Blood Oath

by Linda Fairstein

  “What’s the ask?” the commissioner said.

  “The victim,” I said. “Twenty-four years old. A cold case and the crime’s got great legs against a public figure, all of which I plan to be able to prove. If we don’t make a move next week, I expect before too long his name will be carved on the front of a government building in DC.”

  “Wasn’t Battaglia’s mantra that you can’t play politics with people’s lives?”

  “I’m not playing anything,” I said, as sharply as I could. “I’ve had my witness in a safe place for several days, but she went on social media yesterday, just in time for someone to push her onto the subway tracks this afternoon.”

  “I got that report,” he said. “That’s your vic?”

  I had the commissioner’s attention. “Yes.”

  “Where is she now? Back at Streetwork?”

  “Too chancy,” I said. “I have her at my apartment.”

  “Who’s riding shotgun?” he asked. “Mike or Mercer?”

  “Mike,” I said, turning to look at him. He just shook his head from side to side, obviously displeased with my approach to the problem.

  “And now you want to make her a material witness? Put her up at the Mandarin Oriental for a few grand a night? Massages and manicures included?”

  “I’ll ignore your sarcasm,” I said. “A hotel is too rough, given her history. You’ll understand when I fill you in tomorrow.”

  I braced myself for the ask.

  “I have an idea, Keith, and you’re the only person who can make it happen.”

  “What?”

  “I understand that the safest place in town is where you have Francie Fain,” I said. “I want to get my vic into Rockefeller Hospital, for safekeeping.”

  He didn’t speak.

  “Word is out, and it’s not leaked from your office, if that’s what you’re steaming about,” I said. “We can talk about that tomorrow, too.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “You must have cops guarding Francie Fain 24/7, don’t you?” I said. “You can get to her hospital room easily, on the East Side, but she’s in a place most people don’t even know exists.”

  “It’s not going to work, Alex,” the commissioner said. “We’ve got Fain in quarantine. I can’t authorize that a healthy young woman goes into the same wing of the hospital as some kind of ruse in an unrelated case.”

  “That quarantine isn’t medical,” I said. “There’s no contagion at issue with this so-called Kiss of Death nerve agent. You’re just trying to isolate my friend Francie from a possible killer—and from the press.”

  “So what if I am?”

  “That’s exactly what I want to do for Lucy Jenner,” I said. “I’m asking for the very same protection for my witness—for a week, max. For just one week.”

  “I’m not waiting till tomorrow to find out what you’ve got,” the commissioner said. “Meet me at Rock U at midnight. The security office in the old Nurses’ Residence. Bring the girl.”

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Mike made a big deal of going out the front entrance of my building, as my friend Vinny, the doorman, helped him into his department car. He turned on the lights and sirens and sped out, going toward the West Side. If anyone was watching the apartment, he was sure to have been seen leaving by himself—rushing off to an imaginary crime scene.

  Before he created the commotion, Mike had taken Lucy and me to the basement garage of my apartment, where we waited with the attendant for Mike to return, in a different car that he had swapped out with the nearby Nineteenth Police Precinct. He pulled down the driveway into the garage. I got in the front seat while Lucy got in the rear. We drove out slowly, made a full stop, and proceeded on our way.

  The distance to the front gates of Rockefeller University was only a short one from my home, but Mike took such a circuitous route on the one-way streets and avenues of the Upper East Side that we didn’t arrive at Sixty-Sixth Street for almost twenty minutes. Following him would have been more of a challenge than doing a Rubik’s Cube in the same time allotted for the drive.

  The guard at the front gate of the old institute campus came out to the car to check Mike’s ID.

  “The police commissioner’s already at the security office,” he said, waving us in. “You can park at the top of the drive.”

  “What did I do wrong?” Lucy asked as I opened her car door and walked with her on the path to security.

  “Not a thing,” I said. “But I need you to stay off-line for another week.”

  “What’s this place?” she asked, looking around the dark campus.

  “It’s called a university, but it’s only for very advanced degrees in science. The labs and classes are in those newer buildings on the north side of the drive,” I said. “They’ve got an old hospital here, too, and it might be a good place for you to be till your injuries are all healed.”

  “A hospital?” she said. “Because I had an accident at the subway?”

  “Not a typical hospital,” I said. “It’s very small, and they’re used to working on unusual cases.”

  Lucy seemed intent on believing that her fall from the platform to the tracks today was a random event. Maybe she couldn’t cope with thinking it had been intentional, but I had to take steps until we ruled that out, and I didn’t want to do anything to alarm her.

  “I’m hardly injured.”

  “The docs were worried about the possibility of concussion,” I said, “so they’re just going to keep you here overnight and for observation tomorrow. Maybe the weekend, too.”

  “Will you stay with me tonight?” she asked, reaching to link her arm with mine.

  “Sure I will.”

  The commissioner’s aide, who was at his side every day, took Lucy from me and off down the hall to a vending machine to buy a soda for her. It had been years since Keith Scully interacted with a crime victim, and I wouldn’t have let him press her under any circumstances. Fortunately for me, he wasn’t a micromanager.

