Chapter One
It was hard not to smile as I watched Lola Dakota die.
I clicked the remote control button and listened to the
commentary again on another network.
"New Jersey police officers have released a portion of
these dramatic videotapes to the media this evening. We're
going to play for you the actual recordings the three hit
men hired by her husband to kill Ms. Dakota made to prove
to him that they had accomplished their mission."
The local reporter was posed in front of a large mansion
in the town of Summit, less than an hour's drive from
where I was sitting, in the video technicians' office of
the New York County District Attorney. Snowflakes drifted
and swirled around her head as she pointed a gloved hand
at the darkened facade of a house ringed with strands of
tiny white Christmas lights that outlined the roof, the
windows, and the enormous wreath on the front door.
"Earlier this afternoon, before the sun went down, Hugh,"
the woman addressed the news channel's anchorman, "those
of us who gathered here for word of Ms. Dakota's condition
could see pools of blood, left in the snow during the
early morning shooting. It will be a grim holiday season
for this forty-two-year-old university professor's family.
Let's take you back over the story that led to this
morning's tragic events."
Mike Chapman grabbed the clicker from my hand and pressed
the mute button, then jabbed at my back with it. "How come
the Jersey prosecutors got to do this caper? Too big for
you to handle, blondie?"
As the bureau chief in charge of sex crimes for the New
York County District Attorney's Office for more than a
decade, sexual assault cases -- as well as domestic
violence and stalking crimes -- fell under my
jurisdiction. The district attorney, Paul Battaglia, ran
an office with a legal staff of more than six hundred
lawyers, but he had taken a particular interest in the
investigation of the professor's perilous marital
entanglement.
"Battaglia didn't like the whole idea -- the risk, the
melodrama, and...well, the emotional instability of Lola
Dakota. He probably didn't know the story would look this
good on the late news broadcast or he might have
reconsidered."
Chapman lifted his foot to the edge of my chair and
swiveled it around so that I faced him. "Had you worked
with Lola for a long time?"
"I guess it's been almost two years since the first day I
met her. Someone called Battaglia from the president's
office at Columbia University. Said there was a matter
that needed to be handled discreetly." I reached for a cup
of coffee. "One of their professors had split from her
husband, and he was stalking her. The usual domestic. She
didn't want to have him arrested, didn't want any
publicity that would embarrass the administration -- just
wanted him to leave her alone. The DA kicked it over to me
to try to make it happen. That's how I met Lola Dakota.
And became aware of her miserable husband."
"What'd you do for her?"
Chapman worked homicides, most of the time relying on
sophisticated forensic technology and reliable medical
evidence to solve his cases. He rarely dealt with
breathing witnesses, and although he was the best
detective in the Manhattan North Squad when he came face-
to-face with a corpse, Chapman was always intrigued by how
the rest of us in law enforcement managed to untangle and
resolve the delicate problems of the living.
"Met with her several times, trying to convince her that
we could make a prosecution stick and gain her trust to
let me bring charges. I explained that filing a criminal
complaint was the only way I could get a judge to put some
muscle behind our actions." Lola was like most of our
victims. She wanted the violence to stop, but she did not
want to face her spouse in a court of law.
"It worked?"
"No better than usual. When reasoning with her failed, we
relocated her to a temporary apartment, arranged for
counseling, and sent a couple of our detectives to talk to
her husband informally and explain that Lola was giving
him a break."
"Happy to see the local constables, was he?"
"Elated. They told him that she didn't want us to lock him
up, but if he kept harassing her, that wasn't a choice I
would allow her to make the next time he darkened her
doorway. So he behaved...for a while."
"Until she moved back in with him?"
"Right. Just in time for Valentine's Day."
"Hearts and flowers, happily ever after?"
"Eight months." I turned back to glance at the screen,
motioning to Mike to give us sound again. Flakes were
caking up on the reporter's eyelids as she continued to
tell her story, reminding me that undoubtedly snow was
piling up on my Jeep as well, which was parked in front of
the building. A picture of Ivan Kralovic, Lola's husband,
appeared as an insert on the bottom right corner of the
screen.
