Devil's Bridge

ONE

“Are the People ready for trial, Ms. Cooper?” Judge Fleming took off her glasses and pointed them in my direction.

I was slower than usual to get to my feet, stalling for time as I waited for another prosecutor from my office to walk into court with information that would determine my answer.

“Actually, Your Honor, I’d be grateful if you would put this matter over until tomorrow.”

“That wasn’t your attitude yesterday when you were urging me-pushing me, actually-to clear my calendar so we could start jury selection this afternoon.”

“I’m sorry, Judge. Something was brought to my attention this morning and I’m trying to ascertain the truth of the facts before I move the case to trial.” I started the sentence by facing the court but had turned my head to the back of the room, trying to will the door to open.

Gino Moretti could barely suppress a smile, sensing my vulnerability. “We’re ready to proceed, Judge. My client is eager to get on with clearing his good name,” my adversary said. “Alex has twisted her neck so many times this afternoon that I figure she’s either looking over her shoulder for a stalker, or she’s waiting until the guys in the press room get wind that she’s about to start performing for them.”

“Cut me a break, Gino,” I said, turning my attention back to the bench.

“Coop hates playing to an empty house, Judge.”

Judge Fleming knew that a convicted rapist was in fact stalking me, and had been since his escape from a psych facility months earlier. Raymond Tanner was not actually on my mind in the secure surrounds of her courtroom, but he’d been a tremendous source of anxiety since he had threatened my life in August.

“What did you say about your client’s good name?” Fleming asked, replacing her glasses and scrolling through the rap sheet attached to the arraignment papers in her file.

“Just that the sooner he can clear himself of these ridiculous charges-”

Fleming didn’t brook nonsense in her courtroom. “Antonio Carlito Estevez. Nice enough name. Going to be pretty hard to clear it, though, Mr. Moretti, no matter what happens with this case. Looks like nine misdemeanor convictions, a murder rap that he beat-”

“He was innocent, Your Honor. He didn’t beat anything.”

“A conviction for manslaughter and-”

“That was a YO, Judge.”

“The fact that he was a youthful offender doesn’t change much, Moretti. Just meant he wasn’t a predicate felon when a jury found him guilty of second-degree assault four years ago. It explains why he did such a short stint for such a serious crime.”

Antonio Estevez gave Janet Fleming his iciest stare. But she met it head-on and returned it with an equally frigid gaze. It was a look I had seen many times on the face of this former Legal Aid attorney who’d been appointed to the bench a decade earlier. She was tougher on perps than most judges who’d come up as assistant district attorneys.

“Can we bring the panel in, Your Honor?” Moretti asked.

“Have you and Ms. Cooper exhausted the possibility of a plea for Mr. Estevez?”

“The only offer is a plea to the charge,” I said.

The top count of the indictment was Sex Trafficking, a crime-added to the New York State Penal Law less than a decade ago-with a maximum penalty of twenty-five years, the same level of punishment as first-degree rape.

“You like the cold, Mr. Estevez?” Fleming asked, waving her right hand at the stenographer, telling her to go off the record and stop recording the proceedings.

“You don’t have to answer that,” Moretti said, catching the move.

“’Scuse me?” Estevez cocked his head and smiled at the judge.

“I see you’re born in the Dominican Republic, moved to Miami, which is where you served time.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Gino Moretti leaned over and whispered into his client’s ear. Estevez brushed him away.

“Dannemora’s where you’re going to end up, if Ms. Cooper is right,” Fleming said. “Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora-not that they correct many of the guys I send there.”

“Let’s have this on the record, Judge,” Moretti said, rising to his feet and tapping his pen on the old oak counsel table.

Janet Fleming shook her head at the stenographer. “I’m just trying to make progress before the jury panel gets here, Gino. Trying to talk plea. Get a disposition.”

“Not happening, I promise you. Ms. Cooper’s got her holier-than-thou posture going on.”

Fleming leaned in and talked straight at Estevez. “They don’t call that prison Siberia for nothing, Antonio. Rubs right up against the Canadian border. I get a chill just thinking about you being holed up there till you’re fifty years old.”

“I’m glad you’re thinking about me, Judge, is all I got to say,” the defendant said, almost leering at her. “I didn’t do nothing wrong.”

“Can we please-?” The conversation was going in a bad direction.

“Stay seated, Ms. Cooper,” Fleming said, holding her arm out toward me. “Clinton is full up with guys who didn’t do nothing wrong, Antonio. It’s a helluva lot warmer in Shawangunk. They have special classes for men like you.”

The prison in Shawangunk was one of the few with a sex offender program, but Estevez-who was also charged with physical assault-had refused all plea discussions that involved accepting sex offender status, and I wasn’t caving to anything less.

“What you know about men like me?” Estevez asked, jabbing his finger in the air, toward the judge. The smile disappeared and a hint of his temper was about to boil to the surface.

Gino Moretti grabbed his client’s arm and flattened it on counsel table.

“Ms. Cooper says you abuse women,” Fleming went on, flipping through the eight-count indictment. “She says you take pimping to a new level.”

“I’m on the record now, Your Honor,” I said, standing up to address the court. “What I say has no relevance. Those are the charges against Mr. Estevez. I get your point, Judge. I’ll move the case to trial.”

“She don’t know shit about me,” Estevez said, now focusing his anger on me as the court officers moved closer to surround him. “I got a wife; I got a baby-”

“No more, Antonio,” Moretti said to him. “Keep your mouth shut.”

“You just wait and see if that bitch who ran her mouth shows up to testify. She took back everything she said about me. The lady DA knows that.”

Janet Fleming stuck her glasses on top of her head. “So you’re stalling this operation till you figure out whether you’ve got a witness or not, Ms. Cooper? Any truth to that rumor?”

It wasn’t unusual for victims who’d been threatened by a perp to change their minds about their willingness to testify in open court by the time the case came to trial. Tiffany Glover had texted me three days ago that she no longer wanted to cooperate, but just yesterday Mercer Wallace-a detective from the Special Victims Squad and one of my closest friends-found her and brought her to my office.

“Ms. Glover will be here when we need her.”

“Perhaps she recanted her recantation, Judge,” Moretti said, one hand on his client’s shoulder, snickering at me across the aisle.

“Which will make your cross even more devastating than I’ve been prepping for,” I said to Moretti, not loud enough for the judge to hear. “The threats didn’t work, Gino. Just FYI.”

“What did you say, Ms. Cooper?” Fleming cupped her hand to her ear.

“I apologize, Your Honor. I had forgotten to tell Gino something I wanted him to know before we got started.”

My adversary and I went back a long way together. I was sure he was aware that Estevez had sent threats to his former girlfriend through someone who had visited him at Rikers Island, but I didn’t want to burn Moretti by putting that on the record.

“Did I hear the word threat?” Fleming asked.

“Ms. Cooper couldn’t help herself, Judge,” Moretti said. “She’s been threatening to have her favorite detectives break my legs if I show her up in the courtroom. Looks like I’m in for the big hurt. That’s all that was.”

Fleming’s scowl suggested she didn’t believe Moretti. “Do you want to move the case, Ms. Cooper?”

“The People are ready for trial,” I said.

“The defense is ready.”

Fleming nodded to the captain of the court officers. “I’ve got a panel of a hundred and fifty prospective jurors waiting in the hallway. Any other housekeeping before I bring them in?”

Gino Moretti and I both shook our heads.

I settled into my chair, resisting the opportunity to turn and look over the dozens of citizens who had responded to their jury duty summons. There would be no more than ten or so in business clothes, another thirty in casual dress, and the majority wearing gear so sloppy and threadbare-and often so odorous-that it appeared court proceedings had lost all the dignity in which they had been cloaked for centuries.

Moretti had turned his chair almost a hundred and eighty degrees, less for the purpose of sizing up the jury pool than for trying to charm them with a welcoming grin, a cheesy suggestion that he wouldn’t be seated next to anyone except an innocent man.

“Nothing to eat or drink in the courtroom,” the captain called out from the railing behind me. “Except for water. All newspapers and materials must be put away. Turn off your cell phones and devices. No e-mailing, calling, or texting. Take your seats, please.”

Moretti stood up and positioned himself behind Antonio Estevez, using the moment to give him a friendly pat on the back, leaning to whisper into his ear. The faked intimacy would feed jurors the idea that my adversary really liked his client-touched him and talked to him and shared a secret from the rest of us. He’d probably just told the experienced criminal to keep his mouth shut from this moment on and resist the temptation to do anything stupid in front of the people who would decide his fate.

“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Janet Fleming. I’m a justice of the Supreme Court of the State of New York, presiding in Part 53 of the criminal term.”

The judge rose, circled her chair, and leaned on its high leather back as she addressed the prospective jurors. She compensated for her short stature by wearing stiletto heels, which got everyone’s attention whenever she walked on the elevated wooden platform that held the bench. Fleming pulled back one side of her black robe-placing her hand on her hip-to make sure the group saw the colorful dress that clung to the outline of her body.

I glanced at my watch. Almost three o’clock and I’d had no word from anyone in my office. Fleming was going to steamroll forward with selection. Jeopardy would not attach until the twelfth juror was sworn in, but that could happen by noon tomorrow.

I zoned out on the judge’s introductory remarks and came back to the case at hand only when she told the group that her clerk would now read the names of prospective jurors to take their seats in the jury box.

The clerk cranked the handle of the metal cylinder on the corner of her desk. The stub of each summons had been placed inside, and all were mixed together as they rolled over and over again. She let go of the handle, reached in, and removed a piece of paper, calling the name of the first individual and following it with thirteen others-which filled even the seats allotted for two alternates.

The usual commotion ensued. Those who had just settled into the long pews and heard their names announced picked up their backpacks and tote bags and scuttled past their neighbors to get to the center aisle and head for the jury box.

A middle-aged woman carrying four shopping bags and dressed for anything but success tried to detour away from the path set by the court officers to approach the bench. One of them put his arm out to stop her.

“But I have to tell the judge something.”

“I’ll take you in turn, madam,” Fleming called out in her sternest voice. She liked to keep tight control of her courtroom.

“But I don’t want to say what I’m going to say to you in public,” the woman whined.

“I’ll give you the opportunity to talk to us privately. Do as we tell you for now.”

The woman reluctantly trudged to the box and took her seat in the number eight position.

Fleming began her general jury instructions. She introduced Gino and me, directing each of us to stand and spin around so that everyone in the room could see us.

She told them that the indictment contained eight counts, but that it was just a piece of paper, and that the defendant’s innocence was presumed at this point.

I could hear juror number eight murmur to the group, “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. That’s what an indictment means.” I assumed that she was on a mission to get herself excused and knew exactly which buttons to push.

“The top count with which Mr. Estevez is charged,” Fleming continued, “is Section 230.34 of the Penal Law: Sex Trafficking.”

Prospective juror number eight gasped audibly and slumped down in her seat. “Oh, my God. I knew he looked like a pervert. He oughta get the chair.”

This time, Gino Moretti heard her.

“Judge Fleming, I’d like to approach the bench with Ms. Cooper.”

He reached there before I could push back and get to my feet.

“What is it with you, Moretti?” the judge asked, cupping her hand over her mouth so the jurors couldn’t hear her.

“You’ve got a whack job in the box and she’s going to poison the well if you don’t remove her right now,” he said. “Didn’t you hear her?”

He repeated the second statement she made and I filled in the first.

Fleming slammed her gavel on the desktop. “The lady in the number eight seat, you’re excused.”

“Who, me? But I want to see you, Your Honor. I want to tell you what my issue is.”

“Just follow the court officer. Before you wind up with a bigger problem than you think you have now. And zip your mouth while you’re on your way out.”

Fleming took the summons stub from the clerk, looked at the name, and ordered her to have the woman removed from all future service.

“You ladies and gentlemen in the audience, raise your hand if you heard anything that woman said,” the judge said.

Not one hand went up.

“Those of you in the jury box,” she said, waving her glasses back and forth over the two rows of stunned spectators who had been within earshot of the woman, “you’re all excused with my gratitude. See you in six years.”