  He, Mike, and I went into Roger Murfee’s office, and Scully closed the door behind us.

  “I take it that young woman is your survivor?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “You say the case was cold.”

  “Not because your guys couldn’t find the perp,” I said, referring to the usual designation when investigations stalled and were later reopened with new forensic techniques. “That’s not what I meant. It’s an old case but only reported this week.”

  “Another Me Too, then,” the commissioner said. “Who is it?”

  “Public servant,” I said. “Great track record as a prosecutor. This woman was his victim, when she was a witness for him in a case.”

  Keith Scully was a Marine through and through. He stood straight, his eyes narrowed, and his teeth were clenched, clearly expressing his disgust.

  I gave him an outline of my case, leaving out all the detail and anything that would connect it to Zachary Palmer. I wanted him to understand the tortured route that Lucy Jenner had taken to get to this point.

  “You sure you can nail this guy?”

  “I believe her,” I said. “That’s what counts, isn’t it? And Mercer and I expect to have a lot more by Monday.”

  “Corroboration? And don’t tell me the law doesn’t require it,” he said. “You won’t make a really old case without it.”

  I held my tongue. I didn’t need any guidance on how to prosecute a rape case. My team had pioneered every innovative technique in the field for more than a decade.

  “I’m on it,” I said.

  “You think someone pushed your kid onto the tracks?” he asked. “That would suggest your man knows you’re coming after him.”

  “Coop doesn’t believe in coincidence any more than I do,” Mike said. “Could Lucy’s fall have been accidental? Yeah, but neithe
r of us think so.”

  “Look, Commissioner, maybe I was too heavy-handed when I met with him the other night,” I said.

  “You what?” Scully asked. “Which of my brainless big shots backed you up on that plan?”

  “I did it entirely on my own,” I said, holding up my right hand like I was taking an oath. “I hadn’t started the investigation. I—I met with him because he wanted to talk politics with me. I’d made the date a week earlier.”

  Scully’s hands were on his hips. “I hope you didn’t step in it too deep, Alex. I hope you didn’t open the door for, well—whoever he is.”

  “Let me tell him that he’s a target tomorrow—I guess that’s today now—and that he needs to pony up with a lawyer,” I said, “and I’ll identify him to you the minute I’m done with that meeting.”

  “The girl went up on social media without telling Coop,” Mike said to Scully. “That could be what drew someone out of the woodwork. She’s led a really rootless and somewhat dangerous lifestyle for the last six years and we don’t know who else has a grudge—from her half brother to anyone else she might have scammed. That’s why we need to stash her here. How can it hurt you?”

  Keith Scully didn’t like being out of the know. He turned his back to us and thought for a minute.

  “Would you have told Paul Battaglia who the guy is?” he asked.

  “I would have,” I said. “I’d have had no choice.”

  Then he turned to face us again, smoothing his tie. “Then you’d damn well better tell me.”

  “I understand, Commissioner,” I said, nodding my head. “I’m going to present evidence against Zachary Palmer.”

  Scully’s expression didn’t change. “You’d better act fast, Alexandra. He tells me he’s the next district attorney of New York County.”

  THIRTY-SIX

  “Good evening. Which one of you is Ms. Cooper?” the head nurse asked. Before Scully left, he gave his team orders to expect us, and they had alerted her desk.

  “I am.”

  “Then the young lady with you will be identified as Patient Eleven,” she said, typing something on the computer and printing out a tag, which she then fitted into a plastic wristlet. “I was told not to put a name or date of birth.”

  “Thank you,” I said as she put it around Lucy’s left wrist. “She’s just here for observation.”

  “So I’ve been told. Will you please follow me?”

  She led the two of us and Mike through the door marked QUARANTINE that we had seen the morning before.

  This wing of the Rockefeller Hospital had eight small rooms. During a century of use for everything from scarlet fever to the Ebola virus, they had been upgraded and equipped for state-of-the-art medical care, but each one was still small, as determined by the old building’s architectural footprint.

  In the quiet corridor, two men were sitting on chairs outside a closed door, on guard. One was wearing the uniform of an NYPD officer and the other had on civilian clothes, with a windbreaker bearing the FBI seal on the front. I knew it was Francie Fain’s room. Two others were backup at the far end of the hallway, where there was another door, about thirty feet away.

  Mike went down to talk to them, to explain the addition of a patient, and then did the same to the two guards across the hall from me.

  The nurse brought Lucy a hospital gown and I encouraged her to put it on. “You’ll get a good night’s sleep, and I’ll be in the cubicle right next to you.”

  “Who are those men and why are they here?” she asked.

  “They’re looking out for a patient who’s had a lot of problems,” I said. “I don’t really know more than that.”

  “Will you be here when I wake up in the morning?”

  “Absolutely,” I said. “Your only job is to have pleasant dreams.”

  Lucy squeezed my hand and said, “Good night.”

  Mike was waiting for me in the corridor. “If you’re both good, I’ll take off.”

  “It seems fine to me.”

