Blood Oath

by Linda Fairstein

  “Stage five, Detective Chapman. Once the abuser has established his victim’s trust in him as her ultimate protector, and he has created an emotional dependence, then comes the sexualization of the relationship.”

  “Just right to it?” Mike said.

  “Usually, there’s some desensitization. They talk about intimacies with others, if there have been those, or he takes photographs. But do you want to know what one of the most popular methods is?”

  “Sure I do.”

  “Swimming,” I said, raising my glass in the air. “Behaviors like swimming together, which seems like a perfectly benign thing to do.”

  “Yeah, it does but—”

  “This is where I nail the jurors,” I said. “Think of it, a kind of sport that most kids like, that involves taking off your clothes together.”

  “But Lucy couldn’t swim,” Mike said.

  “Jake knew that from the interviews in her file. That was part of his information-gathering about Lucy, and it’s what made the Great Salt Lake ideal as a secret trip for just the two of them.”

  “Just take your clothes off, lean back, and float in my arms,” Mike said.

  “Then on the way out of the water, he rubbed against her buttocks until he ejaculated.”

  “She didn’t say that, did she?” Mike asked.

  “She was fourteen years old. I can make ‘warm and sticky’ into a recipe the jury will understand.”

  “But will that hold up in court? It wasn’t his penis touching her body,” Mike said. “He had his tighty-whities on and she had underwear.”

  “You’re going back fifty years, Detective,” I said, rolling my eyes at him. “You need that refresher course in sex crimes I give twice a year at the academy. Sexual abuse no longer requires skin touching skin. That’s ancient law.”

  As much as Mercer loved working with survivors who needed the extra measure of compassion a great SVU detective brings to his or her work, Mike preferred the emotional detachment of his dead victims—no hand-holding needed, no legal nuances involved.

  “All right,” he said. “Stage five takes trust up a level to sexual contact.”

  “Exactly. And the final stage is maintaining control of the child over a prolonged period of time,” I said. “Secrecy and the possibility of being blamed for cooperating with the perp are his two most powerful tools—short and long term.

  “The relationship is as knotted and twisted as the abuser wanted it to be from the outset. If the kid thinks of ending the relationship, she knows the gifts and trips and special attention will end. Lucy knows there are people in her life—like Kathy—who always expressed such admiration for Zach, and like her aunt—who will blame her for engaging in the conduct. And she knows that exposing what she and Jake have been doing would not only humiliate her in the face of everyone else, but perhaps it would make her even more unwanted than she has been to this point.”

  “‘Unwanted,’” Mike said. “Now, that’s an ugly word. A teenage girl—virtually an orphan—finds herself ensnared in the web of a cunning predator. Not only is she vulnerable for that reason, but she’s the star witness in a murder prosecution, and the perp is the puppeteer pulling her strings. Use ‘unwanted’ and that jury will be eating out of your hand.”

  “Do you understand the grooming process better?” I said.

  “Yeah,” Mike said. “Especially when you seal it with a blood oath.”

  Mike’s cell phone vibrated and started twitching on my glass-top table as though it was alive.

  He picked it up. “Chapman.”

  He listened to someone—I could hear a woman’s voice speaking to him—before he answered.

  “No, ma’am. I wasn’t at the hospital on official business,” he said. “There is no case. I’m just an acquaintance of Ms. Fain and we happened to be passing behind the courthouse when the medics were working on her.”

  Mike listened again.

  “I can’t answer that, but I’m here with one of her best friends.”

  Mike passed the phone to me. I put down my drink and introduced myself to the woman, who was the head nurse just starting her midnight shift at Bellevue’s Neuro ICU. I told her I was a prosecutor in charge of special victims’ cases, hoping that would add gravitas to the fact of my friendship.

  “Are you related to Ms. Fain?” the nurse asked.

  “No. No, I’m not. Just a good friend.”

  “Are there any relatives I can contact?”

