Linda Fairstein - Death Dance

"Benito!" I screamed as the shiny silver cell phone dropped out of my pocket and slid across the floor.

I could hear a faint voice calling out from the little device, "Hello? Hello? Who is it?"

The figure was standing over me now, pulling on my legs, twisting me onto my stomach and trying to grab the hair at the nape of my neck to hold my head still.

I thrashed and kicked at him, screaming again to Benito. "It's Alex Cooper. I'm in the stairwell, Benito. Fire ! Benito. Fire !"

I was yelling as loud as I could, knowing from years of professional experience that someone was more likely to come to my aid if I screamed "fire" and not "rape."

The man had one knee on the floor and the other planted in the middle of my back as he reached for one of my arms, stretching at the same time to try to grab for the phone. He made a weird, grating sound-like the tip of his tongue hissing against his front teeth- as his chin grazed the top of my head.

"In the stairwell, Benito," I screamed again, unable to remember exactly which floor of the building I had reached. "I'm on-I'm not sure, Benito. I'm think I'm on sixteen. Help me! Help me !"

My assailant couldn't have it both ways. He had to release my arm to snatch the phone from the floor. As he did, we both heard Benito giving commands in Spanish to one of the handymen, directing him to run up the stairs to find me.

The attacker dropped the phone and I heard it clatter down the steps. Then he kicked me once in the side so that I remained writhing on the floor, doubled up in pain. He took off into the darkness above me, and thirty seconds later, somewhere on a high floor between the landing and the penthouse on thirty-five, I heard one of the heavy emergency doors open and slam shut behind him.

I was able to crawl down the steps to retrieve my phone and dial 911 before the building workmen reached me.

By the time the sergeant and two uniformed cops from the 19th Precinct arrived in the lobby, the team of Con Ed repairmen had restored power to the A line and started the elevators running again. There was no electrical fire and it would be hours before they could determine the reason for the blackout.

The sergeant took me up to my apartment while the cops called for a backup unit to go through the building from top to bottom.

I poured each of us some scotch and we sat in the living room, his police radio on the coffee table so that we could hear the conversations back and forth as the guys searched the staircases and hallways in vain.

When the doorbell rang, Sergeant Camacho walked to the door to let his men in.

"Yo, sarge. I didn't know you and Coop had hooked up. Am I breaking anything apart here? A cocktail? Last dance?" Chapman was leaning against the entrance to my apartment, gnawing on a toothpick as he held the door open with his foot.

Camacho blushed and started to protest that he'd only responded to a call and was starting to fill out the paperwork on my complaint.

"Relax, pal. Take it easy. Not enough I spent the last six hours checking out a jumper off a project rooftop in East Harlem, now I got blondie seeing shadows in the stairwell. The least you could have done is invite me to the after-party, too," Mike said, walking into the den, toward the bar. "Mind if I turn in the brew for something more refreshing?"

"Good news travels fast, I guess."

"The commanding officer of the Nineteenth called in an unusual on you. Lieutenant Peterson heard it on the scanner and told me to get my ass over here ASAP. And by the way? Peterson says the CO thinks you've got Munchausen syndrome. That you make these whacko stories up just because you like my company."

"The only thing I like better than your company is a good night's sleep. I'm forgetting how that happens."

An unusual report was filed in matters that might be of some significance to the commissioner and higher-ups in the department. The fact that a prosecutor working on a high-profile matter had been rousted from her home during the night and had been the target of an attempted assault would be of interest to everyone.

"You know your guys are coming up empty, don't you, sarge? I just saw one of them in the lobby and there's no trace of an intruder."

I bit into my lip and tried to calm myself.

"This place is big. If it wasn't the midnight shift, we woulda had more guys on duty, bigger response to sweep the building. Do it faster."

"It can't be that difficult. He fled up the stairs. He eventually had to go down to get out of the building, didn't he?" I asked. "You're telling me nobody saw him?"

Mike sat opposite me, his hand on the knee of my jeans. "Give the guys time to canvass people. Maybe we're dealing with a pro. He got in without anybody knowing about him, could be he slipped out that way, too. You okay?"

"Considering the alternative? I'm great."

"You have any idea what this guy was trying to do to you?"

I glanced at the sergeant, afraid he would think I was crazy if I said what I really thought.

"C'mon, Coop. Tell me."

"You don't really believe I was flushed out of my apartment randomly, do you?" I looked back and forth between their faces but neither answered. "You think this perfectly prepared-I don't know what to call him-lunatic? Will that do? A guy dressed completely in black, head and hands covered-no I.D., no trace evidence. You think he just happened to be there when my lights went out? Not for a minute. This has to be connected to something I'm working on."

"Did he talk to you? Say anything that suggests he knew who you were?"

"Talk to me? It wasn't a pickup, Detective Chapman. The plan was obviously to kill me by choking or-"

"Whoa. A little dramatic tonight, aren't we? Kill you?"

"I called out to him, thinking maybe he was a neighbor. He never answered. All he wanted to do was overtake me and pin me down so that he could-well, he could do whatever it was he intended to do to me." I rubbed my neck. "I'm telling you he gripped me so hard that if I hadn't gotten away from him he'd have stopped my breathing within seconds."

The sergeant was emboldened by Mike's skepticism. "Maybe, ma'am, he was just coming along behind you and fell on the staircase. My guys are knocking on-"

"Oh, my masked neighbor? The one who dresses for blizzards in April? The clumsy one who can't stay on his feet?" I stood up and walked to the front door. "Why am I wasting time with you two? Sergeant, I'd like you to take me down to the lobby so I can see who these guys are from Con Edison."

"Coop, stay here and I'll bring up their supervisor so you can satisfy yourself that none of them have anything-"

"I wasn't talking to you, Mike. You might as well go home and keep wallowing in your own misery. No need to take me seriously."

Mike grabbed me by the elbow and pulled me away from the door. "Wallowing? Is that what I've been doing for three months? Is that what Val-"

"I'm sorry. That's not what I meant to-"

"You don't usually have any difficulty expressing yourself. I get your point."

"I apologize, Mike." I squared off to face him directly. "I'm scared and I'm tired and I'm the one who's feeling sorry for myself tonight. Please accept my apology."

"Whoever did this to you was either inside another apartment or out of the building by the time the first RMP got here."

"Mike, will you forgive-"

"It's not the time for this, Coop. The sergeant doesn't need to know my backstory, okay? These Con Ed guys who are here-"

"You've seen them yourself? They're legit?"

"There's bad wiring, they say, that took the electricity in this whole line down."

"Bad, like it's damaged? Or like it was intentionally altered?"

"It's two o'clock in the morning. Bad is all they know so far." Mike took a slug of vodka and adjusted the collar of his jacket.