Fairstein, Linda - Silent Mercy

I didn’t disturb the sheets. I pulled back the duvet and slipped in beneath it, knowing that I needed to calm down but aware that I was far too restless to sleep. Daylight would soon flood the large windows, so for an hour, I closed my eyes and tried to transport myself to a more tranquil surround.

Photographs on my night table allowed me a brief escape from the night’s dreadful scene and Mike’s unpleasant prophecy. My parents smiled at me from the porch of the beach home on the Caribbean island to which they had retired, and my brothers’ kids were oblivious to the camera lens as they body-surfed in the Atlantic during a visit to my summer house on Martha’s Vineyard. My lover, Luc Rouget, waved from his red convertible in the tiny village of Mougins, near the Côte d’Azur in the south of France, and thankfully didn’t seem to be an ocean away when I rested the silver picture frame next to me on the pillow.

I must have dozed despite my apprehension of revisiting visions of the body in my nightmares. My alarm sounded at seven, and I allowed myself another hour after listening to the headlines — still vague and devoid of essential facts — on the local all-news station.

At eight, the time I was usually at my desk in the criminal courthouse in lower Manhattan, I got up and showered. I dressed for the trial, in a gray, chalk-striped suit with a pleated skirt and a mantailored ivory silk blouse. Lyle Keets, the trial judge, was an old-fashioned gentleman who liked all the niceties of the practice of law as it was done forty years ago — professional attire was almost as important to him as professional conduct. He had once forbidden a colleague of mine to reenter his trial part in slacks after a juror remarked that he had been distracted throughout the proceedings by the tight panty line he could see as she stood behind the lectern.

I had missed rush hour, so I grabbed a yellow cab for the fifteen-minute ride down the FDR to the courthouse.

“Morning, Ms. Cooper,” one of the uniformed cops on security said as I passed through the metal detector at the One Hogan Place entrance to the building. “Half a day, huh?”

It was easier to smile and nod at him than expect him to have linked my night’s activity to the morning news.

My office was on the eighth floor of the massive courthouse structure, just across the hallway from the district attorney’s executive wing. I had enormous respect for Battaglia, whose long tenure and innovative policies as Manhattan’s chief prosecutor had made him a legend in law enforcement. The pioneering Sex Crimes Unit, created three decades earlier, was one of the jewels in his crown. Battaglia was not a micromanager. He left daily details of running investigations in the hands of me and my staff of dedicated lawyers, but he insisted on being kept up to speed on any high-profile matters that would affect his standing in the community or his political base.

“You’re running late.” My secretary of many years, Laura Wilkie, knew when not to waste words. I rounded the corner into my office and she followed with a handful of phone messages.

“Sorry. I thought I told you Keets had a dental emergency to deal with.”

“You did. But I didn’t know you’d be out with my boyfriend half the night.”

Laura had an unrequited crush on Mike Chapman. There were days I think she came to work just in order to talk with him on the phone, or be dazzled by his broad grin when he perched on the edge of her desk to flirt.

“He ratted me out already?” I untied my cashmere scarf and hung it with my coat behind the door.

“Nope. But Mercer did,” Laura said, reading from a list on her steno pad. “Told me to keep Mike’s calls away from you so you could get done what you needed to do in front of Keets.”

“Okay.”

“Nice thought, but I’ve already had to scratch the idea of giving you space. Battaglia skipped his meeting at City Hall to get in early. He wants you to brief him on the murder.”

“He picked up from the news that I was out on that? I didn’t think they made me.”

“No again. Some guy named Wilbur Gaskin called him to complain about how you were all browbeating a bunch of kids at his church. Gaskin’s on some charity board with the boss.”

“The guy was more upset about our questioning trespassers than finding a headless corpse on his doorstep?” I took the messages from her and flipped through them. “Have you Googled Gaskin for me?”

Laura handed me a two-page printout. She’d never let me see Battaglia unprepared, if she could help it. “The profile I found reads a tad self-serving. Doesn’t say what the man eats for breakfast, but gives you the rest.”

“Sound legit?” I brushed my hair and reapplied some lipstick in the small mirror above the coat hook.

“Banker. Family man. Do-gooder. Moved here from Atlanta a few years ago. I’ll run a broader search.”

“I’m looking for an ax murderer, Laura. See if you can find me one before the end of the day.”

“Got it. And Mercer told me to check with the press office. Tell them to let us know about calls coming in through the switchboard on the news reports.”

“Any yet?”

“Minor flood. Not a tsunami, so far.” Laura read from her notes. “Some of these missing girls go back months. Who’s going to vet the callers?”

“I’ll look these over. Can you find Nan Toth?” She was one of the most experienced lawyers in the unit with plenty of homicide experience, as well as one of my closest friends. Nan could be the liaison to the squad for the remainder of the day. “Maybe she’ll have time to take it from here.”

I grabbed a legal pad from my desk to list the things Battaglia would tell me to do. If the pastor of Mount Neboh had pulled out votes for his last election, I’d be reporting to the boss with updates four times a day and ordered not to step on the toes of any more parishioners.

“On the lighter side, Alex,” Laura said, checking off her notes, “am I confirming that reservation for four at Patroon Saturday evening? You still expecting Luc for the weekend?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. The owner of the restuaurant, Ken Aretsky, was a great friend to Luc and me, and Joan Stafford was one of my closest confidantes. She moved between homes in Washington, D.C., and Manhattan, and I was looking forward to spending time with her at dinner. “Fingers crossed. And will you ask Ken if we can dine in the wine cellar? It’s a surprise I’d like to arrange for Joan.”

“I thought I could make you smile. You’ll have your appetite back by then. If not, well, you can always just drink, right?”

Luc was a restaurateur whose father had been one of the most prominent men in that business on both sides of the Atlantic. While his main outpost was a destination spot for fine dining in Mougins, Luc’s plan was to reestablish Lutèce, his father’s great culinary creation that had once been New York’s swankest French restaurant. Until that time, the elegance and quality of Patroon made it his favorite dining experience whenever he reached Manhattan.

“Dead right about that,” I said, thinking about the assistant DA who was my trial partner in the case. “One more thing. Would you please call Barry Donner?”

“Damn. Back to business. I so prefer the social side of your life.”

“Me too.” I looked at my watch. “Ask him to meet me here at ten thirty so we have a little time together before we go up to court.”

“Sure. And Rose says the boss is in a perfectly good mood. Somebody just comped him four tickets for opening day at the stadium.”

“That always helps,” I said as I left Laura to pass yet another security officer in order to enter Battaglia’s inner sanctum.

Rose Malone, my good friend and the DA’s longtime executive assistant, was the most trusted person in the office. She was the personification of a loyal and devoted employee who knew where all the bones were buried, with the side benefits of great looks and style that belied her age. Battaglia and his predecessors had no secrets from Rose, nor did any young assistant who caught the attention — for better or worse — of the front office.