Blood Oath

by Linda Fairstein

  “Not quite yet,” I said. “I have to see if I can get a presentation together to get in the grand jury this term.”

  In New York County, grand juries sat for half a day, five days a week, for an entire month. But if an assistant DA couldn’t complete a case within that time, he or she had to withdraw it and start all over the next month. I feared we were too close to the end of the term to get it done.

  “Would you do it NA?” he asked.

  Non-arrest, Mercer meant.

  “I’d have to do it that way,” I said, folding up the wrapper from my turkey sandwich to throw it out, taking a swig of my Diet Coke. “I’d be excoriated by the media for grandstanding or just trying to take down a political opponent if I dragged Zach out of a station house in handcuffs, and then couldn’t make a case.”

  “But you have to give him notice, don’t you?”

  I got up from my desk and started to pace the length of my office, back and forth. “Yes. I have to give him the opportunity to testify in the grand jury.”

  “You want to step down from this and hand it to someone else?”

  “Not a prayer of a chance,” I said.

  “You don’t have to go mano a mano with him,” Mercer said. “It’s not a personal thing.”

  “No, but it would be a sign of weakness that everyone seems to be looking for in me, now that I’m back.”

  “Then you’ve got to stick with Lucy through thick and thin,” Mercer said. “This kid has picked herself up from the ashes and managed to soldier on. You can’t flip-flop on your decision to try the case down the line.”

  “When have you known me to do that?” I asked, putting my hands on my hips and squaring off with Mercer. “All I have to deal with is the fact that, like her aunt told me, Lucy’s manipulative. She’s lied in the past and she’ll lie to us. That’s the one thing we can’t tolerate.”

  “Chill, Alexandra,” Mercer said. “Let’s start with your wish list.”

  I walked back to my desk and started writing on a fresh pad, as I spoke the order of play to Mercer.

  “Decide how and when to tell Zach Palmer he’s a target,” I said. “Include an extra two days for him to get counsel, which will be a top dog like Lem Howell or Martin London.”

  “Damn,” Mercer said. “That’ll be a test of wills.”

  “Just be there to catch me if I fall,” I said. “I can draft subpoenas today. I’ll need all the police reports from Lucy’s arrest six years ago. I’ll need all the police and FBI reports from the Welly Barnes case—regarding Lucy and everyone else. Long-range issue will be mapping out the whereabouts of Lucy, Zach, Kathy Crain, and the other agents as they moved around the country.”

  “You think you can get that evidence admitted?” Mercer asked. “The stuff he did to Lucy in Iowa and Utah?”

  “I have to get it in,” I said. “It establishes the entire chain of events for Lucy to come to New York and be victimized here. It’s the reason Zach called her right before his wedding to see if all was good with her, making sure nothing would implode on his way down the aisle.”

  “Search warrants?”

  “Dicey, at best,” I said. “Lucy suggests that Zach might have souvenirs, like the photographs and notes, but that info is really stale at this point. He’s moved homes—to marry and now to divorce—and has had offices in a variety of places. I’d have to develop that from other witnesses, if they come forward, or if he talks to me.”

  “What’s your smoking gun going to be?” he asked.

  I laughed. “I haven’t found that yet.”

  “You need something incontrovertible,” Mercer said, “to back up all the problems of time passed by and memories gone weak. You need the dude’s DNA on an old pair of Lucy’s jeans or a bloody knife of sorts.”

  “Keep on keeping on, Detective Wallace. I don’t mind that you’re dreaming,” I said, “but I think we’ll be doing this one bare bones.”

  “That may be,” he said, “but any juror who doesn’t melt when Lucy testifies would have to have a heart of stone.”

  Mercer and I had been through this too many times together to know that what we wanted for our witness wouldn’t necessarily come to pass. Some would see the early years of contact the way Zach described it to Lucy—as a consensual affair, even though she was below the age of legal consent.

