Terminal City
Authors: Linda Fairstein
Tags: #Thriller & Suspense, #Thrillers, #United States, #Women Sleuths, #Mystery, #Legal, #Literature & Fiction, #Police Procedurals
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Copyright © 2014 by Fairstein Enterprises, LLC
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Fairstein, Linda A.
Terminal city / Linda Fairstein.
pages cm
eBook ISBN 978-0-698-15721-7
I. Title.
PS3556.A3654T48 2014
813'.54—dc23
2014009932
Map by David Cain
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Version_1
CONTENTS
For Michael
Good can imagine Evil, but Evil cannot imagine Good.
W. H. Auden
ONE
“Not a pretty way to die, Alexandra.”
The lieutenant of Manhattan South’s Homicide Squad opened the door to the luxury hotel suite on the forty-fifth floor at the Waldorf Astoria on Park Avenue.
“You know of one, Loo?” I asked, following him through the elegantly appointed living room. “I mean a pretty way.”
Rocco Correlli shrugged his shoulders and shook his head. He had been on the job for almost thirty years and seen more corpses than most guys in the bureau could now lay claim to, as the city’s murder rate continued its dramatic decline.
“Mike Chapman’s got one.” Pug McBride was behind me, practically stepping on my heels in his effort to stay close to Correlli. The short detective, square-bodied with a wrinkled face like the dog for which he was nicknamed, was as annoying as he was good-natured. “Says he’d like to die in bed with Gisele Bündchen’s body double—fourth down, goal to go.”
Correlli stopped short at the open bedroom door. “Shut it, Pug.”
“Yeah, I guess that’s why Mike got jammed up. In the wrong bed at the wrong time.”
I was wedged between Correlli’s back and McBride’s barrel chest. His warm Marlboro-laced breath hit the back of my neck each time he opened his mouth. I trusted that neither man could see the color rise in my face at the mention of Chapman’s name.
“I got the DA here,” Correlli said to someone standing with the body inside the room.
“Better buy him a cocktail first.”
I saw the flash of a camera go off. The speaker was Hal Sherman, one of the great pros in the Crime Scene Unit, whose voice was all too familiar to me.
“She’s already had one, Hal.”
“Was it Scotch?” Hal said. “Does that mean I actually drew the Coopster?”
“Hey, Hal. You going to let me in?”
Sherman framed himself in the archway of the open door. “Good evening, Alex. I’d hoped you had better things to do tonight than come out on this one. You gotta learn to delegate, girl. Can’t always be a control freak.”
“I did delegate, as a matter of fact. Had one of the new kids in the unit on the chart.”
The Special Victims Unit of the District Attorney’s Office, which I had headed for more than a decade, used an on-call system, just like the prosecutors working homicides. That meant we rode investigations 24/7 in partnership with the NYPD—going to crime scenes, running lineups, interviewing suspects on video after the initial police interrogation—all designed to enhance the viability of the legal case that developed from the evidence collected.
“What was the matter? No booties or gloves that fit her?”
I glanced down at my outfit. Rocco made me glove up before I got on the elevator in the lobby. “She’s three months pregnant.”
“Probably throws up enough every day without having to see this crap, too,” Pug said.
I rolled my eyes. “When Mercer called me, he was figuring she’d be on maternity leave by the time we’d need to go to trial.”
Rocco Correlli stepped to the side. He had straight silver-gray hair, a bit too long around the edges, and strong features that complemented his lean, angular build. “That’s assuming we catch the bastard.”
“Alex always assumes that,” Hal said. “It’s why she pushes us so hard.”
Mercer Wallace was the best Special Victims detective in the city and one of my closest friends. He had worked homicide for years—the highest-ranking African American in the squad and one of the few to be promoted to first grade—but requested the transfer to SVU because he preferred working with survivors of violent crime to handling murders. His compassion and gentle nature had helped scores of women and children in their recovery from the trauma of sexual assault.
“Are we waiting for Mercer?” I asked.
“He’s downstairs with hotel security,” the lieutenant said, “setting them up with a team of detectives to watch video surveillance tapes from the last seventy-two hours. No telling when he’ll get back up here. This place is vast.”
“But there are so many cameras in the Waldorf, Loo. We could get lucky in a few hours,” I said.
“From your lips.”