Cold Hit

18

“You’re not going home alone tonight, Coop. End of story.”

It was midnight, and I was sitting at the corner table in the front of Primola with Mike and Mercer. The third Dewar’s had failed to calm me.

After I had driven through Central Park, I headed directly across Sixty-fifth Street to my second home, the Italian restaurant where I frequently entertained my companions for dinner. I knew that even at eleven o’clock, Primola would be full of people, so I parked at a fire hydrant in front and ran inside to find Giuliano, the owner. He was my friend, and just as important, he was a soccer player who had competed on a World Cup team several years earlier. If he was between me and the door, I’d be perfectly safe until reinforcements arrived.

I told him that someone crazy was following me, so he sat down at my table, asked Adolfo to get me a drink and Peter to bring over the phone. I dialed Mercer’s beeper number and inhaled the scotch as I waited for a callback. He and Mike had just left Varelli’s studio and were sitting in a bar in SoHo, eating dinner and enjoying their first cocktail. It took them half an hour to get uptown to meet me. Once they arrived, Giuliano left us alone to talk, and Fenton, the bartender, kept sending rounds over to the table.

“Obviously, I didn’t want to go home alone. That’s why I called to tell you what happened. But if you two deposit me there and lock me inside, I’ll be fine.” I live on the twentieth floor of a high-rise building with two doormen, and pay dearly for a great sense of security once inside.

“Why didn’t you just go right to the station house, instead of coming here?”

“Because then there’d be a police report, and then somebody would call the tabloids, and then Battaglia would have me under lock and key for the next month.”

“You don’t even know who you’re looking for, blondie. I’ve had blind victims who’ve given me a better scrip than you have.”

“It’s awfully hard to give you a description when the guy’s wearing a mask and gloves.”

“I think it’s time for a slumber party. One of us is gonna hang with you overnight.”

Mercer took it a step further. “And besides that, you are on the very first plane to the Vineyard in the morning. That is, if you’re not going to be by yourself up there this weekend.”

“Clark Kent’s booked in for a visit, Mercer. Ace reporter for the Daily Planet. She’s dumping us for some news jock, m’man. What time of day do they start flying those tin cans?”

Either the liquor or the scare I had just experienced made the idea of a weekend in the country even more attractive than it had seemed earlier in the day. I had completely neglected matters like the sleep clinic investigation for the more pressing problems of the Caxton murder, but I’d push that one back another week as well. “There’s an eight a.m. out of LaGuardia. Probably overbooked this time of year. I’m not sure I’ll get on.”

“Know how much pleasure it would give me to officially bump some investment banker off that flight?” Mike asked. “I’ll take you out there myself.”

I looked at my watch. “Make you a deal. Let me call David Mitchell. If he and Renee are home,” I said, referring to my next-door neighbors, “I can sleep on their sofa, and they can drop me at the airport on their way to the Hamptons in the morning. You two have better things to do, okay? Try solving this mess before anyone else is killed.”

My call awakened David, as we knew it would, but he was more than gracious. Renee made up the sofa bed while Mike parked my Jeep in my garage and Mercer escorted me up to my own apartment so I could grab my robe as well as a shirt and pair of leggings to wear in the morning.

“Want me to wait while you pack things to take with you to the country?”

“I’ve got everything I need up there,” I said, as I gave him a hug and opened the door to David’s apartment with his spare key, which I kept in my dresser drawer. “Thanks. Call me if anything happens before I see you on Monday.”

I undressed, took a steaming hot shower, and wrapped the terry robe around me. I was too jumpy to sleep, but I turned out the light and rested, with their dog, Prozac, curled up by my side.

We left the apartment at seven, and David walked me in to the gate to make sure I got on the flight. There were the usual number of no-shows, and ten minutes before takeoff I boarded the thirty-seat Dash 8 and fell asleep for the short flight to the Vineyard.

I had a monthly parking spot at the airport. It was a brilliantly clear day and a good ten degrees cooler than it had been in the city all week. I put the top down on my little red Miata and drove up-island to Chilmark, to the house.

