed the
composite of the Silk Stocking Rapist's face under the nose of our
prime suspect.

David recoiled
automatically and started breathing heavily. "It's-it's like me a lot,
but then, who made this? White women? A lot of the characteristics
would, well-look like any, um-"

Mercer's dark brown
skin was almost the same shade as David's. He leaned in and pointed at
the kid. "Don't let me hear any we-all-look-alike-to-them bullshit,
okay? This sketch looks more like you than the photo on your driver's
license."

Another knock on the
door and Peterson cracked it enough to motion me out. I thought Mercer
had David on the ropes for the first time, making progress and
softening him up. My annoyance at the interruption was visible.

"Sorry, Alex. I
assumed you'd want the call. Darren Waxon, the chief of protocol says
he has to talk to you."

I took the receiver
and spoke brusquely into the phone. "Yes, Mr. Waxon?"

"Miss Cooper, I'm
wondering how much later you're going to keep the ambassador and his
son in the police station. It's after eight-thirty and if you're
planning to take any kind of action, I'll need to know about it as soon
as possible."

I hesitated, afraid
there had been a leak from someone in the department who saw the two
men waiting downstairs earlier in the evening. "Who told you Mr.
Maswana was here?"

"He called me himself,
to thank me and let me know what was going on."

"Thank you? For what?"

"For telling him why
the district attorney subpoenaed the personal-residence information in
the first place and what the investigation concerned."

My annoyance was fast
turning to anger. "Exactly when did you tell him that?"

"Miss Cooper, I gave
each of the missions the courtesy of informing them that we had no
choice but to respond to the proper legal process. Protocol requires-"

"But what time? At
what hour did you tell that to Mr. Maswana?"

"This afternoon,
shortly before I gave Detective Wallace the list of addresses."

The whole time that
Mercer thought that he had pulled a fast one on Maswana with the ruse
of getting information from him via the INS agent, the ambassador knew
we were looking at one of his sons as a possible serial rapist.

"You had absolutely no
business revealing that-"

"Miss Cooper," Waxon
said, meeting my ire with his own, "I wasn't about to cause an
international incident over a-a handful of hysterical women."