Before they could gather their belongings and follow the crazy lady out of the room, the heavy doors creaked open again.

“You caught a break, Alex,” Fleming said to me. “Did you coach her? Is she part of your stalling-for-time routine?”

“Beyond my doing, Your Honor, but I like her thinking.”

“Well, speak of the devil,” Moretti said. “Detective Michael Chapman, Manhattan North Homicide. We got a body I don’t know about?”

I spun around and saw Mike standing at the back of the large room. He was holding the door open for the exiting line of prospective jurors.

“Speak of what?” Fleming asked.

“I told you Alex had detectives lined up to break my legs. Seems not to be an idle threat if she’s got Chapman on board.”

“Did your man Estevez kill somebody?” the judge said to Moretti as she motioned to Mike to approach the bench.

“Chapman has nothing to do with this case,” I said. “I have no idea why he’s here.”

“Don’t get flustered, Alex,” Moretti said to me. “I think we all have a good idea why he’s here, or haven’t you heard, Judge Fleming?”

“Can we take a break, Your Honor?” I asked. “I can assure you it’s nothing personal.”

“Ten-minute recess, ladies and gentlemen. You’re not to leave this room, but you’re free to check your messages and talk among yourselves,” Fleming said. Then she snapped at the captain as she stepped down from the bench. “Make Mr. Estevez comfortable in his office.”

The fact that any defendant on trial was a prisoner at Rikers Island was supposed to be withheld from the jury. They dressed in civilian clothes, and but for being escorted back to the holding pen behind the courtroom surrounded by four armed men, most jurors would have to guess the fact that Estevez was actually incarcerated.

“Let’s see what Chapman’s got,” Fleming said. “We’ll go to my robing room.”

“Don’t you have a disrobing room for them?” Moretti asked.

I walked ahead of Fleming and Moretti, into the short hallway that connected her robing room to the courtroom. Mike caught up with us, offering apologies to the judge, greeting Moretti and me, and closing the door behind him.

“Sorry to break up your trial, Judge. Commissioner Scully asked me to come over to deliver the news to Ms. Cooper face-to-face. Let you know there’ll be a passel of reporters swarming around her when she leaves your courtroom.”

“I have no intention of letting her leave till the close of business, Mr. Chapman. Now, what’s the story?”

My heart was racing. I couldn’t make a connection between Mike and this defendant. I couldn’t think of a reason for Mike to interrupt the middle of my working day, especially since our relationship had now become an intimate one. I was embarrassed by his presence.

“Bad news first. We had an attempted murder early this morning. Rape and stabbing of a teenager in Riverside Park. Likely to die when I got the call, but she seems to be coming around.”

“You’re not getting Ms. Cooper on this one,” Fleming said.

“Not a problem,” I said, avoiding eye contact with both Mike Chapman and the judge. “He’s not here for me. I had a call on this case at nine A.M., before I knew there was anyone in custody, and assigned it to Marissa Bourges.”

Bourges was one of the best lawyers in my unit.

“The commissioner wanted me to deliver good news for a change, and make a plan with the judge about the media. We nailed the bastard who did the girl in the park an hour ago, Coop. It’s Raymond Tanner. You’re out of harm’s way.”

TWO

“Sit down before you fall over,” the judge said to me. “Take a deep breath.”

“I’m fine, Your Honor. Really I am. This is great news.” I was shaken by the mention of Tanner’s latest attack, and the reality that I would now have to face him from the witness stand.

“Maybe he needs a good lawyer,” Moretti said. “You might whisper my name in his ear, Chapman.”

“This is the scumbag-excuse me, Judge-that’s got KILL COOP inked on his hand, Gino. I’m looking to do more to him than whisper in his ear. Some of his other body parts have my more immediate attention.”

“Don’t tell me anything else about him,” Fleming said, clapping her hands over her ears. “I don’t want to have to recuse myself if this guy winds up in my courtroom. Siberia might not be cold enough for him.”

“The commissioner wants to know whether your court officers can take Alex down to her office at the end of the day. Just so the press guys don’t throw microphones in her face.”

“Sure. We can put her right on the judges’ elevator. Nobody has access to that bank.”

The tiny elevator kept the judiciary away from the great unwashed, so they didn’t have to ride up and down with perps and witnesses, snitches and scoundrels of all sorts. It opened directly into the back room of the office of District Attorney Paul Battaglia on the eighth floor of the massive courthouse.

“Perfect,” I said, trying to control the tremor in my hand by steadying it on the judge’s desk. “Where’s Tanner now?”

“Look,” Fleming said. “Why don’t you two take five minutes in here? Answer all her questions, Detective, so she can get back to concentrating on the business at hand.”

Gino Moretti winked at me as he followed Janet Fleming out of the robing room, a stark space with only a desk, three chairs, and an empty bookcase. There were no curtains on the windows that overlooked the narrow passage of Hogan Place. Elsewhere in the courthouse the judge had chambers with a large office, well decorated and watched over by her secretary.

“You’re okay now, Coop,” Mike said, bracing his back against the door to the room.

I bit my lip and nodded.

“This is weird, don’t you think, kid? That you’re just standing there staring at me?”

“What’s weird about it? I’m not staring.” I shifted my eyes from Mike’s face, focusing on a button on his navy blazer.

“Six months ago, if the same thing had happened, the judge would have walked out and you’d be clinging to me for dear life, asking me to tell you details and stop you from shaking.”

“It’s different now.”

“Yeah, it’s different,” he said, brushing back a shock of dark hair. “It’s supposed to be better. C’mere.”

I walked toward Mike and let him wrap his arms around me. Inside that embrace had always felt like the safest place to be. We had started working together more than a decade ago, and throughout those years had become best friends. Just two months earlier, in August, we had crossed the line and turned our friendship into a romance. I still wasn’t clear on how that would affect things on the job-at crime scenes, the morgue, my office, or his squad room.

Mike took my chin in his hand and tipped my face up to look into his. “It’s over for Tanner, Coop.”

“Don’t kiss-”

“You think I was going to kiss you? Get over yourself, girl. I know where we are.” Mike threw his hands up in the air and walked to the window.

“Sorry for being so awkward,” I said. “Where’s Tanner now?”

“The lieutenant’s going to hold him up uptown at the squad till you leave the building tonight. Whatever time that is. He just doesn’t want you under the same roof at the same time.”

“Crazy to slow down his arraignment for that reason.” I walked to one of the chairs and sat down. “Is he talking?”

“As in a confession? Not a word,” Mike said, walking to the desk, leaning on it as he looked into my eyes. “We don’t need anything from Tanner. Put together all the stuff he’s been doing since he slipped out of his work release program and his rap sheet will reach to Cleveland.”

“The girl, Mike. The likely from this morning. How’s she doing?”

“Collapsed lung from the stab wound, but she’s out of surgery and expected to make it.”

“No lead pipe?” The lethal weapon had been his signature in several cases.

“Except for the crater in this vic’s head, you’d hardly know it was Tanner. Yeah, he had a pipe. Yeah, he tried to smash her skull with it. The guys just haven’t found it yet.”

“Who collared him?” I asked, over my own reaction and interested now in the details. “Please tell me it was Mercer.”

“That’s a better attitude. Show me those whites, Coop.”

I smiled at him, reaching out and covering his hand with one of mine.

“Call it rookie luck. A kid on patrol heard screams, but they stopped so abruptly that he couldn’t find the location. Tanner apparently laid low for a couple of hours, hiding in one of those huge rock formations in the park till the cops scoured the area and cleared out. This kid asks his boss if he could stay on the scene for a while, guessing Tanner hadn’t made it far. Good instincts. And he asked for the K9 Unit to give him a dog to sniff around. The rookie eventually broke with the rules-let the dog off the leash to hunt on his own-and the animal actually rousted the rapist from his spot. The kid saw Tanner running down a grassy slope toward the river. Gave chase and caught up with a blood-spattered perp.”

“Sounds impressive,” I said. “The knife?”

“Yeah. Tanner dropped it during the chase.”

“They’ll get prints off it? Or submit it for touch D-?”

“You know what?” Mike said, straightening up and adjusting his tie as he walked to open the door. “They’ll do everything they’re supposed to without you breathing down their necks. They’re pros, kid. Just like you think you are. You get back to Mr. Estevez.”

“When do we celebrate? I mean, not us, but the team.”

“You do what you gotta do for the rest of the afternoon. A few of us will be lifting a glass to that rookie a little later this evening. You’ll be the first to know where.”

I headed for the door. “The lieutenant call you in on this today?”

“No, no. Mercer gave me the heads-up first, and the commissioner knew I had a keen interest in the motherfucker’s arrest.”

“So you’re still doing a midnight?”

“That’s what the loo tells me. Lets you get a good night’s sleep.”

“The weekend can’t come soon enough.”

“Scoot, Coop.”

One of the court officers was waiting for me in the hallway. Mike walked past us and we entered the courtroom. Fleming nodded at the captain to return the defendant from the small cell that held him during these proceedings to his place at counsel table.

Janet Fleming gaveled the group back to order and asked the clerk to put fourteen more citizens in the box. “And if I didn’t tell you earlier, folks, once you leave here tonight, there will be no tweeting, no Facebooking, no Instagramming your buddies about what goes on in here. For the forty dollars a day the state pays you, you get your train fare and your hot dog from the umbrella man in front of the building. No selfies with me or my staff. You don’t get to link in or friend me, understood?”

She rose again to project her voice to the entire room. “This is just to remind you that the unexpected interruption had absolutely nothing to do with the case at trial. You are not to speculate about anything you see or hear the parties do. The only evidence will come from that witness box, or from physical evidence and exhibits introduced during the trial,” she said, going on with the general instructions.

Fleming liked to control the voir dire of the panel as well. She would allow Moretti and me to ask a limited number of questions, but it wasn’t like the old days when a lawyer could free-form and inquire about magazine subscriptions or favorite television shows, hoping to glean a bias that would make a juror’s exclusion automatic.

After the judge finished forty-five minutes of questioning and entertaining three requests to be excused from the case, Fleming nodded to me for my turn. I carried an old green felt board, eighteen inches long, with two slotted tiers that held the summons for each of the individuals seated in front of me, so that I had their names and addresses at the ready. I rested it on the wooden flap that served as a mini podium attached to the side of the jury box.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Riley,” I said to the man in the first seat. An unemployed electrical engineer, he had tried in vain to have Fleming let him go. He didn’t answer me but stared straight ahead, determined-it seemed to me-to make himself unlikeable to Moretti and me so as not to make the cut.

The second juror was my age-thirty-eight-and a professor of women’s studies at Columbia College. I was quick with her, too, for the opposite reason. Human trafficking had become a hot-button issue with feminists and academics, and I had the gut instinct that she would be sympathetic to my victim, despite the witness’s history of prostitution. No need for me to open any doors for Moretti to slip in and knock her off.

Prospective juror number three was a challenge. An African-American male in his early thirties, he seemed affable and engaged in the proceedings, but a bit too eager to get the attention of the defendant, who looked over at the box from time to time. His black T-shirt featured a small logo of a pizza in the center of his chest, although I found the large neon green letters above it-EAT ME-to be not only off-putting but also totally inappropriate for the occasion.

“Mr. How-ton,” I said, phonetically breaking up the name that I read on the summons. It was spelled Houghton. “Am I pronouncing it correctly?”

“Nope. No, you’re not. My people say Huff-ton.”

Strike one for me.

“Could you tell us a little more about the work you do at Metropolitan Hospital?” He had his sneakered feet up against the wall of the jury box. His hands were clasped together and he was twiddling his thumbs somewhat nervously.

“I’m, like, a phlebotomist, you know?”

“So you’re trained to draw blood.”

“I’m in a tech program right now. I’m being trained,” Houghton said, looking over at Antonio Estevez. “I’m not quite Dracula yet.”

Estevez pulled back one side of his mouth in half a smile and Houghton laughed. Half of the prospective jurors laughed with him, at my expense.

Strike two for me.

“Is there anything you’ve heard so far that might make you uncomfortable sitting on a case of this nature?” I asked.

“Nah. You gotta prove what you gotta prove.”