  Still others would blame her for all of it. The Great Salt Lake seduction, the runaway bus trip to New York, the shoplifting of lingerie meant best for a tryst, the fact that she tracked her predator down and willingly went—alone—to his apartment, and her failure to make a more timely outcry than this week, when she was picked up by police on an old warrant. I knew what kind of ugly defense could be mounted against these charges, and while it took me the trust of a dozen jurors to convict, it would only take one person who blamed Lucy to hang the rest.

  It was two thirty by the time Max delivered Lucy back to us. They had eaten at one of the delicious little restaurants on Pell Street, and Max had walked her charge all around Chinatown to show her the sights—as well as to relax her.

  “You did really well this morning, Lucy,” I said.

  “Does that mean you both believe me?” she said, lowering herself into the chair. “Are you going to arrest Jake? I mean, Zachary Palmer.”

  “We do believe you and at some point soon he’ll be charged with these crimes,” I said. “Let’s just get a little more done today.”

  It was details I needed most, and any facts that could be corroborated by independent evidence. The law no longer required the latter, as it used to do, but jurors wanted as much of it as they could have.

  I broke down the visit to Jake’s apartment six years ago, second by second, word by word, and touch by touch.

  Lucy was fading by four thirty and I understood why. “We can pick this up on Friday,” I said, figuring to give her the next day off. “The worst is over, I promise you.”

  “How about my things?” she asked.

  “You bet,” I said. “Where were we? I’m keeping the fake ID and the MetroCard and the train receipt, okay?”

  “How about my money?”

  I counted out the eighty dollars and passed it to her. “Then there’s this two-dollar bill,” I said. “Very neat. You don’t see many of those.”

  “It’s my good-luck charm,” Lucy said, taking the bill from me. “At least, I used to think it was.”

  “It will be again,” Mercer said. “Hang on to it.”

  “Here’s the handkerchief,” I said. “It’s got your initials on it, I see.”

  Lucy’s aunt had explained that to me on the phone. I wanted to see if she confirmed the same story, but mostly I was getting to the ring, and whether Lucy would admit it belonged to her cousin.

  The handkerchief was dirty and worn, but when Lucy smoothed it out, you could see the embroidered initials—LJ—made with lavender thread against the white cotton.

  “My mother made this for me, right before she died,” Lucy said. “I keep it with me all the time.”

  “That’s a lovely keepsake to have,” I said. “Then there’s this gold ring. Where did you get this?”

  “You’re not going to like my answer,” Lucy said, “but I stole it. It belonged to my cousin Callie. I guess I was just so jealous of her for having it that the night I ran away, I took it from next to her bed.”

  “Actually,” I said, “I like that answer a lot. All we want from you is the truth, and that’s what you told us.”

  I got up from my desk to walk Lucy to the door so that Max could accompany her back to the Streetwork facility. I was still holding the ring.

  “Maybe you’ll have the opportunity to give this back to Callie,” Mercer said, pointing at it.

  “Do you want to wear it now?” I asked.

  Lucy shook her head. “When this is done, I’d like to try to
mend things with my aunt and with Callie. It’s safer in your drawer, I think.”

  “Smart idea,” Mercer said. “We’ll help you get back with your aunt when you’re ready. That’s the kind of thing I like to do.”

  Lucy was wrapping the handkerchief around her fingers as we walked toward Max’s office.

  “You’ll probably think this is stupid,” she said to me, holding her hand up in the air, “but this is the handkerchief I used to stop the bleeding when Jake cut me.”

  “You mean—?”

  “Yeah, ten years ago, when we made the oath. He nicked his fingertip and rubbed it into the bloody palm of my hand, like I told you,” Lucy said. “When I didn’t stop bleeding right away, I crumpled this up and made a fist.”

  I stopped in my tracks. “May I see it again?”

  “Sure,” she said. “If you look right over here, there’s still some of the bloodstain on it.”

  “But you must have washed this hundreds of times.”

