Blood Oath

by Linda Fairstein

“No one in her office has the faintest idea where she is,” she went on. Janet Corliss took a deep breath and I flashed back to the note in Francie’s briefcase, telling me that she was thinking of taking a new job and wanted my advice. I thought, too, of her pregnancy.

  “Ms. Corliss,” I said, trying to calm myself as I spoke, “Francie’s a good friend of mine. It’s entirely inappropriate for me to handle your complaint, as I’m sure you realize. I’m going to get the best prosecutor to come see you as soon as possible. Catherine Dashfer will call you back shortly.”

  “You’ll regret passing me off to someone else, Ms. Cooper,” she said. “There are things about my husband that you need to know.”

  THIRTY-ONE

  “I get the feeling I’m kind of talking you down from a window ledge,” Catherine said after five minutes in my office, listening to the complicated stories that had interwoven themselves since I was called up to Judge Corliss’s courtroom on Monday.

  “Truth? I was actually feeling like I was back to normal,” I said to her. She was as solid a friend as she was a lawyer, and there was nothing I couldn’t trust her with. “Suddenly, I’m back out with my legs dangling over the windowsill, and it feels better to be out there than where I’m sitting now.”

  “This is your normal, Alex,” Catherine said. “Have you forgotten how we run here, in just a few short weeks? Bedlam, chaos, mayhem, and every now and then we just have a busy day. You’re registering somewhere between bedlam and mayhem.”

  “Can you do some stroking of Ms. Corliss this afternoon?” I asked. “Call her and go up to her office to hear what she has to say? I’m worried that her domestic situation might truly be escalating this week.”

  “Pronto. I can go right after lunch, and take a paralegal with me.”

  “Smart,” I said, passing her my notes with a wink. “Has Bud ever groped you? I mean, just making sure you don’t have a conflict.”

  “Nope. I never tried a case in front of him, and I was warned off going into the robing room for plea discussions.”

  “Perfect.”

  “What do I need to know about Francie?” she asked.

  “Janet Corliss is trying to make something out of her disappearance,” I said. “All you need to know is that Francie is ill and has taken a leave of absence from Legal Aid for the next few weeks.”

  “Who do you trust in the Bud-Janet face-off?” Catherine said.

  “Based on Bud’s history, I’d go with Janet. But it sounds like a lot of balls are being thrown up in the air—some of them aimed at each other, and there may be a matrimonial split at stake, so I’m counting on you to ferret out the truth.”

  “Where will you be?”

  “Mercer and I are going to dash over to One PP,” I said. Police Plaza was the headquarters of the NYPD, and it was a short walk from the DA’s office, ducking around the side of the federal courthouse. “Mike called just before you walked in. He wants us to see some routine video surveillance tape that may have captured something while Francie was on her way to Forlini’s Monday night.”

  We both got up and walked to the door. Mercer was on Laura’s phone, and I waited for him to hang up before we all walked down the corridor.

  “Talk later,” Catherine said. “I’ll let you know what I think.”

  At eleven fifteen, Mercer and I were making our way to headquarters. When we reached the elaborate security screening, he placed his gun on the conveyer belt and I followed him through the scanning machine.

  The commissioner and his retinue had offices on the fourteenth floor. We took the elevator upstairs and signed in, waiting for Vickee to take us to a conference room she had set up with three video screens lined up side by side on the wall facing the long wooden table.

  “You getting anywhere?” Mercer asked Mike.

  “Blind, I think.”

  “He’s watched each tape about twenty times,” Vickee said, “and I’m not sure we know any more than we did before we had them.”

  The three screens represented images captured by three different cameras along the route.

  “Francie’s office is at 60 Lafayette Street,” Mike said, referring to some of the suites occupied by the criminal division of Legal Aid, “so she comes into the picture crossing over to walk past One Hogan Place.”

  Hogan Place was a very short block, renamed in the nineties for the great district attorney Frank Hogan, who served in that job for thirty-two years, even longer than Paul Battaglia. Because One Hogan was the entrance to the DA’s office, there were security cameras over the doorway and on each end of the street.

  “Check out the first screen,” Mike said. He pressed the Start button and the grainy black-and-white tape rolled.

  It was shortly before eight P.M., and the sidewalk had a good number of people—mostly staff, I assumed—walking out of our building as well as the one directly across the street. Francie entered the shot after about fifteen seconds, walking across Centre Street, from her office past the front door of ours.

  Two or three times, she waved and had a verbal exchange with colleagues of mine, and once she stopped to plant a kiss on the cheek of another prosecutor.

  “I’ve put pads in front of you,” Vickee said. “You and Mercer can jot down names of anyone you recognize.”

  I picked up a pen and wrote down three names, which I’m sure would be an exercise in futility. “No killers that I see.”

  “I want names in case they saw something that had no meaning at the time,” Vickee said. “We should go back to all of them.”

  “Second screen,” Mercer said.

  The next sequence picked Francie up in front of the steps of One Hogan, on her cell phone, placing a call and having a short conversation before hanging it up.

  “You have the phone?” Mercer asked.

