We drove down-island, away from the sheep pastures and rolling, open farmland of Chilmark. For almost three hours, we traversed the twenty-two-mile length of the island, in and out of the separate towns, stopping along the side of the road for Val to take photographs of scenes she wanted to paint later on. Sailboats tacked in the distant waters and lobstermen pulled up their traps in the local saltwater ponds.
Everything was beginning to blossom, not only the ancient lilac trees, which were everywhere, but azaleas and forsythia and beach plum. It was a spectacular time of year to be in residence, as all forms of life shed their bleak winter garb to reawaken in the deep green palette that spread from Vineyard Sound to the Atlantic Ocean.
By the time we pulled into the driveway, Nina had made a pot of coffee and was sunning herself on the deck. “No carpooling, no play dates, no sugar-coated breakfast cereal sticking to every countertop. I’ve forgotten what life can be like. Feeding time?”
“I left the motor running. I figured you’d have a craving for your favorite lunch.”
This time, we took the ride past Beetlebung and hooked around to the little fishing village of Menemsha. There was already a line of discerning eaters who knew that the tiny gray shack on the side of the road, with two picnic tables and a couple of benches on the porch, was the unlikely place to find the best fried clams in the world. The Quinn sisters, Karen and Jackie, sweated over their deep fryers with their staff at The Bite for a very short season, from Memorial Day weekend to Columbus Day, but managed in that time to draw islanders and tourists, hardworking locals and mega movie stars, to eat the most delicious seafood on the coast.
I stood on the back of the line while Nina and Val tried to stake out the end of a table. By the time I got to the screen door to place my order, Karen was already fuming about a customer.
“Clam rage. Can you imagine? We’re not even open twenty-four hours, and some guy just docked in a stinkpot is mouthing off about how long he’s had to wait for his oysters and calamari. What’ll it be, Alexandra?”
“We’ve got a first-timer with us. Definitely clams. But you better give us a sampling of everything else with it.”
The three of us sat at a small table, shaded by a striped beach umbrella, and devoured the finger food in ten minutes’ time.
“Ready to work off that fried stuff?” I asked, heading back to my hilltop. I parked the car and unlocked the door of the barn. I kept four ten-speeds there, since the island had miles of bike paths through forestland and along beach roads. “Val hasn’t seen Aquinnah. I thought we’d do it this way.”
We changed into biking clothes and mounted up, heading right out of my driveway and down the last steep, curving hill in Chilmark to cross over the town line. We rode past Herring Creek and out onto Moshup’s Trail, a stunning strip of roadway that ran along the ocean, named for a legendary Wampanoag Indian chief. We biked up to the lighthouse, then back past the Outermost Inn and down Lobsterville Road, before doubling back up the winding slope we had cruised down so easily at the start of our ride.
Nina rolled her bike into the garage. “Pooped. Done. Easy for you with your weekly ballet lesson, my friend. This is why we have cars in Beverly Hills, so we don’t have to do this stuff.”
“Your reward is waiting. Remember Pamela? Bodysense?”
“The massage therapist? Divine.”
“A house call for three. By the time we shower, she’ll be here. Then all I have to do is pick up dinner-already cooked for us-before seven.”
“Explain that part,” Val said.
“Larsen’s Fish Market, in Menemsha, will boil and split three lobsters for us, to be picked up steaming hot from the pot. Around the corner to the Homeport, for clam chowder and a wonderfully refreshing Key lime pie, and all we have to do is light the logs in the fireplace if you’d like a little ambience to go with your meal.”
While Val took the first massage, I went back on-line. There were several messages for me from friends in between blind solicitations for Viagra and products to enhance the size of my penis. Then I saw the one I wanted, from Omydarling.
I clicked on the symbol that saidRead Mail and the letter opened. Not exactly warm and friendly: “Who are you and why do you want to know?”
I typed a response. There was no point lying to Clem. I was not going to win him over any more quickly unless I revealed myself. “I’m a prosecutor in the office of the district attorney of New York County. If you give me your telephone number, I’d like to call you to explain my concern about Katrina.” I included my own number on the Vineyard, in hopes that Clem would trust me enough to call tonight. I hitSend, noting that it was four-thirty daylight saving time, and probably five hours later where the letter was being delivered.
When it was my turn to lie down on the massage table, I was too wired to relax. Often, it was my calves that were tight, from hours of doing trial work, standing in the courtroom in high heels. Today, Pamela worked the tense muscles that had knotted themselves in my neck and upper body.
Nina had started a fire in the living room and opened the first bottle of Sancerre by the time I got back with our dinner. I emptied the chowder into a pot on top of the stove, stirred it, and left it on low to heat up.
“Be honest. I’m just telling Val that I’ve saved you from at least four bad romances in the last decade. Is that fair?”
“Probably five.”
“Oh, yeah. I forgot about that horse’s ass you fell head over heels for when we spent the week in Aspen. What a con artist he was. Alex was ready to throw out her penal law and take up life as a ski bum. I practically had to use a winch to get her down the mountain and out of town.”
