“It’s the only job I want—the cap in my career—and this election will be my sole chance to secure it. I’ll be eighty years old by the time someone your age hangs up her hat and walks away from the job, if you were to get it. It’s a pretty powerful position, and I’m the right man to control it.”
The waiter set our plates down in front of each of us. I had lost most of what I thought was my appetite.
Zach sliced into his steak as easily as he had tried to cut up my character. He chewed for a minute before speaking again.
“I’d ask you to be my number two when I win,” he said. “My executive assistant DA. Basically run the show, do all the internal decision-making, be as innovative for the rest of the office as you’ve been for sex crimes.”
“That’s what you’re offering me?” I asked. “Where will you be?”
“Up front, dealing with the mayor as well as the mudslingers.”
“I’m not interested,” I said.
“Is it the number two thing that sticks in your craw? Do you really need to be the one who’s on top?”
“What I need is to do something that I care about, working for someone I respect.”
“I’ll pretend I didn’t get what you meant by that last line,” Zach said. “The respect part. Try me. I think we’d do well together.”
There was a chill that had fallen over our dinner table. I took a few bites of the delicious sole, but the conversation confirmed to me that Zach wasn’t fit for any kind of public office.
We managed to talk about issues that interested both of us—where we thought Battaglia had lost his footing in the last year of his life, what needed to be updated in the criminal justice system, how hard it must be to manage more than five hundred lawyers who need to do “the right thing” every day of the week.
“Do you have time for coffee?” Zach asked.
“No. I’m going to stop off to visit a sick friend.”
“Can we drop you somewhere?”
“No, thanks. I’ll grab a cab.”
I put my credit card on the table to split the bill with him, and Zach put his hand on top of mine. “I’ll clean up my act, Alex. Put a lid on my loose tongue and slow down with the skirt chasing. You know that.”
“It may be a bit late.”
He reached into his jacket pocket and took out a business card. “This has all my contact information,” he said. “Think about some of this stuff I threw at you, if you need any help making your decision. And let me know if you hear anything about others who plan to jump into the race. We’ll have to start collecting signatures on petitions pretty soon.”
I picked up the card. “Zachary J. Palmer,” I said aloud. “What’s the J for?”
Zach rubbed his eyes. “Jacob.”
“Really? No wonder you got twitchy when I said the name Jake. You must have thought I was talking about you.”
“No such thing.”
“Nobody ever called you Jake?” I asked.
“Only my grandmother, and she’s been dead a really long time.”
“I know I’ve heard someone refer to you that way,” I said. “Maybe it was the agent—Kathy Crain. The one who worked with you on Welly’s case.”
Zach pushed back from the table and stood up. “Then she’d have been mistaken is what I’d say.” His teeth were clenched and his expression was sour. “And you’d be advised to stay out of my way and stick to what it is that you do best.”
TWENTY
“New York/Cornell Hospital, please,” I said to the cabdriver. “I’d like to go to the entrance on East Sixty-Eighth Street, just off York Avenue.”
He pressed the meter and headed north on Third Avenue without saying a word.
It was only a ten-minute ride to the enormous medical center. At nine forty-five in the evening, there was very little traffic on the streets.
I texted Mike that I was going to stop by and check on Francie, hoping for the chance to squeeze her hand or stroke her forehead if the nurses would let me in.
The security guard at the front desk, probably near the end of his eight-hour shift, seemed tired and uninterested.
I showed him my DA’s office ID and gold badge—just like a detective’s badge but without any corresponding juice—and asked for the Neuro ICU.
“Take the F elevator bank to the third floor and follow the signs.”
I thanked him and walked down the corridor. Most visitors were gone at this late hour, but several walked by me as the elevator doors opened and discharged some glum-looking folks.
When I reached the third floor, I pushed through several sets of double doors until I reached the nursing station for Neuro ICU.
I could see in the glass-walled sides of the first three cubicles. Patients in them were attached to an array of monitors that beeped and blipped. One nurse was bedside and another was standing at the station, noting something on a chart.
“Good evening,” I said. “I’m sorry to interrupt you.”
“No problem. How can I help you?”
“I’m here to see Francie Fain,” I said. “I’m not family, and I know it’s late, but she’s a dear friend and I was just thinking you might let me in for a minute to whisper some encouragement in her ear.”
“Just a minute,” the woman said. “Let me talk to the other nurse. I just came on to cover while one of them went to have her dinner.”
She walked to the door of the cubicle and I heard her say Francie’s name. The second nurse shook her head as they both walked back to the station.
“Is she the one who flatlined earlier?” the first nurse I talked to said. “Before I got here?”
Dead? She couldn’t possibly be dead.
“No,” the second nurse said, running her finger down the list of patient names, then looking up at me, still talking to the other woman. “The flatliner was a man. Delivery guy without a helmet thrown off his bicycle and crushed his skull.”
She flipped the top page of papers on the clipboard.
“What’s this Francie Fain to you?” she asked.
