Blood Oath

by Linda Fairstein

  “The back door might be a better way in than the front.”

  “Director of security,” Mike said. “Roger Murfee.”

  “An acquaintance?”

  “Aces. Super guy,” Mike said. “He was a lieutenant commander in Harlem for six years before he left to take this job, the bio says. We had our share of walking body bags out of the projects together, with Murf riding shotgun for me.”

  Mike seemed totally engaged in looking up his former colleagues who were guarding over Francie’s facility. But the next moment, when he opened his mouth, his attention was back on her medical condition.

  “Nerve agents work by disrupting the central nervous system. They kill by asphyxiation—or by cardiac arrest.”

  I couldn’t speak. I just listened to Mike.

  “If Francie had collapsed fifteen minutes earlier, sitting alone at her desk, cleaning up her papers after a long, stressful day in court,” Mike said, “and not found till hours later—or in the morning—the assumption would have been that she had a heart attack.”

  “She’s too young for that,” I said.

  “I bet you don’t have any idea of her medical history, or the effect of pregnancy on it.”

  “I don’t, but . . .”

  “One of the things that makes Novichok and its progeny a level worse than earlier nerve agents is that they are designed to be untraceable,” Mike said. “A woman keels over at her desk in the Legal Aid offices? She’s got no family to advocate for her, to fight to get someone’s attention in the system. Even with an autopsy, it’s unlikely the medical examiner would find any sign of the cause.”

  “Francie’s not dead,” I said.

  “She’s at a hospital that seems to be the last resort for someone on life support, don’t you think? If she doesn’t make it, then the whole matter goes from Major Case to the Homicide Squad.”

  He stood up, took the glass from my hand, and rinsed it out in the sink of the wet bar. “Six A.M., Coop. Set your alarm. I want to check out what’s going on. I have a feeling the commissioner is holding out on something he knows about all this.”

  “Then I’m coming with you,” I said.

  “Good,” Mike said. “It may be your last chance to see Francie Fain.”

  TWENTY-NINE

  “Is he expecting you?” the guard in the security booth at the Sixty-Sixth Street gate said to Mike, who had flashed his gold shield to the uniformed man.

  “He’ll be happy to see me. Let’s just leave it at that.”

  We had walked through the two tall stone pillars that were topped with an elegant wrought iron archway, a typical design at the time it was built, more than a century ago.

  Mike’s answer didn’t seem to raise any concern in the guard. “Well, you’re early, but you might as well go on in,” he said. “Just turn right at the Founder’s Hall, at the top of the drive, and it’ll be your next building on the left.”

  “Thanks,” Mike said.

  We walked uphill toward the five-story gray-brick building with limestone trim that had the name FOUNDER’S HALL carved above the entrance. It seemed to anchor the campus of the institute-turned-university, and was undoubtedly the first structure built there.

  We turned right to reach the next building, almost as old as the main one, bearing its original designation: NURSES’ RESIDENCE.

  “This means we must be getting close to the hospital,” Mike said, climbing the steps and opening the front door, shortly before seven A.M.

  Instead of a residential hall, the first floor had clearly been turned into suites of offices. The first ones, to the left and to the right, were both marked SECURITY.

  Murf’s name was on a sign over the door to the left. Mike knocked but there was no response. He opened it and we entered, sitting down in the reception area, where Mike picked up a map of the grounds from a pile on the secretary’s desk.

  We began to study it but hadn’t gotten very far when Roger Murfee came through the door.

  “Well, well, well,” he said, smiling at Mike and extending his hand. “It’s sort of like a bad penny turning up. It had to happen sooner or later.”

  “I’m Alexandra—”

  “Cooper,” Murf said. “Special Victims. My guys had a ton of cases with you.”

  He was taller than Mike and lean, with a handsome face framed by short, slightly wavy blond hair and frameless glasses.

  “Good to meet you,” I said.

  “Somebody asleep at the front gate when you got here?” Murf asked.

  “Tinning the old-timers still works,” Mike said. “The shiny badge opens a lot of doors.”

  Murf unlocked his door and led us into his office. “I’ve been here five years, without a scintilla of a violent crime. So don’t change the odds for me, okay?”

  “Just sniffing around,” Mike said. “Looking for a body.”

  “Fresh out of luck. I don’t do bodies anymore.”

  “Even before you hear my story?” Mike asked.

  “I’ll give you fifteen minutes,” Murf said. “What do you want to know?”

  “What is this place, and why is there a private hospital here?”

  “Let me answer your question with a question. What do you know about John D. Rockefeller? I mean Senior, the original?”

  “That he was probably the richest person in modern history,” Mike said. “Founded the Standard Oil Company in the 1870s.”

  “And known for his philanthropy, too,” I added.

  Murf filled in all the gaps with a brief bio of John D.’s business and philanthropic successes in his very long life.

  He went on. “In 1900, Rockefeller’s first grandchild—his daughter’s baby, Jack—died of scarlet fever. There was no treatment for the disease back then. The billionaire was devastated by the boy’s death. He told friends that he had enough money to try to find a cure for both scarlet fever and infectious diseases like it.”