  “You got these four guys babysitting you, and Murfee has a crew of nearly forty campus security officers, with many of them on at night,” Mike said. “Scully said there are more than four hundred surveillance cameras on the Rockefeller campus. One hundred twenty years and not a murder on the grounds. So go to sleep.”

  I kissed him on the cheek and thanked him for getting us here. He patted me on the back and left the floor.

  A second nurse—a young man about my age—came by to ask what I needed when he saw me leave Lucy and go into my cubicle.

  “Nothing, thanks. I’ll just sit and read for a while until I stretch out on the bed, if that’s okay.”

  “That’s fine,” he said, turning on the standing lamp that was next to a chair in the corner. “My name is Billy—Billy Feathers—if you need anything at all.”

  He walked out and returned soon after with a pitcher of ice water and some plastic cups.

  “Have you worked here very long?” I asked.

  “Fifteen years.”

  “Long time,” I said, putting down my book. “What brought you here?”

  “Most people have never heard of us, but within the medical community—even internationally—we’re known for doing amazing things. You know the reason the hospital was even included in the creation of the institute,” Billy said, “was the idea that direct contact by the doctors with illness—really deadly illness—would ignite their intellectual curiosity—new facts that could lead to treatments.”

  “But you? You yourself?”

  Billy leaned against the radiator under the windowsill. “My older sister worked for an NGO in Africa, about twenty years ago,” he said. “She died there, in Mali, of malaria, even though she had been vaccinated against it.”

  He paused for a few moments. “Malaria parasites are quite complex genetically, so not all our vaccines are effective. Rockefeller was one of the few places doing research on the disease, so that started me in this direction.”

  “I can understand that.”

  “Malaria is one of Melinda and Bill Gates’s causes, and Melinda’s given millions to the university to further the work on malaria. Anyway, it’s allowed me a purpose and a place to work to honor my sister’s life.”

  Then Billy smiled at me. “If you’re here a few days, I’ll take you over to Flexner, to the fly labs.”

  “I expect to be here all weekend,” I said. “What are fly labs?”

  “Are you squeamish?” he asked.

  “Let’s just say I’ve seen a lot, and flies aren’t a major problem for me.”

  “Flexner’s one of the newer buildings on the north side of campus, where a lot of the laboratories are. It’s where the mosquito rooms are,” he said. “It’s impossible to get in there, except I’ve got a pass I can use to swipe us in.”

  “Yeah, but what’s there?”

  “There are these small rooms within the labs,” he said, excitedly, “that hold canisters of mosquitoes. Volunteers like me stick our arms into the canister, and the researchers see which of us they bit, and which they didn’t. Flies, too. That’s a really simplified way of putting it.”

  “I get the point.”

  “You work with DNA as a prosecutor, don’t you?” Billy asked.

  I was surprised he knew what my job was. “Yes.”

  “Did you know that it was doctors here at Rockefeller in 1944 who made the historic discovery that genes are made of DNA, not of protein or other substances? It’s probably the most important scientific finding of the twentieth century.”

  “Are you sure?” I said. “I thought it was Crick and Watson.”

  “No, no,” Billy said. “They discovered the double helix structure that makes up the DNA molecule, but our doctors here proved that DNA was the carrier of all hereditary information.”

  My respec
t for Rock U was growing by the minute.

  “Ms. Cooper,” he said, “Ralph Steinman was our doc who won the Nobel for creating the first experimental vaccine for the HIV infection. We still do a significant amount of research in the AIDS-HIV field.”

  “I want a tour, Billy,” I said. “I can see your enthusiasm for the institute. But you must have better things to do tonight than educate me.”

  “I’m talking your head off,” he said, getting up to go on his way. “There’s no cure for that, I’m afraid.”

  “Thanks for everything,” I said. “See you in the morning, if you’re still on.”

  “Yes, I started at midnight and it’s a twelve-hour shift.”

  I walked to the room next door and pushed it open to look at Lucy, who was sound asleep.

  Although I had brought a tote bag with clothes for the next day and a nightshirt for tonight, I decided it was more appropriate to just lie down on the bed in my jeans and sweater. There were too many people on the tiny corridor to expect much privacy. I turned out the light and tried to get comfortable.

  It was probably close to two by the time I fell asleep and six A.M. when a small commotion awakened me.

  I opened the door to my room and looked out. The hallway was completely empty—none of the cops or FBI agents in place.

  I ran out of my room in my bare feet—my heart in my mouth—and opened Lucy’s door. I was relieved to see that she was still sleeping, oblivious to the noises I had heard.

  I looked across the hallway toward Francie Fain’s room. I thought about opening the door, just as the head nurse came back through the entrance to the wing with a doctor—his lab coat and stethoscope signaled his role—and one of the uniformed cops.

  The nurse and doctor entered the room, and the cop stood next to the door, facing outward, not even acknowledging me.

  I took a step forward and he held out his arm. “Go back to your room, if you don’t mind,” he said. “They don’t need any help in here.”

  “But I’m—”

  “We know who you are,” the cop said. “Best if you return to your room.”

  I took a step or two backward and stopped when I saw Billy push through the double doors and rush toward Francie’s room.