"We've got to take a short break," the reporter said,
repeating the euphemistic phrase that signaled a
commercial interruption, "then we'll show you the dramatic
footage that led to Mr. Kralovic's arrest today."
Mike got rid of the noise. "And at the end of those eight
months, what happened? Did you lock him up the second
time?"
"No. She wouldn't even give me a clue about what he had
done. Called me that October to ask how to get an order of
protection. After I greased the wheels to expedite it for
her in family court, she told me she had rented an
apartment on Riverside Drive, moved to a new office away
from the campus, and settled her problems with Ivan the
Terrible."
"Don't disappoint me, Coop. Tell me he lived up to his
name."
"Predictably. It was in January of this year that he cut
her with a corkscrew, while they were enjoying a quiet
dinner for two. Must have mistaken her for a good
Burgundy. Sliced open her forearm. He raced her to St.
Luke's and it took twenty-seven stitches to close her up."
"They were together for just that one evening?"
"No, he had coaxed her back for the holidays a month
earlier. A seasonal reconciliation."
Chapman shook his head. "Yeah, I guess most accidents
happen close to home. You nail his ass for that one?"
"Once again, Lola refused to prosecute. Told the doctors
in the ER -- while Ivan was standing at her bedside --
that she'd done it herself. By the time I heard about it
through the university and got her down to my office, she
was completely uncooperative. Said that if I had Ivan
locked up, she would never tell the true story in a
courtroom. She had learned her lesson by trying to reunite
with him, she assured me, and wasn't going to have
anything further to do with him."
"Guess he didn't get the picture."
"He stalked Lola on and off. That's what led her to hide
out in New Jersey, at her sister's house, sometime in the
spring. She called me every now and then, after Ivan
threatened her or when she thought she was being followed.
But her sister got spooked -- worried about her own
safety -- and brought Lola to the local prosecutors over
there."
"Let's go to the videotape," Mike said, spinning my chair
back to the television screen and hitting the sound button
on the clicker. The film was rolling and the reporter's
voice-over was providing the narrative. The scene appeared
to be the same large suburban house, earlier in the day.
"...and you can see the white delivery van parked at the
side of the road. The two men walked up the steps in front
of the home, which is owned by Ms. Dakota's sister,
carrying the cases of wine. When the professor opened the
door and came outside to accept the gift bottles, both men
put their packages on the ground. The one on the left
presented a receipt that Dakota leaned over to sign, while
the man on the right -- there he goes now -- pulled a
revolver from beneath his jacket and fired five times, at
point-blank range."
I leaned forward and watched again as Lola clutched at her
chest, her body pushed backward by the force of the
impact. Her eyes opened wide for an instant, seeming to
stare directly at the lens of the camera, before they
closed, as she fell to the ground, blood oozing from her
clothing onto the clean white cover provided by the
preceding day's dusting of snow.
Then, the camera, held by a third accomplice in the van,
zoomed in for a close-up, and the man seemed to lose
control of the equipment as it apparently dropped from his
fingers.
"When the killers played their tape for Ivan Kralovic in
his office at noon today, after the Summit Police
Department released the news of Ms. Dakota's death to the
wire services, they were rewarded with a payment of one
hundred thousand dollars in cash."
Back to a live shot of the chilled reporter, wrapping up
her story for the night. "Unfortunately for Kralovic, the
gunmen he had hired to kill his estranged wife were
actually undercover detectives from the county sheriff's
office here in New Jersey, who staged the shooting with
the enthusiastic participation of the intended victim."
The tape rolled again and showed the supposedly deceased
Dakota now sitting upright against the front door of the
house and smiling for the camera as she removed the outer
jacket that had concealed the packets of "blood" that had
spurted and flowed so convincingly moments before.
