Linda Fairstein - The Bone Vault

The police radio crackled the rest of the way to my building, with urgent calls about falling beams and hazardous shifts in the settling structures. It was after seven when I unlocked my door. There were eighteen messages on my machine, family and friends becoming more frantic as the day wore on. I returned the most urgent calls, then asked two friends to get in touch with a list of the others for me.

Jake had left two voice mails, telling me he was fine but that the airports were closed both in D.C. and New York. He had no idea when he’d be coming home.

What was the point of sharing your life with someone if he was never available when it really counted?

I undressed and balled up my clothes to take to the incinerator later. I stepped into the steamy shower and stood beneath the head for almost five minutes, tears streaking down my cheeks as they mixed with the hot water. I got out and toweled off, putting one of Jake’s business shirts on with my jeans. It was not a night to be alone.

For the rest of the evening I sat in front of the television, forgetting to eat or drink as I watched the towers fall over and over again, listening to survivors tell miraculous stories of their escapes, and watching the distraught families of women and men who had not been heard from since 8:46A.M.

I caught Jake on MSNBC, doing remotes from the Pentagon, and later that night, from the steps of the Capitol. What does it take to be a newscaster? I wondered. I could never have reported this story-or many less tragic than it-without being overcome by emotion.

At midnight, I called Mercer for the last time that evening.

“Any word?”

“Your prayers have worked before, Alex. Just get some sleep.” I didn’t know then that Vickee’s cousin, who worked as a secretary for the Port Authority, had been missing from the time of the second crash. Vickee and Mercer had more to worry about than my concern for Mike. I hung up the phone.

Sometime after two I must have dozed off. The doorbell awakened me at four-thirty. I had told Nina that much of the story before, and now I picked it up from Mike’s arrival.

“I knew it was Mike when I was startled out of my sleep. The doormen would never have let anyone up who wasn’t a close friend. When I pulled the door back, I threw my arms around his neck and held my head against his chest until he pushed me down.”

I breathed in and bit my lip. “You can’t imagine what he looked like. You’d never have known his hair was black. He was absolutely caked in cinders. His clothes, too-sweatshirt and pants. There were dark stains on his chinos that looked like dried blood. I told him to go in and take a shower, but he wouldn’t do it. He didn’t want to wash off anything from the scene, like it was sacred to him. He took me by the hand and led me into the living room. All he wanted to do was talk.”

“But that’s what I mean. Wasn’t he going out with Valerie then? Why wasn’t he ather place?”

“Well, I didn’t even know about Val then. He hadn’t told me.”

“But when you found out about her, that he had started to see her last summer, don’t you think it’s weird that he didn’t want to be withher?”

“I, uh, I don’t think I’ve ever thought about it.”

“Maybe nobody else knows when you’re full of crap, but I certainly do.”

I paused. “I guess it was two things. I don’t think anybody understands what a cop puts himself on the line to do for other people-for total strangers-unless you are one. Or in my case, unless you’ve been with him to see him do it. You think even one lawyer, one person in a business suit, rantoward the towers that day?

“And the second thing, about Val, is that she had been facing the possibility of her own mortality for most of that year. Mike saw so much death in the space of those twenty hours that I don’t think he could bring himself to her doorstep to talk with her about it.”

“Are you just blind to the third thing, Alex? Didn’t everybody in America want to be with the person, the people, they cared most about? Do you know anyone who didn’t want to find whoever meant the most to them and just cling to them like the world was going to end? I brought Gabe into bed with Jerry and me and just rocked him in my arms all through the night.”

“I’m telling you, Nina, you’re seeing something in this that just isn’t there.”

She knew she was irritating me and moved on. “Did he tell you what it was like, being there, I mean?”

“Yeah. He couldn’t stop talking for hours. I had seen the explosion. I had smelled death. I hadn’t heard anything except sirens. The first thing he heard when he got out of his car were the screams. He’s still got nightmares. You don’t want to hear what he told me about, I promise you.”

“Where was he when the buildings fell?”

“When the south tower went down, he was in a stairwell of the other one. There was a pregnant woman who’d been walking down from the seventy-eighth floor. A bad diabetic. She’d collapsed after she reached the tenth floor landing and was getting trampled by the others, so she crawled off into the landing and just refused to move. She didn’t want to slow anyone down. She just gave up.

“Her coworkers got firemen to try to help her. Mike ran into them a few flights up and offered to carry her down. He was just coming out of the stairwell and setting her down in the lobby when the first building went. Picked her up again and didn’t stop moving till he got her up to Vesey Street. His last image was the single-file line of firemen heading up the stairs, as he scanned their faces to look for guys he knew.”

“Did he-did he lose many friends?”

“A cop who’s lived in this city all his life? He went to funerals and memorial services for months. That’s why he stayed most of that first night at the scene, helping to pull bodies out and keeping up the hopeless vigil for signs that anyone was still alive in the rubble.”

“The girl you said you’d tell me about, is that the first time since you’ve known Mike that he had ever talked about her?”

I nodded my head. “Her name is Courtney. Yeah. That’s another reason why he probably didn’t want to go to Val’s, to talk about his unrequited love.”

“Who was she?”

“Neighborhood kid who grew up with him. Prom queen, good student with big dreams. They dated on and off through high school. When he was a junior at Fordham, studying history, she was chasing him like crazy. She was pushing him to go to law school, make something of himself, buy her all the things she wanted.

“Remember what I’ve told you about Mike’s dad? Spent twenty-six years with the NYPD. Then two days after he retired, turned in his gun and shield, he dropped dead of a massive coronary. Mike finished college, but he idolized his father. Took the test and went to the Academy right after his graduation.”

“And this Courtney?”

“Dumped him. Broke his heart, the way he told the story that morning. She pursued one of his roommates, who went on to Fordham Law School and got a job on Wall Street. Married him five months after she walked out on Mike. Big house in Manhasset, three kids, two cars-all the material things she wanted. She told him she’d never marry a cop, she didn’t want to live her mother’s life. Not because of the danger of it, not because of the hard work and unpredictable hours, but because she wanted to escape from her background, her milieu.”

“Did you know anything about this?”

“Never. I’ve known women he’s dated. All very casual till now. I just assumed that he was so busy with sports and school and friends that he’d never had a serious romance.”

“What happened?”

“Courtney had come into the city that morning for an early breakfast meeting at Windows on the World. She was planning a celebration for her husband, who had made partner at his firm. The banquet manager was helping her do a menu, select the wines, make the seating arrangements.”