Lethal Legacy (2 page)

“I want you to open the door for me.”

Only silence.

“Look through the peephole,” I said. “I’m not a
cop. I’m an assistant district attorney.”

I stepped back and squared off so the woman inside
the basement apartment could check me out. The hallway and staircase had been
cleared of men in uniform, including the detail from Emergency Services poised
to knock down her door with a battering ram, which was there when I arrived at
the scene a short while ago at one o’clock in the morning.

I didn’t hear any sound from within. No sense of
her movement.

“My name is Alexandra Cooper. You’re Tina, aren’t
you? Tina Barr.” I didn’t say what my specialty was, that I was in charge of
the DA’s Office Sex Crimes Prosecution Unit. The police weren’t certain she had
been assaulted by the man who had earlier invaded her home, but several of them
thought she might reveal those details to me if I could gain her confidence.

I moved in against the metal-clad door and pressed
my ear to it, but heard nothing.

“Don’t lose your touch now, Coop.” Mike Chapman
walked down the steps and handed a lightbulb to the rookie who was holding a
flashlight over my shoulder. “The money on the street’s against you, but I’m
counting on your golden tongue to talk the lady out so those guys can go home
and catch some sleep.”

The young cop passed the bulb to Mercer Wallace,
the six-foot-six-inch-tall detective from the Special Victims Unit who had called
me to the brownstone on the quiet block between Lexington and Third avenues in
the East Nineties.

Mercer reached overhead and screwed it in,
illuminating the drab, cracked paint on the ceiling and walls of the hallway.
“Somebody—most likely the perp—shattered the other one. There are slivers of
glass everywhere.”

“Thanks, kid,” Mike said, dismissing the rookie.
“No progress here, Detective Wallace?”

“We haven’t got a homicide,” I whispered to
Mercer. “And they sell lightbulbs at the bodega on Lex. I don’t know why you
think we needed Mike, but please get him off my back.”

“Damn, I’ve listened to Blondie charm full-on
perverts into boarding the bus for a twenty-five-to-life time-share at Sing
Sing. I’ve seen her coax confessions from the lying lips of the deranged and
demented. I’ve watched as weak-willed men—”

Mercer put his finger to his lips and pointed at
the staircase.

“Tina, these two detectives are my friends. I’ve
worked with them for more than ten years.” I paused to cough and clear my
throat. There was still a bit of smoke wafting through the hallway. “Can you
tell me why you don’t want to open up? Why it is you won’t trust us? We’re
worried about your safety, Tina. About your physical condition.”

Mercer pulled at my elbow. “Let’s go up for a break.
Get some fresh air.”

I stayed at the door for another few minutes and
then followed Mike and Mercer to the small vestibule of the building and out
onto the stoop. It was a mild October night, and neighbors returning to their
homes, walking dogs, or hanging around the ’hood were checking on the police
activity and trying to figure out what was wrong.

The uniformed sergeant from the Twenty-third
Precinct, whose team had been the first responders, was on the sidewalk in
front of the building, talking to Billy Schultz, the man who had called 911 an
hour earlier.

“What’s the situation behind the house?” Mike
asked Mercer as I caught up with them on their way down the front steps.

“Two cops stationed there. Small common garden for
the tenants. Back doors from both the first floor and Barr’s basement
apartment, but no one has moved since they’ve been on-site.”

“What do you know about the girl?”

“Not much. Nobody seems to,” Mercer said. He
turned to the man standing with the sergeant, whom I guessed to be about forty,
several years older than Mike and I. “This is Mike Chapman, Billy. He’s
assigned to Night Watch.”

Mike worked in Manhattan North Homicide, which
helped staff the Night Watch unit, an elite squad of detectives on call between
midnight and eight a.m., when precinct squads were most understaffed, to
respond all over Manhattan to murders and situations, like this one, that the
department referred to—with gross understatement—as “unusuals.”

“Billy lives on the first floor,” Mercer said.
“He’s the guy who called 911.”

“Good to meet you,” Mike said. He turned to me.
“What’s her name?”

“Tina Barr.”

“She your friend?” he said to Billy.

“We chat at the mailboxes occasionally. She’s a
quiet girl. Keeps to herself. Spent a lot of time gardening on weekends in the
summer, so I ran into her out back every now and then, but I haven’t seen her
much since.”

“Lived here long?”

“Me? Eighteen years?”

“Her.”

“Tina sublets. A year, maybe more.”

Mike ran his fingers through his thick black hair,
looking from Billy to me. “You sure she’s in there?”

“I could hear a woman crying when I first got
here,” I said.
Whimpering
was a more accurate word.

“Tina was sobbing when I knocked on her door,”
Billy said.

“But she wouldn’t open up for you?”

Billy Schultz adjusted his glasses on the bridge
of his nose while Mike scrutinized him. “No, sir.”

“Why were you knocking? What made you call 911?”

“Mercer gave us all this, Mike. Let me get back
inside.”

He held his arm out at me, palm perpendicular like
a stop sign. “Don’t you want the chronology from the horse’s mouth? Primary
source. Catch me up, Billy.”

I had one hand on the wrought-iron railing but
stopped to listen. “I’m a graphic designer, Detective. Worked late, stopped off
for a burger and a couple of beers on my way home,” Billy said. He was dressed
in jeans and a sweatshirt. There were smudges of ink or paint on his jeans, too
dark in color to be blood, I thought. “It was about twelve-thirty when I got
near the building. That’s when I saw this guy come tearing out the front door,
down the steps.”

“What guy? Someone you know?”

Billy Schultz shook his head. “Nope. The fireman.”

Mike looked to Mercer. “Nobody told me about that.
The fire department got here first?”

“Not for real,” Mercer said.

