Final Jeopardy

CHAPTER 3

The rest of the afternoon passed slowly. I wasn’t able to concentrate on the brief I had to submit for the sodomy case I was scheduled to try in three weeks, and I was desperate to avoid unnecessary phone conversations. Sarah stopped by to discuss several new investigations that needed to be assigned, and to cheer me up with chatter about her baby.

The only phone call of interest was from Mercer Wallace.

He was pleased about Katherine Fryer’s input with the sketch artist.

“It’s the best one yet, Coop,” he told me.

“She’s really good on facial characteristics. She’s firm about the size and shape of the mustache, and you know how they all say he’s got bad skin? Well, she actually draws these big pockmarks and a deep set of creases down each side of his forehead. Swears that’s exactly where they are. I never had an illustrator as a victim before but it sure helps the sketch take on some definition.”

I knew exactly what he meant. The typical description started with witnesses saying they’re lousy at doing this, and that the guy was average height, average weight, average-looking, nothing distinctive about his appearance, and so on. I had a folder full of sketches of wanted rapists who looked like everybody and nobody. Try and display one to a jury and claim a resemblance to the defendant on trial and it was more likely to look like three of the jurors.

Not guilty.

Mercer went on.

“Better yet. She also thinks she made out a birthmark. Says she really tried to avoid looking at his private parts, but he kept sticking it in her face and she’s pretty sure he had a fuzzy area on his right thigh, ‘bout the size of a tangerine, two inches southeast of his equipment.”

Bingo. One of the few advantages afforded a rape victim in identifying her attacker is actually the intimacy of the crime. She gets to see anatomical parts rarely displayed in a bank robbery or mugging. And sometimes there are birthmarks or tattoos or surgical scars that a victim describes the day of the assault, and that a knowledgeable detective photographs the minute he has his suspect in custody. Mercer and I had our fastest conviction on a case when our witness told us the rapist had a tattoo of a spider on his penis. The jury only needed to see the Polaroid of that scorpion for about ten seconds before they voted to convict the defendant.

Then they spent the next hour eating lunch, because they didn’t want the defense attorney to think they hadn’t spent a serious amount of time deliberating about his client’s fate.

Once we had a lead on this suspect, Catherine’s description of the unusual mark would help sink him, especially if we didn’t get lucky with DNA testing.

Mike came back to my office shortly before five-thirty, as Laura was packing up to leave for the day.

“I don’t blame you for getting out of here,” he said to Wilkie.

“I bet you never knew how unpopular your boss was. I got a list as long as your arm here of people who’d like to get rid of her, and those are just the guys she’s prosecuting, who don’t even know her personally. Wait till I start with that crew.”

Laura laughed and said good night.

“I won’t see you tomorrow, will I?” she asked.

“No, but we’ll call you from the Vineyard. Have a good weekend and I’ll see you on Monday.”

Mike and I spent another hour going over the list of possible killers he had culled from my closed case files.

“You’ve prosecuted some sick puppies, blondie,” he mused as he shook his head over the long accumulation of names he had scrawled during the afternoon, with brief case descriptions next to each of them.

“Great cop you are. It took you ten years to reach that conclusion?”

“No, I mean, we mess with some ugly characters in Homicide. But your guys torture people who are alive and looking them right in the eye. And it takes them a lot longer to do it than a shooting or stabbing a couple of seconds in my cases and it’s all over. I never liked working sex crimes, making the victims talk about it in such detail, relive it. Seeing your screening sheets makes me remember why I hated it so much. Murder is easy you know how it happened, you just gotta figure out who did it. And you got no complaining witness to screw up your case with inconsistencies when you get to trial. C’mon. I’ll take you home so you can freshen up for lover boy.”

“You always know just what to say, Mike, don’t you?

Let’s go Jed’s not getting back tonight. He won’t be here till Saturday.“

“Whoops. Looks like you, me, and a pizza. Let’s go.”

It was almost seven when I shut down my computer, turned off the light and locked the door to my office, almost reluctantly. It seemed to be easier to stay there than to face the emptiness of my apartment for another long night.

One of my doormen held the front door open for us as Mike and I approached the building, while the other one walked toward the package room, motioning that he had something in the back for me.

“Your mail, Miss C, and some lady dropped off flowers for you,” Victor called across the lobby.

Most days my mail didn’t fit in the box and had to be held on the shelf with all the other assorted deliveries. It wasn’t a lot of personal correspondence, but I’m a magazine junkie, and the regular arrivals of news magazines, fashion books, women’s journals that I clipped for topical articles for my lectures, and things I actually read were always bundled up in rubber bands because they were too bulky for the boxes.

