The Last Precinct

Chapter 6

THE RUDE JOKE FOR YEARS HAS BEEN THAT VIR-ginians go to New York for art and New Yorkers come to Virginia for garbage. Mayor Giuliani almost started another civil war when he made that snipe during his much-publicized war with Jim Gilmore, Virginia's governor at the time, over Manhattan's right to ship megatons of northern trash to our southern landfills. I can only imagine the reaction when word gets out that now we have to go to New York for justice, too. As long as I have been the chief medical examiner of Virginia, Jaime Berger has been the head of the sex crimes unit for the district attorney's office in Manhattan. Although we have never met, we are often mentioned together. It is said that I am the most famous female forensic pathologist in the country and she is the most famous female prosecutor. Until now, the only reaction I might have had to such a claim is that I don't want to be famous and don't trust people who are, and female should not be an adjective. Nobody talks about successful men in terms of a male doctor or male president or male CEO.

Over the past few days, I have spent hours on Anna's computer researching Berger on the Internet. I resisted being impressed but can't help it. I didn't know, for example, that she is a Rhodes scholar or that after Clinton was elected she was short-listed for attorney general and, according to Time magazine, was privately relieved when Janet Reno was appointed instead. Berger didn't want to give up prosecuting cases. Supposedly, she has turned down judgeships and staggering offers from private law firms for the same reason, and is so admired by her peers that they established a public service scholarship in her name at Harvard, where she spent her undergraduate years. Strangely, very little is said about her personal life except that she plays tennis_extremely well, of course. She works out with a trainer three mornings a week at a New York athletic club and runs three or four miles a day. Her favorite restaurant is Primola. I take some comfort in the fact that she likes Italian food.

It is now Wednesday, early evening, and Lucy and I are Christmas shopping. I have browsed and purchased as much as I can stomach, my mind poisoned by worries, my arm itching like mad inside its plaster cocoon, my craving for tobacco akin to lust. Lucy is somewhere inside Regency Mall taking care of her own list, and I search for a spot where I might evade the churning herd. Thousands of people have waited until three days before Christmas to find thoughtful, special gifts for those significant people in their lives. Voices and constant motion combine in a steady roar that shorts out thoughts and normal conversation, and piped-in holiday music jars my already vibrating nerves out of phase. I face plate glass in front of Sea Dream Leather, my back to discordant people who, like unskilled fingers on a piano, rush and stop and force without joy. Pressing my cell phone tight against my ear, I yield to a new addiction. I check my voice mail for what must be the tenth time today. It has become my slender, secret connection to my former existence. Tapping into my messages is the only way I can go home.

There are four calls. Rose, my secretary, checked in to see how I am holding up. My mother left a long complaint about life. AT amp;T customer service tried to reach me about a billing question, and my deputy chief, Jack Fielding, needs to talk to me. I call him right away.

"I can hardly hear you," his scratchy voice sounds in one ear, my hand covering the other. In the background, one of his children is crying.

"I'm not in a good place to talk," I tell him.

"Me, either. My ex is here. Joy to the world."

"What's up?" I say to him.

"Some New York prosecutor just called me."

Jolted, I will myself to sound calm, almost indifferent, when I ask him this person's name. He tells me Jaime Berger reached him at home several hours ago. She wanted to know if he assisted in the autopsies I performed on Kim Luong and Diane Bray. "That's interesting," I comment. "Isn't your number unlisted?"

"Righter gave it to her," he informs me.

Paranoia heats up. The wound of betrayal flares. Righter gave her Jack's number and not mine? "Why didn't he tell her to call me?" I ask.

Jack pauses as another child adds to the upset chorus in his house. "I don't know. I told her I didn't officially assist. You did the posts. I'm not listed on the protocols as a witness. Said she really needs to speak to you."

"What was her response when you told her that?" I ask.

"Started asking me questions, obviously has copies of the reports."

Righter again. Copies of the medical examiner's initial report of investigation and the autopsy protocols go to the commonwealth's attorney's office. I feel dizzy. It now seems that two prosecutors have spurned me, and fear and bewilderment gather like an army of fiery ants, teeming over my interior world, stinging my very psyche. What is happening is uncanny and cruel. It is beyond anything I have ever imagined in my most unsettled moments. Jack's voice sounds distant through static that seems a projection of the chaos in my mind. I make out that Berger was a very cool customer and sounded as if she was on a car phone, and then something about special prosecutors. "I thought they were only brought in for the president or Waco or whatever," he says as the cell suddenly clears and he yells_to his ex-wife, I assume_"Can you take them in the other room? I'm on the phone! Jesus," he blurts out to me, "don't ever have kids."

