Alex Cooper 01 - Final Jeopardy

by Linda Fairstein

  My eyes were closed now and I nodded my head in answer to his question.

  “Tell me what happened, Alex. Tell me how you’ve been involved and what they’ve put you through all week.”

  I pushed away from the wall, looked at Jed, and pressed my finger to his lips to silence him as I led him by the hand into the bedroom. “I’ll tell you everything you want to know later, but for now, I have other plans.”

  “But did they actually think the killer was after you and not Isabella? Do they think they know who did it?”

  “Really, Jed, you’re the one who’s always telling me not to talk about my cases all the time, and when I finally want to leave it behind me, you become the Grand Inquisitor.”

  “I’m sorry, darling. I’ve just felt so useless being in Paris while all this was going on, worried about your safety, and…”

  “If you want me to prove to you that I’m absolutely fine, you’re going to have to take off all your clothes right now and save the conversation for dinner.”

  “Sounds fair to me,” Jed responded, starting to undress. “I’ve been traveling for hours—you’ll be much happier with your suggestion if you give me a few minutes for a shower.”

  I watched him undress and smiled at the familiar sight of his lean body. It had only been three months since we’d met in June, but the attraction had been immediate and intense, and I was relieved to know he would hold me and tether me to reality as the circumstances of Isabella’s death continued to unravel.

  “I didn’t have any time for shopping, but I just want you to know that I thought of you wherever I was,” Jed said, smiling as he tossed bottles of Chanel 22 perfume and body lotion onto the bed and headed for the bathroom.

  “Thank God for airport duty-free shops,” I laughed and unwrapped the cellophane from the sharp black-and-white packages. Nothing could distract Jed from his deal-making when the numbers were on the table and the stakes were climbing—so I was delighted that he had thought of me at an odd moment during his trip. As he knew, shopping was a passion of mine, and there weren’t many things other than crime scenes that could dull my interest in a good sale. I was pleased that he had remembered my brand and that he had tried to cheer me up with these luxurious tokens.

  I heard the shower water running, so I slipped out of Isabella’s satiny garment, dropping the pajamas onto the floor, and opened the bathroom door. Steam had filled the tiny room and clouded the mirror completely. I held apart the white eyelet curtain and stepped in with Jed, whose head was arched up so that the hot water was spraying in his face and running down the length of his frame. I took the bar of soap from its niche in the tile wall and began to lather his shoulders and back. He sighed approval and shifted his body, so that his hands leaned against the front of the shower and his head dropped forward between his arms. My hands gently rubbed every inch of his torso, then down each leg and back up to the top of his thighs, like a slow wet massage on a very compliant subject.

  I stood as Jed let go of the wall against which he had braced himself and turned to face me, his penis fully erect, but his eyes barely able to see through their water-soaked lids. I reached up to kiss him and again we embraced, tasting each other and letting the shower rinse me free of any thoughts except the man and the moment. He entered me and all my fantasies of a slow and languorous reunion on my comfortable bed yielded to the reality of our eager bodies finding each other and mating against the slick tile wall.

  When we released each other a minute later, I turned off the water and we stepped out to wrap ourselves in heavy bath sheets. I left Jed to shave and change and went back to my bedroom to put on my more familiar costume of leggings and a shirt.

  Jed followed me in after he had dressed. I hugged him to me and told him how much I had missed him during the week. We rolled back onto my bed together, and I let him kiss the dark circles under my eyes, which I teased him that he had caused by making me sleep alone. I rested in his arms, delighted at not having to talk or explain or resolve any of the problems which had plagued me since he had last been with me in this room so many days ago.

  “Can I fix you a drink?” he asked, as I finally untangled myself and started for the kitchen, prepared to nuke our dinner in my microwave.

  “Sure, if you’ll join me.”

  “I think I’ll just have a glass of wine with dinner. Between the jet lag and your magic-fingers-welcome-home treatment, I’m not going to last too long this evening. Is that very rude?”

  “I’m so glad you’re here, Jed, of course not. I haven’t slept in three days, so we’ll just eat and go to bed early.”

  “When I got off the plane I almost changed my mind and went directly to my own apartment. I never thought I’d have the strength to, well, to…”

  “I’d have been so hurt if you hadn’t come here.”

  “But, Alex, I want you to understand that I had to come here, too, for my own sake. Not just because you needed me. Because of everything that’s happened. Now it’s clear to me that I really love you and that I had to be with you—and that once I held you in my arms there wasn’t any way I couldn’t make love to you.”

  My mind scrambled for a diversion from the direction this conversation had started to take. Our romance had progressed with great speed, and for weeks it seemed that I had been more anxious to engage Jed’s sentiments than he had wanted. The physical attraction had been a perfect fit, and I knew he would be slow to involve and yield his reserve. He had left Santa Barbara earlier this year when his marriage split up, and he was plagued by thoughts about the effects of the divorce on his two kids. By late summer, I knew I was falling in love with him, once he had opened himself up with a warmth and playfulness that I found irresistible.

  Still, I reminded myself that at the height of my crisis he had been an ocean away and unwilling to cancel the deal he was negotiating to wing his way to my side. It excited me physically and calmed me mentally to have him with me tonight, but I wasn’t ready to confuse it with loving him.

