Linda Fairstein - Killer Heat

Mercer knew why Mike wanted my company. Mercer and I spent countless hours handholding survivors of violence who needed emotional support to get through the unfamiliar clinical steps that marked their introduction to the criminal justice system. It took as much time, sometimes more, than working the investigation.

Mike was impatient in that role. He was at his best when he set himself up against an unknown predator, teasing secrets from the dead to offer up cold, hard evidence that would lead him to the suspect.

"You want Alex to take charge of Janet Bristol tonight?" Mercer said. "And if the little black book has some dynamite in it, you want her to sit right on top of that keg?"

"Or stick it in her pocket. Give me a curfew, man. I'll have her tucked in. She's so overwired for this trial, you can't be worried about it."

"You want to go with them, Alex?" Mercer asked.

"Sure."

"See you here at seven thirty. You get some sleep."

I straightened up my desk and, when Janet Bristol returned, went with her and Mike to his car. The ride to the six-story blue brick building that housed the morgue took only fifteen minutes. The deputy medical examiner assigned to the case, Jeff Kestenbaum, met us at reception and took us into his office. A lanky man with the serious mien of a scholar, he was always gentle with family members, who usually came to his office for terrible news.

Kestenbaum explained to Janet how the viewing would occur. He tried to tell her, more graphically than Mike had done, how the skin and soft tissue of the woman he now believed to be Amber had been devoured by insects after her death. He confirmed that the dental records matched the work in those teeth that had not been kicked out of Amber's mouth by her killer.

"Do I-do I have to look?"

The office required that at least one person known to the deceased attempt a physical identification. Stories were legion about people with similar characteristics-build, coloring, crowned wisdom teeth or abdominal surgical scars-who were mistakenly identified because of confusion about these traits.

"Before we release the body to you, yes, you must."

We took the short walk to the window that separated Janet from the corpse. It would be cleaner now, after the autopsy, with some of the facial wounds stitched together, than when Mike had called me in the night before.

The green curtain was drawn back and Janet reacted immediately.

"Oh, my God," she said, pressing her face against the glass. "Yes, it's my sister. Oh, my God, yes."

Now the resemblance was even more obvious, with Janet's cheek in profile to us, matching the outline of the bone structure of Amber's face. Her knees buckled and Mike picked her up in his arms before she could hit the floor.

We followed Kestenbaum down the hall and Mike rested Janet on the sofa in the small lounge that was set aside for grieving families. She was alert almost at once, and the men left the room while I sat beside her, stroking her hand and trying to calm her for the tasks ahead.

"Is there someone you'd like to have here with you?"

"No. There's no one. It's my mother I've got to call." She took a deep breath and leaned her head back against the arm of the sofa.

"Any friends who can keep you company?"

"I don't want anyone to know, don't you see?"

"To know that Amber's been killed?"

"That'll be news soon enough. I don't need them to find out how she lived."

"Anything I can do to-?"

"Would you please step out for a few minutes? I'd like to be alone here for a while. To think about Amber, if you don't mind."

I closed the door behind me and walked to Kestenbaum's office. The doctor was standing at his desk, organizing autopsy photographs- a male victim of a gunshot wound-probably for a court appearance. Mike had his feet up on the side of the desk, surfing channels on the small TV.

"Janet ready to go?" he asked.

"Wants a few minutes to collect herself."

"I'm itching to get my hands on Amber's client files."

"You'll have a laundry list of some of her johns, a married lover, the disgruntled landlord, an ex-employer, and maybe a random stranger who carries the tools of torture with him," I said, counting on my fingers the directions Mike's investigation might now take. "Where to begin?"

Mike raised the volume and Alex Trebek announced the Final Jeopardy category. " 'Famous Americans,' folks. Let's see what you're willing to wager."

"I'm in, Coop. Twenty bucks."

Not a gruesome crime scene nor the solemnity of a morgue could keep Mike from watching the last minutes of Jeopardy . He had majored in history at Fordham and he loved to show off his extensive knowledge of a variety of trivia subjects.

"I know, you're about to tell me it's inappropriate," he said. "You're about to tell me even hookers got sisters with feelings. I'll have your money before Janet powders her nose."

"Twenty for me."

"Doc?"

"Got to concentrate, Mike. I'm working on an exit wound," he said, making notes as he held one of the enlarged photos.

' Taceant colloquia. Effugiat risus .' Mike's Latin was better than mine, from years of parochial school. He, too, recognized the translation of the words posted over the entrance to the medical examiner's office.

"Let conversation cease. Laughter, take flight. This place is where death delights to aid the living.

"You're just taking a pass 'cause the question isn't some brainiac scientific thing, Doc. You blew us out of here with that one about injuries to the fifth metatarsal. A Monto fracture or whatever it was.

Trebek was back on cue. "He was only the sixth foreign-born individual to be declared an honorary citizen of the United States by the president, pursuant to an act of Congress. Two of the three studio guests eagerly scrawled questions on their screens. One cocked his head and stared blankly at the camera.

"I'm sorry, sir," Trebek told the kayak instructor from Indianapolis. "Winston Churchill was the first to receive the honor. In his lifetime, actually, in 1963. We're looking for the sixth person. No guesses?"

The bank teller from Long Island had also guessed incorrectly, and the beekeeper from Dallas didn't bother to take a stab at the answer. Neither did Kestenbaum or I.

"Who is the Marquis de Lafayette?" Mike said. "Major General Marie Joseph de Lafayette, hero of the American Revolution. Valley Forge. The Yorktown campaign."

Trebek nodded at the camera as the board behind him revealed the answer. "Yes, indeed. George Washington's great friend, only the sixth foreigner so honored. Churchill, Mother Teresa, Raoul Wallenberg, William Penn-and his wife, Hannah-and then the young French nobleman who came to America's aid. Not chronological, obviously, folks."

Mike shut off the television to continue our history lesson. "Yeah, if Cornwallis hadn't surrendered at Yorktown-"

"Excuse me," Janet Bristol said, pushing open the door to Kestenbaum's small office. "Would you mind telling me exactly-well, exactly how my sister died?"

Mike took his feet down from the desk and held back a chair for Janet.

"Not at all," Dr. Kestenbaum said, stacking the photos he'd been working on into a pile.

"Did you reach your parents?" I asked. She was pale white and still sniffling, and even more agitated than when I had left her minutes ago. Her cell phone was clasped tightly in her hand.

"Not yet. I'm not ready to do that," she said, looking at her watch. "I decided to wait another hour, till my father gets home from work. I want them to be together when they get the news."

The cell phone in her hand rang. She flipped it open and looked at the incoming caller's number. "It's Jim Dylan. I don't need to take it. He can just rot in hell," Janet said, dropping the phone into her tote.