Fairstein, Linda: Silent Mercy

For CYRUS R. VANCE, Jr., District Attorney, New York County, whose wisdom, vision, integrity, courage, loyalty, and gift for friendship inspire me

“ISthat you with the broad, Detective?” the fire captain shouted at Mike Chapman in the darkness of a frigid March night. “Keep her back there, across the street.”

“Got that, Coop? Stay put.” Mike left me in the middle of the double-wide roadway, wedged between unmarked police cars and bright red fire trucks as he charged in behind the huddle of uniformed cops on the sidewalk on the far side of the street.

I took my own blue-and-gold badge out of my pocket — no one would stop to read that the small print beneath my name said Assistant District Attorney, not NYPD — and flapped it over the breast pocket of my ski jacket, slinking between rowdy onlookers to get within inches of Mike.

“Alexandra Cooper. Special Victims,” I said to one of the firemen. His scowl softened and he nodded to let me pass.

Chaos had enveloped the corner of 114th Street and Seventh Avenue. Flames still danced around something that lay on the portico of a stately old church, teasing the water that spouted from steady-stream nozzles the firemen aimed at it. Emergency Service Unit cops wielded axes to try to break open the locks on the wrought-iron gate that guarded the front steps, and a growing herd of neighborhood rubberneckers crowded the first responders who were trying to get the job done.

I was on the tips of my toes, hoping to catch a glimpse of what was burning. Amidst blackened fragments of some kind of fabric and the occasional glitter of embers atop that, I could make out something white — almost flesh-colored. The shape of a human arm, maybe, but that thought was too awful to imagine.

More firemen rushed past me to aid their brother officers, one of them knocking me back a step. There was no point in slowing anyone down to ask questions.

I raised myself up again. It must have been sensory overload because I thought I could see a hand, but there weren’t really any fingers, and a terrible smell made me dizzier than the confusing sight.

“Who on fire?” one tall kid yelled out at no one in particular, then started to pull on the sleeve of my jacket as I passed in front of him.

“Don’t know,” I said, breaking loose from his grip and inching forward, but his choice of pronoun focused me.

No question that within the fiery pile was a human being. The putrid odor of burning flesh — coppery and metallic — permeated the air. Holocaust survivors and soldiers who had liberated camps in World War II claimed it was a stench they would never forget.

“Go!” It was one of the ESU cops who had pushed back the gate he’d hacked open, calling out to the firemen who’d been spraying hoses impatiently from the sidewalk.

The pair took the church steps two at a time, rushing toward the smoking mound. While uniformed cops turned their attention to crowd control, Mike dashed in through the gate.

“I’m his partner,” I lied to the startled cop at the foot of the steps, running up behind Mike. I could see feet — small, pale, and bare — protruding from the remains of what might have once been a blanket that had covered them. They didn’t move.

The taller fireman dropped to his knees and did what he must have done thousands of times after dousing the flames at a scene, whether or not he believed the victim would be able to respond.

He grabbed the ankles and pulled them toward him, then threw off the charred material that had concealed the corpse. He leaned over to begin an attempt at mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but his back bucked and broke sideways as he braced himself against one of the massive columns and retched.

I stepped forward to see what ended the fireman’s effort so abruptly, and a wave of nausea swept over me too.

The body of the young woman had no head.

“DON’Tyou think the guys should move her inside?” I asked. The fire had been out for almost an hour and everyone on duty was growing restless.

Mike Chapman didn’t look up at me when he answered. “She can’t feel the cold quite like you do, Coop.”

My gloved hands were deep in the pockets of my ski jacket. “I’m not talking about the weather. I’m talking about the size of the crowd we’re attracting.”

“Breaking into a church is against my religion. Besides, the arson investigators have to check her out before we can take down the scene.”

I glanced at the pathologist who’d been dispatched from the medical examiner’s office. He was standing against another of the six columns at the far end of the portico, talking on his cell phone.

“The ME’s word isn’t enough?”

“Not when the perp was playing with matches. Got to make nice with the fire department,” Mike said, standing to turn and look down the steps at the growing number of passersby pressed against the wrought-iron fence.

“What do you want us to do, Chapman?” asked one of the four uniformed cops guarding the gated sidewalk entrance. It always seemed harder to get things done on the midnight shift.

Mike didn’t answer. He scanned the crowd of faces — all African American, mostly young-adult men with a handful of women among them. “It’s two o’clock in the morning. You mooks got nothing better to do with your time? Come back on Sunday for the full service. Be sure to bring something to throw into the plate.”

“I know you — you a DT,” one tall kid yelled out, using the uptown street name for detectives. “I seen you lock up dudes in Taft Houses last year, after that pimp got whacked. Who dead?”

Mike waved him off and speed-dialed the veteran lieutenant in charge of the Homicide Squad, Ray Peterson. “How about that backup you promised, Loo? Northeast corner of 114th Street and Powell Boulevard.”

This stretch of Seventh Avenue that spiked into Harlem, north of Central Park, had been renamed Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard in honor of the pastor turned politician, the first black congressman from New York.

“What did he say?” I asked Mike as he flipped his phone shut.

“Should be lights and sirens any minute now.”

“Who’s the shorty, man?” The kid with the big voice was pushing through the crowd, referring to me — despite my five-foot-ten-inch frame — with another street term used by many teens in Harlem to tag their women. When that question failed to get Mike’s attention, a string of curse words followed.

“Yo, keep it sweet. This is sacred ground, don’t you know that?” Mike pointed over our heads to the large white wooden sign that appeared to have been added to the limestone façade of the old building more recently. I knew it read MOUNT NEBOH BAPTIST CHURCH, though I wasn’t sure how visible the lettering was in the early morning darkness. “And the shorty is my sister. So keep it sweet.”

I suppressed a smile at Mike’s form of crowd control. It was less controversial to claim me as kin than announce to the agitated onlookers that I was the prosecutor in charge of the Sex Crimes Unit in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.

“Chapman!” the uniformed cop shouted again. “I asked if you got a plan.”

I could see the revolving red lights as a fleet of squad cars approached from both directions on the boulevard.

“Here comes your mob management, guys,” Mike said. “They’ll help you clear the sidewalk.”

An unmarked car moved through the vehicular snarl with urgent repeats from its screaming whelper. When it braked to a stop across from the church, I could see Mercer Wallace, one of the city’s only African American detectives to make first grade, his six-footfour inches towering over the noisy kids.