Linda Fairstein: Lethal Legacy

We were in my office in the Sex Crimes Prosecution Unit on the eighth floor of Manhattan ’s Criminal Courthouse at nine-thirty on Wednesday morning. Mike had brought me a third cup of coffee and took the lid off after he set out his bagel on top of a file cabinet, using a manila folder as a place mat.

“How come Judge Moffett scheduled a hearing on the Griggs case? You don’t even have an arrest yet.”

We had been working on the rape-homicide of a nineteen-year-old-girl named Kayesha Avon that had taken place almost eight years earlier. The case had gone cold long ago, but the recent submission to the databank of the DNA profile of a man named Jamal Griggs and the near match that resulted had given Mike a reason to revive the investigation.

“Jamal Griggs doesn’t like the idea that we’re so interested in his family tree,” I said.

Jamal and his brother Wesley, known to us as the Weasel, had floated in and out of the criminal justice system for most of their adult lives. Despite Jamal’s homicide conviction as a teenager-or maybe because of it-he and Wesley had become part of the entourage that surrounded and sold drugs to the crews of late thug rappers such as Biggie Smalls and Tupac Shakur.

“I applied for a search warrant to get into the California database to see what it tells us about Wesley’s DNA, and must have struck a nerve. Jamal’s new counsel requested a chance to oppose my motion. I need you and Mattie Prinzer,” I said, referring to the forensic biologist who headed the lab at OCME, the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, “to make my case.”

“Jamal get himself a new suit? Last I knew he was a poster boy for the Legal Aid Society. How’s he paying for a lawyer?”

“I have the feeling we’re going to meet the new suit in the courtroom. He’s been dispatched from the City of Angels by the Weasel.”

“Amazing that Wesley made it out the ’hood,” Mike said. The thirty-two-year-old wannabe gangsta had moved from pushing crack cocaine on East Harlem street corners to producing records in Hollywood, while his baby brother was behind bars again for an armed robbery of a gas station in Queens. “I think a proper homecoming would be a sweet thing, Coop.”

“I’m a long way from blowing up balloons and mailing out save-the-date cards for the Weasel’s return to New York,” I said. “Would you give these lab reports to Laura, please, and ask her to make copies? I’ll have to turn them over to defense counsel if Moffett makes you two testify.”

Mike walked to the door and handed the case file to my secretary. He was wearing his trademark navy blazer with a pale blue button-down shirt and crisply pressed khakis. His dark good looks and irrepressible grin were an appealing combination, and his intelligence and experience made him a trusted partner-like Mercer-in the most difficult cases we’d handled together.

“You think maybe she knew him?”

“Did Kayesha Avon know Wesley Griggs?” I asked.

“No, no, no. I’m thinking about Tina Barr. Maybe she didn’t want to cooperate with us because she made the man beneath the mask. Or he actually took it off once he got inside the apartment. If she recognized the guy, could be she knows how dangerous it is for her and that’s why she fled the scene.”

I was studying Jamal Griggs’s presentence report, trying to get a sense of whether he had a favorite modus operandi. “Could be.”

“Don’t you think that puts her at greater risk now? Don’t you need to do something to safeguard her?”

“And what would that be, since she’s expressed herself so clearly? I can’t take her hostage if she’s so dead set against reporting this.”

“Did you ask for a detail to sit in front of Tina’s house?”

“The CO turned me down flat.”

“Use your juice, Coop. There’s a couple of dudes at headquarters who think you walk on bottled water. Call in a chit.”

“Yeah, and maybe you can forward my nomination to the Supreme Court in case there’s a vacancy. That would be an easier task than getting Commissioner Scully to sign off on a spare RMP for a victim who tied up enormous resources in the middle of the night and then took a hike with no explanation at all.”

There was a shortage of both manpower and radio motor patrol cars because of the spike in violent crimes charted since the summer.

“I didn’t know you could qualify for the Supremes if you were living in France. There must be some kind of jurisdictional requirement.”

I looked up from my notes and bit on the tip of my fountain pen, but I was unable to suppress a smile. “Michael Patrick Chapman. Is that what’s bugging you? Have you been working overtime on my love life? All you had to do was ask.”

One of the city’s most experienced homicide detectives turned scarlet from his brow to the point where his neck disappeared into his shirt collar.

“No need to pry into that, blondie. You’re wearing it all over your puss. Be a shame to waste the latest Parisian fashions under long black judicial robes, if you ask me,” Mike said. “And that skirt you’re wearing is way too short for Judge Moffett. His defibrillator might zap into overtime.”

I looked down at the navy blue suit I’d bought on the Avenue Montaigne when I had last visited Luc Rouget, the Frenchman I’d been dating since early summer. Anything not to make eye contact with Mike.

“Make you a deal,” I said. “Let’s get through this Griggs motion today and we can catch up over dinner. I never meant to hold back anything from you or Mercer. Luc turned up in the middle of a killing spree and my personal life deservedly took a back seat.”

“You don’t owe me any explanation,” he said, shifting away from me. “Skip the talk tonight and just feed me, Coop. But you’ll have to take yourself out of that chic getup before cocktails. Too rich for my blood.”

“I’ll call Mercer. The three of us haven’t been out in more than a month. I’m buying.”

“What if it’s about kinky sex?” Mike asked, balling up his napkin and tossing it over my head into the garbage.

My turn to blush. “Kinky what?”

“Not you and the French guy, kid. Tina Barr. Maybe she was tied up ’cause she wanted to be. Could explain why she wouldn’t talk.”

We had seen it all, working sex crimes and homicide. Just when one of us thought there was nothing left to shock, along came a new way for two people to amuse themselves in the privacy of their homes.

“A long shot,” I said. “But always a possibility.”

“Think about it. Broad’s tied up and gagged-there’s evidence to support that-but tells you she wasn’t raped. Wouldn’t be anything to call the cops about if she consented.”

I slipped my heels off under the desk before Mike could comment on their style, and replaced them with a sturdier work shoe for our court appearance. “Maybe.”

“What do you know about chloroform?” Mike asked. “Pick up anything medically useful from your old man while you were growing up?”

“Wasn’t it the first anesthetic used for women in childbirth in the nineteenth century? Till the docs found out it was too toxic.”

“Well, it’s still around, and it caused three deaths, just in the north, in the last eighteen months,” Mike said.

New York County -the island of Manhattan -was split in half by the NYPD for the management of unnatural-death investigations. Mike’s office, the Manhattan North Homicide Squad, responded to everything from Fifty-ninth Street to the tip of Spuyten Duyvil, while its southern counterpart took the territory from midtown down to the Battery.

“You’re not talking serial killer again?”

“Nope,” Mike said, topping off his bagel with a handful of red licorice sticks. “It’s a phenomenon called SSD. Sudden sniffers’ death. Lieutenant Peterson’s been all over these cases lately, he told me yesterday. Easy to buy the ingredients on the Web. Chloroform’s a central nervous system depressant. If it doesn’t kill you, inhaling it for the high will at least leave you dizzy and tired, with a crushing headache.”