“I hate to think what I missed when I went for dinner if we’ve already raced through most of my men. Have we dissected Jake yet, or did you wait for me to do that?”
Val was quick to protest. “She was just giving me a summary of how close you two are, how long you’ve been friends. I envy you. I’ve never had the one great girlfriend who goes that far back with me.”
I couldn’t imagine my life without the loyalty and love of my dearest friend. We had been through every triumph and tragedy at each other’s side, and I had been able to confide in her about each decision-personal and professional-that had shaped my life.
I served the soup, opened the second bottle of wine, and then brought the platter of two-pound lobsters to the table. Nobody worked the meat out of every crevice of a crustacean better than Nina. She stopped talking to savor the sweet little legs, while Val went right on asking questions about each of us between bites.
“Jerry?” Nina answered as she ripped off a large claw and pulled the meat out of the cracked shell. “Summer after our freshman year at Wellesley, I was working at the State Department. Met him at a Fourth of July party.”
“And you’re still together, seventeen years later? I can’t think of any of my friends who are still with the guys they met in college.”
“Get back to Alex. This guy is so juicy and delicious.”
Like everyone else, Val tried to get gently around to why I wound up specializing in sex crimes prosecution.
“No, I’ve never been raped, if that’s what you’re asking. I came to the office to do public service when I graduated from law school. Battaglia runs the finest prosecutor’s office in the country, and I wanted to do trial work, to learn from the best.
“Sex crimes have had a terrible history in the criminal justice system of this country. Before the 1970s, the word of a woman was legally insufficient for a rape conviction, unlike any other crime. The laws of most states required independent proof-evidence from some other source to identify the attacker-before she was allowed to testify.”
“It must have been impossible to win cases back then.”
“Worse than that, they couldn’t even go to trial unless this corroboration existed. And all that was before there were evidence collection kits. DNA hadn’t been dreamed of as a scientific technique back then.”
“Very slowly. But because there were district attorneys like Battaglia, who believed in devoting resources to this issue when few others did, the woman who ran the unit for fifteen years before I took it over was given the backing to do creative things and begin to change the way these crimes were viewed by the legal system and by jurors. They were really aggressive about investigating these cases as partners with the NYPD, about changing the laws as well as informing public attitudes.”
“And you’ve stayed for so long. Doesn’t it get depressing?”
I smiled as I dipped my last piece of lobster tail in the drawn butter. “The good days far outweigh the bad, Val. You can’t imagine what it’s like when a woman puts herself in our hands, having lived through the terror of the assault. You start with detectives like Mercer, who are not only compassionate and emotionally supportive, but who are dogged investigators with the brains and talent to get the bastards who commit these crimes.
“Now there are trained sexual assault examiners at all the better hospitals, who know what medical evidence to look for. And then you come to my team. Best in the business. The victim usually fears that the system won’t work for her, or that even if the police catch the guy, he’ll never be convicted. But one of the lawyers in our unit takes her through it brilliantly. We’re all trained to handle every aspect of the case and make the survivor as comfortable as we can in the courtroom. And when we give her a victory? There’s nothing more rewarding anywhere in the practice of law.”
“Trust me,” Nina said, licking her fingers as she spoke, “she’s had offers. Alex has had the chance to work at some of the best legal firms in the city. And to go on the bench. She stays there because every day is a different challenge, because she really feels great about making the process work for people who’ve been victimized. The rest of us should look forward to going to work as much as her teammates do.”
I cleared the table and filled the dishwasher while my companions talked and Nina poured us each another glass of wine. When I got to the living room, Nina was stretched out on the floor in front of the fireplace, a pillow under her head, wineglass in her hand, and a box of chocolates by her side. “Here’s my contribution to the postprandial hour. I carried these truffles all the way from California.”
Val was resting on one of the sofas, and I lay down on a second one that faced the fire.
“So let’s turn the tables. What’s with you and Mr. Chapman?”
Val smiled and reached for a piece of candy. “He certainly came along at the right moment in my life. I’d just about reached an emotional bottom when he showed up next to me in the hospital. He was giving blood and I was getting it. I’m sure Alex has told you-”
Nina nodded.
“And now he’s given me something to live for. Besides that, it’s never dull. The man loves his work so much that I’m never quite sure when I’m going to have an uninterrupted evening with him. He’s always on, always engaged.”
“You’ve got a real mensch there, Val. Hang on to him.”
I listened to their conversation, thinking back on how close Mike and I had become in the ten years we had known each other. I knew him as a superb investigator and a faithful friend. I had never imagined him as a lover or husband. Val deserved this happiness, so why was I feeling so envious of her tonight?
“I’m trying, Nina. I don’t know if Alex told you, but I was married for six years. An architect, too-guy I met in grad school. He walked out on me. No fight, no other woman, no problem he could identify for me. It was the cancer. He couldn’t handle the fact that I lost a breast. He packed up and left two days after I was released from the hospital.”
Nina rolled over onto her stomach and stared at the fire. “Then there’s Mike. The most stereotypically macho exterior, but his gut is just loaded with sentiment.”
