The Deadhouse (11 page)

I stopped in the lobby to pick up my mail, an assortment of
Christmas cards from friends scattered across the country mixed in with
the usual bills. There were two messages on the answering machine. One
was my mother, hoping I could change my schedule and join the rest of
the family at their Caribbean island home for Christmas. She hadn't
heard the news of my latest case, so I would plan to spend some time
with her on the phone tomorrow. The other call was from Jake, and I
dialed his cell phone number.

"Still at the studio?"

"Trying to wrap up the piece for tomorrow. Brian's going to lead
with the Ugandan story on Sunday's
Nightly News.
We found
some background information that puts a whole new spin on the
assassination, and so far, it's an exclusive. How about you?"

"Wish I could say we were that far along. No spin, no leads. This is
going to be a slow one. The administration closed down the school early
for the holidays, so we're just treading water. Mercer's having a bunch
of us over for a party tonight."

"Then you can hold out for a few more days till I get home?"

I was stretched out on the bed, phone to my ear, patting the empty
space next to me. "Pretty lonely on your side of the mattress. Don't
think I have any choice in the matter, do I? See if you can nab the
assignment to do local traffic up here. Something unexciting that keeps
you in my neighborhood all the time, okay?"

After we hung up, I called a few of my friends to say hello, wrapped
some of the gifts I planned to take to the office on Monday, and
dressed for the evening.

When Mike and I arrived at Mercer's house in Queens, the door was
open and there were fifteen or twenty people clustered around the bar
in his den. The first person to greet us was Vickee Eaton, a
second-grade detective who worked at One Police Plaza, in the office of
the deputy commissioner for public information.

Mike and Vickee were the same age and had gone through the academy
together. He had introduced her to Mercer when the latter's brief
marriage to a girl he'd grown up with had ended. Vickee and Mercer
dated for almost five years, and were married for less than two when
she walked out on him without any reason that he could articulate to
us. When I saw her once thereafter, at a press event the commissioner
held at headquarters to which Battaglia and I had been invited, she
told me she just couldn't deal with the kind of danger Mercer was
exposed to in the field. Vickee's father had been a cop, and had been
killed on the job when she was fifteen. He was the reason she had gone
into the department, and even more, the reason she feared how being a
cop could be a death warrant as well.

I thought I had masked my surprise at seeing Vickee, but she read me
clearly. "You haven't heard?"

I looked at Mike, who shrugged his shoulders. "I didn't go to visit
Mercer in the hospital—too many of you guys around for me to get down
on my knees and apologize for how stupid I'd been." She was talking
about the shooting in August, when the three of us had been
investigating the murder of an art dealer, and Mercer had almost been
killed as a result. "But I went over to Spencer's house immediately and
kind of sat vigil with him that whole first week."

"That old dog really kept it under his vest." Mike and I had been in
constant contact with Mercer's widowed father, Spencer Wallace, who
lived for his only son. He never told us Vickee had reentered their
lives.

Mercer had seen us come in and was making his way across the room
with two glasses of champagne in his hands. He gave one to each of us,
and Mike turned to pass his off to Vickee. She waved a finger at him
and picked up a soft drink she'd been working on when we came in. "No
alcohol for me. Not quite my third month yet."

Mike grabbed her in a bear hug, champagne sloshing from the flute
and covering his lapel. "You mean that doctor got Mercer's plumbing
back in order? Damn, you
are
my idol, m'man. Here I'm
thinking you need all this bed rest and you're going to get out on
three-quarters 'cause some asshole disabled you, and if you can ever be
lucky enough to shoot at all again you'd be shooting blanks. While the
whole time you're just practicing on Vickee, making love—"

I hadn't seen Mercer this happy in more than a year. He was trying
to talk over Mike and explain that he and Vickee had decided to get
married. "It's just going to be my dad, and her mother and two sisters
this time. And both of you. New Year's Day, in Judge Carter's chambers.
Will you be there?"

"Sure, we'll be there. Long as you don't do it during any of the
bowl games, okay?"