“One of the charges here is that Mr. Estevez used force to compel a young woman to engage in acts of prostitution. You understand that?”

“I’m good.”

I walked toward the railing at the end of the well of the courtroom. “Do you know who Jason Voorhees is, Mr. Houghton?”

He sat up straight and dropped his feet to the floor. “You kidding me? Of course I do.”

Jurors number two and four looked at him, puzzled by either the question or his answer.

“Miss Cooper,” Judge Fleming said, glancing up from her notebook, “I hope you’re going somewhere with this.”

“I am, Your Honor.” I continued talking with Mr. Houghton. “And who is Jason Voorhees?”

“He’s the guy-the creepy one with that kind of full-face hockey mask-in the Friday the 13th movies.”

Gino Moretti was on his feet. “I’m going to object to this line of questioning, Your Honor.”

“What’s your point, Ms. Cooper?” the judge asked.

“We intend to present evidence that-”

“Wait a minute,” Moretti said, losing his cool. “May we approach? She can present her evidence when she’s got witnesses in the box.”

I wanted to give the prospective jurors a taste of the People’s case. Houghton, after his Dracula reference, seemed a likely candidate to know the horror-movie genre. I thought I could see whether anyone in the room would be freaked-out by a description of Estevez, whose victims claimed he wore the distinctive goalie mask, punctuated by holes and painted with red triangles-and wielded the same machete Jason did-when he threatened them to go to work for him. Better to find out they had weak stomachs now than midtrial.

“It’s not about the evidence, Judge. I’d like to-”

“I know what you’d like to do, Ms. Cooper. Don’t even think about it. Next question, please.”

“Mr. Houghton, is there anything about your familiarity with the fictional movie character Jason Voorhees that would prevent you from analyzing the facts in this case, independent of-”

“I object,” Moretti said, practically shouting at the judge.

“Sustained, Ms.-”

But Houghton was ready to take his shot. “Mr. Estevez isn’t charged with hacking his old lady’s head off like in the movie, is he? I didn’t hear that count.”

The judge had to gavel the courtroom back to order, while Houghton basked in the amusement he had provoked with his response.

“Approach the bench, both of you,” Fleming said, making her displeasure clear when we got within earshot. “Over and out, Alex. You’re done. Move on to the next seat and ask a few questions and then Gino takes it from there.”

“Understood.”

“Do you want a curative instruction, Gino?” she asked.

“Are you crazy, Judge? Call a little more attention to it? Spare me a ‘No, ladies and gentleman, Mr. Estevez is neither a vampire nor a homicidal maniac.’”

“He’s just a pumped-up pimp,” I said, whispering to Moretti, “who uses masks and machetes to coerce young women-to scare them to death-so they turn tricks from which he profits.”

“Your choice,” the judge said.

“If you’re not going to allow me to ask anything else,” I said, “I’d like you to go a little deeper into the meaning of sex trafficking, Judge. It’s not a familiar statute to most jurors.”

The sex-trade profession may be the oldest on earth, but the crime was a very new one on the books, ramped up recently in recognition of the brutal nature of sex slavery and the inadequacy of the old “promoting prostitution” laws.

“I’ll entertain some questions from you, Alex, but keep them within reason.”

The door creaked open at the rear of the room. I didn’t bother to turn this time as I tried to suggest a punch list for Fleming to use.

Her law assistant assiduously made notes of my comments, while the judge had her eyes on whoever had entered the room.

When I did glance back, I saw a neatly turned-out twentysomething-year-old striding down the aisle, making for the first pew, a row kept empty for press and for family and friends of the accused, directly behind Gino Moretti’s seat. She looked familiar to me. I had seen her recently, in the corridor near my office.

“Keep going, Alex,” the judge said to me, chewing on the arm of her eyeglasses. “That’s not the colleague you’ve been waiting for, is it?”

“No.”

“’Cause if it was, you might want to tell her she’s sitting on the wrong side of the courtroom.”

“She’s new. She’s a paralegal in the Child Abuse Unit, I think.”

“Cute kid. She could give some cred to Mr. Estevez, sitting at his back, fluttering her eyelashes over here at Gino.”

“She’s in the right place, Your Honor,” Moretti said. “Seated on the side of the angels.”

“You must mean my side, Gino,” I said, smiling at him. “That’s why she’s working in my office. Maybe I’ll scoop her up for the Special Victims Unit.”

“You’re missing my point, Alexandra. That young woman is married to Antonio Estevez.”

“She’s what?”

Fleming was on her feet again. “Lower your voice, Alex. I don’t need a situation here.”

“I don’t think she’s been in the office a month,” I said, my jaw clenched. “I’ll bet she didn’t put that fact on her job application. I can’t imagine the hiring administrator-”

“Of course it’s not on her application,” Moretti said, one eye on me and one on the attractive young woman who was trying to get the attention of the defendant. “The wedding was at Rikers Island last weekend. I was the best man.”

I was steaming mad. “I’d like a recess, Judge. I need to find out-”

“Don’t try to stall this anymore, Alex,” Moretti said. “Shit happens. There’s nothing illegal about marrying an inmate.”

Antonio Estevez looked back and saw his bride. She mouthed words to him, but I couldn’t read her lips. He nodded. Then she blew him a kiss and got up to leave.

“Excuse me, Judge, but I’ve got to talk to her. I’ll be right back,” I said.

Most of the prospective jurors were riveted by this bit of courtroom drama. Gino and I were having a standoff in front of the judge and the young paralegal was sashaying her way out of court. The jurors were staring at us as I took off after the new Mrs. Estevez.

“You’ve got no business, Alex,” Moretti yelled after me.

“Hold it right there, Ms. Cooper,” the judge said as she banged her gavel on the bench. “Captain, don’t let the DA out of here.”

The door slammed behind the paralegal and the captain of the court officers squared himself in front of it.

“I’d like to see you both in the robing room,” Fleming said to Moretti and me. “Ladies and gentlemen, I apologize for the lack of decorum in my courtroom. You’re excused from service for the next six years, with the thanks of the court.”

I walked past the judge on my way to the side door next to the jury box.

“You may have been looking for a mistrial, Ms. Cooper,” Fleming said, “but you are far more likely to have me find you in contempt right now, cooling down in a jail cell next to Mr. Estevez, before I give you the chance to pull that kind of stunt on me again.”

THREE

“So what’s the story, Alex?” the judge asked. She parked herself behind the bare wooden desk and invited Moretti and me to sit opposite her. “You started this afternoon’s session by saying that you were waiting for someone from your office to come up with information. Was Señora Estevez your courier? You knew this whole charade was about to happen? Showtime for the prospective jurors?”

“Absolutely not, Judge.”

“What, then?”

I hesitated. “May we go ex parte on this for a few minutes? Would you mind stepping out, Gino, while I explain the problem?”

“You bet I’d mind. I’m as curious as the judge.”

“That’s a new legal standard?” Fleming asked. “Curiosity? There’d be a lot of dead cats in this courthouse.”

“I’d rather answer the question you asked out of the presence of counsel, Your Honor. It’s a confidential matter,” I said.

“What news were you waiting for, Alex?” the judge pressed.

“Just so you understand, there’s an internal investigation in progress. When it was launched,” I said, looking at my adversary, “it had nothing to do with your client. And I assure you that work will go on.”

“See, Judge?” Moretti said. “Another threat.”

“It’s not a threat, Gino. It’s a fact. When I got into my office this morning, I was notified by the head of the IT team that someone outside my unit had tried to hack into my computer file on this case.”

“Oh, the drama in your world is-”

Judge Fleming silenced Moretti with one slam of her hand on the desk. “From outside the office, you mean?”

“No, no. Someone unauthorized to see my trial documents, but with access to the DANY system, logged in and tried to get through the firewall that was set up for my staff only.”

“Nice touch, Gino,” Janet Fleming said, nodding as she stared straight through Moretti’s blank face. “The virgin bride, perhaps?”

“Hold on, Judge. No pointing fingers at me,” he said, bracing both hands on his chest.

“And just a minute ago you were best man. Short honeymoon, Gino,” Fleming said with a sneer. “Go on, Alex.”

“When I came up to court this afternoon, Your Honor, we had no suspect and no reason to think anyone in the office had a connection to Mr. Estevez. Maybe someone was surfing and accidentally punched the wrong docket number into the database. I was hoping to get an answer to stop the spread of some sensitive information-hopefully find some virtual fingerprints of an inexperienced colleague before you impaneled a jury. That’s why I was so anxious and, frankly, trying to stall you.”

“Nothing yet?”

“I’d say I can tell my team to narrow the list of suspects to just one young woman, don’t you think?” There are five hundred prosecutors in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and a support staff twice that size. “Would you mind if I called the investigators with the wedding news?”

Fleming dug her cell phone out of her pocket and handed it to me.

“What’s her name, Gino?” I asked him as I dialed.

“She’s Mrs. Estevez now.” He shrugged his shoulders. “How the hell should I know what it was two weeks ago?”

Fleming slammed her hand down again. “Do better than that, Gino.”

“Her first name is Josie. It’s Josie.”

“Laura?” I said when my secretary answered the phone. “As fast as you can move, okay? Call the squad and tell whoever is closest to the door to come down and grab on to-”

“No!” Moretti shouted.

“Step into the hallway, Gino,” Fleming said. “Now you’re out of order.”

“They need to grab that new kid down the corridor. Josie is her name and-”

“Bring her right up to me,” Fleming said, talking over me.

“Laura? Still there? That’s the judge speaking. I don’t know who Josie works for exactly, but they can cuff her if necessary and bring her up to Part 53. We’re in the robing room.”

“Cuff her?” Moretti said. “You two are going overboard. There’s an innocent view of this that you haven’t even considered. My client isn’t-”

“Move faster, Gino.”

“But, Judge-?”

I put one hand over my ear while Fleming laced into my adversary.

“You know, when I was in your shoes and stood up in court for a client,” she said, “I was the client. I thought for him, I talked for him, I bled for him if necessary. I was going to be cleaner than a hound’s tooth so no one could hold any of my conduct against a guy who was already behind the eight ball. But you? You’re just gaming me. You’re gaming the system. And that’s the lowest type of animal life in my courtroom.”

“I’m not gaming anybody. I had no idea.” Moretti couldn’t bring himself to walk out. “Like it’s okay for a prosecutor and a cop to hook up, right, but not for anybody else? For a paralegal or even the accused, who is still presumed innocent even though you’re the one presiding, Judge Fleming. At least that’s my guess. You don’t think that kind of incestuous relationship between Cooper and her homicide hotshot compromises how an investigation gets worked?”

“Don’t go there, Gino,” I said.

“Close the door behind you,” Fleming added, waving the back of her hand at him.

I was still on the phone. “Yes, Laura. I’m here. Now call IT and tell them it’s this Josie kid who’s most likely trying to break into the database. They need to stop whatever else they’re looking at and get on her computer. Find out what’s on it and lock it down. Then call me back once you make contact. I’m on the judge’s cell,” I said, asking Fleming for her number and repeating it to Laura.

“What’s there to get from your files, Alex?” the judge asked.

I bit my lip. “More than you need to know at this point.”

“Give it up. I’m not going to be able to try this case. Ex parte, ex schmarte. Whatever adjournment you get, this one is already too messy for me to handle. I’ll be reassigning it today. Is it the women?”

“Yeah. And I’d have to say girls, not women. Estevez likes them young. Names, addresses, aliases. Every which way we have to find them.”

“Your victim?”

“Tiffany’s safe. I spent most of yesterday with her and she was good when she went home. Mercer had officers pick her up this morning when we learned this attempt was being made to gain access to my files and they’re babysitting her in a hotel.”

“So Estevez is smart enough, desperate enough, to actually plant a mole in your office?”

“Apparently so. That idea never occurred to me.”

“And Gino?” the judge asked. “Do you think he’s capable of-?”

“No way,” I said, walking to the window to look down at the street behind the courthouse. “I can’t imagine he’s involved.”

“Very gracious of you, Alex,” Fleming said sarcastically. “I wouldn’t be quite so certain. These other girls, are they in danger?”