"What do you mean, special prosecutor!" I inquire. "What special prosecutor?"

Jack pauses. "I guess I'm assuming they're bringing her here to try the case because Fighter Righter doesn't want to," he replies with sudden nervousness. In fact, he sounds evasive.

"It appears they had a case in New York." I am careful what I say. "That's why she's involved, or so I'm told."

"You mean a case like ours?"

"Two years ago."

"No shit? News to me. Okay. She didn't say anything about that. Just wants to know about the ones here," Jack tells me.

"How many for the morning, so far?" I inquire about our case load for tomorrow.

"Five so far. Including a weirdo one that's going to be a pain in the butt. Young white male_maybe Hispanic_found inside a motel room. Looks like the room was torched. No ID. A needle stuck in his arm, so we don't know if he's a drug OD or smoke inhalation."

"Let's not talk about it over a cell phone," I cut him off, looking around me. "We'll talk about it in the morning. I'll take care of him."

A long, surprised pause is followed by, "You sure? Because I…"

"I'm sure, Jack." I have not been to the office at all this week. "See you then."

I am supposed to meet Lucy in front of Waldenbooks at seven-thirty, and I venture back out into the churning herd. I have no sooner parked myself at the appointed spot when I notice a familiar, big, sour-looking man riding up the escalator. Marino bites into a soft pretzel and licks his fingers as he stares at the teenage girl one step above him. Her tight jeans and sweater leave no mysteries about her curves, dips and elevations, and even from this distance, I can tell Marino is mapping her routes and imagining what it would be like to travel them.

I watch him carried along crowded steps of steel, heavily involved with the pretzel, chewing with his mouth open, lusting. Faded, baggy blue jeans ride below his swollen gut, and his big hands look like baseball mitts protruding from the sleeves of a red NASCAR windbreaker. A NASCAR cap covers his balding head and he wears ridiculous Elvis-size wire-rim glasses. His fleshy face is furrowed by discontent and has the slack, flushed look of chronic dissipation, and I am startled by an awareness of how miserable he is in his own body, of how much he wars against flesh that by now fails him with a vengeance. Marino reminds me of someone who has taken terrible care of his car, driving it hard, letting it rust and fall apart, and then violently hating it. I imagine Marino slamming down the hood and kicking the tires.

We worked our first case together shortly after I moved here from Miami, and he was surly and condescending and positively boorish from the start. I was certain that by accepting the chief medical examiner's position in Virginia I had made the biggest mistake of my life. In Miami, I had earned the respect of law enforcement and the medical and scientific community. The press treated me reasonably well and I enjoyed a rise to minor stardom that gave me confidence and reassurance. Gender did not seem an issue until I met Peter Rocco Marino, begotten of hardworking Italian stock in New Jersey, a former New York cop, now divorced from his childhood sweetheart, father of a son he never talks about.

He is like the harsh lighting in dressing rooms. I was relatively comfortable with myself until I saw my reflection in him. This minute, I am unsettled enough to accept that the flaws he holds up to me are probably true. He notices me against the glass storefront, tucking my phone back into my satchel, shopping bags at my feet, and I wave at him. He takes his time maneuvering his bulk through prepossessed people who right now aren't thinking about murderers or trials or New York prosecutors.

"What are you doing here?" he asks me as if I am trespassing.

"Buying your Christmas present," I say. He takes another bite of pretzel. It appears he has purchased nothing but the pretzel. "And you?" I inquire.

"Came to sit on Santa's lap and get my picture took."

"Don't let me stop you."

"I paged Lucy. She told me where in this zoo you was probably at. I thought you might need someone to carry your bags, being that you're a little shorthanded at the moment. How you gonna do autopsies with that thing on?" He indicates my cast.

I know why he is here. I detect the distant roar of information headed my way like an avalanche. I sigh. Slowly but surely I am surrendering to the fact that my life is only going to get worse. "Okay, Marino, now what?" I ask him. "What's happened now?"

"Doc, it's going to be in the paper tomorrow." He bends over to pick up my bags. "Righter called me a little while ago. The DNA matches. Looks like Wolfman whacked that weather lady in New York two years ago, and apparently the asshole's decided he's feeling up to leaving MCV and ain't fighting extradition to the Big Apple_just happy as a clam to get the hell out of Virginia. Kind of a weird coincidence the son of a bitch decides to leave town the same day as Bray's memorial service."

"What memorial service?" Thoughts crash into each other from all directions.

"At Saint Bridget's."

I also didn't know Bray was Catholic and just happened to attend the church where I am a member. An eerie feeling tickles up my spine. No matter what world I occupy, it seemed her mission was to break into it and eclipse me. That she might even have attempted this at my own unassuming church reminds me of how utterly ruthless and arrogant she was.