The house was filled with friends and family. Mercer's team from
Special Victims had all come to celebrate, and we tried not to talk
cases as we ate and danced and drank. By eleven o'clock, I could see
that Vickee was tired and trying to stay off her feet. I pried the
third helping of lasagna out of Mike's hand and suggested we get on the
road.

"The
Final Jeopardy!
category is Astronomy. Any takers?"
Silence. "Blondie, make a stab at it? Could be something in it for
you." I laughed and tugged at his jacket sleeve. "What is December
twenty-first?" Mike asked aloud to no one in particular as I tried to
pull him toward the door. "The winter solstice, ladies and gentleman.
Shortest day of the year, but the longest night. Make good use of it—
I
certainly intend to."

Mercer walked us to the door and held it open as we said good night.
"If your reputation wasn't shot before, Ms. Cooper, it's gone now. What
are you doing for the solstice? You need Jake up here—enough of this
toughin' it out alone. We've all been doing that too long."

"If I stopped to worry about every time Mike opened his mouth,
they'd have to institutionalize me. I'm so happy for both of you. What
a lucky little baby that's going to be."

We walked down the path and up the street to Mike's car. For most of
the ride back to the city, I was quiet. We came through the
Thirty-fourth Street tunnel, then Mike swung onto the FDR Drive going
uptown. The cold spell seemed to be interminable, and I stared over at
the sparkling lights of the bridges crossing the East River.

Off to the right, the forbidding outline of a ruined building loomed
against the dark sky, covered with frozen snow and icicles hanging from
empty window frames.

"What are you thinking about? Where'd you go?"

"Just daydreaming. Thinking that's the most beautiful building in
New York."

"Which one?"

"That abandoned hospital." I pointed to the southern tip of the
island in the river. "It's the only landmarked ruin in the city. Built
by the same guy who designed St. Patrick's Cathedral,

James Renwick."

"Y'know, you can change the subject and create a distraction

better than anyone on earth."

"I didn't know we had a subject. The solstice?"

"I know why you're brooding, Coop." Mike exited the Drive at
Sixty-first Street and stopped at the first light. "You're thinking
about Mercer and Vickee. And the baby."

"I'm not brooding."

"Makes you think about the direction of your own life, doesn't it?
Family, careers, sort of what the purpose of—"

"Don't go getting all Hamlet on me tonight, Mikey. I'm thrilled for
them. He's always been in love with Vickee and I think it's perfect
that they've gotten back together. I really wasn't doing any heavy
thinking."

"Well, you ought to do some." We were getting closer to my apartment
now, and I was shifting my weight in the seat. "How much longer you
gonna stay at this, Coop? Run around playing cops and robbers with us
in the middle of the night? Now you've got a guy who's mad for you,
plus you could name your own price at a law firm, or start one up, for
that matter. Shit, you could hang it all up and have some kids. Little
news jocks."

"This is all about
you,
Mr. Chapman." I tensed and
fidgeted as we neared the driveway. "Sounds like Mercer's lifestyle
changes appeal to you more than they do to me. He was getting anxious
to settle down. I doubt he ever got over Vickee walking out the first
time. Besides, he's forty—I'm only thirty-five—"

"And ticking."

"He loves kids. Always has. I watch him on the child abuse cases and
he's great with kids."

"You are, too."

"Yeah, but he likes all of them. Me, I like the ones I know and
love. I worship my nieces and nephews. I cherish my friends' kids. But
I don't sit in an airport lounge listening to the whining toddlers,
watching them wipe their noses on their sleeves, see the parents
fighting with their petulant adolescents, thinking there's some great
hole in my life. I'd choose a dog every time."

"People think you're nuts for staying in this job. Most of 'em think
there's something screwy in your head, that you like it so much."

"I learned a long time ago not to worry about what other people
think. Unless they're people I care about. You love what you do. You
don't understand why I like my end of it?"

"Different thing."

"What are you talking about? You're sniffing around dead bodies day
and night. I get to help people. Live ones. People who've survived the
trauma, who recover from it, who get to see a bit of justice restored
because we
make
the system work for them."