“I suppose it depends on whether Josie was successful in breaking and entering into my computer system. It’s a big ring this guy runs. He’s got a posse out there who stand to lose a lot of money if Estevez goes down.”

The first few distinctive notes of the theme song from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly played out on Fleming’s phone. She looked at the incoming number and passed it to me.

“Two guys from the squad have been dispatched to look for Josie. Josie Aponte. She’s a brand-new paralegal assigned to Child Abuse,” Laura said. “And the IT crew is headed straight for her computer.”

“Make sure the techies hold back until the detectives are hands-on, so we don’t tip off that we’re onto her if she doesn’t know yet. That should be done within five minutes, right?” The District Attorney’s Office Squad, an elite branch of the NYPD with officers handpicked to work complex investigations, had its own version of a mini precinct just one flight upstairs from my wing. “Keep me posted.”

Judge Fleming reached for her phone and started for the door. “Let’s move this to the courtroom. I want to put this whole thing on the record. The Bar Association can make Gino sweat out his role in this. Let’s see if I can get Josie’s prenup out of her. I haven’t had my chance to do a tough cross since I graduated to my judicial robes.”

“I think we’ve met our match,” I said, following her out. “Can you imagine what balls it takes to go through all the security clearance for this job, then walk in ready to commit a felony, smiling at me every time she passed me in the hallway? Josie’s made of tough stuff.”

“Estevez says he’s got a kid. It’s hers?”

“I don’t think so. There’s a baby mama, but he keeps her away from all his business.”

The court officers and reporter were caught by surprise when Fleming and I walked back in. Moretti was on the phone but hung up when he saw us.

The judge stepped onto the bench and everyone resumed his or her position.

“You want Mr. Estevez in here?” the captain asked.

“No. Not now. Not ever again,” Fleming said. “Tell him I hope his parole officer hasn’t been born yet.”

Moretti was seething.

“I’m thinking of who the toughest judge on the block is, and that’s where this case will be tried. I’ll adjourn this for a month,” she said, tossing the case folder to the captain to hand to the clerk. “Let Eddie Torres have a crack at Mr. Estevez.”

The Honorable Edwin Torres was as formidable as he was smart and solid. The fact that he packed heat was known to every inmate, and none had dared any tricks in his courtroom.

“Your call, Mr. Moretti. Do you want to testify before or after Ms. Aponte?”

“Testify about what, Your Honor?”

Fleming was trying to come up with a reason to get Gino on the witness stand. “People’s lives are at risk here, sir. Do you understand that? What did you know about this harebrained scheme to get into Ms. Cooper’s files?”

“Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Is Aponte Josie’s surname? I didn’t even know that.”

“You better hope she says the same thing. She’ll be up here in-what?” Fleming asked, looking at me.

“Probably another few minutes.”

“Ladies first, Your Honor,” Moretti said.

“Cute, Moretti,” Fleming said. “This just happens to be the wrong time and place for cute.”

“You want me to question her, Judge?” I asked.

“Not a chance. She’s all mine.” The young woman had flaunted her relationship with Estevez in open court, and Fleming would try to hold her toes to the fire, on the record, before the police met with a refusal to answer questions. She opened her notebook and started to write in it. “Just give me some background, Ms. Cooper. Was Josie Aponte one of the women in the defendant’s stable? Did she work for him?”

“I don’t believe so. I never heard her name before today.”

“What’s his MO?”

I didn’t answer.

“Stand up and start talking, Ms. Cooper.”

I didn’t want to give away my whole case to Moretti, but I was getting the feeling that it wouldn’t matter much at this point.

“On your feet. That’s good. How did Estevez meet his girls?”

“He’s got a couple of young men on the payroll who scout for him.”

“You know their names?”

“I do, but-”

“Don’t worry. If I need them when I’m questioning Señora Estevez, you’ll give them to me. Scouted where?”

“The usual places, Your Honor. One went inside the Port Authority terminal, trolling for runaways who get off the bus from some godforsaken town a thousand miles away, twenty-four/seven. No shortage of hungry young girls in that hellhole. The second guy waits outside, in the Slade.”

“Not so fast,” Fleming said, scribbling in her book. “What’s a Slade?”

“Sorry. Street name for a Cadillac Escalade. It’s the Estevez pimpmobile of choice. The sweet-talker who was inside the terminal opens the back of the SUV. Shows off the goods-”

“Goods?”

“Whatever he’s promised to the kid he’s trying to hook. If she’s seventeen and likes sequins and high-heel shoes, he’s got some glitzy clothes to show her. If she’s fourteen and wants designer makeup and bubble gum, there’s plenty of that.”

“Then it’s into the Slade and off to meet the wizard. That’s how it goes?”

“On a good night, yes, Your Honor.”

“Pay close attention, Moretti. Pretend like you’re hearing this for the first time. Where’s the meet, Ms. Cooper?”

“Mr. Estevez keeps a separate apartment, just for the purpose of breaking in the young women. Not the address on the court papers, which is his home.”

“You’ve seen it?”

“Detectives executed the search warrant I drafted, Judge. Lots of photographs for the jury. Three bedrooms-one for him, another for a female assistant who hangs out there to chill with the girls and prep them for Estevez, and the third for his intended victim.”

“Judge, I don’t even know how to begin to object to what’s going on here,” Moretti said.

“It’s easy. You say ‘objection’ and tell me it’s meant to cover everything that’s being asked and answered for the next hour or so, and I’ll say ‘overruled.’ I’ll say it just once, and you’ll understand I mean it for every time you would have flapped your mouth or even rolled your eyes at me. You don’t represent Josie Aponte, and this hearing is about her conduct. You’re extraneous to this whole proceeding, Mr. Moretti. I’m just waiting to see whether your conscience makes an appearance today.”

“May I continue, Your Honor?”

“Yes, Ms. Cooper.”

“The apartment I’m referring to has been completely soundproofed.”

“Loud music? Parties?”

“Not much of either, Judge. It’s mostly to muffle the screaming.”

“That should have been obvious to me. I must be slipping. You’ve got a rape charge in here?” she said, referring to the indictment.

“In almost every instance, Estevez starts with a sexual assault on the victim. No grooming period, no adjustment. They’re brought to the apartment one at a time, and he makes each one have sex with him.”

“What’s the force? Or is that what you mentioned in the voir dire?”

“No, the trafficking aspect starts later. There are at least two rape charges per victim. One is statutory because they’re all under the age of consent. The other is first-degree. Estevez uses physical force. Smacks them around when they resist, uses neckties and socks to secure them to the headboard, then has intercourse.”

“These girls have injuries? They’ve been examined-?”

“No injuries,” Moretti said. “Not a single one. Not a scratch.”

Fleming looked me. “Is that true?”

“Estevez and his crew don’t let the girls go, Judge. That’s the whole point. First he takes a shot at them, one girl at a time. One sexual assault at a time. Then he and one of his alums from the program-an older woman, like, maybe nineteen-spend a few weeks softening the kid up. The vic’s made to think she’s Estevez’s girlfriend. Clothes, video games, music, a gradual introduction to drugs and alcohol. But they never get to leave the apartment. Not once.”

“Stockholm syndrome,” Fleming said. “The girls form a traumatic bond with the hostage taker. That’s how they protect themselves emotionally.”

“Of course Ms. Cooper will have to prove that.”

“Apparently she thinks she can, Mr. Moretti. Go on.”

“That’s why there’s no medical evidence,” I said. “Nothing contemporaneous to the initial assaults. The second series of events begins after the bonding. It’s the period of coercing the young women to work for him. To be trafficked.”

“A machete and a full-face mask?”

“Accompanied by some powerful verbal threats, and the backup of the posse just waiting to have at them. Then Estevez has them branded and off they-”

“Branded?”

“The tattoo, Judge,” I said. “When they’re ready to turn tricks, he brings in a tattoo artist, to make sure they’re each marked as his property.”

“Is that part of the torture?”

“Most of them view it that way.”

“Oh, please, Ms. Cooper,” Moretti said. “These kids leave home with more tats and piercings than most carnies have by the time they’re forty. What’s one more?”

I reached into my file for some photographs. “The Antonio Estevez logo, Judge.”

I handed one of them to the court officer to pass to Judge Fleming.

She turned it upside down. “What am I looking at? What body part?”

“That’s the inner thigh, about an inch below where Ms. Glover’s left leg meets her torso.”

“And the image?” Fleming said, squinting at the inked area.

“It’s supposed to be a woman in the center, with a man on each side of her.”

“The men are both aroused, it seems to me.”

“That’s the plan.”

“And the words? Do I see lettering?” Fleming said, putting on her glasses.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “It’s all about power and control for Estevez. It spells out, I SHARE MY BITCH. They seem to be the words he lives by.”

“A sentiment that will serve him well in state prison, I’m sure,” the judge said, looking up when she heard the courtroom door open, “where he’s probably hoping that he’s not the one who becomes the bitch.”

It was one of the detectives from the squad, Drew Poser, walking toward counsel table.

“Bring Ms. Aponte right in, Officer. She’s not Ms. Cooper’s witness; she’s mine.”

“I don’t have her, Judge,” Poser said, holding his arms out to his sides. “That’s what I’m here to tell you.”

“Did she give you a hard time, Detective?”

“I mean she’s history. No hard time. No time at all.”

“But she works on the eighth floor,” I said. “She whispered something to the defendant and then she went back downstairs to the office.”

“Maybe what she whispered was ‘sayonara,’ Alex, ’cause she never swiped her ID to get back into our offices from the elevator bank. And there’s nothing personal at her work space. No pocketbook, no cell phone-nothing but an empty desk.”

“So Josie Aponte just quit?”

“I don’t think she worried about giving the traditional two weeks’ notice, Alex. Not once she got exactly what she apparently came here for.”

“I know,” I said, taking my seat at the table and massaging my aching head with both hands. “The entire case file of Antonio Estevez.”

“I’d say she’s got a copy of pretty much everything that’s on your computer. Maybe that’s what she wanted to communicate to your perp,” Poser said. “All I can tell you, Alex, is you’ve got no secrets now.”

FOUR

It was four fifteen when Drew Poser and three of the court officers from Part 53 walked me down the quiet corridor to the private elevator, tucked in the southeast corner of the courthouse and accessed by a key distributed only to judges, security staff, and the district attorney himself.

“I’ll take her from here,” Poser said.

“What was the adjourned date?” I asked, unable to concentrate on anything but the information on my computer that now made so many people vulnerable to the Estevez crew.

“You got a month, Ms. Cooper,” one of the officers said. “Judge Torres, November twentieth.”

“Can you believe this, Drew?” I said as the doors closed. “You know how much work we’ve got in front of us now? Victims to call, detectives to warn. God knows what’s on there.”

“Aponte won’t get far. Special Victims is pulling all their guys off the street to concentrate on finding her before she can spread the word.”

The doors opened onto the anteroom at the rear of District Attorney Paul Battaglia’s office. He had been the elected prosecutor of New York County for so many terms that the physical space had been overrun by awards from every civic group in the city, hanging on walls and leaning against bookcases. The strong odor of the Cohibas that he smoked from the crack of dawn till he closed his eyes at night infused every inch of territory he occupied.

“Laura said to tell you that Battaglia wants you,” Poser said, steering me away from the exit door to the hallway and toward the DA’s inner sanctum. He knocked and I heard Battaglia call for me to come in. Drew Poser opened the door but backed off and was gone.

“You ought to be beaming about Raymond Tanner’s arrest,” the DA said as I crossed the enormous room to get to his desk, “but instead you look like the bottom fell out.”

“It did. We had to adjourn my trial just now. Antonio Estevez.”

“Damn. I’ve got that human-trafficking keynote for the White House conference in three weeks. I wanted to go in with a hot verdict. What did you do that for?” Battaglia’s annoyance was palpable. He bit into the half-smoked cigar as he talked to me.

“It wasn’t entirely my doing.”

Why wasn’t I surprised that none of my colleagues had come in to the district attorney to tell him that there had been a serious breach of security? No one liked delivering bad news to him. He was the kind of recipient who delighted in shooting the messenger.