Once I passed the crest of the drive, where my friend Isabella Lascar had been killed, the gray-shingled farmhouse came into sight and, beyond it, the stunning view of Vineyard Sound, which never failed to take my breath away. This is the one place on earth where every tension I have dissolves, and where I have spent the happiest hours of my life.

My caretaker had unlocked and prepared the house for me, and I went inside to open the windows, settle in, and see what messages were on the answering machine.

The first was from Nina Baum, calling late last night from California. Chapman had phoned to tell her about the incident in the garage, and she was checking on me as well as urging me to get on a plane and come out to Malibu until the investigation was over. Nina, by luck of the draw, had been my college roommate freshman year at Wellesley. She remained my closest friend, and she and her husband were often my refuge when I wanted to hang out away from the problems that my job presented.

The message I’d been waiting for was next, the voice of Jacob Tyler calling from an airport phone booth. “It’s Jake here. Can’t find you anywhere-all I get are machines. It’s Friday morning and I’m on my way to the Vineyard, if that’s still the plan. I’ve gone from China to California, then an overnight in Chicago. I’m due into Boston before noon. And if there’s no fog, should be on a Cape Air hop that gets me there at one thirty. I’ll try your office in a bit. If you’re not at the airport, I’ll just take a cab up to the house. Miss you.”

I took the portable out onto the deck and dialed Laura’s number.

“Alex? Are you okay? Mercer left a message on my voice mail telling me not to expect you today. Is everything all right?”

“It’s fine. I’m just whipped. We worked late last night, so I’m taking a long weekend. If people are looking for me, you can reach me on the Vineyard. Anything interesting yet?”

“Jacob Tyler called first thing. He didn’t leave a message, ’cause I couldn’t tell him what your plans were. And Robert Scott, from University of Virginia Law School. Wants to know if you can do a lecture about public service this fall.”

“I’ll take care of Tyler. Would you call Bob Scott back and tell him I’d be glad to, if he can suggest some dates?” Maybe I would tell the students about last night’s encounter. What the D.A.’s Office lacks in financial rewards, it makes up for in drama and intrigue.

I changed into shorts and a T-shirt, set the dining room table for two, went out to the barn to get birdseed to fill the feeders, and sat back down on the deck to read the New York Times and the Vineyard Gazette. The osprey nest at the foot of my hilltop, on the side of Nashaquitsa Pond, had a nestful of babies, being hovered over by their mother. Goldfinches and cardinals fought for the seed I had just put out, and my wild-flower field teemed with the pink, lavender, and white heads of cosmos and the cobalt blue of Oriental poppies.

This was the place that I considered my home. Professionally, I thrived and flourished in the fast-paced life I led in New York City. Most of my friends were there, and I had been born and raised in a suburban village in nearby Westchester County, so my parents and brothers were frequently in and out of town. But this island, especially the quiet rural end on which my house was sited, was where I came to relax and to restore the tranquillity that eluded me in the midst of an intense investigation.

Most of my life had been a charmed one. I was one of three children-the only daughter-of loving parents whose marriage was still not only a sound one, but a great romance as well. The trust fund endowed by my father’s invention, the Cooper-Hoffman valve, had been used to give me a first-class education, first at Wellesley and then at the University of Virginia School of Law. It permitted me to indulge my dream of working in the public sector without the enormous burden of student loans that forced so many of my colleagues to leave the prosecutor’s office for more lucrative careers. And for frivolous interests like travel and my collections of first-edition books and antique jewelry, it was a route to some indulgences that I would never otherwise have been able to afford at this stage in life.

While the Vineyard had offered me some of the most spectacular days of my life, it also held for me my most difficult memories. Adam Nyman, the physician I had fallen madly in love with while I was at law school, had summered here all of his life. When we became engaged the year that I graduated, we bought this house together. It had belonged to the widow of a fisherman whose family was one of the original group of settlers in the seventeenth century. I had delighted in having it redecorated in celebration of our wedding. A local artist had stenciled the walls in pastel designs she had copied from a set of antique hand-painted Limoges plates my mother had given us as an engagement gift. The evocative landscapes by island artists that Adam had collected over the years had been reframed and hung throughout the cheerful rooms.

