Linda Fairstein - Death Dance

My eyes welled up with tears.

"My dear, dear Alex. I'm not trying to make you cry. We want you to be part of our joy, of our marriage."

I stood up and this time she let me embrace her. "Don't worry about the tears, Joanie. I can't think of any greater compliment than this."

She grasped my elbows and pushed me back. "But you've got to look at me, Alex. The hardest part of asking you to do this is knowing what a flood of memories this will open up for you and bring back. It's inviting you to look in the face of everything that you and Adam were about to embark on when he was killed. It's your magical hilltop and your home and-"

"And this time it's your turn, Joanie. I couldn't have faced this ten years ago, I'm certain, so you're right to be concerned. For a long time after Adam's death, I didn't go to weddings, not anybody's. Hell, I couldn't even bear to look at ads for gowns or jewelry or china in all the magazines. I used to bawl when the Tiffany catalog showed up in the mail with endless pages of wedding and engagement rings."

She followed me down the dune and to the edge of the sand, where the bubbles in the surf sat like froth as the waves rolled back out to sea.

"You never forget, Joan, that's for sure. But all of that pain is in a different place now," I said, turning to face her. "I never come home to this island without imagining what it would be like if Adam was here with me, and I never will. But the memories of being here with him are wonderful ones, the best ones of my life. And celebrating your marriage ceremony would be just about the happiest assignment I've ever had."

"So it's a yes?" she said, walking east toward Quansoo, the adjacent beach, where we could see people gathered around what looked to be a giant excavator.

"If you really want to put this event in the hands of an amateur I guess I'm it."

"Excellent. We've got to figure out what we're wearing. We can go shopping together for dresses next time I'm in the city."

"What else can I help with?"

Joan's mind was racing now. She'd clearly been holding back until she raised the issue of the ceremony with me. "We've got to tie up some rooms at the island inns."

"How many people?"

"You know if it were up to me, it'd be a cast of thousands. Jim wants it small and cozy. We're somewhere between his forty and my closest five hundred. Think you can get Mike to come?"

"Joanie. I know what you're thinking."

"You always do."

"He hasn't even started to grapple with Val's death. Mercer and I are just beginning to draw him back into work again, so give him time to adjust."

"Give him too much time and some lucky girl will be in there offering just the right kind of solace."

"I work with him, Joan. I've never had a better partner, someone I could trust as much as I do Mike. He and Mercer cover my back, they think with me, they're the very best in the business. If we take this in a different direction, that entire professional relationship goes by the boards. You're hopelessly romantic."

"Somebody has to be, don't you think?" she said. "What's going on up ahead?"

"They must be opening Tisbury Great Pond."

"What do you mean?"

The southern shore of the Vineyard, almost twenty miles of barrier beach, was dotted by a series of ponds, large and small. "Those oysters you like so much? They come from that body of water," I said, running up the nearest dune and pointing out the Great Pond. "A century ago, the Wampanoags figured out the importance of the moon and the tidal changes in getting saline water from the ocean into the clam and oyster beds in here."

"What'd they do?"

"They used to come down here with oxen and dredge an opening out to the sea. Now the local shellfish constable oversees things. They use heavy earth-moving equipment to make an artificial channel into the pond every spring, and a couple of other times a year."

"That's a huge gap they've created."

"Probably sixty, seventy feet across."

"What's everyone looking at?"

"The local newspaper said the opening was supposed to be yesterday. But it doesn't always take the first time they try. The Native Americans were so damn smart about the tides." We were side by side on the dune, staring out at the ocean. "Mesmerizing, isn't it, the ebb and flow? If it's high tide and you've got a four-foot sea, but the pond is only three feet high, the water rushes right back in and fills the trench. The beach tends to heal itself, so it usually takes twenty-four hours-and a bit more shoveling-to make sure the gap stays open."

"Wouldn't you like to watch?"

Joan and I walked the last quarter of a mile. The giant black excavator had blocked from view the rescue vehicle that had lumbered over the sand to park beside it.

We jogged the last few yards and joined the huddle of men standing around the small truck, its open back revealing a vinyl body bag.

"What happened?" I said, recognizing one of the volunteer firemen from the Chilmark station.

"Some smartass decided to test the waters last night. Inaugurate the opening of the cut by putting on his wet suit and bringing his surfboard down to the beach. Got caught in a pretty fierce rip and disappeared. Rescue crews searched half the night with no luck, till just about daybreak. He-his body-just got thrown back up here an hour ago. Nothing to see, Alex," he said, trying to steer me out of the way. "Nothing left to do but say a prayer."

I nodded to Joan and we started back over to Black Point.

"Talk about putting a damper on a lovely afternoon. Don't you ever feel spooked by this?" she asked me.

"By what?"

"By death, Alex. How death seems to follow you wherever you go."

An early April thunderstorm ripped through the Boston suburbs south of Logan Airport and kept the plane on the tarmac for close to three hours on Sunday evening. It gave me even more time to reflect on Joan's remark, as I had done throughout the lazy weekend we spent together after leaving the beach. Police, prosecutors, pathol-ogists, and serologists-all of us whose professional lives were absorbed with understanding the secrets of the dead-seemed to be surrounded with more than our share of violent happenings.

Instead of reaching LaGuardia in time for the dinner I had planned to enjoy with a couple of my law school friends, I watched Joan race off to catch the last shuttle to Washington and waited on line at the taxi stand to get a cab back into the city.

"Welcome home, Ms. Cooper," Benito said, stepping out to the curb to open the car door for me. "I have your mail and some dry cleaning in back."

I followed the doorman inside, waiting while he went into the storage area to get the bundle of magazines and plastic-wrapped dresses that had been delivered over the weekend.

It was ten thirty by the time I sorted through the bills, a postcard from Nina Baum, and the flood of invitations to charity luncheons that heralded the spring season. I started a tub running with steaming-hot water and sprinkled some bath salts in it, watching them foam up as the tub began to fill.

I was standing at the bar, pouring myself a shot of my new single-malt scotch and smiling at the remembrance of Mike's gesture, when the apartment suddenly went black.

Feeling my way back to the bathroom, I turned off the faucet and then slowly guided myself around familiar pieces of furniture, into the kitchen to find a flashlight and the fuse box.

I yanked at the heavy metal door of the box, standing on tiptoe to see what had blown so that I could flip it back on. All of the switches were aligned, and I played with a few of them to see whether anything made a difference, but no lights came on around me.

With the same baby steps that got me from room to room, I went to the foyer of the large apartment and pressed against the peephole in the front door. I was reassured to see that the overhead hall fixtures were still working, which meant that the entire building didn't have the problem that I did.