“What happened to Fleming?”

“Not her fault, either,” I said, telling him an abbreviated version of the story.

“Who’s responsible for hiring the Aponte girl? How did she pass a background investigation?” He reached for his phone to ensure that heads would start to roll.

“The squad is on it, Paul. The story isn’t even an hour old. Let me get facts for you.”

“Get me names. That’s the surest way to get facts.” Battaglia was a man who held a grudge. There were political enemies he was proud of telling me he had despised for decades, though he often couldn’t recall what had occasioned the hatred.

“I’ve got to go see what else was cherry-picked off my computer,” I said.

“The Tanner arrest is good news, Alex. I had the local reporters in here a little while ago. They want a couple of lines from you, but I told them I’m not letting you talk. Any problem with that?”

“None, thanks. That’s just the way it should be. And I’ll give you all the news on Estevez as the cops work it through.”

“Your computer files-did she get everything?”

“I’m about to find out. I was under the impression that each case entered into my system has its own security code. I’m praying that she only got into Estevez’s file. It’s bad enough with the number of victims in his case-finding them, relocating them, making them safe,” I said. “Keeping them under our wing so they’ll show up for trial. If she got anything else off my machine, I might as well disappear for a month.”

Battaglia removed the cigar from his mouth and blew smoke rings in my direction. “There have actually been times I’d have liked to make that happen to you. Right now isn’t one of them.”

I made my way to the front door to let myself out.

“That memo I gave you during my last campaign, Alex,” Battaglia said, slowing me down.

“Which one?” I asked. The legal staff tried to keep a Chinese wall between the DA’s politics and office business. I thought it safest to take the route of short-term memory loss. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Reverend Hal. And you know exactly what I mean. Reverend Hal and his Church of the Perpetual Scam.”

The ill-tempered Harlem pastor had courted Battaglia and volunteered to support him in the most recent election, in exchange for this office looking the other way on a financial transaction with money stolen from tithed sums of parishioners.

I had been led to believe Battaglia had refused the offer, especially since it had been made shortly after an underage worshipper had come forward to my unit to report inappropriate sexual advances by Reverend Hal.

“I had no case against Shipley, Paul.” It was my practice to keep every file my unit had ever created, because of the recidivist nature of the crime. I’d even had victims who’d come back a second time. But I didn’t want the wrath of Paul Battaglia on my back just yet. “I’m sure Laura wiped the slate clean on your memo.”

I didn’t have the slightest idea what the personal transaction between Shipley and Battaglia had actually been. I assumed, at worst, that the DA had planted his memo with me as a form of future insurance of his good intentions.

“Let me know what you find. You put me in any kind of embarrassing situation publicly, Alex, and you can be sure I’ll hang you out to dry. You’ll wish you had disappeared before I had the chance to get back to you.”

FIVE

“Who died?” I asked, walking past Laura’s empty desk into my office.

Three prosecutors were standing behind the chair in which the head of our Cybercrimes Division, Aaron Byrne was seated. Drew Poser and another detective were in front of the desk, stacking case folders in piles. They each looked like there was a corpse on display in the middle of the table.

“We’re gathered here trying to save your ass,” Ryan Blackmer said. He was standing between Nan Toth and Catherine Dashfer, all three senior prosecutors from my unit. “But if it takes mouth-to-mouth to get your career back on track, I’ve got other plans for the night.”

“The mere thought of that image inspires me to breathe deeply on my own, Ryan,” I said. “How does it look?”

“Not as bad as I feared originally,” Aaron Byrne said. He was more skilled with computer navigation than any lawyer I knew.

“What did Aponte get?”

“First of all, her name isn’t Josie Aponte, okay? A heavy dose of identity theft from a criminal justice student at John Jay College got her in the door of our hiring office.” Byrne was studying my computer screen and typing as fast as his fingers could go.

“So who is she?”

Catherine raised a finger to her lips. “Shh. Let Aaron work.”

“Laura gave you my password?”

“A monkey could have gotten through that,” Aaron said. “Nothing more creative than your law school initials and the year you graduated occurred to you?”

The University of Virginia-UVA-had been easy to remember after a dozen other changes over the years. I had gone through the initials of my fiancé, Adam Nyman, who’d been killed in a car crash the night before our Vineyard wedding, and an assortment of significant dates in my life but had recently returned to the initials of my alma mater as the key to unlock my data.

“In fact, Alex has been looking for a monkey on Match.com,” Ryan said. “Gave up her ‘prosecutes perps’ nickname for ‘lonely lady lawyer.’ Once she knocks off Estevez she can go with ‘my pimp’s a chimp.’”

“Well, I’ve changed all the password info for you,” Aaron said, taking one hand off the keyboard to hand me a Post-it note with a series of hieroglyphics scribbled on it. “Secure it. Learn it. Eyes only for you and Laura.”

“In fact, Chapman says Alex sometimes confuses that long prehensile monkey tail with another organ that-”

“Who cares what Chapman says, Ryan?” I snapped. “What’s Aponte’s real name and how much of my case information is compromised?”

“We don’t know who she is yet,” Drew said.

“She had to be fingerprinted to get this job,” I said.

“You don’t think Estevez would try to embed a mole who’d be roadblocked before she got her toe in the door, do you? His mole has no criminal record. He’s smart.”

“Smarter than I am; that’s for sure.”

“Amen to that,” Ryan said. “Your Wellesley degree with a major in English lit is taking a backseat to Antonio Estevez and his street cred.”

“So this girl-whoever she is,” I said, “has no rap sheet, but she has the balls to take on this assignment. What’d she get?”

Aaron Byrne leaned into my screen. “You’re screwed on Estevez. She copied everything in that folder.”

“Damn. Damn it.” I was walking in circles, furious at myself for enabling this breach because of the obvious password I’d chosen. “It’s on my head now if anything happens to Tiffany and those other young women.”

Nan raised a hand at me. “Calm down. Tiffany’s under control and we’ll find everyone else before his posse does. It’s more important that you work with Aaron to identify the cases that might have been in the same portal.”

“Go through these folders with me, Alex,” Drew said, passing the top three to me.

“I thought the FBI claimed this setup was foolproof,” I said, taking them from him.

“Technically it is,” Catherine said. “Except for human error.”

The feds’ cyberteam had devised a special computer system for our office, in recognition of the fact that hundreds of thousands of case files had to be managed independently of one another. Too many people had access to computer stations-legal and support staff, civilian investigators and cops-that were spread out in both of the large city buildings we inhabited. The sheer volume of DANY employees put a lot of information at risk.

People of the State of New York v. Andrew Kreston.

I focused on the name on the manila folder, first in a tall stack of cases awaiting trial or reassignment to another unit member. Each of the files contained at least one count of sexual assault. Some had top charges of murder in the first degree, while others referenced surviving victims who had been subjected to just about every kind of abuse one might imagine.

“Kreston,” I said, trying to think of the way I had structured my virtual storage cabinet. “Sodomy first degree. Male victim. Drugged and assaulted. No connection to Estevez.”

“Legal issues,” Aaron said. “Any overlap?”

“None whatsoever.”

“Looks like you’ve got it firewalled. Should be fine.”

“Second one is Harry Wiggins. Serial rapist. Four victims, all strangers. Housing projects on the Lower East Side. Nothing to do with trafficking.”

I put that folder to the side and looked at the third one. “Jamil Jenners. Attempted murder, attempted rape. Choked a woman till she lost consciousness. She was coming out of the restroom in a Chelsea club.”

“Clean and clear,” Aaron said.

I reached over for the Wiggins case.

“Go back a step,” I said, unhooking the red string from the back of the folder and pulling out the papers.

Aaron Byrne stopped typing and looked up at me. “I thought you said not related.”

“The cases have nothing to do with each other. But both of them involved a motion to consolidate the counts in order to try the defendant for all his victims at once. Gino Moretti opposed it successfully, and the lawyer for Wiggins tried the same tactic, too, without a shot.”

“You mean you used the identical motion papers in both instances?”

“I’m trying to think,” I said, pulling on strands of my hair. “It was three months ago.”

Everyone was staring at me.

“I’m just not sure, but it’s possible.”

Catherine picked up my phone. “Is there a speed dial to Special Victims?”

“The second button.”

“Is your travel agent on speed dial, too?” Ryan asked. “One way to Afghanistan. Leaving tonight.”

“Take it.” I handed the folder to Ryan. “You’ve always wanted this one. The Post will give you front-page ink if you nail this guy. I’m nauseous even thinking about the possibility that someone like Estevez knows where to find these good people.”

I could hear the clacking keys of the computer as Aaron Byrne tried to figure if the case had been stolen by the Aponte impostor.

“All good here, Alex,” Aaron said. “You only used a blank template for your motion for joinder. You used language and names specific to each case, so there’s no hole in the wall.”

Ryan pushed the folder back in my direction.

I shook my head. “Keep it. Estevez has been put over for a month. Get Wiggins in front of a jury as soon as you can.”

Drew Poser kept passing folders to me while I racked my brain to think of common features between and among the cases.

When we finished scouring the two piles on the desktop, Catherine began to read through the index cards boxed on the far corner of my desk. They contained the hundreds of names of defendants indicted by other lawyers in the unit.

I perched myself on the arm of one of the chairs and rubbed my forehead. “I approved all of these grand jury actions at the time they were submitted, but you’ll have to refresh me on some of them. There are so many.”

“Okay,” she said when I gave her a blank look after the sixth or seventh name. “Wanda Evins. You must know this. The mother who brought her fifteen-year-old daughter to New York from Kansas City to set her up for business during the Super Bowl last year.”

I closed my eyes. “Check that one, Aaron.”

“She was pimping her kid?” he asked.

“I’m sure I cross-referenced this with Estevez. It actually fit the trafficking laws.”

“Yes,” Nan said, “but mother and child are tucked away at home in Kansas. I’ll get the screening sheet and call to check on them.”

“Go back to what you said to me in the courtroom, Drew.”

“About what?”

I stepped out of my heels and ran my stockinged feet across the ratty carpet. “My secrets. You said that all my secrets are gone.”

“Well, I was just-”

“What did you mean?”

“Nothing, really.”

“He meant that a lot of your personal information wasn’t well protected, Alex,” Aaron Byrne said. “Yeah, Wanda Evins is a hit.”

“I’m on it,” Nan said. “I’ll cover them.”

“All the stuff in your Word files isn’t secure, in the way most of the case folders seem to be. Like, here’s a bunch of letters.”

“You keep personal correspondence on here?” Ryan asked.

“No. No, I don’t.”

“Letters to the Bar Association, looks like some to a few of your victims, recommendations for a couple of guys who left the office this year. By the way, the one to the City Bar has got your home address on it, Alex.”

“That’s where they bill me.”

“What’s the difference?” Drew Poser asked. “Everything anyone wants to know about people is on the web. I’m sure Alex’s phone, her e-mail, her contacts, her shoe size-it’s all out there.”

“Then why did you make the crack about my secrets? What do you think I’ve got to conceal?”

“Your thin skin, for one thing,” Ryan said. “You want everybody to think you’ve got the hide of an elephant when you’re soft as a marshmallow inside.”

“I’m just drained. It’s been a lousy day.”

There was nothing personal on my office computer, I reassured myself. My texts and e-mails were a different thing. They wouldn’t make good reading for strangers.

“What the hell is this?” Aaron said, throwing his hands up in the air like the keyboard was toxic. “Why in God’s name are you mentioned in a letter from the district attorney himself to Reverend Hal Shipley? It sounds like Battaglia took money from that Jheri-curled dirtbag, and then you dropped a case against him?”

“I didn’t have any case-and no, I wasn’t aware I was cc’d on any correspondence,” I said, looking from one friend’s face to another as I started to pace across the room. “Are we going blood oath for a moment? Cone of silence? ’Cause the DA is going to have my head on this.”

“Have your head on what?” Nan asked. “Or is this the cue for me to say I’ve got to be going?”

“Don’t leave me now.”

“What’s the story, Alex?” Aaron said. “What’s this about?”

“There should be a memo there from Battaglia to me. About the reverend.”

