Linda Fairstein - Final Jeopardy

“Mercer Wallace called, too. No need to call him back.

Just said to tell you they’re overdue for some noise from the Con Ed rapist there’s a full moon this week so maybe the squad’ll get lucky you’d know what he means.“

I knew exactly what he meant. As folk literature and old wives’ tales had reported for centuries, the full moon, seemed to bring out with it all forms of madness and lunacy. There’s not a cop in the city who didn’t believe that unusual happenings and strange phenomena accompanied the glorious sight of an iridescent full moon. Wallace was hoping the inexorable draw of the tide would bring out his serial rapist and lead to the demon’s capture.

Thinking of Isabella’s stalker, with any luck, I hoped for twofers.

It was almost six-thirty when I said good night to my two young colleagues and took my dress bag and makeup kit into the ladies’ room. The ugly taupe tile and institutional decor was even more depressing than the rest of the drab office space. I undressed, stepped into the shower stall and washed quickly, always amused by the irony that there were no locks on the bathroom doors and that the building cleaning crews who serviced the rooms at night were all ex-cons prosecuted by my colleagues, out on work release and employed by Wildcat the company which attempted to rehabilitate serious offenders. I toweled off, twisted my hair into a French braid, slipped into the slim sheath and traded my mid-heel work shoes for a spiky silk pump. There was room in my tiny Judith Leiber minaudiere for my blue and gold shield always a hit with corporate types my beeper, a lipstick case, and a linen handkerchief, but not for much else. My Schlumberger wing earrings were the only jewelry I put on. A few spritzes of Chanel and I was ready to walk back to my office and call for a car service. The long corridors on the eighth floor were quiet and empty at this hour, with most of the worker bees toiling through the evening on the flights below the executive wing. I was conscious of the clicking noise my high heels made as they echoed in the hallway while I strode toward my office, thinking about the position I planned to take at the sentence hearing before Hadleigh the next morning. I turned the corner and continued past Laura’s desk into my office, where I stopped short in the doorway at the sight of a stranger, a man I had never seen before, standing in front of the bookcase against the far wall.

My heartbeat was racing as we spoke over each other’s voices. I demanded to know who he was and how he had gotten in past the security desk while he blurted out his apology for appearing unannounced and explained that his name was Richard Burrell and he needed to talk to me about Isabella Lascar.

“I called all day Friday and several times today and was never able to get through to-‘

“Well, if you thought just breaking into the District Attorney’s Office was the answer,” I started to say as I backed out to Laura’s phone to call the lobby security guard, ‘you’ve made an enormous mistake.“

“No, please, Miss Cooper. I’m – I’m Isabella’s ex-husband.

I really need your help on this and I just didn’t know where else to find you or whether your calls were being taped.“

Burrell if he really was Richard Burrell looked harmless enough in this setting. My mind tried to quickly filter all the stories I had heard from Iz about him, and as I had told Luther last Friday, none of them suggested violence or danger. Yet here I was alone in my office after hours in a practically deserted building with a man who was certainly on the short list of murder suspects. Not very smart.

“How did you get in here?”

“To be honest with you, Miss Cooper, I lied to the guard. I told him we had a dinner appointment together and he let me right up. Sorry to do that.”

Did he realize how stupid I thought that was? Here he was coming to me for help about some aspect of this case, and the first thing he did was lie to get in to see me. At least I was on notice about his credibility.

“May we close the door and talk?”

“No. Absolutely not. The door stays open and you have five minutes to tell me what this is all about.”

“Look, Miss Cooper, I’m scared, terrified. I’ve come into Manhattan voluntarily because the police want to talk to me. They obviously think I had something to do with Isabella’s death, but I swear it isn’t true. They know that I saw her in Boston the weekend before she was killed, that I wanted to reconcile with her. They think I might have killed her because she rejected me again, but that’s absurd. Iz trusted you completely I need you to help convince the police I had nothing to do with the murder, please.”

“Mr. Burrell, this is very inappropriate. Just because I had‘ a relationship with Isabella doesn’t mean I can vouch for you or anyone else she knew. It’s quite the opposite. Either you tell your version to the detectives and rely on their ability to check out your story, or you get yourself the best damn defense attorney in town and get some professional advice. That’s already more help than a prosecutor should give you.”

“But there are things the police probably don’t know yet that won’t help me, and I’m sure they’ll find out.”

“Like your cocaine problem? They’re well aware of it.”

“No, that’s not what I mean. I don’t have a coke problem anymore. That’s why I left Los Angeles, Miss Cooper. That’s all behind me. I’ve just completed a new screenplay and I’m ready to try to re-establish myself in the business.

Being implicated in a homicide will kill every opportunity I have.“

Not to mention what it did to every opportunity Isabella had… but he neglected to mention that.

Now I was curious about what was a more current dilemma for Burrell.

“What sort of thing are you afraid the police will misinterpret?”

“Guns, for one thing. I’ve got guns.”

“What for? Like pistols, for protection?”

“No, like high-powered hunting rifles. I never had a gun when I was in Hollywood. I always had gophers to handle my drug transactions. I never carried. But I moved to Maine when I detoxed it was easier for me to stay dry in a new environment. Now I live on one of those primitive little islands off the coast no highways, no airports, no police department. Just beautiful vistas and lots of wild animals. The island is crawling with moose and deer and woodchucks and skunks. I started hunting with the guys who live around me not for sport, but when the animals got destructive or like the time a rabid woodchuck attacked my golden retriever. Anyone up there will tell you that I can draw a bead on a four-legged creature and hit it between the eyes like a trained sharpshooter.”

I shuddered at the tone of pride in his voice as he described the strike, since it jolted me abruptly back to the neon-taped crime scene that marked Isabella’s execution. Chapman, Flanders, and Waldron would certainly be interested in this piece of information.

Maybe Burrell would be stupid enough to give me more. Or was he playing me for the fool, so he could defuse this kind of fact by getting it on the table through me before his police interview later in the week.“Everyone involved with Isabella seems to know something about guns. That hardly makes you a prime suspect, Mr. Burrell.”

“Miss Cooper. I’m telling you this because I’m sure Iz mentioned to you when she got to your house that she had just seen me in Boston. I realize you must be aware of what went on between us, and I need to know what you’ve told the police about it, do you understand? I don’t plan to hide anything, I’d just like to walk into that interview with an idea of how much they know about me.”

He had made the mistaken assumption that Isabella had called me with confidences about her Boston rendezvous with Burrell when she arrived on the Vineyard. My lie of omission was simply to let him believe that, and my larger deceit was to bluff him about what I had learned in the I conversation we never had. From the cast he put on the revelation, it was easy to infer that their encounter had not gone well.