"So Chandonne is transported out of Richmond on the same day we're supposed to say good-bye to the last woman he snuffed," Marino talks on, scanning every shopper bobbing past. "Don't think for a minute the timing's a coincidence. Every move he makes, the press will be there in droves. So he'll outshine Bray, steal her thunder, 'cause the media's gonna be a hell of a lot more interested in what he's doing than in who shows up to pay their respects to one of his victims. If anybody shows up to pay respects. I know I ain't, not after all the shit she did to make my life happy. And oh yeah, Berger's on her way here even as we speak. I guess with a name like that she probably ain't into Christmas," he adds.

We spot Lucy at the same moment a gang of loud, turbulent boys do. They have the latest funky hair and cargo jeans falling off their tiny loins and do exaggerated double-takes, lusting after my niece, who is wearing black tights, scuffed Army boots and an antique flight jacket she rescued from a vintage clothing shop somewhere. Marino gives her admirers a look that would kill if glaring with hatred in one's heart could penetrate skin and perforate vital organs. The boys weave and bounce, shuffling in huge leather basketball shoes, reminding me of puppies that haven't grown into their paws yet.

"What'd you buy me?" Marino asks Lucy.

"A year's supply of maca root."

"What the hell's maca root?"

"Next time you go bowling with some really hot woman, you'll appreciate my little gift," she says.

"You didn't really get him that." I halfway believe her.

Marino snorts. Lucy laughs, seeming much too jovial for someone about to be fired, millionaire or not. Outside in the parking lot, the air is damp and very cold. Headlights dazzle the dark, and everywhere I look I find cars and people in a hurry. Silver wreaths shimmer from light posts, and drivers circle like sharks, looking for spaces close to mall entrances, as if walking several hundred feet is the worst thing that can happen to a person.

"1 hate this time of year. I wish I were Jewish," Lucy comments, ironically as if she were privy to Marino's earlier allusion to Berger's ethnicity.

"Was Berger a D.A. when you started out in New York?" I ask him as he places my packages inside Lucy's ancient green Suburban.

"Just getting started." He shuts the tailgate. "I never met her."

"What did you hear about her?" I ask.

"Really hot-looking with big tits."

"Marino, you're so highly evolved," Lucy says.

"Hey." He jerks his head in parting. "Don't ask me something if you don't want to know the answer."

I watch his shadowy bulk move through a confusion of headlights and shoppers and shadows. The sky is milky in the light of an imperfect moon, and snow drifts down in slow, small flakes. Lucy backs out of her parking place and eases into a line of cars. Dangling from her key chain is a silver medallion engraved with the logo for Whirly-Girls, a seemingly frivolous name for a very serious international association of female helicopter pilots. Lucy, who joins nothing, is an ardent member, and I am grateful that in spite of everything else gone wrong, at least her Christmas present is safely tucked inside one of my bags. Months ago, I conspired with Schwarzchild's Jewelers to have a Whirly-Girls necklace made for Lucy in gold. The timing is perfect, especially in light of late-breaking revelations about her plans in life. "Just what exactly will you do with your own helicopter? You're really getting one?" I ask. In part, I want to steer the conversation away from New York and Berger. I am still chafed by what Jack had to say over the phone, and a shadow has fallen across my psyche. Something else bothers me and I am not quite sure what.

"A Bell four-oh-seven, yup, I'm getting it." Lucy dips into an endless stream of red taillights flowing sluggishly along Parham Road. "What do I plan to do with it? Fly it, that's what. And use it in the business."

"About this new business, what's next?"

"Well, Teun's living in New York. So that's where my new headquarters will be."

"Tell me more about Teun," I prompt her. "Does she have family? Where will she spend Christmas?"

Lucy stares straight ahead as she drives, always the serious pilot. "Let me go back, give you a little history, Aunt Kay. When she heard about the shootout in Miami, she contacted me. Then I went to New York the other week and had a rather bad time."

How well I remember. Lucy vanished, sending me into a panic. I tracked her down by phone in Greenwich Village, where she was at Rubyfruit on Hudson, a favorite hangout in the Village. Lucy was upset. She was drinking. I thought she was angry and hurt because of problems with Jo. Now the story is changing right before my eyes. Lucy has been financially involved with Teun McGovern since last summer, but it wasn't until this incident in New York last week that Lucy made the decision to change her entire life. "Ann asks me if there's someone she can call," Lucy explains. "I wasn't exactly in a frame of mind to get myself back to my hotel."

"Ann?"

"A former cop. She owns the bar."

"Oh, that's right."