Our families and friends had been assembled in the homes of friends and country inns around the island for the wedding weekend. The house and its gardens had never looked more beautiful than during that lush summer after an unusually rainy spring.

And then came the morning phone call that ripped my spirit and heart to pieces. Adam had completed his last rounds in Charlottesville and had set off late in the day to drive all night for the trip to the island. It was my mother who took the call from the state police, and it was she and Nina who sat me down on my bed to tell me that Adam’s car had been knocked off a bridge in Connecticut by another driver and demolished on the rocks in the river below.

Everything sealed up inside me for years, or so it seemed at the time. I had been afraid to let myself get close to anyone else for fear that something I loved would be seized from me when I was happiest. I went aimlessly from room to room in the house on those rare weekends I could bring myself to come up here, imagining how Adam would have adored what I had turned it into for us.

The ten years that had passed did nothing to lessen the pain of his loss or to make less vivid the depth of our passion for each other. But I had learned to love again, without ever forgetting that I would have sacrificed all the other pleasures and triumphs of my life to have had this time with him.

I had made changes in the house, too. Something had nagged at me to create a different feel, a sense of another phase of my relationships. So the previous winter I added an addition with a larger living room, a huge slate-trimmed hearth, and tall windows open to the handsome sweep of sea and sky. And with Nina’s urging, for her upcoming Labor Day weekend visit, I had the architect build a new bathroom, decadently luxurious, with a steam shower and whirlpool tub. Slowly it had become possible for me to be here without any longer feeling that I was betraying Adam’s love for me.

Now I found myself looking at my watch every ten minutes, filled with anticipation about the arrival of Jacob Tyler, with whom I had serendipitously become entangled in early July. Less than two months later, I sat here daydreaming about seeing him again this afternoon, excited by the pleasure he gave me, emotionally and physically, and still palpitating from the newness of the romance.

I read the papers, knocked off the Friday crossword puzzle, and called the office to make sure everything was still quiet. I wasn’t a cook, but there was an easy trick to serve an elegant Vineyard dinner with no effort at all, and I set about making it happen before Jake arrived. A phone call to the fish market to order a late-afternoon pickup, a stop at the Chilmark store for island corn and tomatoes-at the peak of perfection at this point in the summer-and I was off for the twenty-minute ride to the airport to meet Jake’s plane.

Cape Air’s one o’clock from Boston was the only flight due in when I arrived. As usual, not many people were leaving the island on a Friday in summer, and several locals waited with me for the nine-seater to come into range. The tiny plane first appeared as a small dot in the cloudless blue sky, and circled out over the south shore before coming in for a landing. I could see the crown of Jake’s thick brown hair emerge from the door first as he bent down to get out onto the steps that the pilot had lowered. He picked up his head to look for me behind the arrival gate and broke into a wide smile when he saw me standing on a bench against the chain-link fence, waving at him with both arms. His suit jacket was slung over his shoulder and hooked by the finger of his left hand, and he blew a kiss to me with his right hand when he touched ground.

When he reached where I stood in the waiting area, next to the luggage rack, he dropped his briefcase, took me by my shoulders as he said, “Hello, angel,” and kissed me for what seemed like three minutes. My head nestled in the crook of his elbow, and I closed my eyes and stood still to savor the feeling of his embrace.

“Got room in that little car for a duffel full of dirty clothes? It’s hard to travel light for ten days in China.” Jake had covered the presidential summit in Beijing for NBC and had been traveling for almost two weeks on his way there and back. We had spent a weekend on the Vineyard before he took off, and our communications had been frustratingly erratic since then, between time differences and our unpredictable schedules.

“I’m thinking of giving up prosecution and taking in laundry. I’d be delighted to start with yours, Mr. Tyler.”

“Bad week? I couldn’t seem to catch you anywhere, no matter-when I called.”

The suitcases were off-loaded to the luggage rack, and Jake lifted his bag out so we could walk to the car. I carried his jacket and briefcase under one arm, taking hold of his left hand with my right. “You’ll get a full report this evening. I’ve been ordered to take today off, so if you don’t talk to me about the gross national product or global warming or the Japanese commodities market, I won’t bore you with the twists and turns in my murder case.”