  “Sad story,” I said.

  “But it launched this incredible place,” Murf said. “Within months, Rockefeller agreed to fund the creation of this new research facility dedicated exclusively to the scientific study of medicine—the nature and causes of disease, and the methods of treatment.”

  “Okay,” Mike said. “I get the research part of it. But why a hospital?”

  “His science advisers insisted on a small private hospital on the same campus,” Murf said. “The research would be done in the laboratories, but the patients would be carefully selected from the general population of the city to receive the new treatments. There was no institute like this in the entire country.”

  “So the hospital is essentially a lab, too,” I said.

  “Yes,” Murf said. “It opened in 1910, just before the height of the polio epidemic. So polio was one of the first diseases studied for treatment, along with typhoid and syphilis and pneumonia—which used to kill twenty-five percent of the people who contracted it.”

  “Can we see the hospital?” Mike asked.

  “Sure. Sure you can,” Murf said. “It’s still in its original building.”

  “Still small, then,” I said. “Still exclusive.”

  Murf got up from his desk. “Exclusive? Let’s just say it’s a club you don’t want to join, although you’ll have the most brilliant docs in the world working on you.”

  “You like your job?” Mike asked as we headed for the door.

  “Best place in the world to be,” Murf said. “It’s like a mini precinct. We’ve got close to forty men and women, on duty 24/7. Two thousand people work here and about two hundred of them are grad students—PhD candidates. I’ve never been treated so well in my life.”

  “I get it,” Mike said. “No perps on campus. No mopes to mess with you. They’re all brainiacs, doing good for the world.”

  We turned left again and Murf pointed u
p over our heads. Three stories above us was an elevated bridge—once copper coated, now with a light green patina that made it stand out against the brick buildings on either end. It connected the third floor of the old Nurses’ Residence with the hospital.

  “Remind you of anything?” Murf asked.

  I looked up and laughed. “You’ve got your own Bridge of Sighs,” I said.

  “You bet we do,” Murf said. “The patients used to be wheeled over to the solarium in the Nurses’ Residence, and their wistful glances out over the East River were often their last looks at the cityscape.”

  “Condemned men and women making that final crossing on the bridge,” Mike said. “Just like the Tombs. Just like the Doge’s Palace.”

  I wanted to get that image out of my head. “Such prime real estate to build a medical institute on back then,” I said. “Bordering on the river, I mean.”

  “By 1900, this thirteen-acre plot of land was left intact on Manhattan Island,” Murf said. “It had been a family farm—the Schermerhorn Farm—since the eighteenth century, until John D. bought it. You should see the old photographs, with great views over the river and all the way out to Long Island.”

  Mike stopped to walk closer to the edge of the building, which hung out over the FDR Drive and the river. He turned back to join us and we continued on to the entrance of the hospital.

  “You’ve got new construction going on,” he said to Murf.

  “Yeah, we’re adding some new labs and offices. State of the art,” Murf said. “These scientists have it good. They’re sitting right on the river, above the Drive.”

  “They probably don’t even know what they’re sitting on,” Mike said.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “The FDR Drive was built after World War II,” he said. “From landfill.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “That landfill came from England, you know.”

  Murf looked at me and shrugged.

  “This part of Manhattan is built with the rubble from the blitz of the city of Bristol,” Mike said, putting his knowledge of military history to good use.

  “That’s crazy,” I said.

  “Not so crazy as you think. Our ships had been delivering supplies to England, in all the time leading up to the Normandy invasion. Specifically to the port city of Bristol,” Mike said. “The ships couldn’t come back empty. They needed to be filled with ballast. Something heavy had to go in the bilge to stabilize them, so they used the material from all the buildings—homes, factories, aircraft manufacturing plants, and even churches—that were destroyed by the Nazis.”

  “That will make my ride home feel a little different from now on,” I said.

  Murf had pulled open the door of the old Rockefeller Hospital to let us in. “Interesting factoid, Mike. But you never made your point. Exactly what are we looking for?”

  “Coop and I are thinking you might have a patient here who might need our help—well, her help specifically when she wakes up out of a coma.”

  I let Mike put the weight on me. Every cop wanted to help when they thought a woman had been the victim of a rape.

  Murf just stared. “But you want to see her now, even though she’s not conscious?”

  I phumphered for an answer. “We—uh, I just missed seeing her at Cornell, and now I understand she’s been transferred here. It’s the way I usually do things, just to get connected to my victim—and perhaps there’s family around I could introduce myself to.”

  I got the feeling that Murf was too smart to buy into us completely.

  “I don’t get to make decisions about patients and who gets to see them,” he said.

  “Well, can you ask one of the nurses or docs about her? About her condition, and whether we’d be allowed in?” I said. “Her name is Francie Fain.”

  “They’re not even going to tell me about her condition,” he said. “HIPAA regulations and all that.”

  We had gotten off the elevator on the third floor. Although the bones of the building were old, the interiors had been completely modernized. I watched as Murf approached the nurses’ station.