  “Darling, I wish I could have dropped my clients or called in one my assistants, but you know…”

  “Sssssh. Stop apologizing. Do you think I’m going to say I’m sorry for pouncing on you in the shower?”

  “Nothing to apologize for. I didn’t seem to mind very much, did I? Kind of reminds me of that story you told me about your first rape trial—I think you were just showing off.”

  The first sex crimes case I had ever taken to trial was a ground ball—so easy the jury should have reached a verdict without ever leaving the box. The victim was a twenty-one-year-old college graduate on her way to her first job interview in a towering office building on lower Broadway, in the middle of the afternoon. As she entered the elevator to go upstairs a man got on with her and—as the elevator started to move—pressed the button to stop it between floors. Before the startled young woman could react, the defendant grabbed her by the neck and slammed her head against the wall to daze her and render her semi-conscious. Then, as he held her pinned in place with one arm, he lifted her dress, ripped down her panty hose, unzipped his pants, and penetrated her while she stood up—slumped in the corner of the elevator.

  Impatient workers on the ground floor kept ringing for the stuck car, which finally returned to the first floor. When the doors opened, the girl screamed and the defendant bolted for the street. An off-duty cop—the building coincidentally housed the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association offices—chased the rapist for two blocks and dragged him back to the scene where other officers arrested him.

  No wonder the bureau chief had given it to me as a first trial. The defendant’s attorney made a very weak argument for mistaken identification, and there didn’t seem to be any reason to worry about the outcome of the case. The jury got the charge at noon, and should have been back before lunch. By ten that night, we all knew some issue was giving them trouble. When the twelve very angry men and women returned with a guilty verdict close to midnight, several of them asked to talk with me.<
br />
  The hang-up? An elderly man—married and the father of four children—simply didn’t believe the victim’s story, even though the defense had conceded that the rape had occurred exactly as she described it. Number eight told the others that she had to be lying: no one could have intercourse in a standing position—it just wasn’t possible! Eleven jurors had spent the rest of the day arguing with this old-fashioned gent, whose four offspring had been conceived in the missionary position. He was convinced that was the only manner in which sexual coupling could be accomplished… until jurors three (a thirty-six-year-old masseuse) and eleven (a forty-three-year-old mailman) volunteered to demonstrate to him, in the interest of justice, exactly what the victim had described.

  From that experience I learned that a prosecutor could never assume any aspect of a case, especially when it comes to the complicated world of sexual assault. Jurors bring to the courtroom with them their own biases, prejudices, and personal knowledge, which was frequently quite limited. And the biggest problem is their natural impulse to confuse consensual sexual events, familiar within their own lives, with the very different phenomenon of forced, assaultive acts. Never again have I presented an event to a jury without using my closing argument to explore the distinctions between what I could suppose were their own private habits and the criminal elements of the acts charged.

  Jed poured me a drink while I opened a bottle of wine for him. I set out the meal, lit the candles, and tried to bring the conversation around to what he had seen and done in Paris and at which restaurants he had eaten.

  But I had put off the obvious topic of conversation for as long as I could and he was determined to be brought up-to-speed.

  “Alexandra, don’t you want to tell me what happened? Do they know who killed Isabella?”

  Like anything else, I had answered this question so many times since Wednesday evening that I could respond quite easily at this point. I summarized the details of her death and the investigation. “No suspects right now. At least none that they’re telling me about. Ex-husband, psycho co-stars, pen pal psychiatrist, obsessed fan—maybe even a secret lover. What’s your guess? I think I’m too close to it to see it clearly.”

  “I didn’t know she’d ever been married. And what lover? Had she told you about him?”

  “No. Talk about using me. You know the crap she gave me about being stalked and needing to get away? Well, she neglected to tell me that she was taking someone with her. A guy.”

  “Maybe it was platonic, a friend—”

  “Well, he left some very unplatonic condoms in my garbage. I suppose if I look at it scientifically instead of with my gut, at least when they get a suspect they can always test what’s in the condoms for DNA.”

  “Don’t the police know who he is? Didn’t anybody see them together?”

  “Not many people. That’s the beauty of the Vineyard.” Jed had not been to the island with me yet because he had spent most of his free weekends commuting back to the West Coast to spend time with his kids. “Anyway they’re talking to everyone who Isabella ever crossed in her inimitable fashion, so I think this is going to be a long haul.”

  “But are they sure the killer was after Isabella and not you? That’s what had me tortured when I couldn’t get here.”

  “Now it seems quite obvious, but it was truly frightening before we could reconstruct the timetable. I was pretty distraught when I called you that first time.”

  I knew Jed had been harassed by a stalker during his brief foray into politics last year, when he lived in California. “I remember those stories you told me about that woman who had followed you all around during the primary.” He had been a candidate in the Senate race, and like most people in prominent positions had attracted a few nuts in his search for legitimate support. “You know what sitting ducks men and women become when they achieve some kind of celebrity status. Most of the time it’s just a nuisance, but quite harmless. Then one of those psychos loses all connection to reality and the result is suddenly lethal.”