“I’m a friend. A close friend,” I said. “We worked together.”
“Ms. Fain was transferred out of here at two P.M. today,” the in-charge nurse said, reading from the sheet of paper.
“To another floor?” I asked. “Does that mean she regained consciousness?”
She put the clipboard down and brought Francie’s name up on the computer.
“No. There’s no change in her condition.”
“Can you please tell me what room she’s in?” I said.
The monitors in the second cubicle began to beep rapidly and both women looked up at the overhead screen. The in-charge nurse pointed and told the temp kid to check on the patient. Then she kept tapping on the keyboard, but looked puzzled each time an answer came up.
“Ms. Fain isn’t here.”
“What do you mean?”
“She was signed out of the hospital,” the nurse said.
“But she’s in a coma, or she was this morning,” I said, a nausea growing in my stomach. “She didn’t walk out on her own steam, I don’t think.”
“You’ll have to check with hospital administration when they open tomorrow,” the nurse said. “We’ve got our hands full up here tonight, as you can see.”
“But she was a patient in this unit, right?” I asked.
“Yes, it looks like she was a transfer from Bellevue.”
“What else does it say about her?”
“Look, ma’am, Francie Fain is gone, okay? I can’t tell you anything else.”
“I’m not asking to see her medical records,” I said, trying not to let myself get shrill. “Nothing privileged. But surely there must be the name of the person who signed her out or authorized her discharge?”
I reached back in my tote for my badg
e and ID.
The nurse scowled at me and told me to come around to look at the computer screen. “Maybe this will mean more to you than it means to me.”
A piece of letter-size paper had been scanned into the system, separate from the medical records:
“I hereby accept responsibility for the treatment of Francie Fain, upon her discharge from Cornell Hospital.”
It was dated at one P.M. today.
The signature line read “Keith Scully,” and below it, “Police Commissioner of the City of New York.”
TWENTY-ONE
“How the hell am I supposed to know?” Mike asked.
“You can certainly find out,” I said, standing at home at my bar, pouring Scotch over a glass full of ice cubes. “You can make some calls now.”
“It’s eleven thirty at night. You think I’m calling the commissioner at this hour when we don’t even know what we’re looking at?”
“Francie was spirited out of one of the best hospitals in the city, in extremely dire physical condition, in broad daylight, at the direction of your boss. The least you can do is see what Vickee knows about this.”
Mercer’s wife, Vickee Eaton, was also a detective, assigned to the office of the deputy commissioner of public information. There was little that went on in the inner sanctum at headquarters that she wasn’t aware of.
“Why don’t you do that yourself?” Mike asked. “Let go of the Dewar’s bottle before you shatter the glass with your grip, and pick up your phone.”
“I tried Vickee from the cab but she’s not answering,” I said. “Probably because she sees that it’s me calling.”
Mike took out his phone and dialed Vickee’s cell. “Going straight to voice mail.”
“I’m reading this right, aren’t I?” I asked. “Francie didn’t have a seizure. She’s the victim of some kind of crime, which is why Scully signed the release order.”
“Apparently so,” Mike said. “But the one thing I’m sure of is that she wasn’t raped, which takes you out of the equation, professionally. So can you power down a bit? The commissioner doesn’t leak. And he’s got no reason to talk to you.”
“She’s still my friend,” I said.
“Francie was on her feet, walking to Forlini’s one minute, and on the ground with—what?—some kind of severe head injury the next. Clothing intact, except for her shoes.”
“You were with her in the ambulance,” I said. “You must have seen something that suggested a beating or strike to the head?”
“What I saw doesn’t mean a damn,” Mike said. “The EMTs didn’t notice any signs of external injury. What’s the name of that Legal Aid supervisor? He may have a clue.”
“He doesn’t,” I said, sitting down on the floor of the den, wearing an old denim shirt of Mike’s, taking another long sip before stretching my legs out to try to relieve the tension in my back. “I called him, too. Quint didn’t get stuff done fast enough to be named her proxy and pick the two others to sign off with him on medical care, before the commissioner got whatever dramatic news it is and kidnapped Francie.”
“Keith Scully doesn’t kidnap people,” Mike said, resting his bare foot on my stomach. “You should be the last person to use that term loosely.”
“Well, Francie’s gone and no one knows where,” I said. “It’s terrifying, actually.”
“Pod people,” Mike said, sliding off the sofa and onto the floor, running his hand the length of my leg.
“What?”
“Maybe the pod people took her,” Mike said, trying to lighten the mood. “Invasion of the Body Snatchers, kid. Your inventory of horror film trivia is pathetic.”
“I’ve never been into horror,” I said. “Well, maybe Frankenstein and Dracula, but not sci-fi.”
“And I’ve never been into Francie,” Mike said, rolling over to put his mouth against mine, before speaking again. “Something about women who like to rip me apart in a courtroom, try to make me look like an idiot in front of the jury, and then apologize and say they were just doing their job.”
“When I’m a defense attorney, I won’t do that to you,” I said, kissing him again. “I promise.”