Victor handed me the pile and the small bouquet of tulips, then winked as he said, “My daughter showed me that picture of you in the paper today, next to that dead movie star. You looked almost as good as she did, Miss C.”

“Thanks, Victor,” I replied as the elevator door closed and Mike pushed the button for twenty.

“What an idiot can you believe there are people who think that any reason to have your picture in a tabloid is a good reason? I swear, I think if some guy showed up with the Post in his hand and told Victor he was the one who shot Isabella but he had really been looking for me, Victor would wink at him and smile and send him right up to 20B to knock on my door.”

“Not between now and Christmas he might lose a big tip if you got knocked off in the next few months.”

I opened the note that was hanging from the string around the flowers.

“Thanks for your message. This must be awful for you. See you next week Ellen Goldman.”

“That’s nice. She’s the reporter for the USA Lawyer’s Digest who’s doing the profil eon the unit and me. Very thoughtful.”

There’s no such thing as a nice reporter or a thoughtful one. Oxymoron isn’t that the word? She’s just sucking up to you for something… probably wants the exclusive on you and Isabella.“

The elevator opened on the twentieth floor and we turned left to walk to my door. There are six apartments on each floor, and as I placed the key in the lock, 20E opened up down the hallway and a large weimaraner came loping at us with her tongue hanging out of the side of her mouth.

As I kneeled to pat Zac and rub her behind her ears, her owner followed behind her to greet us.

“Hi, David,” I said, rising to kiss him and accept an embrace.

“Alex, I just left a message on your machine. Why didn’t you call me during the night? I only heard about the murder this afternoon. Do you need anything, any help?”

“David, this is Mike Chapman. Mike works with me.

Mike, this is David Mitchell Dr. Mitchell’s a psychiatrist,“ I said as I made the introductions, ‘and a great friend. No, I’m okay for the moment, thanks. If you’re going to be around this weekend I’ll fill you in on the whole story.

You look like you’re on your way out for the evening.“

“After I walk the dog I’ve got a dinner date. But I won’t be too late, if you want to talk.”

“I’ve got an early appointment, David, so we’ll catch up this weekend. Have a nice evening.”

I barely had the door closed behind us and the light switched on before Mike grinned at me and asked, “Ever do him?”

“Jesus, Chapman, no!” I shouted back at him, laughing for the first time in hours.

“He’s my neighbor.”

“Well, that’s no answer. You did 31C, didn’t you?”

“It’s my own fault. Why did I ever start playing this game with you? I really asked for it, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, you pump me more than I’d ever have the nerve to ask you. But then, I’m a year older than you are, so I probably have a bit more experience.”

“Where did that expression start do somebody? Is it a squad term? I can’t believe I even answer you when you ask if I’ve ever had a sexual encounter with someone.

“Did you do him?” It’s disgusting, Mike I’m beginning to agree with my father that I’ve been at this job too long.“

“So who’s Dr. Mitchell? Good-looking guy didn’t he ever ask?”

“As a matter of fact, no, he never did.”

David and I had been neighbors for more than two years.

He was in his late forties, divorced, and with a thriving private practice that made him one of Manhattan’s most successful shrinks. For someone like me, convinced that psychobabble and therapy are for other people, I had an abundance of free sessions just by having cocktails with David once a week. He listened to my problems, jogged with me on the occasional mornings he could coax me off my treadmill and around the reservoir, and regularly critiqued my social companions.

“I must be losing my touch, Mike. Anyway, I’ll get the ice out. You call Steve’s Pizza it’s auto dial number four.”

“Who are the first three?”

“My parents, and each of my brothers. And they should consider themselves very fortunate to be placed above Steve’s in my list of priority numbers. When I’m on trial, Steve’s is my lifeline.”

Most of my acquaintances were pretty quick to learn that one of the things I had never managed to take time to master was cooking. I had dinner out most evenings it was usually when I spent time with friends and when I was at home by myself, I could whip up a very tasty tuna salad by opening a can of Bumble Bee and adding a dollop of mayo.

But I lived on a block surrounded by great take-out stores and delivery places: Steve’s for superb pizza, which always arrived hot; P. J.

Bernstein’s, the best deli in town when I craved a turkey sandwich; Grace’s Marketplace for elegant dinners that simply needed a five-minute microwave zap; and David’s for a moist roast chicken when I felt like being virtuous.

“What do you like on it, Coop? I can never remember.”

“Extra-thin crust, well done, no anchovies, and any combination you want. I’m just going to change help yourself to a drink. I’ll be out in a minute.”

I went into the bedroom and closed the door behind me.

