Free Fairstein, Linda - Final Jeopardy by Final Jeopardy (v1.1) [html] Page A

printed beneath one of the photographs of the HEROES OF JINXED JAZZ CLUB: Benjamin Cooper. She had tried to find him before that, and knew only that his friends had called out to him as “Bones’ the night of the fire. She assumed that was a med school nickname that had something to do with an orthopedic specialty and so had called that department at several hospitals with no success. When she finally reached him and he invited her to meet for dinner, she laughed to learn that the name had been given to him as a child by his grandmother, in Yiddish, because he was so thin only skin and bones.
    They married a year later and my father went on to do his residency in cardiology. I was twelve years old when he and his partner invented a half-inch piece of plastic tubing called the Cooper-Hoffman Valve, which changed our comfortable suburban lifestyle as much as it changed the face of cardiac bypass surgery. For the next decade, barely an operation of that nature in North America proceeded without the use of a Cooper-Hoffman, and although my father continued to do the lifesaving surgery that he found so rewarding, the income that he amassed from the distribution of the valve and the trust funds it endowed for my brothers and myself gave each of us the invaluable freedom to pursue our own dreams and our own careers. For me, that had developed into a devotion to public service, with the luxury of a personal lifestyle not possible for most of my colleagues, but which certainly helped to relieve the relentless intensity of my particular specialty.
    Four years ago, my mother had convinced my father to retire from his surgical practice. They sold the house in Harrison, kept a condo in Aspen to be near their sons and grandchildren in the West, and moved to an exquisite Caribbean island called St.
Earth’s. When they weren’t traveling so my father could lecture at medical schools around the world, they were primarily working on nothing more arduous than improving their French, reading all the books that I never seemed to have time to get to, and worrying about why their daughter was still single and so content to be immersed in a steady diet of sexual violence.
    Mike had met my parents many times and knew exactly what I was talking about.
    “Maybe they’re right, Alex. You can still be a prosecutor and do other things frauds, organized crime, drug cartels.”
    “Not for me. You know what I love about this? Most women who survive a sexual assault come to the criminal justice system not expecting that any kind of justice will be done. They doubt that the rapist will be caught, and both fiction and made-for-TV movies have taught them that even if he is, he’ll never be convicted. It’s great to be part of changing that, of making the system work in these cases, of putting these bastards away. And it’s so new. Twenty years ago we had laws in this ccdfritry that literally said that the testimony of a woman in Jpape case was not enough evidence to convict her attacker. It was the only crime on the books like that. Imagine, your guys could be found guilty just on circumstantial evidence, but a woman was not competent to be an eyewitness to her own rape. It’s very exhilarating to be a part of these victories.”
    “Well, it’s obvious there’s something about it you love.
    But if you’re not serving dessert tonight, I’m outta here.“
    I carried the dishes to the sink and walked Mike to the door. He’d be back at six-thirty to pick me up so we could make an early shuttle to Boston in the morning.
    “Lock up after I go, kid. The Nineteenth Precinct has a uniformed cop in the lobby all night he was supposed to arrive at eight tonight and be on till I get here in the morning. I’ll check on the way out.”
    “That’s ridiculous,” I murmured, although I was actually glad to think someone would be backing Victor up at the door.
    “Don’t invite him up and distract him, blondie. If you get lonely, call for the doc next door.