"We've been waiting here, Hugh, hoping this brave woman
would tell us how she feels now that she has taken such
dramatic steps to end years of spousal abuse and bring to
justice the man who wanted to kill her. But sources tell
us that she left the house here this afternoon, after
Kralovic's arrest, and has not yet returned." The reporter
glanced down at her notes to read a comment from the local
prosecutor. "The district attorney, however, wants us to
express his gratitude to the county sheriff for
this 'innovative plan that put an end to Ivan's reign of
terror, something that prosecutors from Paul Battaglia's
office and the New York Police Department across the
Hudson River have been unable to do for two years.' Back
to the studio -- "
I pulled the remote away from Chapman and slammed it onto
the desktop after shutting off the set. "Let's go back to
my office and close up for the night."
"Temper, temper, Ms. Cooper. Dakota's not likely to win
the Oscar for her performance. You peeved 'cause you
didn't get a chance to do the film direction?"
I turned off the light and closed the door behind us. "I
don't begrudge her anything. But why did the Jersey DA
have to take a shot at us? He knows it hasn't been our
choice to let this thing drag on as long as it did." There
wasn't a seasoned prosecutor anywhere who didn't know that
the most frustrating dynamic in an abusive marriage was
the love-hate relationship that persisted between victim
and offender, even after the violence escalated.
My heels clicked on the tiles of the quiet corridor as we
snaked our way down the long, dark hallway from Video to
my eighth-floor office. It was almost eleven-thirty at
night, and the tapping of an occasional computer keyboard
was the only noise I heard to suggest that any of my
colleagues were still at their desks.
Only a handful of cases went to trial this time of year,
in the middle of December, with lawyers, judges, and
jurors all anticipating the two-week court hiatus for the
holiday season. I had been working late -- reviewing
indictments for the end-of-the-term filing deadline, and
preparing to conduct a sex offender registration hearing
after the weekend -- when Detective Michael Chapman came
over to tell me the eleven o'clock news was leading with
the Dakota story. He had been down the street at
headquarters to drop off some evidence at the Property
Clerk's Office and called to see if I wanted a drink
before knocking off for the night.
"C'mon, I'll buy you dinner," he now said. "Can't expect
me to last the midnight shift on an empty stomach. Not
with all the dead bodies I'm likely to encounter."
"It's too late to eat."
"That means you got a better offer. Jake must be home,
cooking up some exotic -- "
"Wrong. He's in Washington. Got the assignment on that
story of the ambassador who was assassinated in Uganda, at
the economic conference." I'd been dating an NBC News
correspondent since early summer, and the rare nights he
was free in time for dinner took me away from my usual
haunts and habits.
"How come they keep giving him all that Third World stuff
to cover when he seems like such a First World guy?"
The phone was ringing as I opened the door to my office.
"Alex?" Jake's voice sounded brusque and
businesslike. "I'm at the NBC studio in D.C."
"How's your story coming?"
"Lola Dakota is dead."
"I know," I said, sitting down in my chair and turning
away from Chapman for some privacy. "Mike and I just
watched the whole bit on the local news. I think she's got
a real future on the stage. Hard to believe she went for
all that phony ketchup and -- "
"Listen to me, Alex. She was killed tonight."
I turned back to look at Mike, rolling my eyes to suggest
that Jake clearly had not seen the entire story yet and
didn't understand that the shooting was a setup. "We know
all that, and we also know that Paul Battaglia is not
going to be thrilled when the tabloids point the finger at
me for not putting this mess to bed a couple of -- "
"This isn't about you, Alex. I've heard the whole story
with the Jersey prosecutors and their sting operation. But
there's a later headline that just came over the newsroom
wires a few minutes ago, probably while you and Mike were
watching the story run on the air. Some kids found Lola
Dakota's body tonight -- her dead body -- in the basement
of an apartment building in Manhattan, crushed to death at
the bottom of an elevator shaft."
My eyes shut tight and I rested my head on the back of my
chair as Jake lowered his voice to make his point. "Trust
me, darling. Lola Dakota is dead."