Deadfall

“Tons.”

I had been raised in a suburb north of the city—in Harrison, a small village that was part of Westchester County. My parents, whom I adored, moved there after my father and his partner—both physicians—invented a plastic device that was used worldwide in most cardiac valve replacement surgery, even to this day. The small piece of tubing—the Cooper-Hoffman valve—funded educations for my two brothers and for me—first at Wellesley College, then at the University of Virginia School of Law.

“Me too,” Mercer said. “I took the subway here every chance I got. What was your favorite thing to see?”

We were driving on the Deegan Expressway, getting off at the exit near Yankee Stadium to wind across Fordham Road, past the bodegas and restaurants that specialized in chimichangas and burritos, in a neighborhood that was home to Jewish immigrants a century ago.

“Gorillas,” I said. “The great apes. They seem so intelligent and, well—almost human. I could watch them all day. And you?”

“Elephants,” Mercer said. “I’ve always loved those beasts. I hated to lose the Ringling Brothers circus, but how I despised the way those gentle giants were treated.”

“Me, I’m a lions and tigers guy,” Mike said. “I used to have all these fantasies about going to live in the jungle.”

“How Tarzan of you,” I said. “I never knew.”

“But without Jane. No use for her.”

“So glad you outgrew that phase.”

“I’m working on it,” Mike said. “Did you know tiger stripes are like fingerprints?”

“No.”

“No two are alike. Each set of stripes is unique.”

“I had no idea.”

I needed a day like this. I felt like I was playing hooky with my two best friends from school, going to the coolest playground in the city of New York.

“Book of common knowledge,” Mike said. “Kind of stuff you should know.”

For the last couple of weeks, I had desperately wanted to regain my stability but had continued to struggle with my post-kidnapping PTSD.

I’d always liked to settle down with a drink in the evening. But I had treated my taste for alcohol like an addiction lately. I despised the fog it created in my brain late at night, and hated, too, the way the hangovers compelled me to stay in bed the morning after.

“Did you hear me, Coop?” Mike said.

“Sorry. I’ve been daydreaming.”

“I asked if you’ve thought this outing through.”

“Not entirely.”

“I like that,” Mike said, looking at me in his rearview mirror. I was stretched out across the backseat. “It’s totally in character with the old you.”

I wanted to be that me again badly. I had been drawn into the Wolf Savage investigation in the most unlikely way, but it had jolted me back into doing what I did best.

Paul Battaglia deserved a better ending than he got. We had been at sixes and sevens for months now, and he had long ago compromised my once-idealistic view of his integrity. But he had helped shape me into the prosecutor I was today, and the two best detectives I knew—Mike and Mercer—should not have been sidelined from solving the mystery of his murder.

“I want us to break this case,” I said.

“How’s that going to happen?” Mercer asked. “The old combo-platter solution? Intel from Vickee, surfing the Internet, and a whole lot of ESP?”

“Look, guys,” I said, sitting up and leaning forward, “there’s nobody who knows more about this situation than we do, is there?”

“You positioned yourself well for that one, Coop,” Mike said. “Between a rock and a hard place, for sure.”

“I clearly wasn’t the target, because the shooter was such a marksman that if he’d intended to kill both Battaglia and me—or just me—he’d have taken another shot. Another perfect shot.”

“Fair enough.”

“So I’m the key witness. The man was coming to see me,” I said. “And I’m supposed to know why that is.”

“But you don’t,” Mike said.

“But they think I do, so I figure I’m actually likely to know before they find out. I mean, that’s what they assigned me to do. We’ll have to break it before the task force does, is all.”

“Is she making sense yet, Mercer?” Mike asked.

“Slow and steady wins the race. She’ll get there.”

Few people knew Battaglia as well as I did—the good, the bad, and the ugly. A dozen years by his side, handling his most sensitive cases and representing him in the community whenever he wanted to duck an appearance or not take the heat for a criminal justice situation.

“I was there for the Wildlife Conservation dinner,” I said. “I did the research for his remarks and helped write his acceptance speech.”

My English lit major at Wellesley had put me squarely in the DA’s sights whenever he needed a ghost for his scripted public remarks.

“I’ve known Prescott for years,” I said. “I’ve got a Skeeter-meter that lets me read him, courtesy of his ex-wife, and anticipate most of his moves.”

“All good, Coop,” Mike said. “But Mercer’s right; we can’t just fly blind.”

“I have no intention of doing that,” I said. “My brain is getting back in gear, okay?”

“Sure—but—?”

“How many people has Battaglia prosecuted—well, overseen the prosecutions of—in the last three decades?” I asked.

“Hundreds of thousands,” Mike said, easing the car off Southern Boulevard and into the parking lot at the zoo.

“Most of them misdemeanors,” I said. “Low-level crimes.”

“Sure, but thousands of felonies every year, too.”

“Not a Pablo Escobar among them,” I said. “No big cartel hotshot, killing off the narcos and cops and district attorneys, simply because the city’s Special Narcotics prosecutor handles all of those matters. Took them away from our office. From Battaglia.”

“True.”

“So follow my thinking for a minute, guys.”

Mike turned off the motor and both men turned in their seats to look at me.

“Here’s what we’ve got,” I said, ticking off a list on my fingers. “The Saint Hubertus Club. A Supreme Court justice who dies under somewhat suspicious circumstances. The district attorney—man of the year of Animals Without Borders.”

“Operation Crash,” Mike said, “and the friction between US Attorney James Prescott and District Attorney Paul Battaglia. That’s your excuse for going off the reservation to play Sherlock with us.”

“That’s if you really think I’m going to need an excuse, Detective,” I said. “Because at some point the man of the year switches uniforms and shows up at a Saint Hubertus retreat. A private hunting preserve. A meeting so secretive that no one even spills the beans that Battaglia was there—except for an anonymous caller.”

“Lord, make his companion be a hooker,” Mike said. “It’ll be the perfect case.”

“Fast-forward to the middle of his displeasure with me,” I said. “Last week, showing up for a face-off, backing me away from the Savage case. And then going ballistic—”

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