“You two have known him for so long. And he’s so close to you, Alex. How do you get him to open up about himself?”
I didn’t know how to answer her.
“I’ll bet Alex could give you hours on that. She and Mike have been through-”
I interrupted Nina before she could finish the sentence. “He’ll give it up when he’s ready. These last nine months, since September eleventh, have been devastating for him. You’ve been a godsend, Val. You were so fragile when he met you, and I think it gave him enormous strength, emotionally, to be able to wrap himself around you, to protect you, but at the same time to get such fortitude fromyour courage.”
“Everybody I know was crushed by the attacks.”
“But Mike was-well,impotent is the way he described it. It was one of the few times in his life that he couldn’t make things right in the world, catch the bad guys. And then there’s all that survivor guilt. The fact that he got out alive, and so many others didn’t.” I said quietly, “Val, you were someone to save, and he feels he helped to accomplish that.”
She stood up and came over to squeeze my hand. “He did do that. He doesn’t want to hear it from me, but he rescued me from wallowing in my own self-pity. I can’t tell you how much I love him.”
Nina propped herself up on her elbows. “Dammit. We’re just getting to the good part. You fading on us, Val?”
“Yes. All that country air and biking. And a bit too much vino. See you in the morning.”
Nina reached up to the glass-topped coffee table and emptied the wine bottle. “Sheesh. Just when I thought we’d be moving into the sex. Haven’t you always been curious about that? I bet Mike Chapman is one hell of a good lover.”
23
“Maybe you have been married too long.” I pulled a throw over my legs and sipped more of the Sancerre, having opened another bottle. “You do that at work? Look at the partner in the next office and undress him when he’s standing in front of you talking deals? I work with the man every day. I don’t fantasize about wrapping my legs around him and-”
“Bullshit. Maybe you should. How about that first guy you worked for when you got to the DA’s office? What did it take, about a minute for him to wriggle your pants off, for the simple price of an evening at Yankee Stadium, a ballpark hot dog, and a brew?” She was laughing as she tried to remember the story.
“Truce! I never did him. I just, well-”
“Fantasized all the time. See? I’m right.”
I heard Val come out of the upstairs bath and close the door to her room.
Nina whispered to me, “You promised you’d tell me what happened last September when we had some time alone together. I didn’t want to ask in front of Val.”
I had avoided the subject every time Nina had tried to bring it up. It was impossible to have witnessed the events of the World Trade Center attack and describe it without reliving the pain of that morning. Nina and I had lost a mutual friend who had been on one of the planes that hit the towers, and in our grieving for Eloise I had sidestepped the memories that had haunted me from the first moment of the crash.
Like most weekdays, I had gone to the office before eight o’clock, enjoying that hour or more of work before the phones started ringing and the corridors filled with lawyers, cops, and crime victims. My desk on the eighth floor of the district attorney’s office faced south, causing the room to flood with light from early morning on. The twin towers stood sentinel, just ten blocks farther south, visible beyond the gargoyles of our annex building’s rooftop twenty feet away, every time I glanced out the window.
I was composing a memo on my computer when the first plane hit. It sounded like a massive explosion and the glass panes behind me rattled and shook. At the time, there was only one other person-Judy Onorato-on my hallway, the executive wing of the trial division. My window shades were drawn to keep the sun’s glare off the screen of my monitor.
I stood up and raised the blinds, thinking that a car bomb had exploded and knowing that the courthouses-the one in which our offices were located, and the federal building across the street-had been targeted before. There from my
desk I could see the gaping black hole near the top of the north tower, less than ten blocks southwest of me. It was framed against the most exquisitely clear blue sky I had ever seen.
Judy ran into my office moments later. She had turned on the conference room television after hearing the blast. “Did you see it? A plane flew into the World Trade Center.”
We both figured it was an accident, a small aircraft that had veered off course and hit the tower. By the time the newscaster was confirming that in fact it had been a large jet, it was still impossible to believe. I couldn’t fathom that an entire 767 had been swallowed into the core of the tall building.
Phones started ringing everywhere on the hallway. I went to the desk of McKinney’s secretary-neither he nor she was in-since her console had all the executive extensions on it.
Lobby security was the first to call, telling me that they were locking the building and no one else would be allowed to enter. The Fifth Precinct, just east of the office, was ordering the evacuation of every office south of Canal Street.
Rose Malone was the next call. “Battaglia’s here. He wants McKinney immediately.”
McKinney was rarely in before ten on a good day, and it wasn’t even nine yet. “He’ll have to settle for me.” My heart was racing. The news stations were already broadcasting that witnesses were describing the crash as deliberate.
“Alex? Ignore the order to evacuate. How many people have you got over there?”
“Just two of us.”
“We’re law enforcement, not civilians. Whoever is here, stays here. Whatever the cops need, get it done.”
I turned to look out the window at the towers. As I watched, a colossal explosion ripped through the south tower, blasting a fireball in my direction. I dropped back into the desk chair and buried my face in my hands. The radio on the desk reported what I had not seen coming: a second plane that soared in from the south to cause the eruption I had witnessed.
The Bone Vault Page 21