I walked over to the dressing table next to my bed and stared at the answering machine, flashing its red light in the dark. There was no one I wanted to hear from, not even my friends, because I couldn’t deal with calling anyone back right now and explaining the situation. Sitting at the table, I laid my head on my arms and let the tears slip out, debating whether to play the messages now or later.

Later. At least two Dewar’s later.

I rested a few minutes then picked my head up, turned on the lights, pulled off my panty hose, and draped my suit over the grip on the treadmill. My leggings and t-shirt felt much more comfortable, and I washed my face in the bathroom sink, sprit zing on some Chanel 22, before going out to join my baby-sitter in the den. There was something about my favorite perfumes that always soothed me, and I was sorely overdue for soothing.

Mike muted the television as I walked into the room, handed me my drink, and let me settle into my chair before he asked me whether I still wanted to talk about the case.

“Is there anything else we have to talk about tonight?”

“No,” he responded.

“It just bothers me. You know as well as I do that most homicides are completely random.

I mean if they’re not domestic or drug-related, then the killer and victim have absolutely no connection. The best cop in the world can spend a lifetime on a case and never solve it unless somebody walks into the station house and confesses. An outdoor shooting like this, there’s no fingerprints, no DNA, no clue. Maybe it’s just a hunter who let off some shots and Isabella was in the wrong place at the wrong time. That’s how most victims get it. Bad timing.“

“It isn’t hunting season, Mike.”

“You know what I’m talking about. Let’s knock it off you’re right. Dinner will be here in another fifteen minutes.

Then I’ll get out of your hair till the morning.“

“I’ll drink to that. Cheers.”

We watched CNN until the pizza arrived Third World civil wars were generally a diversion from a day at the criminal courthouse and then moved to the dining-room tab leto eat, working on our second drinks.

“You know what you said when we came in tonight, about your father thinking you’ve been at it too long?

Were you kidding, Alex?“

”No, but that won’t change anything. You know how I feel about my job. It’s just that no one in my family no one in my life understands that attraction. It’s not quite what they envisioned for their kid.“

I had been raised in a comfortable suburban neighborhood north of Manhattan, the third child only daughter of parents who were old-fashioned and uncompromising in their devotion to each other and their families. My father’s parents were Russian Jews who emigrated to this country in the 1920s with his two older brothers, then he and his sister had been born in New York. My mother’s background was entirely different. Her ancestors had come from Finland at the turn of the century and settled on a farm in New England, re-creating the life they had known in Scandinavia, down to the primitive wooden outhouse and sauna on the edge of an icy cold lake.

She and my father met when he was an intern just out of medical school and she was a college student, both caught up one night in the same disaster. Manhattan’s most famous nightclub in the fifties the Montparnasse was a major attraction because of the combination of its glamorous crowds and its great jazz. My mother was there with a date one November evening, while my father was trying to get in the door with three of his pals who had just finished a tour on duty at the hospital. A raging fire broke out in the kitchen and spread quickly through the crowded club, igniting damask tablecloths and chiffon dresses and silk scarves. The four young doctors turned the Park Avenue sidewalk into a makeshift emergency room, tri aging the fleeing patrons and performers, socialites and staff, as people trampled each other in an effort to escape the treacherous inferno.

My father spent the rest of the night riding the ambulances back and forth from nearby hospitals, unable to help the eighteen men and women who had perished inside the club, but saving scores of lives and calming dozens more who had been overcome by the combination of smoke and fear. The untrained volunteer who worked beside him for hours had been among the fortunate few to emerge unharmed from the Montparnasse. He learned only her first name that night Maude but was taken as much by her strength of spirit and gentle manner as by her perfect smile, green eyes, and wonderful long legs which she disappeared on when the ambulance delivered its final two patients to New York Hospital. When he told the story of that night he always used to say that the only way he could get the deadly images of the injured out of his mind’s eye was to conjure up the vision of my mother, sitting across from him in the ambulance all night, holding the hands of the patients he labored over, and then the nightmares subsided. Two weeks later, when Life magazine printed the story of the fire and the rescue, my mother called to thank the young doctor whose name was printed beneath one of the photographs of the HEROES OF JINXED JAZZ CLUB: Benjamin Cooper. She had tried to find him before that, and knew only that his friends had called out to him as “Bones’ the night of the fire. She assumed that was a med school nickname that had something to do with an orthopedic specialty and so had called that department at several hospitals with no success. When she finally reached him and he invited her to meet for dinner, she laughed to learn that the name had been given to him as a child by his grandmother, in Yiddish, because he was so thin only skin and bones.

