Table of Contents
ALSO BY LINDA FAIRSTEIN
FICTION
Hell Gate
Lethal Legacy
Killer Heat
Bad Blood
Death Dance
Entombed
The Kills
The Bone Vault
The Deadhouse
Cold Hit
Likely to Die
Final Jeopardy
NONFICTION
Sexual Violence: Our War Against Rape
DUTTON
Published by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.); Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England; Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephens Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd); Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd); Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India; Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd); Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Published by Dutton, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
First printing, March 2011
Copyright 2011 by Fairstein Enterprises, LLC All rights reserved
REGISTERED TRADEMARKMARCA REGISTRADA
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Fairstein, Linda A.
Silent mercy / Linda Fairstein.
p. cm.
eISBN : 978-1-101-47601-7
1. Cooper, Alexandra (Fictitious character)Fiction. 2. Public prosecutorsFiction. 3. Serial murderersFiction. 4. ReligionFiction. 5. New York (N.Y.)Fiction. I. Title.
PS3556.A3654S55 2011
813.54dc22
2010045405
PUBLISHERS NOTE
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the authors rights is appreciated.
http://us.penguingroup.com
For CYRUS R. VANCE, Jr., District Attorney, New York County, whose wisdom, vision, integrity, courage, loyalty, and gift for friendship inspire me
ONE
IS that you with the broad, Detective? the fire captain shouted at Mike Chapman in the darkness of a frigid March night. Keep her back there, across the street.
Got that, Coop? Stay put. Mike left me in the middle of the double-wide roadway, wedged between unmarked police cars and bright red fire trucks as he charged in behind the huddle of uniformed cops on the sidewalk on the far side of the street.
I took my own blue-and-gold badge out of my pocketno one would stop to read that the small print beneath my name said Assistant District Attorney, not NYPDand flapped it over the breast pocket of my ski jacket, slinking between rowdy onlookers to get within inches of Mike.
Alexandra Cooper. Special Victims, I said to one of the firemen. His scowl softened and he nodded to let me pass.
Chaos had enveloped the corner of 114th Street and Seventh Avenue. Flames still danced around something that lay on the portico of a stately old church, teasing the water that spouted from steady-stream nozzles the firemen aimed at it. Emergency Service Unit cops wielded axes to try to break open the locks on the wrought-iron gate that guarded the front steps, and a growing herd of neighborhood rubberneckers crowded the first responders who were trying to get the job done.
I was on the tips of my toes, hoping to catch a glimpse of what was burning. Amidst blackened fragments of some kind of fabric and the occasional glitter of embers atop that, I could make out something whitealmost flesh-colored. The shape of a human arm, maybe, but that thought was too awful to imagine.
More firemen rushed past me to aid their brother officers, one of them knocking me back a step. There was no point in slowing anyone down to ask questions.
I raised myself up again. It must have been sensory overload because I thought I could see a hand, but there werent really any fingers, and a terrible smell made me dizzier than the confusing sight.
Who on fire? one tall kid yelled out at no one in particular, then started to pull on the sleeve of my jacket as I passed in front of him.
Dont know, I said, breaking loose from his grip and inching forward, but his choice of pronoun focused me.
No question that within the fiery pile was a human being. The putrid odor of burning fleshcoppery and metallicpermeated the air. Holocaust survivors and soldiers who had liberated camps in World War II claimed it was a stench they would never forget.
Go! It was one of the ESU cops who had pushed back the gate hed hacked open, calling out to the firemen whod been spraying hoses impatiently from the sidewalk.
The pair took the church steps two at a time, rushing toward the smoking mound. While uniformed cops turned their attention to crowd control, Mike dashed in through the gate.
Im his partner, I lied to the startled cop at the foot of the steps, running up behind Mike. I could see feetsmall, pale, and bareprotruding from the remains of what might have once been a blanket that had covered them. They didnt move.
The taller fireman dropped to his knees and did what he must have done thousands of times after dousing the flames at a scene, whether or not he believed the victim would be able to respond.
He grabbed the ankles and pulled them toward him, then threw off the charred material that had concealed the corpse. He leaned over to begin an attempt at mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but his back bucked and broke sideways as he braced himself against one of the massive columns and retched.
I stepped forward to see what ended the firemans effort so abruptly, and a wave of nausea swept over me too.
The body of the young woman had no head.
TWO
DONT you think the guys should move her inside? I asked. The fire had been out for almost an hour and everyone on duty was growing restless.
Mike Chapman didnt look up at me when he answered. She cant feel the cold quite like you do, Coop.
My gloved hands were deep in the pockets of my ski jacket. Im not talking about the weather. Im talking about the size of the crowd were attracting.
