Linda Fairstein - Lethal Legacy

Jamal Griggs cocked his head at his lawyer and slammed his open hand on the table.

“I told you, Mr. Griggs, E Pluribus Unum. Mr. Fine can’t be here, I’ll appoint one of the Baxter Street boys to represent you,” Moffett said, referring to the court-appointed lawyers who hung out in street-front offices across from the Tombs. “Suit yourself, Mr. Fine. It’s in your client’s best interest-well, it might be-if you show up for him.”

The Weasel was paying good money to keep our noses out of the California database, and Jamal was clearly not interested in disappointing him.

I left the courtroom with my two witnesses and went back to the office to drop off my papers, eat the sandwich that Laura had ordered in, and explain to her that Mike and I were going to pay a visit to Tina Barr.

There was no traffic on the northbound FDR Drive, so Mike had us on the Upper East Side in twenty minutes, shortly before two o’clock in the afternoon.

Mercer was waiting in an unmarked car almost directly across the street from Barr’s brownstone, and Mike continued on until he found a place to park closer to the corner of Lexington Avenue.

“How long have you been here?” I asked when Mercer came up to talk.

“A little over an hour. Have you tried calling her today?”

“Couldn’t get a number. She hasn’t got a phone-listed or unlisted-and it’s a sublet, so if there’s a hard line in there, we need to know who the landlord is to get it.”

“Reverse directory?”

“Nothing.” More and more young people were using their cell phones and BlackBerrys in place of a traditional phone.

“Knock on the door, Coop,” Mike said. “It worked for you last night.”

Mercer walked me down the block to Barr’s building. The vestibule door was locked, so I rang the buzzer next to her name several times, getting no response. Then I started pressing other doorbells until the man in 4E responded on the intercom by asking who was there.

“Police,” Mercer said. “I’m trying to get in to speak with Tina Barr.”

“Who?”

“The woman who lives in the basement.”

The man didn’t seem to care much about our visit. He buzzed us in and I followed Mercer down to the basement. I knocked but heard nothing from within.

“Ms. Barr? It’s Alexandra Cooper. If you’re there, I’d like to talk to you.”

We waited a couple of minutes and then I asked Mercer for a scrap of paper from his memo pad. I wrote a note on it, with my cell phone number, and slipped it under the apartment door.

“Let’s get comfortable, Alex. We have some time to kill.”

The three of us went up to the corner together to buy coffee. “I’ll sit at this end of the street,” Mike said. “Better chance she’d be coming from Lex than Third, either by bus or subway. You and Mercer should be right in front of the building, so you can run interference before she gets inside.”

It was a beautiful fall afternoon, crisp and clear, and we leaned against the hood of Mercer’s car, talking about the events of the last month, catching up on Vickee and their young son, Logan.

“Now you see why stakeouts are so tedious,” Mercer said, stretching his arms and straightening his back. “Give it another hour and then go on home. I’ll call you when we see Tina.”

“I can’t take the chance she’ll batten down the hatches again. Battaglia’s ripped.”

We took turns walking up and down the street just to stay alert. I checked with Laura for my messages and made calls on several of my cases. The air chilled a bit as the sun slipped behind the tall apartments that lined Central Park West, and I bought another round of coffee before settling in to the front seat of Mercer’s car.

“What have you got?” Mercer said, flipping open his cell phone. He listened and then answered. “I see him coming.”

It was after six o’clock when Tina Barr’s neighbor, Billy Schultz, approached the building from Lexington Avenue. He jogged up the front steps, unlocked the door, and went in. Within the hour, an older couple got out of a taxicab and made their way inside, too. A minute later, a light went on in the third-floor window facing the street.

I heard the sirens before I saw the flashing strobes of the patrol cars that raced into the narrow one-way block from each direction, coming to a stop nose to nose with each other in front of Barr’s building.

The passenger in each RMP dashed out of his car and bolted up the steps. Someone-it looked like Schultz’s head framed in the narrow space-opened the door, and they disappeared inside.

Mercer was running across the street as I opened my car door, shouting at me. “Stay put!”

Mike raced downhill from the corner, then took the steps two at a time and pushed through the door that had been propped open by one of the cops. I could see the glimmer of the gold detective shield he had palmed.

A crowd began to collect around the front of the building-people on their way home, going out for dinner, heading for a run in the park, or walking dogs.

I tried to get past the driver of the patrol car who had stationed himself at the building’s entrance, but he didn’t know me and refused to let me in. I showed him my ID, but he wasn’t interested in admitting me without orders from a higher-ranking officer.

“You trolling for bodies, Alex?” I turned at the sound of Ray Peterson’s voice.

The lieutenant in charge of the homicide squad had pulled in behind one of the RMPs. He had been at too many crime scenes in his career to feel the need to rush, taking his time for a last drag on his cigarette before nodding at the uniformed cop.

“What do you know, Loo?” I was already feeling guilty about not having pushed Tina to talk to me, and now I was panicked at the thought that her attacker had returned. “Is it Tina Barr?”

“That your vic from last night?” Peterson said, patting my back. “We got a corpse, but she doesn’t fit that ’scrip. Mike’s in there now.”

“Yes, we were waiting together for Barr to get home.”

“What’s he doing leaving you outside with the riffraff? C’mon in. I’m sure you’ve seen worse.”

The officer stepped aside as Peterson guided me up the steps. The commotion was downstairs, and the door to Barr’s apartment was open. Peterson led me in, through the little room where I had talked with the distraught woman. Tables and bookcases were overturned, as though the apartment had been ransacked.

Peterson continued down the narrow hallway. I glanced into the bedroom as we passed it, noting the disarray, including empty dresser drawers dumped on the floor.

“Chapman?” Peterson called out as he approached the kitchen.

“Come ahead. I’m out back, in the garden,” Mike said. He must have seen me when he looked up to answer the lieutenant. “For Chrissakes, Loo, what’d you bring Coop in for? It looks like a slaughterhouse.”

Mercer tried to intercept us before I saw the body, but he was too late. The dead woman was lying facedown, spread-eagled on the wide wooden planks of the kitchen floor, her head split open like a ripe melon. Blood spatter streaked the refrigerator and dotted the ceiling, and what hadn’t spurted upward was pooled around her head.

I closed my eyes as Mercer pressed me against his chest. “The lady’s too tall to be Barr.”

“Who is she?” I asked.

“Don’t know yet. Mike’s talking to Billy Schultz.”

No matter how many crime scenes, autopsies, or morgue visits came up in the course of my work, the individual horror of each circumstance never lost its impact. Peterson liked to tell his men it was time to hang up the job the moment that happened.

I looked again, taking deep breaths to calm myself. There would be a wait for the medical examiner on call, and for CSU to process the apartment and photograph the body. All necessary, but it seemed so cruel to leave her in that position, as a deadly exhibit for the trail of investigators who would be summoned to ferret out clues.