  “I tell you, when you’re in the middle of it, there’s nothing worse. Every time I was giving a speech or standing on a reception line, I’d look up and she’d be there. Nothing threatening, mind you. Just the opposite. She attended a single campaign rally in Century City—probably because there were supposed to be a lot of movie stars there—shook my hand once, and was smitten.”

  “Hey, she’s only human,” I teased.

  “Yeah, well that’s half the problem. Nobody took it seriously because she told everyone we were lovers.”

  “And?”

  “Of course not. She was completely delusional. But nobody—my staff, the police, private security—nobody thought it was worth worrying about because she was a woman, and because I think most of them really believed we had been having some kind of affair. She was smart, reasonably attractive, knew my travel schedule better than my staffers did. She was everywhere I was supposed to be. They all knew my marriage was hanging by a string and they just winked at each other whenever I tried to deny that something was going on.”

  “What did you do about it?”

  “Got an order of protection, finally. I sure as hell didn’t want to do that in the middle of a campaign—prosecute someone for being at my events. Hell, some days she was the only one who showed up. And paid to do it.”

  We both laughed. “One of the reasons I was thrilled to move to New York for CommPlex was to put all that behind me. I assume she’s still in graduate school in L.A., and that she’s attached herself to some other unsuspecting soul. Anyway, I know how distracting and unsettling that kind of harassment is, even if I didn’t know it was so dangerous. Now I’ve got you to protect me—I went right to the top.”

  Jed got up from the table and came around to my side. “Alex, I’ll never let you down again, I promise,” he said, as he leaned over behind me, brushed the damp strands of hair away from my neck, and kissed me softly below my ear until I turned and offered him my mouth. We left our uneaten dinner on the table, carried the wine bottle and glasses into my bedroom, and stripped down a second time to get under the covers.

  “Forgive me, darling, but I don’t think I’ll be much good to you now,” he whispered as he let me cradle his head on my breast. “I’m really exhausted.” He was asleep almost as soon as his eyes closed, and I looked at the clock, noting that it was barely ten as we settled in for the night.

  I stared at the dark, silent figure lying beside me, and thought about how my life had changed in the three months since we had started to date. I met Jed through my closest friend from law school, Jordan Goodrich. Jordan had left Skadden, Arps to go into the investment banking business and worked a few deals with Jed on the other side. When Jed’s twelve-year marriage broke up and he moved to New York, Susan Goodrich began to invite him to some of her dinner parties. She obeyed my rule about no blind dates, but Susan had grown to like Jed and was convinced that I would, too, so she was intent on coming up with an easy introduction.

  In mid-June, Susan rented a movie theater on East Sixty-fourth Street to surprise Jordan for his thirty-fifth birthday. The party was a screening of his favorite movie, Thunder Road, with a fifties theme and everyone in fifties dress, playing pinball and dancing to Coasters’ music for hours after the film. I saw Jed dancing with Susan, and he was better than anybody on the floor. With my ponytail swinging, my turquoise poodle skirt and matching twin-set ready to move, I asked him to rock-and-roll when the record changed and we danced about ten cuts before we stopped to exchange introductions.

  When the party was over, the four of us hopped in a cab—despite our ridiculous clothes—and went downtown to the Gotham, where we sat for hours telling stories and trying to catch up on each other’s lives. The Gotham then became “our place” for dinners together or entertaining friends as the romance flourished despite our mutual reluctance—my fear of losing someone forever if I dared to love him too much, and Jed’s fear of involvement so soon after a disastrous divorce.<
br />
  I thought, as I studied him in sleep, that perhaps this crisis would be the path for each of us to become more open to the other. I needed him to come to the Vineyard with me—I had struggled for too long to keep my lovers away from where I had been happiest with Adam, and with the passage of so many years that division had become too artificial and unnatural. I also wanted Jed to let me understand what had happened to end his marriage, and to let me meet the children who meant so much to him.

  Now that Jed had expressed his love for me tonight—something I hadn’t felt ready to do yet—I was confident we were on our way to a more secure relationship, and I eased myself onto my side next to his body. I hugged him tightly against me and finally gave myself to pleasant dreams, unpeopled by the stalkers and rapists and murderers who loomed before me every day.

  Chapter

  12

  “Was it good for you?”

  “Mike, there aren’t words to describe how good it was,” I responded when Chapman called the apartment in the middle of Sunday afternoon. “If you stop playing with yourself and give some girl a chance, maybe you’ll find out.”

  “Am I interrupting something warm and wonderful right now?”

  “No, Mike, he’s gone. This is fine.”

  “Gone? Already? Jeez, I figured you two would still be making up for lost time. The guy doesn’t have a problem, does he, blondie? Not a long-ball hitter?”

  “No problem, Mikey. Now why don’t you pretend to be mature and tell me what’s on your mind.”

  Jed and I had awakened at daybreak. I was happy and excited, and we made love again, unmindful of what the rest of the world was worrying about. We had coffee together and read the Sunday paper, but he left early to catch up on the mail and messages that had accumulated in his office while he was out of town, before going to his apartment to unpack and settle in for the work week ahead.