“There’s nothing boring about it. What’s been happening?” he asked, as I opened the trunk to put the bag inside.

I put my index finger up to my lips, whispered “ Ssssssssssssshhh, ” and slipped behind the wheel of the Miata. “I’m taking you for a ride. Just relax and enjoy the scenery.”

We left the airport and started up-island. After about a tenminute ride on the South Road, I turned the car off onto a wide-mouthed dirt drive, unmarked and unpaved and full of rutted holes that threatened to devour the small car.

“Am I being kidnapped?” Jake asked, tousling my hair. “Nobody at the network will ransom me, you know. Take me away now and you’ll be stuck with me forever.”

The brush was thick on both sides of the way, and we bounced along the winding path for more than a mile until we came to a fence attached to two wooden posts, which seemed to be standing on guard in the middle of nowhere. I took a key from the glove compartment, got out of the car to unlock the gate, drove through, and locked it again behind us.

“Where the hell are you taking me?” he asked with a laugh. “I’m exhausted. Quite frankly, I was hoping for a long, hot shower in your fancy new digs, and then-well, something in the way of a warm welcome stateside.”

“I promise you’ll feel like a new man after this. You’ve got to trust me.”

After a few more seconds I went around a bend, and ahead of us we saw the flat stretch of the dusty long green grass of the wetlands, and a pond populated only by a handful of swans. Beyond that were the rolling dunes of South Beach, merging into the wide-open expanse of the Atlantic Ocean.

There were a couple of other cars parked at the entrance to Black Point Beach, on one of the most exquisite summer days. “What’s with the gate and key? Where is everybody?”

There are only two states in the country, Maine and Massachusetts, in which you can own beachfront property to the mean low-water mark. As a result, the Vineyard was dotted by vast lengths of ocean beaches that were privately held and not accessible to the general public. This was one of them-more than a mile in length-and I had bought a piece of it when I purchased the house, more than a decade ago.

“Better than a shower. Let’s go for a swim.”

I parked the car, grabbed two towels from my tote, and ran to the footpath that led over the dunes, kicking off my moccasins and telling Jake to do the same with his loafers. We reached the peak together and stood looking out at the wide belt of white sand and the white-capped blue water that seemed to go on forever.

“Great, Alex. You think I didn’t see enough of the Pacific, that I needed this today?”

“Don’t be such a grouch. Get those rags off you-c’mon, hurry up.”

“There are people-”

I lifted my sunglasses and peered down the beach. “It looks like there are maybe four stick figures between here and Edgartown,” I said, turning to Jake and unbuttoning the business shirt that he had worn on the plane, while he stood with his hands on his hips. I reached for his waistband, drew off his belt, and unzipped his pants.

“Well, I guess if they won’t recognize that you’re the sex crimes prosecutor from the big city, they won’t have a clue that the tired, naked guy you’re molesting is a newscaster.” Jake finished taking off his clothes while I lifted my T-shirt over my head and dropped my shorts on the sand. I ran down to the water’s edge, hesitated for a moment as the cold surf dashed against my feet, then dove into the sixty-eight-degree water and started swimming straight out, away from shore.

By the time I picked my head up and turned back to look for Jake, he had overtaken me with a strong crawl stroke.

“Isn’t this glorious?” I asked. I swam to him, wrapped my arms around his neck, and we played our mouths against each other as we bobbed in the endless roll of waves.

“I feel like I’m about fifteen years old-and I like it.”

There was nothing quite like the sensation of the brisk salty water against bare skin. Swimming naked in the ocean ranks among the world’s best pastimes. I set myself a course parallel to the beach and swam back and forth until I had done almost fifty laps. The undertow was getting more fierce as the tide started going out, so I reluctantly dove under a big breaker and went up on the sand to join Jake, who thought the water was too cold for a long swim.

“I’m exhausted just watching you.”

“Harrison High School swim team. Hundred-meter crawl and anchor of the relay. Don’t ever try to get away from me by taking a water route.” I stood behind him, steadying myself on his shoulder as I put my shorts back on.