"I admit I was pretty whacked, and I told Ann to try Teun," Lucy says. "Next thing I know, Teun's walking into the bar. She pumped me full of coffee and we stayed up all night talking. Mostly about my personal situation with Jo, with ATF, with everything. I haven't been happy." Lucy glances over at me. "I think I've been ready for a change for a long, long time. That night I made a decision. The decision had already been made even before this other thing happened." This other meaning Chandonne's trying to kill me. "Thank God Teun was there for me." Lucy doesn't mean at the bar. She is talking about McGovern's being there for her in general, and I feel happiness radiating from some space deep within Lucy's core. Common psychology dictates that other people and jobs can't make you happy. You have to make yourself happy. This is not entirely true. McGovern and The Last Precinct seem to make

Lucy happy.

"And you had already been involved in The Last Precinct for some time?" I encourage her to continue the story. "Since last summer? Is that when the idea first came up?"

"It started out as a joke in the old days, in Philly, when Teun and I were driven nuts by bureaucrats with lobotomies, by people getting in the way, by watching how innocent victims get ground up in the system. We came up with this fantasy organization which I dubbed The Last Precinct. We'd say, Where do you go when there's nowhere to go?" Her smile is forced and I sense that all of her upbeat news is about to get questionable shadings. Lucy is going to tell me something I don't want to hear. "You realize this means I need to move to New York," she says. "Soon."

Righter has surrendered the case to New York and now Lucy is moving to New York. I turn up the heat and pull my coat more tightly around me.

"I think Teun's found me an apartment on the Upper East Side. Maybe a five-minute jog from the park. On Sixty-seventh and Lexington," she says.

"That was quick," I comment. "And close to where Susan Pless was murdered," I add, as if this is an ominous sign. "Why that part of town? Is Teun's office near there?"

"A few blocks. She's just a couple doors down from the nineteenth precinct, apparently knows a bunch of NYPD guys who work that tour."

"And Teun had never heard of Susan Pless, of that murder? How strange to think she ended up just several streets from there." Negativity carries me along. I can't help it.

"She knows about the murder because we've discussed what's going on with you," Lucy replies. "Before that, she'd never heard of the case. Neither had I. I guess the preoccupation of our neighborhood is the East Side Rapist, which is something we've gotten involved in, as a matter of fact. They've had these rapes going on for some five years, same guy, likes blondes in their thirties to early forties, usually they've had a few drinks, have just left a bar and he grabs them as they're going into their apartments. New York's first John Doe DNA. We got his DNA but not an identity." All roads seem to lead back to Jaime Berger. The East Side Rapist would most certainly be a high-priority case for her office.

"I'm going to dye my hair blond and start walking home from bars late," Lucy wryly says, and I believe she would do that.

I want to tell Lucy that the direction she has chosen is exciting and I am thrilled for her, but the words won't come. She has lived many places that aren't close to Richmond, but for some reason, this time it feels as if she is finally leaving home for good, that she is grown. Suddenly, I become my mother criticizing, pointing out the downside, the deficits, lifting up the rug to look for that one spot I missed when I cleaned the house, reviewing my report card of straight A's and commenting what a shame it is I have no friends, tasting what I cook and finding it lacking.

"What will you do with your helicopter? Will you keep it up there?" I hear myself say to my niece. "Seems like that will be a problem."

"Probably Teterboro."

"So you'll have to go all the way into New Jersey when you want to fly?"

"It's not that far."

"The cost of living up there, too. And you and Teun…" I hammer away.

"What about me and Teun?" The lift has left Lucy's voice. "Why do you keep picking on that?" Anger rolls in. "I don't work for her anymore. She's not ATF or my supervisor anymore. There's nothing wrong with us being friends."

My fingerprints are all over the crime scene of her disappointment, her hurt. Even worse, the echoes of Dorothy are in my voice. I am ashamed of myself, deeply ashamed. "Lucy, I'm sony." I reach over and take her hand in the fingertips of my plaster-confined one. "I don't want you to leave. I'm feeling selfish. I'm being selfish. I'm sorry."

"I'm not leaving you. I'll be in and out. Only two hours away by chopper. It's all right." She looks at me. "Why don't you come work with us, Aunt Kay?" She is out with what I can tell is not a new thought. Obviously, she and McGovern have discussed quite a lot about me, including my possible role in their company. This realization gives me a peculiar sensation. I have resisted contemplating my future and suddenly it rises before me like a great blank screen. While I know in my mind that the way I have lived my life is in the past, I have yet to accept this truth in my heart. "Why don't you go into business for yourself instead of the state telling you what to do?" Lucy goes on. "Have you ever given serious thought to that?"

"It's always been the plan for later on," I reply.

"Well, later on is here," she tells me. "The twentieth century ends in exactly nine days."