“Fine. Use the phone in my office to make your calls and I’ll try to find you another room for the interviews.”

“Coop, does Steve’s Pizza deliver this far south?” Wallace asked.

“What’s wrong with the joint around the corner?” Peterson interrupted.

Chapman settled it. “It’s gonna be a long night, Loo. You don’t want any of us to have agita, do you? Steve’s is the absolute best and the guy would deliver to Jersey for Cooper. It’s only on Seventy-first Street -he’ll have it here in twenty minutes. Know the number?”

I could dial it in my sleep. I called out the number and heard Chapman order six large pies, extrathin crust, everything on them, and hold the anchovies off two slices for Miss Cooper. “And put it on her tab, okay?”

It would be foolish of me to think I was telling Battaglia something he hadn’t already heard, especially because of his wife’s position on the board at Mid-Manhattan. It didn’t disappoint me, then, when he told me he thought I’d be calling this evening.

“How do you think it looks?”

“I don’t even have my foot in the door yet, Paul, but there’s an awful lot of blood on this guy’s clothes. Peterson tells me they also looked his body over to make sure it wasn’t from a wound of his own and he’s completely clean. I think we’ll be here a few hours. I won’t call ‘til morning, but you know where to find me.”

Sarah had already put the baby to bed when I reached her. She and James were finishing a quiet dinner together. “I’ll take a cab right up there to meet you.”

“Are yousure you should be doing this? I don’t want to skip over you and give someone else the chance but I don’t want you to do this if it wipes you out or endangers the pregnancy.”

“You know I wouldn’t. I’d love to work with you on this. I’ll stay a few hours tonight and we’ll see where it goes. I’ll just need an extra chair to stick my feet up on every now and then. See you in half an hour.”

“I’m ready, Loo,” I said, walking out into the squad room to meet up with Peterson.

Wallace was leaning against the door of the holding pen. I could hear him talking to Pops and asking if he’d be good enough to come along and tell his story one more time. As they walked single file down toward the lineup room, I told the lieutenant that I wanted to see the notes on the interviews with the two physicians before I spoke with them.

“Chapman, get off the phone and bring Cooper here your paperwork.”

Mike was using a desk in the far corner of the room. He hung up, grabbed his folder, and came back to Peterson’s office accompanied by a well-dressed man of about fifty-five.

“Mr. Dietrich, I’d like you to meet Lieutenant Peterson, my boss, and Alexandra Cooper-well, she’s sort of my boss, too,” Mike added, laughingly. “She’s the assistant D.A. on the case. This is William Dietrich, the director of Mid-Manhattan.”

“How do you do? I’d like to thank you for everything you’ve done so far, lieutenant. We’re all just stunned by Dr. Dogen’s murder. I, uh, I was wondering if there’s anything you can tell me at this point-”

Peterson cut him off. “We know how your people feel, Mr. Dietrich. As soon as there’s anything we can go public with, you’ll be the first to know.”

Dietrich’s artificial skin bronzer and touched-up black hair added to his aura of unctuousness. He was the number one man at the hospital complex and in the desperate position of trying to control the public image of a medical center in complete chaos.

The lieutenant walked back to his desk to get another cigarette, and Dietrich tried the personal approach with me.

“I’ve checked you out today, Alexandra-you don’t mind if I call you that, do you?”

“Not at all, Mr. Dietrich.”

“You’ve got quite a good reputation, I mean, for this kind of atrocity.”

Checked me out with whom, I wondered. Now he moved to the hands-on approach, standing beside me and lifting my elbow with his fingers to gently guide me away from the direction of Peterson’s room for a private talk.

“I’m a great admirer of your father’s, Miss Cooper. He’s really a legend in the medical profession. He’s enjoying his retirement, I take it?”

Don’t even think about using my family as a way to get to me, you schmuck. “Very much, Mr. Dietrich, thanks.”

“Be sure to give him my regards. I’d love to get him back up to New York to lecture to our students and do some consulting with our cardiology department.”

“Well,” I said, gripping my folder with both hands, “you come up with an interesting aortic regurgitation to study and I’ll have him on the next plane. Now, Mr. Dietrich, if you’ll excuse-”

“It’s Bill, Alex. Just call me Bill.”

“I’m going to ask you to step back outside while Detective Chapman and I get to work.”

“I’m counting on you to keep me informed, Alexandra. I think you know better than anyone here what it’s like in a great hospital like ours. There are too many lives at stake for me to be hearing about these things on the eleven o’clock news with the rest of New York.”

“We’ll do the best we can, Mr. Dietrich,” I said as I pulled away from him and returned to Peterson’s office.

Mike closed the door and I sat at the desk to look over his notes. “Dietrich came here with his boys-the two witnesses. Tried to lawyer up but the guy who represents the hospital was on his third martini before dinner. Told him to just go ahead and cooperate with the police.

“The two you want to talk with are across the hall. Losenti made the mistake of interviewing them together. I’ve got them separated so we can speak with them one at a time.”

“Who’ve we got?”

“John DuPre. Male, black, forty-two years old. Married, two kids. He’s a neurologist. Howard University, Tulane med school, residency down South. Opened a private practice in Manhattan two years ago and he’s been affiliated here ever since. The other one is Coleman Harper. Male, white, forty-four. Divorced with no children. Also a neurologist. Vanderbilt undergrad and med school. Practiced for a while. Now he’s here as a ‘fellow.’ ”

“What does that mean?”

“You’ll have to ask him. I didn’t get that far. He’s one of the guys Spector-the neurosurgeon-pulled out of the gallery to assist on the operation when Dogen didn’t show up. And the patient’s doing just fine.”

“Who do you want to start with?”

“I’ll go get DuPre.”

Chapman returned a couple of minutes later with Dr. John DuPre. I stood up to greet him and he extended a hand as I looked him over. He was eight years older and a few inches taller than I, with shortcropped hair, a mustache, wire-rimmed glasses, and a trim physique. He was dressed in a sports jacket and navy slacks and had the same earnest expression on his face that most people sucked into a murder investigation present to their interrogators during the early rounds of questioning.

“I know it’s been a long day for you, Dr. DuPre. Detective Chapman and I would like to have you go over your story once more if you don’t mind.”

“If it will help, I don’t mind at all. Seems like I’ve been doing it all evening.

“I arrived at the medical college in the middle of the afternoon. My private office, where I see most of my patients, is on Central Park West. I came over to Minuit to use the medical library. That’s on the sixth floor, where, uh, where Gemma’s office is. Or was.

“The library was pretty busy-it usually is in the late afternoons. I got into a discussion with several of my colleagues about a case that Dr. Spector is working on.”

“Bob Spector? The neurosurgeon who had asked Dogen to assist the morning she was killed?”

“Exactly. Spector’s doing some very important research on Huntington’s disease. Do y’all know what that is?”

DuPre cocked his head and looked up at us, his soft southern drawl framing the question.

“Only that it’s a hereditary illness, no known treatment.”