Linda Fairstein - Likely To Die

“After this investigation, I’m not sure there’s a medical center in this city where I’d be welcome. I’ve got a really great internist, though. If you guys could just take me home and do your interviews there, it’d be much less painful all around. You can look up a number for Dr. Schrem with Information and his service will beep him. I think maybe he’d make a house call in this situation.”

The superintendent’s assistant had seen the cops arrive at the building and had followed upstairs with an old blanket. Police Officer Dick Nicastro wrapped it around my shoulders and took me down to the patrol car for the short ride home.

I sat in the backseat with my head resting against the window listening to the staccato noise from the radio as a call came over of a rape in progress on a rooftop in the 7th Precinct.

“It’s gettin‘ to be that season, Miss Cooper.”

I closed my eyes and wiped the raindrops off my hair, shaking my head at the sight of my bloody hand. “Unfortunately, officer, it’s always that season.”

BATTAGLIA’S MONDAY MORNING REACTION to my unexpected skirmish was nothing compared to the whipping I took from Mercer and Mike on Sunday evening. When they arrived at seven, my doctor was just finishing up his examination, documenting his findings in detail because I told him they would be evidence at the trial. He made the guys promise not to aggravate my fragile condition with any excitement or emotional turmoil and he insisted on remaining with us while I relived for them my encounter with Coleman Harper.

“No cross-examination, gentlemen,” he dictated as he left us. “She needs an early night-and a quiet one.”

Mike had called in Hal Sherman from the Crime Scene Unit to take photographs of my injuries. I didn’t need a mirror to remind myself what shape I was in when I saw the expression on his face. “I’ve photographed cadavers that look better than you do, Alex. If you were the winner, what does the other guy look like?”

Chapman lifted my hair from the side of my neck to show Hal the ligature marks. “Don’t worry. She took a nice chunk out of his ass. He’ll be singing soprano with the Attica boys’ choir.”

The flash from the camera made my eyes sting as he shot close-ups of the bruises on my forehead, then focused on my wrists and forearms.

Nobody wanted me to stay alone in case I needed anything during the night. So I accepted the invitation from David Mitchell to sleep on the fold-out sofabed in his living room, where he and Renee could look out for me, with Zac at my feet. Mike and Mercer left at nine, taking my clothing along with them to be vouchered and sent to the police lab for serology and analysis.

I was determined to show up at the office bright and early before the story of the attack took on mythical proportions. It was obvious that Gemma Dogen’s murder case would have to be reassigned to another assistant district attorney-along with the assault on me. I was an ordinary witness in this matter now and not a prosecutor. Rod Squires let me have a choice of lawyers to handle the two attacks as long as it wasn’t Sarah or anyone in the Sex Crimes Unit. I asked that it be given to Tom Kendris, who was a friend and whose work I respected.

There was a bedside arraignment at Bellevue for Coleman Harper and I was pleased when Battaglia called me himself to tell me that Judge Roger Hayes, a sage and intrepid jurist, had remanded the defendant without bail.

Laura would need an extra week’s vacation even more than I did. She spent the better part of each day dodging the calls from the press, everybody looking for an exclusive. I hated to say no to Katie Couric, so Battaglia reluctantly agreed to go on camera himself to do aToday show interview about the issue of violent crime as it occasionally involved health care professionals. Mike Sheehan was begging me to leak something to him for Fox 5, but I knew there were enough of the guys he used to work with in the Police Department to take care of that impropriety for me.

Most of the week I spent working with Tom Kendris and the detectives so that I could testify before the grand jury on Thursday afternoon. We devoted hours to analyzing the evidence in the case, with Gemma’s voluminous records from ten years of her guardianship of Minuit’s neurosurgical program spread out on every flat surface in Kendris’s office. I kept coming back to the pictures of the crime scene floor trying to divine whether the dying woman had actually been writing some message to us in her blood.

Now the unfinished letter looked to me like an R, and so, in hindsight, I had her spelling out the word “Reject.” Every time he saw me glance at the picture, Chapman pulled it from my hand and told me to get real. “She didn’t have the strength to write anything at that point.” I would always be willing to believe that she did.

Maureen and her husband Charles had been brought back from their safe house on Sunday night, so Mercer drove me out to see them after work on Monday. We hugged each other until I thought I would crack her rib cage. Then we took out our date books and picked a May weekend for our trip to a spa.

The lab results had confirmed that the “nurse” who drugged Mo had given her a massive dose of a horse tranquilizer-nothing that would kill her but something that would call to everyone’s attention that she had been made as a cop.

There hadn’t been any progress on figuring out who had done it, although Mike suspected it was Coleman Harper trying to divert the police from looking at him and get them to focus their attention on DuPre, who was one of Mo’s attending physicians. No one was able to convince Mo, though, to blame it on her pal John DuPre. She was having trouble with the fact that he wasn’t really a doctor at all since she had liked his manner better than that of the guy whom David had assigned to be in charge of her hospital admission. We imagined that John was probably cruising around the country right now, looking for a little town where he could hang out his shingle and start up a new practice. Maybe this time using some dead doctor’s name that he could lift off a tombstone.

Joan Stafford had returned to New York on Tuesday evening and insisted that I come for dinner. She cornered me once she had me seated at the table. “Here’s the deal. It’s an offer you can’t refuse. Nina’s taking the red-eye in from California on Thursday night and on Friday the three of us fly to the Vineyard and help you open the house for the season. Just us girls-she’s leaving the baby in L.A. with her husband and Jim has to go to Vienna to cover the summit. U.S. Air has been flying direct from La Guardia as of April first. I’ve booked three seats and we’re not interested in any arguments from you. We take the last flight up at 5:45 Friday afternoon and come back at the crack of dawn on Monday. I’ll have you at your desk before nine, okay?”

I smiled at her across the table. “It’s the new me, Joanie. I’m ready.”

I wanted to go home to the Vineyard and nothing could be easier than having my two best friends at my side when I drove into Daggett’s Pond Way for the first time since last October.

Nina Baum took the red-eye and arrived early on Friday. I had left my spare keys with the doorman so she could shower and relax before coming down to hang out with me at the office. Our friendship had started the first day we both arrived at Wellesley when we had been assigned by lot to be roommates, and I had never found a more loyal or loving friend.

Sarah had called in early to say she was taking the day off and fortunately, for a change, the Sex Crimes Unit had a quiet one. Nina and I went to Forlini’s for a long lunch, came back to close up my desk for the weekend, and hopped into a taxi to meet Joan at La Guardia.