“Got it. There’s the memo and then there’s also this letter. Maybe Rose Malone,” Aaron said, talking about Battaglia’s executive assistant, “sent a copy to Laura, since it mentions you, and Laura downloaded it to your documents.”

“I swear I never saw any letter.”

“I’ll print it. You’d better read it before it goes viral.”

“If any of this correspondence goes viral, I might as well be looking for work,” I said. My palms were breaking into a sweat. “My piece of it was simple. We had a vic who claimed a statutory case against Shipley. Mercer worked it to the bone and couldn’t get it to stick. Girl has a psych history and liked being around the celebrity-”

“He counts as a celebrity?” Ryan said.

“She’s fifteen. Even you’d count as a celebrity to her with a triple-homicide jury verdict under your belt. Her mother dragged her to a few of Hal’s rallies. Mercer thinks it was all an attempt at blackmailing him that backfired.”

“Do you know anything about a fraud investigation against Hal?” Aaron asked.

I put my head in my hand and exhaled. I couldn’t tell them the little I knew about the tithing improprieties or Battaglia would kill me. That was still a confidential investigation. “Nan,” I asked, “would you do me a favor and call Rose? Ask whether Battaglia has left for the day? I might as well do something to earn the hangover I’m going to buy myself tonight.”

“If you do that, Nan,” Aaron said, “you should also ask Rose if she’s the one who copied Alex on this letter.”

“Please don’t. Not yet,” I said. “I promised the DA I wouldn’t breathe a word of his contact from Shipley. Just see if he’s still here.”

The printer powered up and churned out two pages, which I picked up from the tray.

I faced the wall as I skimmed them.

“Jesus,” I said, starting to read the document again. “This letter thanks the reverend for his contribution, but Battaglia told me he didn’t take any money from Shipley.”

“Could be a contribution of another kind,” Catherine said.

“Who would want anything of any kind from him?” I spoke the words and then stopped in my tracks. “I don’t understand Battaglia at all.”

“What is it?” Nan asked, walking back in from Laura’s desk to tell us that Battaglia had left the office at five thirty, more than half an hour earlier.

“It’s four paragraphs long. It’s-it’s dated about three weeks before I dismissed the statutory case against Shipley. Right after the DA thanks Hal, he tells him in this letter that ‘my chief of the Special Victims Unit,’” I said, hanging imaginary quotation marks in the air, “‘says you have nothing to worry about in regard to the malicious stories being circulated about you.’”

“You must have known Battaglia traded on that kind of information,” Drew Poser said.

“No, I did not. Certainly not in a pending investigation. It’s totally improper. Two weeks before the dismissal I still had no idea whether I had a real case or a psycho teen. This makes it look like the DA was in fact doing favors for Hal Shipley and dragging me into the deal.”

“What do you think this means?” Catherine said.

“Nothing good,” I said. “At the very least, he was trying to curry favor with the devil.”

“But the boss never micromanages your cases.”

“Exactly. And, Aaron, what does it say in my files about a fraud investigation?” Now that I’d read the letter, I knew there was no point in keeping the little I knew about Battaglia’s dealings with Shipley a secret from them. These were my closest professional allies.

“Give me a minute. There’s a link here,” he said to me. “That doesn’t ring any bells?”

“Yeah, there’s a slight tinkling. Just tell us.”

“The letter in your documents folder kicks over to the white-collar division. Looks like there’s a tax fraud allegation that’s been opened into the reverend’s nonprofit profit center.”

The tithing scam was about to come out in the open, way before Battaglia was ready for anyone to know about it. It was as though someone was trying to plant the seed in that division that Shipley indeed had the protection of the district attorney.

“So that’s my fault, too? I’m unleashing this monster and, on top of it, I’m going to take the fall for Battaglia’s double-dealing?”

“Hold tight,” Aaron said. “The fog is lifting.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that the letter from District Attorney Paul Battaglia to the Reverend Hal Shipley was just dumped onto your computer today. Not months ago, at the time it was written.”

“What?” I said. “Maybe I should ask Rose why she did that after all.”

“It wasn’t Rose,” Aaron Byrne said.

“Who, then?”

“This letter was uploaded to you-and filed by Laura around noon, with your documents-by Josie Aponte. Or whoever it was who stole the Antonio Estevez file.”

We were all trying to connect the dots at once.

“What you’re telling us,” I said, “is that there is some kind of connection between Estevez, a world-class sex trafficker-”

Detective Drew Poser finished my sentence. “And the Reverend Hal Shipley, who’s a world-class pimp in every sense of the word.”

“Aaron,” I said, aware that more than half of what the white-collar lawyers dealt with was Internet crimes, “you know everyone in the fraud division. Will you nail that piece of it for me as discreetly as you can? We need to know as much about this as possible or you’ll be drawn into the quicksand with me.”

“Starting right now,” he said, pushing back from my desk. “Be back to you by morning. All you have to do is figure out the link between Estevez and Shipley.”

“Well, if there is one,” I said, “why would Estevez want to do anything to discredit Shipley? It might cause his flock to think twice about giving to him.”

“Nothing has ever made Shipley’s people second-guess him, Alex. They seem to like the scoundrel side of the reverend.”

“Whatever the link,” Drew said, “it’s pretty obvious Estevez and Shipley have the same goal. Looks like they’ve got a plan to bring you down, Alexandra Cooper.”

SIX

“Let’s knock off,” Aaron said. “What’s your day like tomorrow? That’s Thursday, right?”

“Right. It’s only six forty-five. Why don’t we keep at it?” I asked.

“Your witnesses are all accounted for,” Drew said. “And your trial is adjourned, so you’re wide-open tomorrow, to answer Aaron’s question.”

“What’s your rush?”

“I’ve got a class to teach at NYU,” Aaron said, “and if everyone is safely tucked in for the night, let’s pick up first thing in the morning.”

“Hey, it’s only me they’re aiming at, guys. Take the rest of the day off, why don’t you?”

“You’ve been telling us there’s nothing personal in your files here,” Drew said. “You can’t go face-to-face with Battaglia till he shows up in the A.M., and we’ve got three teams looking for the Josie Aponte wannabe. Stay here late by yourself, but that’s when the roaches come out of the woodwork to play. Get a life.”

“C’mon, Alex,” Catherine said. “Time for a cocktail. There’s a Dewar’s with your name on it at Primola. Nan?”

“Have to help the girls with math homework. Have one for me.”

Catherine waited till I shut down my computer. I threw a trench coat over my suit against the cool fall air, and we walked down the dimly lit corridors to the elevator.

Centre Street was populated, as usual, by a mix of lawyers and perps-the former leaving work after a long day or pausing for a meal, the latter just released after an arraignment in night court. Too many of the arrestees were making their way to the Canal Street subway station. The last thing I needed was some frotteur-a subway rubber-celebrating his release from custody on our way uptown. Catherine was known to paralyze them with a single kick.

“I know you don’t want to train it, but there are no cabs in sight,” Catherine said.

“I’ll punch in Uber,” I said. The app for the service usually resulted in a black car arriving at the courthouse within five minutes. I tapped out our location and the address of the restaurant, one of my favorite Italian eateries, on Second Avenue in the Sixties.

“I spoke with Marissa. All good with Tanner. It’s wise for her not to join us tonight, so she’ll go home as soon as he’s on his way down here to meet the judge.”

“So who’s at Primola besides Mike?”

“Most of the guys from the task force that has been trying to hunt Tanner down,” she said. “Mercer called Vickee in, too.”

“Sweet. I know she’d rather be home with her son at night.”

Vickee Eaton, Mercer’s wife, was also a detective. She was assigned to the office of the deputy commissioner for public information and usually knew more about what was going on in headquarters than most of the chiefs. We were close friends, and I was godmother to their four-year-old, Logan. I’d spent many nights in their guest room while Tanner was on the loose.

“She and Mercer want to stay for dinner with us.”

“Guess that trumps my plans,” I said, glancing at my watch. “I was supposed to meet an old friend who’s just in town for a couple of days. I can always move that back to a nightcap.”

The car arrived seconds later and we settled in to the backseat.

“You want to tell me how it’s going with Mike?” Catherine asked.

I was very comfortable confiding in the close circle of women with whom I’d worked for so long at the DA’s office.

“Baby steps,” I said, leaning my head back against the seat cushion. “We’re taking it very slow. So far, so good.”

“Sorry, but that must have been a weird transition-the first time you took your clothes off-after working together for such a long time.”

“Weird but good. You know, even in bed-”

“TMI, Alex. Stop right there,” Catherine said, holding her hand between our faces. “Way too much information.”

“I wasn’t headed where you think,” I said, smiling at her. “No inappropriate reveals here. I was just about to say that Mike’s never going to cease taking shots at me. It’s totally disarming. There’s no angst, no pressure, no relationship psychobabble. We just make each other laugh. It’s refreshing after some of the self-involved guys I’ve dated.”

“It’s great to see you relaxed and happy. You know I told Mike if he ever made you cry, I’d break every bone in his body.”

“Catherine-it’s been six weeks. That’s all. Don’t blow things out of proportion.”

“Just for the record, Grand Central Terminal’s a pretty offbeat place to start an affair.”

“Foreplay only. It was that weekend in September that we went to the Vineyard.”

“Yeah, the one that was supposed to be ladies only. The one you canceled on me.”

My old farmhouse on a hilltop in Chilmark, overlooking Vineyard Sound, was the most romantic spot I’d ever known. It was a haven for me, a small piece of paradise where I was able to escape from the stress of a constantly challenging job. My colleagues and I held lives in our hands-our victims, the accused, those wrongly accused, and the cops who fought to keep our city safe-every day of the week.

“Pick a date. We can do it next month.”

I was the third child-two older brothers-of a marriage between a doctor and a nurse, an ordinary upbringing until my father and his partner revolutionized heart surgery with the invention of a small plastic device used in operating rooms worldwide. The Cooper-Hoffman valve had paid for our educations, and the trust fund established with its proceeds allowed me the luxury of a Vineyard vacation home that I couldn’t have dreamed of on a public servant’s salary.

“Yes. Let’s go before it gets too cold,” Catherine said. “You’ll have to tell me how you managed to seduce a man in your country house when you can’t even cook. You could store some of your shoes inside your oven, it gets so little use.”

“Can you believe that Mike cooks? Like, really well.”

“You’re shattering my image. I know he loves chowing down fried clams at the Bite, and I can see him sitting at the bar at the Chilmark Tavern, chatting up the hostess. But cooking? He’s such a tough guy. Just makes you think a woman would love to take care of him,” Catherine said, “although you’re really useless at that.”

I picked my head up. “I beg your pardon. I’ve got certain charms. Limited in the kitchen, maybe, but talents that come in handy.”

“So what did he serve?”

“Oysters from one of the island ponds, which Mike shucked himself. And lobster. Two-and-a-half-pounders from Larsen’s-which he cooked to perfection.”

Larsen’s Fish Market, in the tiny fishing village of Menemsha, had the most amazing selection of fresh seafood, off-loaded from working boats that docked right at the back door in the small harbor.

“You melted the butter and poured the drinks. A match made in heaven.”

“Don’t forget I’m in charge of the fireplace, too. I even remembered to open the flue.”

“Mid-September? Wasn’t it a tad warm for a fire?”

“I opened all the windows. The fire helped with the atmosphere,” I said. “You can’t imagine how nervous I was.”

“Did you manage to get through the first night without any shop talk?” Catherine asked. “No double helixes or autopsy photos or dramatic readings from the penal law?”

“Totally social. I don’t think Mike’s ever gone that long without measuring someone for a body bag.”

Catherine was quiet for the next few blocks. “I have to ask,” she said. “Did any of your demons show up after dark?”

“You’re a great friend,” I said. She had been witness to all of my darkest moments over the years. “Thanks for asking. No, nothing at all. No nightmares, no one stalking me, no old lovers. The whole thing felt very safe, very normal.”

“For a change.”

“And the cat’s out of the bag,” I said as we pulled up in front of the restaurant. “That’s kind of a relief, too.”