  Lucy laughed. “Not so many as you think. I didn’t have a washing machine except when I was at my aunt’s house, and mostly I’ve been afraid that the lavender threads—see how pale they are?—would lose all their color.”

  I was studying the faint pink tinge on a three-inch square of the handkerchief.

  “Lavender was my mother’s favorite color,” she went on.

  Then I pointed to the spot with my pinky. “You think this is blood?”

  “I know it is.”

  “Yours, and maybe some drops of Jake’s mixed in it?”

  “Probably so.”

  “Did you ever tell him about this handkerchief, way back then? I mean, did you tell him that it was very special to you because your mother made it for you?”

  “I could have told him,” Lucy said. “But who knows if he’d remember?”

  “Would you mind very much if I held on to this a little longer?” I asked. “I promise you I won’t lose it. It could be a very important piece of our case.”

  “That old thing could be evidence against Jake?” Lucy said. “How my mother would have loved that. Do you think it’s something about the blood?”

  “Well, if I’d gotten my hands on the handkerchief ten years ago, we’d be looking for Jake’s DNA mixed into that blood sample,” I said, with a new lilt in my voice. “And even though this stain is there, it’s sure to be contaminated by now.”

  “So it’s no good?”

  “It would have been ideal if you’d put it away right after you used it, and never touched it again until now.”

  “That would have been impossible,” Lucy said.

  “I like the reason you kept it with you. But Jake doesn’t have to figure that out. For all he knows, you left it in a drawer at your aunt’s house,” I said. “I might even tell him that.”

  Lucy chewed on the corner of her lip. “I don’t understand why it’s okay for you to tell lies, but it’s wrong for me to do it.”

  “Because I’m not going to lie to him, Lucy,” I said. “But a bloodstained handkerchief that a prosecutor could threaten to submit to a lab for DNA testing will make for a powerful bluff. And I’m always game for a bluff.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  “You got the bloody knife?” Mike asked.

  We were sitting at the corner table in the front room at Primola with Mercer, waiting for Vickee Eaton to arrive.

  “Well,” I said, “it’s an old threadbare piece of cotton that seems to have some blood on it—degraded, to be sure. But it might be a way to start a conversation with Zachary Palmer about Lucy.”

  “You opened that door pretty wide when you met with him last night,” Mercer said. “Talking about Kathy Crain and Josie Breed, dropping the Jake name on him—I’m kind of surprised you didn’t raise his dander up. He’s a fool, but he’s not stupid.”

  “Did she let you listen to the tape?” Mike asked Mercer.

  “Yeah. Alex got a lot out of the guy.”

  “Sounds like you missed the message about subtlety,” Mike said, raising a glass to me. “It’s hard to bluff when you start showing all your cards.”

  “That’s not what I did,” I said. At least, I didn’t think that I had.

  “The last thing you want to do is put him in a position to take action.”

  I raised my Dewar’s and we clinked. “I’m the one who’s poised for action,” I said, reeling off the steps I needed to take before I headed into the grand jury.

  “How about his elementary school disciplinary records,” Mike said, pushing back from the table. “You going for them, too? Or you think you have enough to bury him with that list you just recited?”

  “This will do for starters,” I said, getting up to follow him to Giuliano’s office, downstairs from the dining room. “C’mon, Mercer. Back me up.”

  The owner, Giuliano, had a small TV in his office, which he lets us use to satisfy Mike’s addiction to Jeopardy! The three of us crowded in, standing room only, and waited for Trebek to announce the category.

  “In case you’ve just joined us, tonight’s Final Jeopardy! category is ‘Astronomy,’ folks. ‘Astronomy.’”

  “That doesn’t bode well for any of us,” I said.

  “It’ll still cost you twenty bucks to be in the game,” Mike said.

  “I’m good for it.”

  Trebek revealed the answer. NATIVE AMERICAN NAME FOR OCTOBER’S FULL MOON.

