Linda Fairstein - The Bone Vault

I listened to their conversation, thinking back on how close Mike and I had become in the ten years we had known each other. I knew him as a superb investigator and a faithful friend. I had never imagined him as a lover or husband. Val deserved this happiness, so why was I feeling so envious of her tonight?

“I’m trying, Nina. I don’t know if Alex told you, but I was married for six years. An architect, too-guy I met in grad school. He walked out on me. No fight, no other woman, no problem he could identify for me. It was the cancer. He couldn’t handle the fact that I lost a breast. He packed up and left two days after I was released from the hospital.”

Nina rolled over onto her stomach and stared at the fire. “Then there’s Mike. The most stereotypically macho exterior, but his gut is just loaded with sentiment.”

“You two have known him for so long. And he’s so close to you, Alex. How do you get him to open up about himself?”

I didn’t know how to answer her.

“I’ll bet Alex could give you hours on that. She and Mike have been through-”

I interrupted Nina before she could finish the sentence. “He’ll give it up when he’s ready. These last nine months, since September eleventh, have been devastating for him. You’ve been a godsend, Val. You were so fragile when he met you, and I think it gave him enormous strength, emotionally, to be able to wrap himself around you, to protect you, but at the same time to get such fortitude fromyour courage.”

“Everybody I know was crushed by the attacks.”

“But Mike was-well,impotent is the way he described it. It was one of the few times in his life that he couldn’t make things right in the world, catch the bad guys. And then there’s all that survivor guilt. The fact that he got out alive, and so many others didn’t.” I said quietly, “Val, you were someone to save, and he feels he helped to accomplish that.”

She stood up and came over to squeeze my hand. “He did do that. He doesn’t want to hear it from me, but he rescued me from wallowing in my own self-pity. I can’t tell you how much I love him.”

Nina propped herself up on her elbows. “Dammit. We’re just getting to the good part. You fading on us, Val?”

“Yes. All that country air and biking. And a bit too much vino. See you in the morning.”

Nina reached up to the glass-topped coffee table and emptied the wine bottle. “Sheesh. Just when I thought we’d be moving into the sex. Haven’t you always been curious about that? I bet Mike Chapman is one hell of a good lover.”

“Maybe you have been married too long.” I pulled a throw over my legs and sipped more of the Sancerre, having opened another bottle. “You do that at work? Look at the partner in the next office and undress him when he’s standing in front of you talking deals? I work with the man every day. I don’t fantasize about wrapping my legs around him and-”

“Bullshit. Maybe you should. How about that first guy you worked for when you got to the DA’s office? What did it take, about a minute for him to wriggle your pants off, for the simple price of an evening at Yankee Stadium, a ballpark hot dog, and a brew?” She was laughing as she tried to remember the story.

“Truce! I never did him. I just, well-”

“Fantasized all the time. See? I’m right.”

I heard Val come out of the upstairs bath and close the door to her room.

Nina whispered to me, “You promised you’d tell me what happened last September when we had some time alone together. I didn’t want to ask in front of Val.”

I had avoided the subject every time Nina had tried to bring it up. It was impossible to have witnessed the events of the World Trade Center attack and describe it without reliving the pain of that morning. Nina and I had lost a mutual friend who had been on one of the planes that hit the towers, and in our grieving for Eloise I had sidestepped the memories that had haunted me from the first moment of the crash.

Like most weekdays, I had gone to the office before eight o’clock, enjoying that hour or more of work before the phones started ringing and the corridors filled with lawyers, cops, and crime victims. My desk on the eighth floor of the district attorney’s office faced south, causing the room to flood with light from early morning on. The twin towers stood sentinel, just ten blocks farther south, visible beyond the gargoyles of our annex building’s rooftop twenty feet away, every time I glanced out the window.

I was composing a memo on my computer when the first plane hit. It sounded like a massive explosion and the glass panes behind me rattled and shook. At the time, there was only one other person-Judy Onorato-on my hallway, the executive wing of the trial division. My window shades were drawn to keep the sun’s glare off the screen of my monitor.

I stood up and raised the blinds, thinking that a car bomb had exploded and knowing that the courthouses-the one in which our offices were located, and the federal building across the street-had been targeted before. There from my desk I could see the gaping black hole near the top of the north tower, less than ten blocks southwest of me. It was framed against the most exquisitely clear blue sky I had ever seen.

Judy ran into my office moments later. She had turned on the conference room television after hearing the blast. “Did you see it? A plane flew into the World Trade Center.”

We both figured it was an accident, a small aircraft that had veered off course and hit the tower. By the time the newscaster was confirming that in fact it had been a large jet, it was still impossible to believe. I couldn’t fathom that an entire 767 had been swallowed into the core of the tall building.

Phones started ringing everywhere on the hallway. I went to the desk of McKinney’s secretary-neither he nor she was in-since her console had all the executive extensions on it.

Lobby security was the first to call, telling me that they were locking the building and no one else would be allowed to enter. The Fifth Precinct, just east of the office, was ordering the evacuation of every office south of Canal Street.

Rose Malone was the next call. “Battaglia’s here. He wants McKinney immediately.”

McKinney was rarely in before ten on a good day, and it wasn’t even nine yet. “He’ll have to settle for me.” My heart was racing. The news stations were already broadcasting that witnesses were describing the crash as deliberate.

“Alex? Ignore the order to evacuate. How many people have you got over there?”

“Just two of us.”

“We’re law enforcement, not civilians. Whoever is here, stays here. Whatever the cops need, get it done.”

I turned to look out the window at the towers. As I watched, a colossal explosion ripped through the south tower, blasting a fireball in my direction. I dropped back into the desk chair and buried my face in my hands. The radio on the desk reported what I had not seen coming: a second plane that soared in from the south to cause the eruption I had witnessed.

Now the only street noise was sirens, a shrieking cacophony blitzing the area from every direction. Directly below the window on Centre Street, the scene unfolded like a 1950s movie about nuclear warfare. Hordes of men and women, dressed in business clothes, carrying briefcases, began to head north, some walking, others beginning to trot.

The only people moving south were those in uniform. I knew that every fire truck in the city and beyond must have headed to the towers when the first plane hit. Now every one of the hundreds of police officers assigned to the DA’s office for trial appearances or preparation, each of the thousands who had business at headquarters, and all of the uniformed court officers who supervised activity in our buildings, were running to the World Trade Center. At that point in time, I couldn’t begin to imagine what they would encounter. I only knew that something inside these people’s heads and hearts gave them the courage to go help when everyone out of uniform was moving in the opposite direction.