“I mean, I assumed he was a fireman. He was dressed
in all the gear—coat, boots, hat, even had a protective mask of some kind on.
That’s why I couldn’t see his face.”

“Did you stop him? Did he talk to you?”

“He flew by me, like there was a forest fire on
Lexington Avenue he had to get to. Almost took me out. Even that didn’t seem
odd until I looked up the street for his truck but there wasn’t one around.
Just weird.”

“What did you do then?”

“I unlocked the door to the vestibule, and as soon
as I got inside, I could smell smoke. I could see little waves of it sort of
spiraling upward from the basement,” Billy said. “We don’t have a super who
lives in the building, so there was no one for me to call. I figured whatever
happened had been resolved. By the guy I thought was a fireman. But I wanted to
check it out, make sure there was nothing still burning.”

“Sarge, you want to get me that mask?” Mercer
said.

The older man walked to the nearest squad car and
reached in for a paper bag while Billy Schultz talked.

“I went downstairs first. It was pretty dark, but
I could make out a small pile of rubble in the corner of the hallway, a couple
of feet from Tina’s door. Nothing was burning—no flames—but it was still
smoldering. Kicking off a lot of smoke. That’s when I knocked on her door.”

“Did she answer?” Mike asked.

“No. Not then. I didn’t hear anything. I figured
maybe she wasn’t home. I ran up to my apartment, filled a pitcher with water,
and came back down to douse whatever was still smoking. Figured the other
firemen must have gone off to a bigger job and that the last one—the guy who
almost plowed me down—was trying to catch up with them.”

The sergeant passed the bag to Mercer, who put on
a pair of latex gloves from his pocket before opening it.

“It’s when I went downstairs the second time that
I heard Tina.”

“What did you hear, exactly?” I asked.

Billy cocked his head and answered. “I knocked
again, just because I was worried that the firemen might have left her there
even though there was still something smoldering in the hallway. She was
weeping loudly, then pausing, like to inhale.”

“Words,” Mike said. “Did she speak any words?”

“No, but I did. I told Tina it was me, asked her
if she was all right. I was coughing myself from the smoke. I told her she
could come up to my apartment.”

“Did she answer you?”

“No. She just cried.”

“How do you know it’s Tina Barr you were talking
to?” Mike asked.

Billy hesitated. “Well, at that point—I, uh—I just
assumed it, Detective. She lives there alone.”

“What next?”

“I went home to get a bucket and broom. Swept some
of the trash into the bucket to throw out on the street—”

Mike glanced at the sergeant. “Yeah, we got it,
Chapman. Looks like amateur smoke bombs.”

“The sobbing was so bad by then, I called 911,
from my cell. Maybe she was sick, overcome by the smoke. I waited out here on
the stoop till the officers came. Three minutes. Not much longer. That’s when
Tina went berserk. That’s when I knew it was her, for sure. I recognized her
voice, when she was yelling at the cops.”

Mercer removed a large black object from the bag and
dangled it in front of us.

“Yeah,” Billy said. “That’s what the fireman had
on his face.”

“Found it halfway up the block,” the sergeant
said. “Right in the perp’s flight path.”

“That’s not department gear,” Mike said. “It’s a
gas mask. Military style.”

It was a black rubber helmet, with two holes for
the eyes, and a broad snoutlike respirator that would fit over the mouth, with
a long hose attached.

“Couldn’t see a damn thing,” Billy said. “It
covered his entire face.”

“What did the cops do?” Mike asked.

“I led them down to the basement. They knocked on
Tina’s door and one of them identified himself, said they were police. That’s
when she started yelling at them to leave her alone. I mean screaming at them.
Freaked out. Sounded like she collapsed—maybe fell onto the floor—crying the
whole time.”

“What makes you think she’s alone in there?”

“We’re guessing,” Mercer said. “She’s the only one
to make a sound—no scuffling, no struggling, no other voices. But that’s
another reason ESU won’t leave.”

Mike prodded my side with his fingers as we
started up the front steps. I went back in the vestibule toward the basement
staircase.

“One of the cops told Tina he just wanted to make
sure that the fire hadn’t affected her,” Billy said, drawing a handkerchief
from his pocket to wipe his smoke-fogged glasses. “Asked her if she could stand
up and look through the peephole at his badge, for identification. She went
wild.”

“What do you mean?” Mike asked.

“Tina screamed at the cop. Told him that’s how the
guy got in. The fireman. That he showed her his badge and she opened the door.”

“It was the fireman who was inside her apartment?
You knew, Coop?”

“That’s why Mercer called me. We don’t know who
the man was, why he was using such an elaborate disguise, why he went inside,
and what he did to this woman. Okay? Don’t come any closer, Mike. Let me talk
to her.”

I walked the short corridor to the rear of the
hallway, glass crunching under the soles of my shoes.

“Tina? It’s Alex Cooper. We’re all still here. The
police officers won’t leave until I convince them that you’re unharmed. I’ll
keep them outside the building if you’ll let me in for just a few minutes.”

“I’d rank that a toss-up,” Mike said. “Ten minutes
with you or the quick punch of a battering ram? Tough call.”

“You think this helps? You think she can’t hear
you?” I threw up my arms in frustration as I turned to Mike. “Mercer, please
take him upstairs.”

The men marched back to the first floor as I made
another attempt to persuade Tina Barr to let me in.

“I’m the only one in the basement now, Tina. The
men are all outside. I don’t want them to break down your door any more than
you do. But they’re worried that you’ve been injured. There was a lot of smoke
down here. Can you just tell me if you’re hurt?”

There was no answer for more than a minute. Then a
soft voice spoke a word or two, which sounded as though the woman was still
sitting or lying on the floor inside. I couldn’t understand her, so I crouched
beside the door and put my ear against it.

“Sorry. What did you say?”

“Not hurt. I’ll be okay.”