“I’m not going anywhere anytime soon,” he said, grabbing my knee and kissing the still-damp back of my calf. He pulled on his trousers and we walked slowly over to the car, arms entangled, drying in the breeze as the early afternoon wind shifted and kicked up a bit.

Once on the main road again, I was conscious of driving too fast and tried to slow myself down. The outdoor shower was behind the house, its oversized head curtained only by a couple of old lilac bushes. I soaped up and washed off all the sand before going into my bedroom through the sliding door off the rear deck.

Jake did the same, following me in and pulling me toward him, onto the pale blue cotton sheets that covered the bed. “If dreaming counts, then I’ve made love to you over and over again all these last two weeks-in hotel rooms, on airplanes, every time I closed my eyes.”

“It doesn’t count at all,” I said teasingly. “I didn’t feel a thing.” I reached an arm across his chest and he raised my face to his, his tongue reaching in to taste mine. He ran his hands up and down the length of my thighs as I wrapped my leg inside his. We kissed and rolled and laughed and touched for as long as we could both stand to, and then Jake entered me and told me that he loved me.

For the next hour we rested on the cool sheets while I explored the surfaces of his body, which seemed so pale next to my own.

“Aren’t you going to answer your phone?” he asked me when it rang.

“Let the machine get it.”

“Coop? It’s me. Are you okay? Nothing urgent, but I wanted to make sure you got up there without any trouble. I started beeping you an hour ago but-”

It was Chapman’s voice speaking into the recorder, so I grabbed the receiver from beside the bed. “Hi, Mike. Sorry. Yeah, I’m fine.” For some reason that I didn’t understand, it made me feel uneasy to be lying in bed with Jake while I was talking to Mike, with whom I had had such a close and complicated relationship for so long.

“For chrissakes, why didn’t you call us back? Me and Mercer have been worried about you after last night. Whaddaya trying to scare us for?”

I glanced over at Jake. I hadn’t yet told him the story about the week’s events. “I apologize. Actually, I never even heard the beep. I stopped off at the beach for a swim and left the beeper in the car. My fault-I won’t do it again.”

“Don’t tell me, Coop. Your new man’s into that From Here to Eternity crap. Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr on the beach, waves washing up over them as they make love on the shore. That it? Too much sand in the crotch for me, kid. I’d rather-”

“Grow up,” I snapped into the phone as I slammed it down on the table.

“Friend of yours?” Jake asked jokingly.

“A very good one, actually. One of the detectives on the Denise Caxton case.”

“Remind me not to cross you. Why did you hang up on him?”

“Some other time,” I said, leaning back and caressing Jake as I did.

“Have you made a reservation for dinner? I’d love to grab a nap before we go out.”

“Even better. I thought you might enjoy a good homecooked meal.”

Jake looked over at me and raised an eyebrow. “Now I’m really confused. What time zone am I in? Who are you?”

“While you’re resting I’m going to sneak out for half an hour, and by about eight thirty tonight we’ll have a candlelit dinner for two.” I wasn’t proud of the fact that I couldn’t cook, but it was the truth.

“A little more exercise, and then you might lose me for a few hours,” Jake said, pulling me over on top of him and starting to arouse me again. “Put every one of those bad guys out of your mind, Alexandra Cooper. This weekend you’re all mine.”

When I finally rested in his arms, half an hour later, we both fell sound asleep. Shortly before six o’clock I showered and dressed and headed down the road. In the little village of Menemsha, less than ten minutes away, I could forage for an entire gourmet meal with no more effort than a few phone calls and a quick ride.

My first stop was the Bite, where I picked up a steaming quart of clam chowder and a side order of the world’s best fried clams. True to form, the Flynn sisters had the most-uptothe-moment island gossip. “Heard you got a real looker with you for the weekend. Is it really that guy on the evening news?” Karen asked.

“He hasn’t even been out of my house yet. Who’s spreading this one?”

She pointed at her sister. “Jackie’s best friend works at the Cape Air counter. She called as soon as you picked him up. Bringing him for lunch tomorrow?”