  “Major Case did the dump,” she said. “She was trying to reach a client on that call, but she just left a message on a machine.”

  When Francie reached the corner of the block to square the building and turn left on Baxter Street to walk to Forlini’s, the screen darkened. Her figure became more shadowy and indistinct as she walked away from the stationary camera.

  The third screen picked her up again at the intersection of the two streets—Baxter and Hogan Place—from a camera mounted high overhead against the side of the building.

  The block was packed thick with blue-and-white patrol cars and black unmarked detective vehicles, some parked half on the sidewalk and others doubled in for long court arraignments or bookings.

  “See her there?” Vickee asked.

  Mike had obviously watched this earlier. Mercer and I both nodded.

  “What’s she doing?” I asked. “Why’d she turn, do you think?”

  “Keep watching,” Mike said.

  Francie stood in place while someone approached her. It was clearly a person she knew, because she waited and seemed to be talking to him or her.

  “Where did that guy come from?” Mercer asked.

  “Why are you saying it’s a guy?” Vickee said. “Watch again. I mean, maybe it is, but can any of you see any identifying features?”

  The overhead angle made it hard to see anything at all about either figure. We knew the first one on the sidewalk was Francie Fain because we had seen her so clearly in the first two videos. Now she stopped and turned her head, as though someone had called to her.

  The second figure emerged from between several cars that were parked tightly together. He or she was taller than Francie, who was about five foot seven in her mid-height heels, and was clothed in jeans and a dark hoodie-style jacket, with the hood covering the head and upper portion of the face.

  “Slow it down,” Mercer said.

  We watched as the person eased into the camera’s frame, having already called Francie’s name. He or she continued walking toward Francie, although no on
e else was within range, and they could have begun to speak from that distance.

  “Why change the speed?” Vickee asked. “Someone you think you know?”

  “It’s worth checking out,” Mercer said. “You see any regulars, Mike?”

  “I’m good but I’m not that good,” Mike said. “Androgynous male white with flat head, at least five foot nine and—”

  “Why did you say ‘male’?” Vickee asked.

  “Simple. You see him squeeze between the patrol car and that second unmarked number that’s parked too close to it?” Mike said. “See where he puts his hand, how he cups it on the front of his pants below his belt, to protect his dick—sorry—his private parts from getting squished against the metal? That’s a guy thing.”

  “That is so lame,” I said. “It’s not a guy thing at all. I do it, too. I put my hand down to flatten whatever I’m wearing so my jacket or dress doesn’t get caught on the car grillwork. Totally gender-neutral movement.”

  Mike played that clip again, at least three times, but it didn’t seem to solve anything.

  “I don’t see that person touching Francie,” Mercer said. “Am I wrong?”

  We all murmured in agreement.

  “Okay,” Vickee said. “Now Francie waves good-bye—we can’t get it close enough to lip-read anything—and completes the turn onto Baxter Street, with Forlini’s less than two blocks away.”

  The three screens went blank and were replaced by other videos from the rear of the courthouse.

  Mike clicked on the first one, which was at the back door of the building. “She’s walking alone again. She takes out her phone like she’s going to make a call, but before she does, the same figure runs in her direction, seems to shout something to her.”

  This time the person in black seemed to jog back into view, cup hands to his or her mouth, and call out a few words before backing away out of sight.

  “What’s that motion Francie made with her right hand, when she spun around to look?” I asked.

  “Seems to me,” Mike said, holding up his arm to imitate the motion, “that she was either suggesting that the person wait for her, or that she was saying ‘five’—you know, holding up five fingers.”

  “‘I’ll only be five minutes’?” I suggested.

  We moved our attention to the second screen. The camera was poised on the south side of the walkway—the overhead Bridge of Sighs—pointing downward.

  “Oh my God,” I said, throwing my hand over my mouth.

  Two people had passed Francie Fain on the sidewalk, both of them in suits and carrying briefcases. One had brushed her shoulder—maybe a little intoxicated from a post-work cocktail at a Baxter Street bar.

  But it was the sight of Francie Fain that had brought me up short. In the thirty seconds it had taken her to get from the corner of Hogan Place to the back of the Tombs, she suddenly appeared to become dizzy, leaning against the side of the building for support.

  “She’s drooling, right?” Mercer said. “Drooling and shaking uncontrollably.”

  There was no one in sight. I just wanted to reach through the screen and steady my friend, find out what she had eaten or drunk or been injected with. I wanted to make whatever was happening stop.

  “That man that bumped her,” I said, “should we try to find him, too?”

  “Male black. Gray or navy blue pinstripe suit, expensive briefcase,” Mike said.

  “Why did you guess he’s black?” I asked.

  “I’ll run this one back,” Mike said. “When he held up his hand, like excusing himself to your friend, I’d say he has dark skin.”

  “It’s like a video Rorschach,” Mercer said. “We’re all looking at different things when the pieces start moving.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “I’m so fixated on Francie Fain that I didn’t even notice the man put up a hand.”

  The last scene showed Francie in a full-on convulsion, sprawled on the ground and trying desperately to breathe as she thrashed from side to side.

