Free Bad Blood by Linda Fairstein Page A

around the victim’s body. By seven fifteen, I had restructured my case presentation and was ready to quit for the night.
    “Let’s check the tube and see how they play the day,” Mike said, starting out for the public relations office on the main corridor of the eighth-floor hallway. The press secretary, Brenda Whitney, had the responsibility of monitoring media accounts — on television and in print — of all the office cases that attracted attention for daily reports to Paul Battaglia, the longtime district attorney of New York County.
    “Did Brenda leave you the key?” She had a bank of television sets that ran all day so that her staff could follow national news stories — Battaglia’s creative white-collar investigations that frequently shook up the financial industry — and feeds from the local networks that replayed around the clock.
    Mike dangled the key over his shoulder as he walked out my door. “Follow me. One cycle of breaking news and then you can feed me. Mercer will meet us for dinner in an hour.”
    “I’ve told you I can’t eat,” I said, picking up some folders to take home and turning out the lights.
    “We need to keep your strength up for the rest of the battle. I think Lem’s been chewing steak knives to sharpen his teeth for the kill.”
    We let ourselves into the pressroom and Mike flipped on one of the TVs. The local all-news channel repeated its headlines three times an hour, and it took only minutes until they reran the end-of-the-
day broadcast from the courthouse steps.
    Mercer had done his job well. He had spirited Kate Meade out the back door so the press had no photo ops, no footage with which to tell her story. Instead, they got shots of Preston Meade being led away from the building by three uniformed officers who had surrounded him when Judge Gertz ejected him from the proceedings.
    The telegenic Lem Howell smoothed his hair back and smiled for the cameras. He’d never met a microphone he didn’t like. “I think you’ll see that the state rushed to judgment in this tragic matter,” he said to the reporter, who was eager to get a quote from a principal in the case.
    “You have any idea who the killer actually was?”
    “No more so than the prosecutor does, I’d have to say.”
    “Give those glib jaws a rest,” Mike called out to the image on the screen as he switched channels. “You didn’t come off too badly in all that.”
    “Only because Preston Meade hasn’t found a path to Battaglia yet to complain.”
    “C’mon, blondie. The way your luck is blowing, I got a shot at
Jeopardy!
tonight and then we’re off, okay?”
    For as long as I’d known Mike Chapman, it had been his habit to watch the last five minutes of the perennially popular quiz show in order to bet against whoever was in his company on the final
Jeopardy!
question. Mercer and I were the usual combatants, wagering twenty dollars or more, depending on whose favorite subject was the topic of the evening. Squad commanders, prosecutors, morgue attendants, and dead bodies had all been kept waiting while Mike tested his wits against the on-screen players.
    Alex Trebek was smiling at us as the commercial break ended. “Tonight’s category is Greek Mythology. Let’s see what the answer is, folks.”
    “Double or nothing,” Mike said. He had majored in history at Fordham College before joining the NYPD and had encyclopedic knowledge of military figures and events, both American and worldwide. If the subject was an ancient Greek warrior, he would beat me cold. “You can always hope for Leda and her swans.”
    “Do I have any choice?” I asked, removing the bills from my wallet.
    Trebek revealed the answer on the giant blue game board as he spoke it aloud. “Iconic desert figure whose original Greek name means ‘the strangler,’” Trebek said, repeating the word I had hoped not to hear again tonight. “The strangler.”
    “Brendan Quillian isn’t Greek, is he?” Mike said. “I’m