“Stop wasting my time, Mike,” Friedman said. “Tell me about her.”
“What for?”
“Because the more we know, the greater the likelihood we can get a handle on this.”
“Because nothing else has worked, right?”
“Where’s the Chapman humor I’ve heard so much about?” she asked.
“No place for it in this.”
“Don’t lose it, Mike, whatever you do. She’s going to need that when we get her home,” Friedman said. “You want coffee?”
“Red Bull. Two of them.”
“I have coffee and an egg sandwich on the way. It’s better for you than an energy drink,” she said. “Eat a real meal every few hours, get your caffeine from coffee like you usually do, take cat naps several times throughout the day, and rely on the professionals that Scully is pulling together. Your adrenaline is only going to carry you for so long before it fizzles out.”
I liked that she was forthright.
“Tell me about Alexandra. Tell me why you love her.”
I stared at the diamond pin on the lapel of Dr. Friedman’s suit. I had barely been able to communicate those thoughts to Coop. I couldn’t speak them out loud to a stranger.
“Look, Mike. Lieutenant Peterson told me you’re lovers. Ten years of a very close friendship before that, is what Vickee Eaton says. I get that Alex is smart and has lots of backbone, and that she has far more compassion than you’re able to summon in any circumstance. I know from the work she does that she’s tough.”
“Not tough enough to stand up to something like this.”
“Take me inside her head, Mike. Let me get a feel for how she thinks and acts,” Friedman said. “It will help me understand how she’s dealing with her captors, if we’ve got a kidnapping here.”
My head snapped up. “Is that what Scully says?”
“Nobody knows. There’s no body, so that gives us hope.”
“There’s no ransom demand, either.”
“That could come at any time,” she said. “Or not at all. In some instances, the victim is held for days or even months-”
“Don’t tell me my business, Doc.”
“Then talk to me about the Alexandra Cooper who’s not in the newspaper headlines.”
I clasped my hands under the table, wringing them as I thought about Coop. Fatigue had overwhelmed me. Fatigue and a great deal of fear. “The part of her I like most-the part that scares me for her right now-is how soft she is.”
I didn’t just mean the touch of her skin, which was smoother than I’d imagined it to be for all those years I’d fantasized about taking her lady-lawyer clothes off and getting her in bed.
“Good start, Mike.”
“What you don’t see when you watch her rip apart a defense witness in the courtroom, or when she’s standing beside Paul Battaglia at a bank of microphones talking about some scumbag who sodomized a bunch of kids, is that she’s completely soft on the inside. She’s completely mush beneath that bruiser exterior.”
Dr. Friedman nodded her head.
“Scully, even Peterson, might think she can cope with one of these monsters, but I’m telling you that Coop can’t.”
“I understand you. We’ll come back to that,” Dr. Friedman said. “Why do you call her ‘Coop’? So far as I can tell, you’re the only person who does.”
“Just a nickname,” I said. “Don’t know, actually. I’ve been doing it since we first started working together, ten or twelve years ago.”
“It’s cold, Mike. She’s got a beautiful name. It’s an odd way to address your lover, by her surname.”
I brought my hand up and pointed it straight at the woman’s face. “If I wanted to talk to Dr. Ruth, I’d have asked Scully to call her in.”
Friedman worked around me, never breaking the calm demeanor of a shrink sent from central casting.
“How does Alex handle personal problems, Mike?” she asked. “I know that she tackles professional ones directly and with absolute resolve. When she’s confronted with a personal crisis, what does she tend to do?”
“This is no-win for me, Doc,” I said. “She’ll kill me for telling you.”
“I like your smile. You ought to use it more,” Friedman says. “What does Alex do?”
“She cries. She actually cries a lot, like, at the drop of a hat.”
“Really? That surprises me. No one else has mentioned it.”
“Not professionally. Man, you’d never see that at the office. It’s just-I don’t know.”
“Do you think you do things that make her cry?”
“No, ma’am,” I said, sitting upright. “Last thing I’d want to do.”
“So what is it?”
“Wait, go back a bit. I’d say the temper flares first. Yeah, usually the wild temper before the tears. This guy-these guys-they press the wrong button, and no telling how Coop will react. If she shows a flash of her temper, they could come down on her hard, couldn’t they?” I took a deep breath and blew it out. “She’d better hold on to those tantrums.”
“What do you do, Mike? I mean, when she flares up? Do you fight with her?”
“No percentage in that, Doc. I just let it pass.”
“Really? You’ve got a strong personality yourself. You don’t take her on?”
“You never win. That’s the thing with her. At least I never win.”
“And what does that do to you, Mike? How do you react?”
“I turn on a classic movie, pour a strong drink, read an old Chandler or a new Connelly or Coben. Just give it up till it blows over.”
“Well, that’s unlikely to happen,” the doctor said, “if she’s being held by thugs. Just giving it up to her, I mean.”
“Then, tears,” I said, with a sober nod to reality. “Coop’s got this really tough hide-that’s what she wants the world to see. She took on this job when women weren’t always recognized for aggressive prosecutorial skills. She stood up when few others did. Built this team of Amazon warriors around her-they’re amazing women, and so are the guys who work with them. Talk to Ryan and Evan-two of her favorites in the unit. They know what makes her tick as well as I do. Get her home? Surround her with all the silks and satins that she was accustomed to, growing up in a privileged household? It’s a totally unfamiliar world to me. But I’ll tell you Coop melts. She goes to pieces at the first sign of a conflict.”
“Temper tantrums and emotional meltdowns,” Dr. Friedman thought out loud. “Those would present very different reactions to her captors, if indeed she’s in trouble. It would mean opposing ways to handle Alexandra.”
It was chilling to think of anyone “handling” Alexandra. Handling my Coop.
“Who would you say is the person-the people-who mean the most to Alex?” Friedman asked. “After you, of course.”
“By no means am I in first place, Doc. No way,” I said. “She’s got amazing parents. Both have worked hard, raised three nice kids, made some real money, and use it to do good for other people. A lot of good. They’re her first concern, if someone is, well, like, leaning on her to-whatever.”
“I understand.”
“Two brothers-I’d say their kids are pretty important to Coop,” I said, putting my elbows on the table so I could rest my head in my hands. “It would be pure torture for her to think of anyone going after her family.”
“Thank you. I know how hard this is, but we need to figure the pressure points. As many of them as we can.”
“Yeah. You better count in her friends next-all the people in her unit. They go to the mats for each other. Her best friends outside the office, too-Nina Baum and Joan Stafford, from way back in her life…”
We spent the next fifteen minutes going through my personal index of things that meant something to Coop-people, principles, ideas, even material things. Friedman was good. She knew how to draw things out of me that I hadn’t even thought were there.