  “Her mother’s in a nursing home in Texas,” I said. “She’s got advanced Alzheimer’s, and Francie has no siblings. Isn’t there anyone who’s arrived from her job, from the Legal Aid Society?”

  “Not that I’m aware of,” the nurse said.

  “I’ll make some calls.” It didn’t matter that it was close to midnight. I had an emergency contact list for all the supervisors in the criminal division.

  The nurse had a catch in her voice, as though she was holding something back from me.

  “I’m looking for someone who knows whether Ms. Fain has a will,” she said.

  I clasped my hand to my mouth as she went on. “Ms. Fain is on life support, and we need to know whether she has a DNR if things take a worse turn tonight.”

  “Just a minute,” I said, and covered the phone while I spoke to Mike. “Will you go into my office and look for the Legal Aid directory, please? Francie’s on life support and they need to know if she has a ‘do not resuscitate’ order.”

  “Keep it together, Coop,” he said, getting up from the love seat.

  “I’ll get on this right now,” I said to the woman on the phone. “May I please have your number so I can call you back when I find one of her colleagues?”

  The nurse gave me her name and the number at the nurses’ station.

  “Does this mean—this putting Francie on life support—does it mean the doctors know what’s wrong? Is there a diagnosis?”

  “No one’s sure yet,” she said. “It’s still a puzzle. But brain disorders are very complicated and Ms. Fain has only been here a few hours. Please give us some time.”

  “I appreciate that,” I said, nervously running my finger around the rim of my drinking glass. “I’m a good friend. I was supposed to see her tonight.”

  “We’ll do our jobs on this end,” the nurse said, “and the best thing you can do for us is find out where her papers are and who she has designated as her health care proxy.”

  “Certainly.”

  Francie was two years younger than me—maybe thirty-six or thirty-seven. What if she hadn’t done a will or named a proxy yet?

  “May I ask you, Ms. Cooper, might it be as simple as her husband or boyfriend that we should be looking for?”

  “Francie isn’t married,” I said. “There’s no boyfriend in the picture either.”

  “Then I suggest you find me someone to step in as soon as possible,” the nurse said. “There are important decisions to be made—and there are two lives at stake.”

  “Would you say that again?” I asked. “Did I understand you correctly?”

  “There are privacy rules, Ms. Cooper. I’ve already said too much, and whatever happens, you didn’t hear it from me. I’m just trying to stress the urgency here.”

  “I know all about HIPAA,” I told her. “So let me be the one to say it to you. Francie’s pregnant, I take it.”

  The nurse didn’t respond, but she didn’t correct me either.

  There was enough need for urgency to save Francie’s life. But apparently, the scans had revealed she was also carrying a child.

  FOURTEEN

  “There’s a woman here to see you,” Laura said, opening the door to my office wide enough to put her head in. It was shortly after nine A.M. “No appointment, and she’d prefer not to give me her name.”

  “Am I going to need protection or do
es she look sane?” I asked, covering my mouth as I yawned.

  I finally reached Quint Akers, the chief of the Legal Aid Criminal Defense unit, around midnight. Quint was the man who had hired Francie years back and knew her well. He promised me he would go to the hospital himself, immediately, and continue to reach out to the lawyers on her team to see who knew her best.

  I hardly slept at all, worried about Francie Fain’s sudden flip from partygoer to patient on life support. And then there was the startling news of her pregnancy, which meant I had been way out of the loop on her private life—more so than I realized.

  When I could get the image of my friend, mid-seizure and frothing at the mouth, lying on a city sidewalk out of my mind, I fretted about Lucy Jenner and how she would come out of this ordeal—even if we could prove a case. She had once trusted a prosecutor whose betrayal had cost her the last decade of her life. I wondered how she would fare in my hands as I tried to structure a cold case with no physical evidence.

  “The woman looks about as sane as you do,” Laura said, “on a good day.”

