Linda Fairstein: Final Jeopardy

“But why Isabella?” I asked her.

“I can understand you were mad at me for taking up with Jed while you were in jail, but Isabella Lascar?”

“All of a sudden, last month, I began to find out about his meeting her. I could deal with you, I was sure. There was nothing that special about you,” she said.

“I knew if I made him aware of me again, you wouldn’t be in my way.

But then when she began calling him and seeing him, here and in L.A.” I knew it was a serious problem. I may be able to compete with you, but she was a movie star people idolized her, adored her, worshiped her. He’d never come back to me as long as she was in his life. Once I learned they were going to Martha’s Vineyard together, it just seemed so easy for me. I drove right onto the ferry, didn’t need any reservations off season. Got up to your house easily between the listing in the phone book and those locals in the post office who’d trust anybody pulled off the main road, just like I did tonight… and waited. I was back on the boat within hours. I just never meant for Jed to get blamed for it.“

Psychose passionelle. I tried to recall more facts from my reading the night before. Ellen Goldman really believed that Jed loved her, that he would actually return her affection, were it not for some external influence. The person in jeopardy is not the beloved she’d have no reason to harm him. The most likely recipient of the violent act, I had read, is the person perceived to be standing in the way of the desired union: Isabella Lascar. Get her out of the way and Jed Segal would be free to devote himself to Ellen.

And then, once she was dead, instead of turning his attention to Goldman, he tried to repair his romance with me. I wasn’t interested, but that didn’t lessen the annoyance of his calls and entreaties in her mind. For me, this was final jeopardy, too. Ellen was too impatient to wait for Jed’s ardor to subside. She had seized the moment of my precinct visit this evening when she learned about it on the radio, and used the fact that it drew me through Central Park, to come up with a scheme. Kill me, in the style of Harold McCoy who had a reason to want me out of the way and it wouldn’t look anything like the death of Isabella. Abduct and stab me to death, don’t shoot another one. She was right the tabloids would love it, and more importantly, no one would connect it to the death of Isabella Lascar.

How sadly ironic for me, to have spent a decade prosecuting men for crimes of violence against woman, and now to meet my peril at the hands of a woman. Perhaps that’s what had me blinded in this case all along.

I thought of the lines of poetry scribbled in Isabella’s manuscript, sent to her by Goldman, in the guise of the letters of “Dr. Jeffers‘: ”Is it… a crime… to love too well?“

Pope named it aptly a most unfortunate lady. The crime was not the loving, but the murder.

I tried to give her more incentive to back off.

“Let’s call Jed together, Ellen. Let’s talk with him about-‘

”I don’t ever want him to talk to you again, don’t you understand that? If you’re out of his life, he’ll come back to me. I know that.“

“I’m leaving New York. I’m going out of town this weekend. I – I won’t come back till you work it out with Jed.” I’d go anywhere, forever, if you’d let me out of here.

I was almost able to work loose my hands, but had no idea what I could do with them, against her weapons and her physical ability, if I were free.

“You’re playing with me again, Alex. You won’t leave for long. This is where your work is, you can’t stay away.”

Shit, maybe they need a sex crimes prosecutor in Wyoming or Montana. Someplace without investment bankers and without erotomaniacs.

A man’s voice from the top of the staircase on the Bethesda Terrace, to our south, broke the stillness. Both of our heads snapped in that direction, vainly trying to see who he was and where he stood, as he called out, “Hey, girl, hey, pooch. You down there? C’mon back up here to me.”

A dog walker. Goldman tensed and held a finger in front of her mouth, warning me to stay quiet. I prayed whoever he was would venture down the steps to my hellhole.

“Hey, Zac. C’mon back up here. Zac? Zac? C’mon, let me put your leash on.”

David Mitchell? David and Prozac was it possible?

My eyes were riveted to the top of the great staircase as David, snapping his fingers as though to attract a wandering dog, moved into sight, flooded in the full light of the moon.

“Hey,” he called out again.

“Anybody there? Anybody see a Weimaraner loose around here?”

It was impossible to know whether he could see Goldman from his angle, but I was certain that he wouldn’t be able to tell that I was seated below her on the ground. She didn’t speak. I assumed that she hadn’t recognized him, but she had done so much research about me that I couldn’t be sure she hadn’t checked my building and neighbors as well.

“Yes!” I screamed out at the top of my lungs, and she swung around to stick the tip of her knife against the back of my neck, without uttering a sound.

David started down toward us at a trot.

“Great,” he was enthusing, ‘which way did you see her go?“ He was still acting as though he were simply looking for a lost dog, so it was impossible to tell if he had anyone else with him, or if he had identified the sound of my voice.

He was coming at us too quickly now, and I feared that Goldman wouldn’t let him intrude on our session without penalty. I could feel her body leaning over, from behind me, and although she was out of my range of vision, I was afraid she was going to make a move to reach for her holster.

“David!” I screamed out, ‘she’s got a gun.“

I lurched forward by my own motion and pulled one hand out of the rope. But it was my left hand, and as I broke away from Goldman’s grasp, I was useless to do anything to disarm her with it. My right one was still entangled in the cord. As she dropped the knife to the ground and reached for her pistol, four or five dark figures ran down the steep incline and the staircase heading for us, as David dropped to his knees in place.

I could hear Chapman’s voice yelling orders from somewhere in this small charging force. First at me, to stay flat, and then at the others to move in slowly, and next at Ellen to throw down her gun.

A shot rang out from just inches above my right ear and I looked for a place to shelter myself without success. I had no idea who Goldman was aiming at, but if she chose to focus her attention on me again, there was no way she could miss.

Someone on Mike’s team had apparently been waiting for Goldman to shoot first, and fired back in our direction.

I flattened myself on the ground, my face crushed against a sharp rock my left arm out to the side and my right one pinned beneath me.

Chapman shouted at her once more: “Drop it!”

Goldman fired again and again. I ached so badly from every bloodied joint and bruised skin surface that I wasn’t sure I would know if a bullet struck me or not.

Seconds later, I heard footsteps approaching Goldman from the rear a crunching on the dry leaves as someone ran down the slope from the north. She must have heard the sound as well, since she swung herself around to point her pistol in the direction of the man coming in behind her.

But he got a shot off first, and she screamed as she dropped backward, her body falling across my own.

The gun was still in Goldman’s hand as she lay writhing in pain, her body cushioned against mine. I couldn’t tell where she had been hit, but her legs were still twitching and kicking like a frog on a dissection table in a high school biology class.