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Chapter 71
I sat atthe small desk in my hotel room, staring at a blank legal pad. Somehow I had a feeling things were starting to move. Maybe it was just me thinking about a different aspect of the case. Maybe it was Detective Holly’s good-natured personality. Somehow, still wearing yesterday’s clothes, I had a faint feeling of hope. But it’s hard to exploit hope without some hard work.
Trying to get a DNA sample surreptitiously is one of the trickier investigative jobs. DNA can be derived from a number of sources, like someone’s sweat, saliva, hair, mucus, or, of course, blood. Think about the challenge of taking any of those things without a person knowing about it. A stealthy investigator might be able to pull out a strand of a suspect’s hair without her knowing it. But probably not. You could follow her around for a month until she got a haircut. Then you’d have to prove there was a 100 percent chance you had picked up the right hair. After that, the sample would have to match. It was an endless maze that ended in a puzzle.
The three suspects I was focusing on were Beth Banks, Justice Steinberg, and Jeremy Pugh. I didn’t even want to think how I’d manage to get a DNA sample from someone who worked at the Supreme Court. Jeremy Pugh might be a much easier case. Especially if he accosted me again. A decent punch and I might end up with plenty of DNA sample on my knuckles.
The other more direct, and efficient, way was to see how the NYPD was doing on the investigation into Jeremy Pugh’s altercation with the New York Times reporter. That reporter had been hospitalized for three days. I had left the details with a friend of mine at the Special Investigations Division.
Detective Sergeant Lisa Mulé had worked with me in a couple of squads over the years. Her nickname was Lisa “Chaos.” That’s because chaos seemed to follow her. Or, more often, she seemed to cause it. More than that, Lisa seemed to thrive in it.
At home, she had four kids, each smarter than the last. That made for a wild mix. Our theory on the squad was that she was so used to chaos at home, she needed it at work to feel normal. She was definitely a punch-first-ask-questions-later kind of cop. To make all that even more interesting, she stood a statuesque five foot ten, with a smile that could stop traffic.
The flip side to the idea she caused chaos was that she got results. That accounted for her meteoric rise to Special Investigations. To me, she was a really good cop, but more important, she was a good friend.
She picked up her desk phone on the second ring. She had a very professional greeting. “Sergeant Mulé, Special Investigations.”
“Chaos, what’s going on?”
“Hey, Mike. It’s the usual bullshit around here. Some dick at One Police Plaza thinks that we can tie more than half of our homicides to serial killers. Somehow he thinks that’ll show how good the PD has been in reducing overall violence. I swear to God, Mike, I have no idea where some people get their ideas.”
“You’re preaching to the choir, sister.”
“This jackass just pulled it out of his butt. Now I have to do a two-year survey. I looked over the initial data, and it feels like you were the lead on about half the homicides. What a waste of time.”
“Everyone gets interfered with. Teachers hate all the dictates that come down from school boards. Nurses hate some of the rules that come down from hospital directors. Cops just hate rules.”
Lisa said, “Are you still in Washington, DC?”
“I am.”
“If I was your wife, I’d go down there, grab you by the hair, and drag your ass back to New York.”
“If you were my wife, I’d be smart enough not to let you know where I was staying.”
We both laughed, and she brought me up to speed on her family. She ended by saying, “I’m guessing you called me about this shithead Jeremy Pugh.”
“You guys done with the case? Anything we can do?”
“You mean you didn’t hear already? This is just a coincidental call?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’ve got the warrant right in front of me. We can’t identify who was with Pugh the night they beat the poor New York Times reporter. We figure Pugh might talk after we arrest him.”
“Do you know what precipitated the fight?”
Lisa let out a laugh. “It was no fight. The reporter was trying to get reactions on the president’s latest poll numbers. That’s it. He spoke to these two and somehow his question didn’t sit well. They put him in the hospital. Three broken ribs, broken left wrist, ruptured eardrum, and a collapsed lung. Nice people you hang out with, Mike.”
“This makes it much easier for me, Chaos. I needed to get a DNA sample, and now we can get it when he’s booked.”
“I’ll email you the affidavit and warrant.”
“What was the exact day of the attack?”
There was a pause in the conversation, and I could hear Lisa searching through some paperwork. She came back on the line and said, “The assault occurred on the second. The victim picked out Pugh from a photo lineup. Plus, we have two different security video sources on the attack. It’s a good case.”
I was silent as I processed what she just told me.