  “I deserved that. Send her in,” I said. “And see if Max can sit in with me.”

  Two minutes later, Laura opened the door again and both Max and the woman entered.

  “Good morning,” I said. “I’m Alexandra Cooper.”

  “I don’t mean to be rude,” the woman said, “but I’d like to talk to you alone.”

  “My paralegal is an essential part of all my cases,” I said. “She’s as silent as the grave.”

  The woman flashed a look at Max but then focused back at me. “Thank you, but it just won’t work for me,” she said, turning on her heels to leave the room. “Stand on ceremony one time too many and the blood will be on your hands.”

  “Ceremony? What are you talking about? Whose blood?”

  The well-dressed woman stopped at the door and glared at Max.

  “Would you mind, Max?” I asked.

  “No point in an unnecessary bloodletting if I’m the one who’s making the difference,” Max said, as unflappable as always. She left the room.

  First, Lucy Jenner yesterday and now this woman—it seemed like the new trend was demanding a private audience with me.

  “Thank you, Ms. Cooper,” the woman said, taking the chair opposite my desk. “We’ve never met, but you’ll understand the reason I’m here.”

  I was stone-faced. I didn’t like anyone playing games with my time.

  “My name is Jessica Witte,” she said.

  “And your best friend is Janet Corliss, wife of the judge,” I said, recognizing the name but not the face of my visitor. “You’re a speechwriter for the junior senator.”

  “That much is all true, but I’d like to keep the senator out of this,” Witte said. “She doesn’t know I’m here.”

  “How about Janet?” I asked. “Does she know?”

  “Of course. But if she sets foot in this courthouse, where her husband works, word will shoot through the building like wildfire.”

  “You’re very well known, too,” I said.

  “My words are, Ms. Cooper. But speechwriters are invisible, so I don’t expect I’ll attract any attention by coming to 100 Centre Street. Our words are front and center, but we stay out of the limelight.”

  “What is it you want to discuss?” I said.

  “Janet is looking for advice about what to do,” Witte said. “She trusts your judgment and your discretion, and suggested I do the same.”

  “Does this concern her marriage?”

  “It does.”

  “You need to understand that I work with Judge Corliss,” I said. “One of my lawyers is on trial before him this week. I think it’s best I turn you over to one of the other assistant district attorneys in my unit.”

  Jessica Witte put her hand out on my desk to stop me from getting up. “It’s your guidance that Janet wants.”

  “I’m not in private practice, Ms. Witte. The best I can do is recommend some lawyers who can help her.”

  Jessica Witte shook her head. “You don’t get it, do you? Bud Corliss—without his judicial robes—is a violent man. Are you afraid to take him on?”

  “I’m fearful of bears and mountain lions and rattlesnakes,” I said, thinking of the recent invitation from a law school friend to recover from the trauma of my kidnapping in the wilds of Montana, at his ranch. “Taking on guys who subject women to abuse? Squaring off against them in or out of court doesn’t frighten me much at all. It’s what I do.”

  “Fine,” Witte said. “Then do it.”

  “Let me get a few things straight. The Corliss residence is in Bronx County, am I right?”

  “Yes, they have a home in Riverdale.”

  Riverdale is an affluent community in the northwest corner of the Bronx, where many Manhattan businessmen built country estates a century ago.

  “If you plan to tell me about events that occurred in another county, I’d best refer you to the Bronx DA’s office.”

  “Janet keeps a pied-à-terre in Manhattan,” Witte said. “She inherited it from her father. It’s where Bud prefers to stay when he’s sitting in this county.”

  “I didn’t know that,” I said.

  “And you probably don’t know that he threatened to kill her.”

  “We’re getting into very serious territory here,” I said. “Is Janet willing to come forward and tell me this herself?”

  Jessica Witte hesitated. “She wants to know what the consequences will be if she does that. Janet wants to know if your office will prosecute Bud.”