  Then he went on talking while two of the contestants looked as puzzled as I was, and the third one began to scrawl a question on his screen. “That’s right, folks. Each month’s full moon has a particular name, and this month’s October moon—coming up any day now—is the one we’re looking for.”

  The annoying music played in the background while I scratched my head for the right question.

  “What’s the harvest moon?” Mercer asked.

  “That would be wrong,” Mike said.

  “Isn’t that September?” I said.

  “Yeah, Madame Bluff. So what’s this month?” Mike said.

  “I give up.”

  Mike gave his reply, beating all three contestants. “What is the hunter’s moon?”

  Trebek consoled the three losers and came up with the same name as Mike. “That’s right,” the show host repeated. “Named by Native Americans centuries ago, because it’s the time of year when sunset and moonrise are closest together, and the light at night is brightest.”

  “Prime time for hunters,” Mike said, clicking off the television. “The tall grasses are gone, so the animals are more exposed than in summer, and the sky is bright all evening.”

  I followed Mike to the staircase. “And you know that factoid because—?”

  “Book of common knowledge, blondie,” he said, blowing me off with a toss of his hand. “Next week we’ll have Zach Palmer in our sights, under an October hunter’s moon. There’ll be nowhere for him to hide.”

  When I turned the corner and rounded the long bar, I saw Vickee at our table. She got up to give her husband a warm embrace, and to exchange kisses with Mike and me.

  Vickee was the daughter of a much-decorated detective and the wife of one of the very best men on the force. She knew what a high-stakes game she played in by working for the deputy commissioner of public information.

  Mercer had ordered a glass of Pinot Grigio for her. She seemed so tense—taut muscles in her face and stiff body language—that I assumed she’d had a bear of a day.

  “Everything okay?” I asked.

  Vickee grimaced. “You first.”

  I let Mercer give her a quick update on our progress with Lucy and my conversation with Zach Palmer last night.

  “I don’t want to distract you from your goal,” she said. “Sounds like you’re making headway. But you need to know this.”

  “What is it?” I asked.

&n
bsp; Vickee inhaled. “You’ve all got to protect me on this. There are only half a dozen of us who know it as of right now.”

  “Cone of silence,” Mike said, raising his right hand, in far too light a response.

  “I’m serious,” Vickee said.

  “It’s Francie,” I said, flattening my hands on the table. “It’s about Francie, isn’t it? Has her condition worsened?”

  “Still critical,” Vickee said. “No change at all. But the docs know what happened to her now, and it changes everything.”

  Vickee waited until Giuliano set the wineglass down in front of her with his customary “Salute” and walked away.

  “Francie was poisoned,” Vickee said. “That’s what put her in a coma.”

  “But she was frothing at the mouth and convulsing,” I said. “What kind of poison does that?”

  “A pretty deadly one,” Vickee said. “Francie’s barely clinging to life. She was poisoned by a potent nerve agent—the most lethal one ever developed.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  “How could that happen to Francie Fain?” I asked.

  I wasn’t challenging the facts, but I was ignorant of what kind of toxin had such violent effects. I imagined the result of ingesting poison would lend itself to a more tranquil death, like in the cozy mystery novels of Agatha Christie.

  “I can answer that in three words. I can’t get my brain around the Russian expression, but the translation is easy,” Vickee said. “‘Kiss of death.’”

  “Am I supposed to know what that is?” I asked her.

  “How’s your Russian, Coop?” Mike asked, interrupting us. “‘Kiss of death’ is the English translation of the Russian poison used against Francie—the latest in a long line of deadly chemical weapons.”

  “A nerve agent, developed by the Russians,” Vickee said. “An extremely powerful nerve agent. At four o’clock today I’d never heard of it, and now I’m practically an expert.”

  “Go back to your news stories,” Mike said. “Think nerve agents as military weapons.”

  “Out of my reach,” I said. “Help me.”