Giuliano, the owner of Primola, was seating people at a table by the window as we walked in. “Signorina Cooper,” he said. “Ciao, ladies. Good to have you here. The guys are all waiting for you in the back.”

He pointed past the bar to the area in the rear of the crowded room. Several tables had been pushed together for the dozen or so men-and Vickee-who had worked relentlessly since summer to find the elusive Raymond Tanner.

I saw Mike’s dark hair, his back to me, and we made our way through the hungry New Yorkers who were three deep the length of the room as they waited for turnover.

Mercer was the first to see us and raise a glass in our direction.

“I’d hardly call it waiting for us,” Catherine said. “The team seems to be throwing back some celebratory drinks in anticipation of our arrival.”

“Hey, Coop,” Mike called out to me. “Grab yourself something from the bar.”

I gave him a thumbs-up and we stopped at the end, next to the waiters’ station. I ordered a Dewar’s on the rocks and for Catherine a glass of pinot grigio. We mounted the two steps that separated the rear room from the main floor of the restaurant, and the detectives greeted us with whistles, cheers, and a toast to the young rookie-unknown to all of them-who was on his way down to the courthouse to take Tanner to his arraignment.

“Here’s to you, Alex,” one of the men said. “Bet you’ll sleep like a baby tonight.”

“I’ve slept well every night, because you guys were on the job.” No need to tell them about the times I closed my eyes and still was sure I could see the image of the letters that spelled KILL COOP on Tanner’s hand.

“They were all just a little slow on the draw, Coop,” Mike said.

“You leave my task force alone, Detective Chapman. They had a few things more urgent on their plates than my stalker,” I said. “Now, why don’t you sit and we’ll get some dinner for you?”

Vickee came around from the far side of the table to give me a hug. “Way to go, girl. Raymond Tanner was a great big accident waiting to happen, wasn’t he?”

“To put it mildly.”

“All good?”

I smiled at Vickee. “I guess stranger things have happened, but yes, all good.”

“Five more minutes till you take your seats, guys,” Mike said, motioning to me with his forefinger. “C’mon, kid. Time for the final question.”

Mercer, Mike, and I had a long-standing habit of betting on the last Jeopardy! question whenever we were together on a weeknight evening. These detectives were two of the smartest men I knew, and our vastly different areas of interest made it fun to be challenged, whether at the morgue or my place, crime scenes or chic restaurants.

The small television was in the short corridor behind the dining room, hung out of sight but close enough so that diners could track sports scores or breaking news.

Mike followed me into the space, off to the side of the busy kitchen. “You feeling okay?”

“About this news? I couldn’t be happier,” I said, sipping my Scotch. “The rest of my afternoon cratered, but that’s not your problem.”

“You’d be wrong about that, Coop. Antonio Estevez and his crew?”

“Correct. Possibly related to the Reverend Hal Shipley. I’ll tell you later.”

“Am I breaking something up?” Mercer asked.

“We were just waiting on you, Mr. Wallace,” Mike said. “Time for the big question.”

Mercer clinked his glass of vodka against my drink, and Mike reached over my arm to hit us both. At the same time, Alex Trebek had come onto the screen after a commercial break and was about to reveal the final answer to the trio of contestants.

Mike Chapman was a graduate of Fordham University, where he had majored in military history. He’d been obsessed by that subject since childhood and knew as much about it as any scholar I’d ever encountered. Mercer Wallace was raised by his widowed father in Queens. The Delta mechanic had papered the walls of his son’s bedroom with maps of the world, and there was barely a square foot of it with which Mercer wasn’t familiar. Geography was where his depth of knowledge was concentrated.

Mike grabbed the clicker off the top of the monitor and unmuted the sound.

“All right, gentlemen,” Trebek said. “You’re each within a hundred dollars of the others, so I assume any one of you can win.”

I had majored in English literature before deciding that a career in public service would be my focus. Reading the Romantic poets and dense nineteenth-century British novels was my favorite way to escape from dry legal briefs. All three of us were on sound footing when the categories touched on Motown music or classic movies of the 1930s and 1940s.

“Tonight’s Final Jeopardy category is ‘The Wild Wild West,’” Trebek said as the words were revealed on the giant game board. “What will each of you wager on the Wild Wild West? We’ll see in just a minute.”

“I’m in for forty,” I said, doubling our usual bet of twenty dollars.

“Just because you grew up on reruns of Bonanza?” Mike said.

“You obviously don’t know that my childhood dream was to be Annie Oakley.”

“Hard to imagine since you’re so skittish around guns. Double or nothing.”

“Don’t you two go all sky-high on me,” Mercer said. “I’m in at eighty bucks. I’ve got a little mouth to feed at home.”

Trebek’s voice boomed from the speaker as he revealed the answer. “He was the first man executed by the federal government in the Dakota Territory.”

“See that?” Mike said. The three contestants grimaced as they struggled-or appeared to be doing so-to write the proper question as the show’s iconic “Think” music played loudly. “We’re all on equal footing. It’s about murder.”

His encyclopedic knowledge of all things homicidal took Mike back through generations of killers and their weapons of choice.

“You’re up, Alex,” Mercer said as the music stopped and Trebek pointed at the first of the three men standing on the stage.

“Who was-?” I couldn’t pull up the name I wanted. “Who was Billy the Kid?”

“So wrong in every direction that you ought to pay triple the ante,” Mike said, reaching out his hand for my money. “Billy the Kid’s real name was William Bonney. Killed so far south of Dakota that it was practically part of Mexico. New Mexico. And shot by Sheriff Pat Garrett, not hung by the feds.”

The first two contestants had drawn blanks also.

“You’re next, Mercer,” Mike said.

“Who was Jack McCall?” Mercer asked, just as the contestant who had been in the lead revealed to Trebek that he had written, “Who was the man who shot Bill Hickok?”

“That’s almost the right question,” Trebek said, “but we were looking for his actual name. And that’s Jack McCall. Who was Jack McCall? I’m sorry, gentlemen. Let’s see what you wagered.”

Mike slapped Mercer’s hand in a high-five as he clicked off the TV. “Broken Nose Jack, they called him. Shot Wild Bill in the back of the head during a poker game. A pair of aces and a pair of eights. That’s why they call it the dead man’s hand when you draw those cards. McCall was acquitted by the first jury and then retried…”

“Now, that’s double jeopardy,” I said. “You can’t have a second trial after an acquittal.”

“First trial was in Deadwood,” Mercer said. “When the feds heard about the acquittal, they said the trial hadn’t been a formal legal procedure because Deadwood was an illegal town in Indian Territory, so double jeopardy didn’t apply. No constitutional violation.”

“Yeah, they nailed McCall in Yankton, tried him again, and strung him up from the tallest tree,” Mike said. “You gotta love a place where the prosecution gets two bites of the apple. It would have helped your batting average a whole lot, Coop.”

I smiled and took another sip of my drink. “We don’t keep scorecards, Detective. One and done works fine for me.”

Mike led us back to the tables where everyone in the group had seated him- or herself, counting the twenty-dollar bills to split with Mercer. Vickee motioned me to an empty chair beside her. One of my favorite SVU detectives, Alan Vandomir, was on my other side.

Mercer stayed on his feet to make the first toast. “I’ve got a candidate for rookie of the year,” he said, naming the young officer who had collared Raymond Tanner. “Puts all you gold-badged first and second graders to shame. You’ve been running around town for two months without a scintilla of perp progress and-”

“We were looking for love in all the wrong places,” one of the guys shouted out.

“And now some kid gets the job done in your stead. The commissioner asked me to send you his best and to announce that the Raymond Tanner Task Force is officially disbanded.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Vandomir said.

“I just want to add,” I said, leaning on Vickee’s shoulder as I got to my feet, “that I am especially grateful to each one of you, personally, for making this work a priority.”

“We weren’t worried much, Alex,” Pug McBride said, displaying his empty glass over his head to the waiter. “Chapman had your back.”

“He’s had her back for years,” the sergeant said, reaching for one of the bottles of wine on the table. “Now he’s got a hand on better body parts than that.”

Most of the guys laughed, so there was no point in protesting.

“It’s all about Tanner tonight,” Mercer said, knowing the banter, the focus on my vulnerability, would make me uncomfortable.

“The kid cop sounds like a star,” Pug said. “If that stunt don’t buy him his gold shield, nothing will.”

“Goes to the head of the class for deceiving the devil,” Mike said. “I told the lieutenant he ought to ask for an interview with him. Grab him now before any bad habits set in. He’s my kind of cop, building the devil’s bridge.”

SEVEN

“I’ll bite,” Vickee said. “What is it?”

“The bridge?” Mike asked.

“There’s a Devil’s Bridge off the tip of the Vineyard,” I said. I remembered it from the days when I fished with Adam Nyman at the crack of dawn. “It’s a treacherous archipelago of boulders that strings out below the Gay Head Cliffs toward Cuttyhunk Island, under the water where the ocean meets the sound.”

The deadliest marine accident in New England’s history occurred in 1884, when a passenger steamer-the City of Columbus-ran aground on the shoals of Devil’s Bridge, killing more than one hundred people. I had heard the story from descendants of the dead still on the island, haunted by the tragedy that had occurred within sight of the Gay Head Lighthouse.

“Brush up on your folklore, ladies.”

“We’re about to get a touch of Brian Chapman, are we?” Pug McBride said, laying on his thickest brogue. “I miss your father every day, Mikey.”

Mike’s father, Brian, had a legendary career in the NYPD, much decorated for his heroism and his brilliant investigative work. It was his great pride that Mike pursued a college degree instead of following him onto the job, but when Brian dropped dead within forty-eight hours of turning in his gun and shield for retirement, Mike went directly from his Fordham commencement to sign up for entry in the Police Academy.

“There are devil’s bridges all over Europe,” Mike said. “Masonry arches from medieval times-in France and Spain and Italy, and of course throughout England and Ireland-each of which comes with its own version of a folktale.”

“What does it have to do with being a cop?” Vickee asked.

Mike was sitting directly across the table from Vickee. He placed his glass of vodka on the table and pointed at her with his forefinger, picking up the dialect of his County Cork roots. “So my great-aunt Bronwen-she was from Wales, as you can tell by the name-she came from a town near the great Mynach Gorge.”

“You giving us blarney, Chapman?” Pug asked. “I heard this one from your old man more times than I can count.”

“Roll with it, Pug. The ladies seem to be ignorant.”

“Welsh fairy tales?” I said. “Guilty as charged.”

“Mynach’s one of the most scenic places in the countryside, with dramatic waterfalls that drop nearly three hundred feet down the gorge. And the problem was, back in the day, there was no way to cross that gorge to get to the other side-to town, to the fields where the cows were grazing, to church-”

“We get your point.”

Mike took another slug of vodka. “So Bronwen’s great-great-great-granny made a pact with the devil. She got Satan himself to agree to build a bridge for her,” Mike said, snapping his finger with a loud click, “and to do it overnight. But he wanted something in return.”

“He always does,” Vickee said.

“Well, that time he wanted a promise that he could have the first living soul who crossed his bridge the next morning,” Mike said. “Stayed up all night getting the bridge made-you can still see it spanning the gorge today-and then he hid himself right at the end of the rock pile. Just like a rapist hiding amid the boulders in Riverside Park. Waiting for the first living soul.”

Vickee waved the back of her hand at Mike. “You forget, Detective, that the kids growing up in the projects don’t exactly know the folktales you were brought up on. Might not be the same risk/reward ratio.”

“Don’t distract me, Vickee. I’m on a high here. I’ve got everybody but Pug spellbound.”

“Heard it before, Chapman. The little old lady-aye, your auntie Bronwen herself-she deceives the devil. He builds her a beautiful bridge in the most unlikely of places-”

“And instead of giving him a living soul to ravish, the clever woman sends her dog on ahead of the beautiful young maiden,” Mike said, lifting his glass in the air. “The first living thing, only it happens to have four legs.”

“So this smart cop used the dog to roust Raymond Tanner from his hiding place,” I said.

“And like the devil, who was so enraged by the old lady’s trick that he leaped into the falls and was never seen in those parts again, the rookie has rid us of the evil Tanner.”