I realized I had raised my voice in answering Mike, so I said more
calmly, "Twenty years ago, prosecutors couldn't get convictions in
these cases in a court of law. Now, the guys in my unit do it every
day. Different thing? According to who? To
you?
'Cause your
narrow-minded, parochial upbringing wants you to think that women
shouldn't do this kind of work, right?"

My pitch had gone up again. There was no point trying to explain
what he already knew.

We were stopped in the middle of the driveway at my building, the
doorman standing at the passenger side to let me out, but waiting till
our argument stopped before daring to approach the car. I was sure he
could hear my agitated voice through the window.

Mike lowered his tone a notch and spoke to me softly. "'Cause I
think you've got to start thinking about the rest of your life, Coop."

"I think about it every day. Know what my thoughts are? That if a
fraction of the people I knew did something that was as emotionally
rewarding as what I do, they'd be a pretty satisfied bunch. I've got
loyal friends who happen to have a great time working together, with
one another and with the good cops like you and Mercer."

"And you're going home, by yourself, to an empty apartment. With
nothing to eat in the refrigerator, nobody to keep you warm when the
heat goes off, and no way for anyone to know if you're dead or alive
until it's time to show up for work on Monday. It's pathetic. You
should have been on the last shuttle to Washington, slippin' into
Jake's hotel room—"

I stepped out of the car and slammed the door behind me. "When you
straighten out your own love life, instead of going home and playing
with yourself every night, then you can start giving advice to the
lovelorn."

He accelerated over the speed bumps and raced out of the driveway.

"Sorry." I nodded to the doorman. "Thanks for waiting."

"Miss Cooper? There was someone here an hour or two ago asking
questions about you."

I shivered. "Do you know who he was?"

"No, it wasn't a man. It was a young woman, actually. Wanted to know
if you lived here."

"What did you say?"

"Well, it was the new guy she spoke to, the one covering for the
holiday break. He thought she looked harmless enough. He told her that
you did live in the building before he even thought about why she might
be asking."

Great security. Must be why my rent is so high.
"What else
did she say?"

"She wanted to know if anybody else lived with you. She wanted to
know if you usually came home alone at night."

9

The light was flashing on my answering machine when I walked into my
bedroom at midnight. Jake said he and the film crew had gone out for
dinner, but he was back in his hotel room and would wait up awhile for
my call. The second caller was an unfamiliar voice.

"Miss Cooper? Hello? This is, um, Joan Ryan. I'm one of the
counselors in the Witness Aid Unit at the DA's office. We haven't met
yet, and this isn't exactly the way I, uh, wanted to introduce myself.
But I need to tell you about a problem on one of your cases.

"I've been counseling one of your victims, Shirley Denzig, you know
the one who claims the delivery guy attacked her? She was flirting with
him in the deli when she bought her dinner, and then she paid him to
bring up the dessert half an hour later?" Ryan was rambling now, in
that way people do on answering machines so it seems to the listener
that the story will be interminable.
What's the point, Joan?

"I, um—I probably should have given you a heads-up about this
yesterday, when she showed up at my office. But then, you know,
whatever she tells me is privileged, 'cause I'm a social worker and
she's a victim. It was only when she showed up again tonight that the
supervisor called me. She really seemed out of control, asking all
kinds of questions about you. Anyway, if you want to call me at home,
here's my number. You'll probably want to know what Shirley was saying.
My supervisor thinks I have to tell you."

I cut off her confessional narrative and dialed the number.

"Joan? It's Alex Cooper. Sounds like I woke you up."

"That's okay. This is really my fault."

I knew who Denzig was, so there was no need to go through the story
again. It was during her second interview with me a couple of weeks
ago, in our discussion of her psychiatric history, that I had set her
off on a tirade. While I was asking the routine pedigree questions,
Denzig had told me she was a student at Columbia College. Considering
the other information she had provided, I was skeptical of her claim
and asked to see her identification. She had presented me with a photo
ID that had expired two years earlier. It looked fairly generic, with
no Columbia crest, or any of the characteristic blue-and-white
university markings.