  “Would you pull up that first video of this group again, when she’s turning the corner from Hogan Place onto Baxter Street?” I asked.

  Mike stood up and came behind me, massaging my shoulders. “Hard to watch, kid. We know that.”

  “I want to see it again for a reason, Mike. You gave me an idea.”

  He went back to his chair, leaned over it, and restarted the video I wanted to see. When it got to the point at which the figure in black picked up a hand to cup his or her mouth and call out to Francie, I told him to freeze it.

  “Now make it larger,” I said. “Give us a close-up of the hand.”

  Mike zoomed in on the person, whose hand appeared from within the arm of the oversize hoodie when it was lifted to his or her mouth.

  “That’s a woman!” I said. “It’s a woman who knows there are cameras all around these buildings, and has dressed and covered herself to conceal her identity.”

  All three of them were leaning in now to take a closer look.

  “Something stuck out to me the first time I watched it, but I couldn’t articulate it until Mike said something about the man’s hands in the next frame,” I said. “Check out the fingernails as the hand comes out of the sleeve of the jacket.”

  In the frozen blowup of the side of the left hand that was closest to the camera, the fingernails were long and slim, delicately shaped as though they’d been manicured.

  “Cherchez la femme,” Mike said. “That’s putting a nail in a coffin.”

  THIRTY-TWO

  “I’m not saying this is the person who brought down Francie Fain,” I said, “but you’ve got to find out who she is and what she stopped Francie for.”

  “I’m with you,” Vickee said.

  “Get someone over to Francie’s office and see who her visitors were on Monday, all throughout the day, until she left.”

  “I can do that,” Mike said.

  “We’ve been to her office,” Vickee said. “Crime Scene went to both her home and her office in Hazmat suits and came out with everything that wasn’t nailed down. It’s all at the lab being processed.”

  “See if you can get a picture of Janet Corliss from somewhere,” I said. “A judicial dinner photo spread or a column in the New York Social Diary.”

  “We got perps in the society columns now?” Mike asked.

  “I’m not saying she’s a perp. She’s just a little frantic—and quite possibly for a good reason,” I said. “She has convinced herself that Bud and Francie were carrying on together. I’d like tech guys to try to compare Janet’s height and body type and hands—if we can see them—to the woman in the video, just so we cover all the possible bases.”

  “You want us to pixelate Janet Corliss?” Mike said. “Sounds more like something her husband would do to a law clerk.”

  “Francie didn’t seem afraid of the woman, whoever she was,” Mercer said.

  “Yeah, but we don’t know what her relationship really is with either of the Corlisses,” I said. “Could be they are all just friends, and the judge got a little more friendly than before.”

  “We’ve all got things to do,” Vickee said, turning to leave the room. “Thanks for coming over to take a look at this.”

  “Could I talk to you for a few minutes?” I asked her.

  “It’s not necessary,” Vickee said.

  “I just want to apologize for my behavior—our rudeness—at Primola last night,” I said. “You’re the last person I’d want to push.”

  “Come for dinner when this is all behind us,” Vickee said. “Logan asked why he hasn’t seen you.”

  Vickee and Mercer’s kid—my godson—was almost five years old. I had kept my distance from him when I was at the height of my PTSD period, but the invite to see Logan—to be back in the warmth of their home—meant Vickee accepted my weak ap
ology.

  On the way back, Mercer and I stopped at the deli to pick up sandwiches to eat in my office, then continued working on our case.

  It was four o’clock when Laura told me that Lucy Jenner was on the phone.

  “Lucy? All good?” I asked.

  “I want you to talk to someone,” Lucy said, sounding slightly off, as though she’d been drugged. “I’m passing my phone to my counselor from Streetwork.”

  “Ms. Cooper?” the woman asked, introducing herself by name. “I need to talk to you about Lucy.”

  “Is everything okay?” I asked. “She doesn’t sound like herself.”

  “Well, she was involved in an accident today. I’m with her at Mount Sinai West, the old Roosevelt Hospital, right now. She’s fine, medically. No worries.”

  “What’s wrong? What kind of accident?”

  “Lucy was coming from the library.”

  “The New York Public Library? Fifth Avenue, with the lions out in front?”

  “Yes, the main one. Basically, she fell and got pretty scraped up, so we brought her here to be checked out.”

  “But it was just a fall?” I asked.

  “Yes, ma’am. Sort of a fall.”

  “What was she doing at the library?” I stood up, pacing back and forth behind my desk with the phone cord trailing behind me. “Let me talk to her, please.”

  I would have to get the meaning of “sort of” from Lucy herself.

  Lucy got back on the phone. “Can’t my counselor tell you what happened?”

  “No, no,” I said. “I want to hear it from you, and I want to know that you’re okay. Let’s start with that. Are you—?”

  “I’m okay.”

  “You don’t quite sound like yourself.”

  “The doctor gave me something for pain, for my bruises.”

  “Bruises?” I said.

  “I was at the library for a couple of hours, and then I walked to the subway station, to come back to the project.”

  “Which subway?”

  She told me the location of the station on Sixth Avenue, at the far end of Bryant Park.