  “First of all, I can’t answer that without knowing specifically what the conduct has been,” I said. “I also need to know if there are lawyers involved—any kind of matrimonial action in progress. And lastly, it may be that because Judge Corliss is sitting in Manhattan’s Criminal Term, we might have to have a special prosecutor appointed in another county.”

  “It really sounds like you’re ducking responsibility on this one,” Witte said.

  “Why in the world would I do that?”

  “What’s the difference if Janet plans to file for divorce? What if she has a lawyer for that purpose?”

  “Perhaps no difference at all,” I said. “But maybe you know that allegations of domestic abuse skyrocket during matrimonials. Real ones, of course. And false ones.”

  “I can’t believe you even mention the word ‘false’ to me,” Witte said, snarling at me like a caged wildcat.

  “Then why don’t you tell me what happened?” I said, leaning back in my chair and steepling my fingers. “Did you hear the threat that the judge made? Did Janet happen to tape it?”

  I was always hoping for corroborative evidence to back up the word of a witness. The law didn’t require it, but jurors responded better to the existence of something in support of a complainant’s word.

  “The threat wasn’t verbal, Ms. Cooper. It was physical.”

  What did Corliss tell me yesterday, before my day exploded with Lucy Jenner’s story? That I would hear rumors of an assault on Janet—perhaps that he had hit her.

  “What did he do, exactly, if you know?”

  “Of course I know,” Witte said. “Janet’s my best friend. They were in the apartment in Manhattan. Bud came home late, claiming he’d been at work till after ten P.M. Janet accused him of infidelity—she has a bit of a drinking problem and was probably intoxicated, but he’s been terribly unfaithful.”

  There was nothing to be gained by my telling Jessica Witte that I was well aware of his philandering.

  “Janet raised her voice and began to yell at Bud. She admitted that to me,” Witte said. “But then he did it. He put his hands on her neck—on her throat, actually. Bud choked her. He actually choked her to make her shut up.”

  I had dozens of questions. What happened after that? Had the judge ev
er done this to her before? How long was he holding her throat? How was she able to free herself, or did he just let go? But I wanted these answers from the victim, not from her well-meaning best friend.

  “That’s terrible,” I said. “Did Janet have any injuries? Did she go for any medical treatment?”

  “She wasn’t injured, and she was afraid to go to a doctor because her internist is Bud’s doctor, too, so she was certain there’d be no assurance of confidentiality,” Witte said. “It doesn’t matter, Ms. Cooper. Choking is a crime, whether there are injuries or not.”

  “My staff deals with that every day of the week, I promise you.”

  Choking had been a crime in New York State for less than a decade. Prosecutors and advocates—my team—had fought for years to have strangulation added to the penal law because it had usually been ignored as a separate charge of criminal conduct for lack of injury or evidence—yet it was often a strong indicator of a more violent intention by the perpetrator. A man willing to stop the flow of oxygen to his victim—face-to-face—suggested he was capable of far greater violence.

  “I wrote a lot of the senator’s speeches on domestic abuse, Ms. Cooper,” Witte said. “When a man places his hands on a woman’s neck, it’s really the ultimate form of control and power.”

  “I’m glad to have the senator in our corner,” I said, doubting that Witte’s speech research made her much of an expert on the issue. “But now we have to find a way to keep Janet Corliss safe. When did this happen?”

  “About two months ago,” Witte said.

  “Did she continue to live with Bud after that?”

  “What was she supposed to do?”

  “I’m not second-guessing her at all. My question was not meant to be a criticism of Janet,” I said. “She’s the rare DV victim who is fortunate enough to have a second residence. I thought perhaps she might have kicked him out.”

  “Don’t you dare blame Janet Corliss,” Witte said, wagging a finger at me.

  “I’m not in the habit of blaming victims,” I snapped back at her. “What is it you want me to do?”

  “Janet wants to know if you can come to her office, instead of interviewing her here.”