“What, and lose him to one of you two? See you.”

A quarter of a mile farther, I pulled into the narrow space beside Larsen’s Fish Market. One of the best services on the island was provided by Betsy and Chris. You could call in the morning, place an order for lobsters, and pick them up at the appointed hour-all cooked, split, and cracked-ready to serve and eat. I could place them in the oven to keep warm, and then serve up the two-pounders anytime I wanted. I went next door, to Poole’s, for a few fresh oysters from Tisbury Great Pond. Last stop was the Homeport Restaurant, right on the edge of the harbor, where I stopped at the back door and bought a Key lime pie from Will for dessert.

When I returned home, I shucked the corn and put the water up to boil, poured the chowder into a pot to reheat it later on, and tucked the pie into the refrigerator to keep it chilled.

It was almost eight o’clock when Jake woke up, shaved and showered, and dressed for dinner. The red ball of the sun was setting off to the west as we sat on the deck and sipped our drinks. I listened to the details of the China trip and Jake’s descriptions of the meetings he’d had, the personalities he had met, and the opinions he had formed during his travels. For me it was fascinating to get inside a world so foreign to my own, and to contrast the problems of the witnesses’ lives in a single criminal case to the global problems he studied every day.

I disappeared into the kitchen to stir the pot, lit the candles in the dining room, and opened a bottle of ’ 91 Puligny-Montrachet. “Why don’t you come in and sit down?” I asked, dishing up the thick chowder and carrying it to the table.

With Smokey Robinson singing in the background, we feasted on the delicacies of a Chilmark summer, talking and laughing as we devoured the food. As best as I could I tried to explain the events of the week since Deni Caxton’s death, walking Jake through the steps of the investigation to date. “No more of this tonight or you’ll have bad dreams,” I said, pouring decaf with a serving of the pie.

“Have you made any plans? Outing us to any of your pals this weekend?”

“Everyone, Jake. It’s August on the Vineyard-I don’t have much choice, do I?” The usually tranquil island more than quadrupled in population with summer people, and it was an opportunity for me to be with friends from all over the country-some of whom I rarely saw all winter-when I came for a weekend or vacation.

“What’s the drill?”

“We’re teeing off with Janice and Richard at Farm Neck, eight a.m. Louise Liberman and Maureen White are giving a cocktail party in the evening, and we’re invited to stay on for dinner.” It had amazed me, when Jake and I first met, to discover how many people we knew in common. Those with whom I had social relationships of long standing, he had gotten to know through his position in the media. Somehow it made us seem even more connected than the short months we had known each other would indicate. I looked forward to letting everyone see how happy I was to be with him.

“Will the president and Mrs. Clinton be there tomorrow night?”

“Not sure, but I know they’re invited. I hope so.”

“Let’s clean up this mess and go to sleep.”

I held his face and kissed him on the forehead. “Go inside. This is the part I do really efficiently. I’ll join you in ten minutes.”

By the time I cleared the table, loaded the dishwasher, and straightened up the kitchen, Jake was spread-eagled, face down on the bed. I folded my clothes and placed them in my armoire, slipping in beside him and raising the comforter over us against the soft night wind that always makes my hilltop such an easy place for sleeping. I don’t remember any tossing and turning after my head came to rest on the pillow.

I was startled by the sharp ring of the telephone. Light was just appearing on the horizon as I picked it up and spoke softly into it. It could not have been much later than 6 a.m. “Hello?” I asked somewhat disoriented, perhaps by the hour, perhaps because of too much wine with my dinner.

“Alex, it’s Mercer. The lieutenant insisted on me calling you. Said you raised a stink last time you read it in the newspaper without a heads-up from us.”

“Don’t worry, he’s right. What is it?” I sat up as Jake raised his head and rested it on his elbow, massaging his eyelids with his thumb and middle finger.

“West Side-Eighty-sixth Street. Our man just hit again early this morning, about an hour after midnight. Got a twenty-year-old kid going into her building. Raped her, beat her up pretty bad when she tried to resist. I hate to do this, but can you come on back into town?”