I had been engaged to marry a medical student I’d fallen in love with while I was at law school in Virginia. Together Adam Nyman and I had bought our dream house on Martha’s Vineyard, and I’d allowed myself to plot out all the fantasies of a long life together. On the drive from Charlottesville to Chilmark for the wedding weekend, Adam died when his car plunged from a bridge on the interstate to the riverbed below.
I bit my lip. “Maybe that, Mercer.”
“Why is it you fall in love with guys who are impossible to fit into your life? First Jed, then Jake, now Luc. You’ve got to work at it some yourself, Alex. This guy is mad for you, isn’t he?”
“Who set you up for this chat?” I said, reaching to turn on the car radio. “Nina? Joan?”
My two closest friends had teamed up, from Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., to hector me about my love life and raise the volume of the ticker on my biological clock.
“Vickee’s been talking about you a lot.”
“That’s bad for me. I can tell.”
Vickee Eaton was a second-grade detective herself, with a great desk job in headquarters, and had married Mercer many years earlier. But as the daughter of a cop who’d been killed on the job when she was fifteen, she had broken up their relationship, unable to cope with the dangers that he was constantly exposed to in the field. We had all celebrated with them when they remarried several years ago.
“It’s been good for her, Alex. She wants it for you too.”
“But she didn’t give up the work she loves, and she got you in the deal. How do I make that kind of thing happen?” I said, reflecting for a few seconds before I spoke again. “Want to do a movie tomorrow night? Get our heads out of this mess for a few hours? Let Vickee tell me herself?”
“Wish we could,” Mercer said. “Her cousin’s engagement party is tomorrow. I got the whole mother lode of Eatons to contend with.”
“Who’s minding Logan?”
Mercer’s son was almost three years old. Vickee worked her schedule so that she could be with him every evening and weekend, while her younger sister was the main babysitter at other times.
“Vickee’s on the hunt. One of her pals will turn up.”
“Forget that. The boy is mine for the night.” I was delighted to be able to offer the comfort of a close friend to stay with Logan while they celebrated with family. Mercer twisted his head and smiled at me. “I hear you right?”
“I’ve done it before. I haven’t even given him his Christmas presents yet. You tell Vickee that I’ll drive out and take care of everything.”
“It may get late. Those Eatons can party.”
“If it gets too late, I’ll sleep over. Let’s see if this domestic tranquillity is all it’s cracked up to be.”
“Deal.”
It was almost six o’clock when Mercer parked in front of the entrance to the DA’s office on Hogan Place. The space for Battaglia’s car was empty, and the security officer greeted us and let us pull in.
Laura was still at her desk when we walked down the quiet corridor to my office.
“You are the most loyal human being in the world,” I said to her, hanging my jacket and scarf. “Why didn’t you go?”
“Nan told me it would be a late one. I ordered in a vat of coffee for all of you and some sandwiches. Your phone’s been going off the hook.”
“Anybody I want to hear from?”
“Not a one. I’m happy to stay if I can be useful,” Laura said. “Mercer, that guy from Verizon wants you to call him. Some kind of problem with the information I faxed over to him. And nobody touch the chocolate chip cookies-they’re for Mike.”
Laura had an unabashed crush on Mike and did everything she could to provide his creature comforts in our sterile bureaucratic environment.
Mercer helped Laura on with her coat while I flipped through the messages. “How’d I get lucky enough to miss the district attorney tonight?”
“Rose called to ask if you were back yet. Said he was on his way to City Hall.”
“Again?”
“No, no. Nothing to do with you.”
“Really?”
“You trust anyone more than Rose? She told me that it has something to do with either a fraud case, or a judicial appointment. Maybe both.”
“Good.” If it was about Tim Spindlis, I didn’t need to take the heat.
Mercer went inside my office, sat at the desk, and made his call to the phone company. I was saying good-night to Laura when Howard Browner appeared in the doorway.
“I’d say Happy New Year to you, Alex, but it doesn’t seem to be starting off like a good one.”
“Thanks, Howard. You must be swamped with everything that’s come into the lab in the last forty-eight hours.”
Browner was one of my closest friends at the forensic biology lab. With every cutting-edge advance in this scientific field that continued to evolve, Browner and his colleagues educated us and prepared us for the challenges of the courtroom.
“Can I talk to you about Karim Griffin for a minute?”
I stepped into the hallway with Howard so Mercer could finish his conversation. “I don’t ever mean to blow you off. I just can’t concentrate on anything but today’s events, Howard. Let me get back to you in a couple of weeks, when things calm down.”
We were an incongruous pair. Howard was much shorter than I and a lot rounder, with a head of dark, untamed hair and a full beard. But he had helped me through some of the most difficult issues I had ever faced with patience and a wisdom that he was pleased to impart to others.
“I was here to testify on that murder case in Times Square. I ran into Catherine and she said you’d been meaning to call me about Griffin,” he said. “That’s the only reason I dropped by. I have an idea on the push-in with your eighty-two-year-old victim, but it’ll wait.”
“Here’s hoping she has time to wait. I shouldn’t have put you off, Howard. What is it?”
“I’m going to try to get some touch evidence for you. I know it’s the weakest case in the pattern.”
I was trying to look at Mercer to see what was taking so long yet still pay attention to Howard.
“Sorry. I thought you’d reviewed everything. I thought all the swabs were negative for seminal fluid,” I said. “There was nothing to analyze for DNA.”
“That’s the old-fashioned way. I can try for touch DNA now. It’s different-we’re looking for skin cells, for things the perp put his hands on. Instead of swabbing with distilled water, I can actually scrape the items he had to touch to attack her. The cotton undergarments she was wearing, the housecoat he ripped off. You and Mr. Howell were supposed to have a meeting this week. I just wanted to know if I had time to give this a try.”
I put both hands on his shoulders and kissed him on the cheek. “Go for it. You can’t imagine how happy Wilma would be to get a chance to be on the witness stand.”
“I’ll let you get back to what you’re doing. We’ll probably have lots to talk about in the next few days anyway.”