Linda Fairstein: Final Jeopardy

“You’ve got to think for me, Alex. Things that aren’t in case files, things nobody else could know about, remarks that you’ve ignored because you’ve been in the business too long to pay attention to them. Hang-up calls, letters from cranks, goofballs, malcontents.”

“I’ve been thinking about it all night, Mike. Most of the guys you and I encounter are much too stupid to plan something like yesterday’s murder. I’m sure this is going to tie in to something that Isabella did to someone, really.”

“Well, Coop, we still have to go through the motions, so start combing your file folders for ideas. Jesus, your desk looks like the bottom of a birdcage! I want you to go through every piece of paper that’s current, and clean up that mess while you’re at it.”

I gave Mike the key to the office shared by my two paralegals, where all the unit records were stored, so he could get a jump on the older cases and parole notifications while I thought about how to begin to examine the jumble of papers on my desk.

I picked up the phone, accessed an outside line, and dialed the number for the Ritz, the elegant old hotel Jed favored when he was doing business in Paris.

“Non, madame, Monsieur Segal is not in at the moment. Yes, madame, of course I will leave him another message.

Au revoir, Madame Cooper.“ It was midday in Paris. Jed was probably sitting in some outdoor cafe sipping a good Bordeaux with a client, and unlikely to pick up my messages until he returned to his room at the end of the evening.

During the next two hours, I managed to fill several pages of a white legal pad with some obvious candidates for consideration. There were plenty of active investigations to look at – the drama coach who subjected students to sexual abuse, the drug importer who sedated and videotaped models as he raped them, and the gay art dealer who played sadomasochistic games with young men he picked up in leather bars; and there were literally thousands of closed cases serial rapists, pedophiles, and professionals who didn’t look the part of sexual deviants.

For once I was delighted when the hour approached 9 A.M. and the corridors began to come alive with the courthouse regulars.

Laura Wilkie had been the secretary for the Sex Crimes Unit even before I joined the staff and, fortunately for me, had stayed on as my assistant ever since. She was almost twenty years older than I – in her mid-fifties and lived alone in a small apartment on Staten Island where she devoted her off-duty hours to tending her cheerful flower garden and painting imaginary landscapes. Laura was terrifically loyal to me and responsible for keeping the work of the twenty-five lawyers who reported to me in better control and order than I ever could. When Laura came in she was pleased to see me in place and plopped the pile of daily papers in front of me, as she always did.

“Well, somebody besides me really didn’t like Isabella, did they?” she offered with a wry expression.

“Don’t say it too loud, Laura, or Chapman will add you to the suspect list. What did you have against her?”

“Oh, nothing really, Alex. She just used people like you so much, and she had no use for people like me. She wasn’t a very nice person, that’s it.”

“She wasn’t all that bad. I know she could be rude and insensitive, which was inexcusable. But she was also clever and funny and extremely talented, once you got past that artificial veneer. Anyway, let me bring you up to speed on what lies ahead today,” I went on, repeating last night’s events to Laura, who would serve as the shield between me and the outside world. On a good day, no one got past Wilkie on the phone or in person without her knowing their purpose, except for close friends. And on a bad day like this, she would be impenetrable, if that’s what I asked for.

“Mike’s in charge – anybody who shows up without an appointment gets cleared by him.” Laura nodded. She knew that Mike Chapman and I had met on one of my first cases more than ten years ago, and even though the constant macho banter was not Laura’s style, she enjoyed Mike’s friendship and knew I respected his ability as a cop.

“The D.A.”s at a budget meeting at City Hall, which should go a couple of hours,“ I went on.

“He’s going to call for me the minute he gets back, so that’s the big one I’m waiting for.

“Mercer Wallace should be on his way down with a victim. Make her comfortable in the waiting area and let me see him alone first. I want to get the story from him before I talk to her, because it’s part of the pattern, the serial rapist we’ve been looking for. I’ll take calls from any of the guys on trial – Gina may have some questions during jury selection ‘cause she’s got a tough drug issue in her case.

“And no personals, not one, not any, nobody.” In addition to the three lines on Laura’s desk, I have a private line that rings only on mine, so I knew that Jed and my closest friends could get through when they wanted to.

“Tell everybody that I’m fine and I’ll call them later.”

“What about press calls?” Laura asked, as Mike came back into my room with several case jackets under his arm.

“Hey, Wilkie, you want to lose your job? You ever know her not to take a call from a reporter? Get a grip, Laura.”

“He’s kidding, Laura. All press calls go into the Public Relations Office. Please tell Brenda I’ll give her a full update as soon as I can.” The District Attorney had a well-trained professional staff to deal with media matters, and my friend Brenda Whitney had her hands full trying to keep tabs on the hundreds of thousands of cases that passed through our office every year. She didn’t need the complications of our private lives to make her job more miserable, and it was essential to bring her in on details that were likely to surface in the press.

“Alex,” Laura questioned timidly, ‘how about people from the office? Everybody’s going to come by to check out how you’re taking this. Who do you want to see?“

“Uh,” I groaned and tried to make a mental barricade between myself and the real world. But it was impossible to ignore that there were at least three colleagues I would simply have to see during the course of the day.

Rod Squires was chief of the Trial Division, the man who supervised several hundred lawyers responsible for all the violent crime prosecutions in the office, and who reported directly to Battaglia. He was smart and personable, and at forty-five, had come up through the ranks in the office, having tried some of the toughest murder cases the city had witnessed. He had been a generous mentor to me and a great supporter of mine from my earliest days in the office.

“If Rod asks for me, I’ll go down to his office as soon as I’m done with Wallace’s case.

“And of course I’ll see Sarah.” My unit deputy was a terrific young lawyer. She was a few years younger than I, married to a former prosecutor who had just gone on to the bench, and she had returned from her first maternity leave to assist me with the operation of Sex Crimes. Sarah Brenner was petite, dark, and as attractive as she was competent.

I trusted her, I liked her, and I selected her to work with me to oversee the complex and sensitive range of cases that included sexual assault, child abuse, and domestic violence.

“In fact, tell her she’s got to review everything new that comes in. I’ll be out of commission till I know what’s happening with the murder investigation.”

Laura screwed up her courage to ask me about the third one: “Patrick McKinney?”

“Try to keep him as far away from me as you can, Laura,” I snarled.

“He’ll be the first one sniffing around here, hoping to find me miserable, and I’ll break his fat fucking neck if he says a word to me.”