“You’re not serious,” he said. “You’ve gotta stay on the side of the angels, Coop. I expect you to die with your prosecutorial boots on.”
I turned on my side and rested my elbow on the carpet so I could pick up my glass and drink a bit more. “I’ll be hanging out a shingle if Zach Palmer turns out to be the next district attorney. As much as I want to keep doing violence-against-women work, I won’t stay if he’s elected.”
“Don’t you think his chances rest on you building a case with Lucy? That could decide his fate—as well as yours,” Mike said. “Did you open a grand jury investigation today?”
“No. No, I didn’t do that,” I said. “If he suspected I was onto him at dinner tonight and asked if anyone was ‘investigating’ him, I wanted to be able to say no with a clear conscience.”
“Half-clear, anyway.”
“I’m going to start the investigation tomorrow,” I said. “I’ll go into the grand jury first thing so I can begin to subpoena documents for the relevant dates. Help nail down a time and place. I haven’t even gotten to ask Lucy the details of what happened.”
“Did Zach say anything interesting?”
“He’s a pig,” I said. “And he doesn’t even try to hide it. His language, his attitude about women, his hunger for the job—at the expense of dragging out the dirty laundry of anyone who plans to oppose him.”
“Did Lucy’s name come up in the conversation?” Mike asked. He leaned over to pull up my shirt and kiss my abdomen.
“No way was I going there,” I said. “But I skirted around it, talking about the agent who sort of babysat Lucy, and pretending I’d met her at a conference. The woman named Kathy Crain.”
“Why?”
“I just want to get him thinking about what he’s done,” I said. “Guilt is a powerful motivator. I’d love it if he fell on his sword and backed out of the race.”
“Wishful thinking,” Mike said. “He’s already dreaming of his name chiseled in stone over the entrance to the building. What else?”
“Well, Jake. I talked about Jake when Zach gave me his business card,” I said. “I pretended to be surprised that his middle name was Jacob.”
“Sounds like you didn’t hold your hand as close to your chest as you might have,” Mike said. “You weren’t there to tip him off, you know.”
“I think it was fine,” I said. “You can listen to the tape if you come to the office tomorrow.”
“Tape? I ripped that recorder right off your blouse, kid—for your own good—or don’t you remember?”
I sipped my Scotch and then smiled. “You’re always telling me not to be so impulsive,” I said. “But this time you were way off the mark.”
“How so?” Mike said, sitting up straight.
“The tech guys were concerned that when I chewed on my food it might interfere with reception on the recorder if they placed it too close to my mouth,” I said. “So they concealed the mini device in the third button down, not in the top one,” I said. “Not in the one you snagged.”
“You actually recorded your conversation with Zach Palmer, despite what I told you?” Mike asked.
I pointed at the spot on my chest where my cleavage started to show—the point where the recorder had been.
“Why not?” I said. “You think only detectives earn the right to go rogue?”
TWENTY-TWO
“Good morning,” I said, standing in front of the room of twenty-three grand jurors, arrayed before me in two semicircular rows of ten people, and three beyond them—one of whom was the foreman. “My name is Alexandra Cooper.”
This was the first case I was presenting to them since returning from my leave of absence. It
was essential for me to get started in the grand jury. I couldn’t issue subpoenas without the signature of the foreman, nor did I have the power to compel witnesses to talk to me, while they could be summoned to appear before the grand jury with ease.
I slipped in ahead of my colleagues who were in the adjacent waiting room with witnesses for their own cases—cops and civilians—who would testify in expectation that the jurors would return an indictment, which was required in all felony cases in New York State.
Some jurors were still reading newspapers and noshing on bagels or egg sandwiches. A few were attentive, spotting a lawyer they hadn’t seen before, and looking me over in my navy blue pinstripe skirt suit, ready to hear the charges.
“I would like to open an investigation into the matter regarding John Doe,” I said. There was no point naming Zachary Palmer before I had proof certain that he had committed these crimes.
“At this time, the charges include rape in the third degree and sexual abuse in the third degree,” I said. I had opted to start with statutory crimes rather than the far more inflammatory first-degree forcible rape charges that Lucy had alluded to when she visited New York six years ago.
I was used to what happened when jurors heard the word “rape.” Newspapers were flattened on the wooden panels in front of each chair and the breakfast food was bagged and put beneath their seats. It always got the full attention of everyone in the room, but I hadn’t expected the hands of four women jurors to shoot up in the air the instant I stated the crime.
“I usually prefer questions after the presentation,” I said, “but I’m happy to come to each of you and take them individually.”
There was no point tainting the panel with comments from any of the jurors, so I climbed the three steps to get to the first woman.
I leaned in close to her and asked her what she wanted to tell me.
“Look, I’ve going through a rough patch since last year, with all this Me Too business,” the woman said. “I had a bad experience with a guy when I was in college, twenty years ago, and I’m finally dealing with it in therapy. I just don’t think I’m the right person to sit on a case like this.”
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