  He leaned in and spoke with the only nurse at the desk, looking back at us to explain who we were.

  Her stern expression didn’t waver for a second. I could see that the corridor to our right had an open door, and that a physician in a lab coat was heading back to the desk.

  But something the nurse said—without moving her head to either side—made Murf look in the opposite direction, toward the corridor entrance to our left.

  “Look, Mike,” I said. “There’ll be no getting in that wing.”

  There was a sign posted over the closed door, with a single word printed in a large, bold font. It had to be where Francie Fain had been taken. All the sign said was QUARANTINE.

  THIRTY

  “Not a word to Mercer about our visit to Rockefeller,” Mike said half an hour later when he dropped me at the courthouse. “He’s likely to tell Vickee, and then Scully will be after my scalp.”

  He was on his way to headquarters to view the video surveillance tapes from Francie’s last walk down Baxter Street.

  “Understood,” I said, getting out of his car and stopping at the coffee cart for two large cups of black coffee.

  There was plenty for me to do to organize the presentation of my case against Zach Palmer. The harder task was to figure out how and when to tell him that he had better retain counsel and prepare to defend himself. Since it was already Thursday, I decided to wait until Monday to make that move.

  “You must have been here awfully early,” Laura said when she reached her desk almost an hour after I had settled in.

  “You know the offer of a door-to-door ride from Detective Chapman is always too good to refuse,” I said, giving her a thumbs-up and a morning smile. “Try your best to keep the day quiet for me, will you?”

  “That might take some magical powers that I simply don’t possess,” Laura said. “Are you taking calls?”

  “Screening them carefully, if you don’t mind.”

  Mercer wasn’t far behind, with a third cardboard cup of coffee and a blueberry muffin for each of us.

  “I want to apologize for my role in upsetting Vickee last night,” I said.

  “You ought to call her up and tell her,” he said. “I’m not authorized to accept apologies on her behalf.”

  “I’ve already tried to call her twice, but she’s just letting it go to voice mail.”

  “Vickee’s walking a tightrope,” Mercer said. “Scully’s got her on a tight leash, and she knows she can’t make you and Mike happy at the same time.”

  We got to work, dividing our chores on Lucy’s case. I called her aunt to let her know that I thought we were making progress, that Lucy admitted to stealing her cousin’s ring, and that she hoped to be reunited with the family when she was ready to leave Streetwork. Her aunt seemed pleased, and suddenly much warmer, to hear that news. I decided there was no reason to get into the fine points of the case against Zach Palmer at this point.

  An hour later, Laura buzzed me. “I’ve got the judge’s wife—Janet Corliss—on your first line. Do you want her?”

  “Want her? Of course not,” I said, “but I’d better take her.”

  I pressed the plastic button and answered the call. “This is Alexandra Cooper.”

  “Ms. Cooper? It’s Janet Corliss.”

  “How can I help you?”

  “My friend Jessica Witte was down to see you on Tuesday. You told her you’d consider coming to my office to meet with me—and, well, there’s getting to be some urgency to it.”

  There was usually some urgency with most of the people I dealt with, and it was always part of my job to triage each matter.

  “Would you be comfortable with next week, Ms. Corliss?” I asked.

 
“Next week? Did you say next week? I could be dead by next week.”

  “Then we’ll deal with it right away,” I said. “I’ve got a fabulous deputy. Perhaps Catherine could get to you this afternoon or tomorrow?”

  “You’re too important to do this yourself?” she asked. “Or are you in Bud’s pocket, too?”

  “Excuse me? Bud’s pocket?”

  There were moments that the burden of being a public servant weighed heavily on my tongue. I couldn’t tell the woman what I really thought about her comment, her dig at my ethics, without causing her to try to climb the chain of command—though it didn’t go very far up since Battaglia’s death.

  “Listen to me, Ms. Cooper,” the distraught woman said. I assumed that the tension of her situation might have heightened the aggressive tone she took with me. “My husband just made an offer to a young lawyer to be his new law secretary. It’s an important job, as you know, and the fellow who’s had it for the last eight years is moving to the West Coast.”

  “I didn’t know that. He’s a smart kid and he’s been a great asset to your husband,” I said.

  “So now he offers the job to a young woman,” she said, “and I believe they’re having an affair.”

  “I can only imagine how upsetting that must be to you, but it’s not my territory, Ms. Corliss,” I said. “I prosecute violent crimes. I don’t meddle in affairs.”

  “This woman is the one we were fighting about when Bud tried to choke me, Ms. Cooper. Does that make it all a bit more relevant?” Janet Corliss asked. “I accused Bud of having a sexual relationship with her. He denied it, of course, but he put his hands on my throat because he got so angry.”

  “Yes, your friend told me about that, and we need to discuss whether or not you want to prosecute, which you’re certainly entitled to do.”

  “I need to see you today,” Janet Corliss said, screeching into the phone. “The woman Bud offered the job to has disappeared. She’s a Legal Aid lawyer and her name is Francie Fain.”

  I almost gasped out loud. I was reeling at the mention of Francie’s name.