“Yeah, he built his own bridge to Rikers Island for the night,” Pug said as the waiter tried to get everyone’s attention to announce the dinner specials. “The devil played right into the kid’s hands.”

For the next two hours, we did what cops and prosecutors do when thrown together with good food and an excess of alcohol. We told war stories. Pug on the homicidal maniac who had paralyzed the subway for half the summer; Alan on the child molester who dressed in his mother’s clothes to lure kids into the apartment; Catherine on the guy who jumped bail fifteen years earlier only to be nabbed in Georgia by her cold case unit and charged with a dozen more rapes along I-95.

When Vickee finished her chicken piccata, she left the table to go outside to call the public information office to see whether there was any word on the Tanner arraignment.

I was still working on my orecchiette con broccoli rabe, enjoying a cool glass of pinot grigio, when Mike walked around the table and took Vickee’s seat next to me.

“You okay, Coop?”

“Yes,” I said, smiling back at Mike. “This time I think it’s just mind games, not physical threats. You’ve heard what Antonio Estevez pulled off?”

Mike nodded. “Yeah, Drew called me about it. Really slick. And sticking stuff into your document files by uploading it from another DA’s office computer? The dude’s got game.”

“Next time I see him, I’ll tell him you’re a fan.”

“At least you get a reprieve from the trial. Maybe we can figure something to do with the weekend.”

“A last Vineyard trip for the season? Give me something to look forward to.”

Mike and I were still trying to feel our way through the rhythms of a relationship. We each had apartments of our own and had spent few nights together since we’d starting dating. The irregular assignments of a homicide detective rarely synched with my litigation schedule.

“Sounds like you’ve got a full plate till then,” Mike said.

“Tomorrow I get to put my head on the block for Battaglia to chop away at.”

“Estevez?”

“You probably haven’t heard the whole story about Reverend Hal yet. I may have lots of time on my hands once the DA finishes with me.”

“The reverend don’t scare me. I got scores of snitches who’d drop a dime on him in a heartbeat. Federal tax fraud, which means city and state are bound to follow; kids out of wedlock that he supports with money from his phony church; ruining the life of an innocent prosecutor in the Twainey Bowler case ten years back, and still not paying his dues on that. Bring him on, babe, ’cause I’d like nothing better than to spit in his face.”

“Thanks. I hope whatever you spit is even half as toxic as Hal’s own venom.”

“Keep drinking, kid. It’s good for your attitude,” Mike said. “I’ve got three more midnights to work and then off for two days. You want me to drop you at home when I leave?”

“I’ll hang for a while.” I looked at my watch again. “I’m good. It’s nice to see everybody again.”

“I have to stop at the morgue to pick up the autopsy photos of yesterday’s stabbing. Lieutenant Peterson and the ME don’t see eye to eye on the nature of the wounds. I’m going to take off in a few minutes,” he said, patting my thigh under the table.

Mike was working a week of midnights. The lieutenant’s to-do list usually added a few hours to the grueling tour of duty he and his colleagues liked so much.

While he was leaning in, talking to me, Mike’s cell went off. He checked the phone number. “Let me step out and talk to the office.”

“I’ll get some fresh air with you,” I said.

Catherine looked up at me from her end of the table when she saw me stand. “I’m coming right back in,” I said to her. “Just walking Mike out to make a call.”

Vickee was a couple of feet away, coming back in our direction, hands raised over her head with double victory signs. “Spoke to my boss, gentlemen and ladies. Raymond Tanner, aka Raimondo Santini, aka Ronald Tanney, has appeared before the court and has been remanded without the possibility of bail. He’ll spend the night in leg irons and cuffs in the Men’s House of Detention before being transported tomorrow to Rikers Island.”

“That calls for another round,” Pug said. “I’m off for the next two days. Nothing would make me happier than a Tanner hangover.”

“I haven’t felt this good since the beginning of the summer,” I said, shaking off the courtroom drama of the day. “This arrest kind of puts Josie Aponte in perspective.”

“Good to hear. C’mon, Coop. I’m going out to use Vickee’s phone booth,” Mike said, referring to the patch of sidewalk in front of Primola that was a quieter spot from which to make and receive calls.

It was close to ten P.M., and although Mike’s tour didn’t start till eleven thirty, he and his team were often called in early if a case was breaking.

He dialed the number and waited for Peterson to answer the phone. “Hey, Loo. What’s happening?”

Mike listened, and I just leaned against the door of the restaurant. “Where?” he asked.

Murder investigations in Manhattan were split between two elite squads. Mike worked in North Homicide, which covered the island from the tip of Spuyten Duyvil, facing the Bronx, to 59th Street, the lower border of Central Park. The South squad handled everything down to the farthest end at Battery Park.

“Deep-six the morgue photos for now, right?” Mike asked, then waited again. “Got that.”

“What is it?” I asked after he ended the call.

“Eight million stories in the naked city and none of them are pretty,” Mike said, holding the door open for me. “Got a domestic in the two-eight.”

“The victim’s dead?” I asked, turning sideways to get through the bar crowd.

“That’s why they called the homicide squad and not auto theft, Coop.”

“How’d he kill her?”

“You keep making these sexist assumptions,” Mike said. “She offed her main man. Her boyfriend of two years. Shot him in the back of the head when he was sleeping. Wiped out the savings under his mattress, according to his daughter, who found the body.”

The Twenty-Eighth Precinct was a largely residential area of Harlem. The current policing tactics of the commissioner and a crime-prevention strategy by the DA had brought rates of violent attacks way down, and homicides in particular had plummeted.

“So she’s waiting there to be cuffed?”

“Now, you know my job isn’t that simple, Ms. Cooper,” Mike said, grabbing his glass from the table and taking a last swig of vodka. “The vic’s body was just found an hour ago, but this seemed to have happened late last night. No telling where the perp-lady is by now.”

“The girlfriend’s your prime suspect?”

“Like I say, she’s my perp till I learn otherwise.”

“Call me later, will you?”

“No, ma’am. You get a good night’s sleep tonight. I’ll give you a wake-up call instead. Get you ready to take on the district attorney. Feed you some breakfast of champions and all that.”

“Be caref-”

“I’ve already got a mother, Coop.”

Mike said his good nights around the table, kissed Vickee good-bye, and parted from me as though he was still just a professional colleague.

He was ten feet away before he turned and doubled back. “If it helps you count sheep tonight, I’ve got a crumb for you to feed Battaglia when you see him.”

“Always useful,” I said.

Paul Battaglia kept ahead of the game by trading on inside information. Those most loyal to him dropped nuggets of facts-literally as valuable as pieces of gold-which gave him the power to strategize on policy and politics before leaks hit the tabloids or the street.

“The lieutenant says the deceased was a worshipper at the church of the Reverend Hal. Might even have been his bagman, which would account for the mattress money. Use the info with Battaglia if it helps distract him, keep you out of his sights. I’ll be going into Holy Hal’s sanctuary with a search warrant before too long.”

EIGHT

“Things going okay for you?” Vickee asked, moving her chair closer to mine. “You’ve certainly got Mike in a good mood.”

“Can you remember what it’s like at this stage of a relationship?” I asked.

“First time or second?” Vickee and Mercer had split years ago, before Logan was born, because she feared his devotion to the job led him to take risks with his life. “It’s always tricky at the outset.”

“Even trickier with our work situation.”

“C’mon, now. Mercer and I are both on the job. We used to have cases together all the time. That can’t be the issue.”

“Totally different dynamic than yours, with one of us prosecuting and the other handling the investigations.”

“Why? You’ve always ridden these guys as hard as they’re able to go. Like you’re suddenly afraid Mike can’t take direction from you?”

“Nothing new about that, Vickee,” I said with a smile. “Mike and I will go right on doing what we’ve always done. He and Mercer are the best cops I’ve ever known, and that never changes. They do the heavy lifting and I get the evidence to hold up their collars in court.”

“So stop making a big deal about it.”

“I think the department bosses are watching us like hawks. Battaglia, too. I’m not exactly sleeping with the enemy, which is how they seem to be treating us, but it does make things very complicated sometimes. They figure I’m just playing with their ace detective. That once I toss him aside he’ll be useless to them.”

“Well, are you?”

“Am I what?”

“Just playing with Mike’s emotional well-being.”

“I’m out of here before I snap at you, okay?” I lifted my bag off the floor to pull out some cash and get ready to leave. “Are you turning on me, too? Everybody is pushing this relationship along because we’ve been in each other’s lives for so many years. We’re not even living together yet or anything remotely close to that. Mike’s a quirky guy, Vickee. You know that as well as I do.”

“And you’re all sunshine and light? Give me a break, girl.”

“I have never in my life claimed I was easy. But this is a man who lives in a studio apartment so small and so dark that he nicknamed it ‘the coffin.’ This is a guy who is so used to his privacy and his man-cave ways, who keeps every ounce of his sensitivity bottled up inside him so far that even a suppository wouldn’t unglue him, that there are times I-”

“Don’t you even think about bad-mouthing Mike Chapman to me, Ms. Cooper,” Vickee said, wagging a finger at me.

I dug in my bag again to find my phone. “Why are we having this conversation? I think it’s a little too much Scotch on my part, for sure. I’d never bad-mouth him. I simply tried to give you an honest response when you asked me how things are going. And all I said is that some things are tricky with Mike and me. You want this transition to be a smooth one? Then give us some time and space.”

“Don’t lay one of your high-profile, strung-out, going-to-pieces bits on him because of this Antonio Estevez dirtbag. He doesn’t need it right now, okay?”

“Like I would do that?” I said, tapping the Uber car service app. “What’s got your nose so out of joint tonight? Mercer must be complaining about the fact that Mike and I have something going on.”

“Forget I said anything. And for God’s sake, don’t tell Mike. You texting him already? He’s got a homicide to deal with.”

“This whole conversation is forgotten,” I said, pushing back from the table. “And no, I don’t text him while he’s working a scene, Vickee. Something has you all gnarled up.”

“What’s with Uber?” Alan Vandomir asked, catching the screen on my phone before I stood up. “I’ll drive you home.”

“No problem. I have no intention of breaking up this cozy gathering. You stay right here,” I said, punching in my destination on the app. “I’m close enough to walk, but if I said I was going to do that, all you Cub Scouts would be on your feet to protect my honor.”

“Whatever’s left of it,” Alan said.

“Giuliano is right at the front door. He’ll see to it that I get in my chariot, and here’s some dough for my share of the bill,” I said, plunking down money, then reaching for a biscotto as I left the table. “Ciao, guys. See you tomorrow.”

I shimmied through the bar crowd again and looked down at my phone. An Uber driver had responded to my request and would be at the exact location I ordered, right around the corner from the restaurant on 65th Street, in two minutes.

I waited inside for a bit, to make sure the driver would be there. Giuliano held the door open for me. “Thanks again, Alessandra. Everybody have enough to eat?”

“Perfect, Giuliano. See you in a few days.”

I stepped down onto the sidewalk and turned north on Second Avenue, in the direction of my apartment. Traffic was heavy, as it usually was, heading for the entrance to the 59th Street Bridge out of the city, just a few blocks the other way.

At the first corner, I crossed Second and made a left turn onto the quiet side street, looking over my shoulder to make sure Vickee hadn’t followed me out. I couldn’t figure out why she was so testy this evening, and I didn’t want any more judgmental jabbering.

The black sedan I expected wasn’t there yet, but it looked as though an SUV had pulled up to take the job.

I walked toward it, at the edge of the curb next to the fire hydrant. The windows were tinted, but I could see the driver motioning me to open the rear door.

I heard the click of the lock and I pulled on the handle. Just then, I picked my head up and could see the lights of a black sedan approaching the rear of the SUV.

I hesitated for a second as I opened the door, wondering if there was a mix-up in cars. But in that single moment, I felt a tug on my arm from a figure sitting in the backseat of the SUV. His hand was on my throat before I could open my mouth to scream. He covered my nose with a cloth that reeked of the powerful sweet smell of chloroform.

I tried to pull my head back and break away, but in that instant my entire world crashed to black.