They married a year later and my father went on to do his residency in cardiology. I was twelve years old when he and his partner invented a half-inch piece of plastic tubing called the Cooper-Hoffman Valve, which changed our comfortable suburban lifestyle as much as it changed the face of cardiac bypass surgery. For the next decade, barely an operation of that nature in North America proceeded without the use of a Cooper-Hoffman, and although my father continued to do the lifesaving surgery that he found so rewarding, the income that he amassed from the distribution of the valve and the trust funds it endowed for my brothers and myself gave each of us the invaluable freedom to pursue our own dreams and our own careers. For me, that had developed into a devotion to public service, with the luxury of a personal lifestyle not possible for most of my colleagues, but which certainly helped to relieve the relentless intensity of my particular specialty.

Four years ago, my mother had convinced my father to retire from his surgical practice. They sold the house in Harrison, kept a condo in Aspen to be near their sons and grandchildren in the West, and moved to an exquisite Caribbean island called St.

Earth’s. When they weren’t traveling so my father could lecture at medical schools around the world, they were primarily working on nothing more arduous than improving their French, reading all the books that I never seemed to have time to get to, and worrying about why their daughter was still single and so content to be immersed in a steady diet of sexual violence.

Mike had met my parents many times and knew exactly what I was talking about.

“Maybe they’re right, Alex. You can still be a prosecutor and do other things frauds, organized crime, drug cartels.”

“Not for me. You know what I love about this? Most women who survive a sexual assault come to the criminal justice system not expecting that any kind of justice will be done. They doubt that the rapist will be caught, and both fiction and made-for-TV movies have taught them that even if he is, he’ll never be convicted. It’s great to be part of changing that, of making the system work in these cases, of putting these bastards away. And it’s so new. Twenty years ago we had laws in this country that literally said that the testimony of a woman in rape case was not enough evidence to convict her attacker. It was the only crime on the books like that. Imagine, your guys could be found guilty just on circumstantial evidence, but a woman was not competent to be an eyewitness to her own rape. It’s very exhilarating to be a part of these victories.”

“Well, it’s obvious there’s something about it you love.

But if you’re not serving dessert tonight, I’m outta here.“

I carried the dishes to the sink and walked Mike to the door. He’d be back at six-thirty to pick me up so we could make an early shuttle to Boston in the morning.

“Lock up after I go, kid. The Nineteenth Precinct has a uniformed cop in the lobby all night he was supposed to arrive at eight tonight and be on till I get here in the morning. I’ll check on the way out.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I murmured, although I was actually glad to think someone would be backing Victor up at the door.

“Don’t invite him up and distract him, blondie. If you get lonely, call for the doc next door. The cop they send for a job like this is likely to be too young for you, don’t you think?”

“Too tired to think, Mike. Good night.”

I took the copy of W that arrived in today’s mail into the bathroom, ran the water as hot as I could stand it, poured a few more drops of Chanel into the tub, and climbed in to decompress.

As hard as I tried to lose myself in the smashing outfits for spring and the gaunt models who obviously didn’t indulge in a lot of Steve’s pizza, my mind kept making its own connections. I thought back to what I had told the serial rape victim Katherine Fryer in my office earlier this morning: like it or not, try or not, you will have flashbacks; things you see and hear will trigger memories of events or conversations, and some of them will be significant to the investigation.

Now things were forcing themselves through my own head. Mike’s parting joke about calling the doc next door and the earlier coincidence of running into David Mitchell and the fact that David is a shrink and my skepticism about my own need for a shrink. It all connected back to where I did not want to go at that precise point in time:

Isabella.

Why had I blown her off so abruptly when she talked about a second stalker? I knew I was feeling guilty for having done it, since he might have been her killer. Now my mind was racing as the chain of thoughts kept triggering portions of her phone calls to me. What had she said about a shrink? I know she had used that expression in one of our talks, but I couldn’t remember whether she said she was seeing one because of the stalker or that she was imagining that the stalker was a psychiatrist.

There would be more flashbacks to conversation, I knew, especially if I tried to ignore them. Tomorrow I could call Nina in L.A. and she would undoubtedly know more about it. She probably listened to Isabella more seriously than I did and would know the significance of the reference to the shrink. I took my own advice and got out of the bathtub, wrapped myself in a towel, and walked to the desk to write down my chain of thoughts, just as I told my victims to do.

Then I started to dry myself off and set the alarm for 6 A.M.

Before I could settle comfortably onto the bed, the telephone rang. I picked it up and said, “Hello,” only to be met by dead silence. I repeated my greeting and again got no response. I reached over to replace the receiver in its cradle, shivering from head to toe as I did so, and convincing myself that the chills were caused by my emergence from the late-night bath, and not by the eerie stillness on the phone line. I pulled up the covers and concentrated on the hopeless task of falling asleep for a few hours, before setting off to see how my beloved Vineyard road had been turned into the scene of a murder.