Fairstein, Linda - Final Jeopardy by Final Jeopardy (v1.1) [html] Read Free Book Online Page B

begin to press for details. The booming jabs didn’t bother me half as much as the next phase, when he could make you feel like a complete idiot if you were unable to provide him with the details he wanted. I had watched unsuspecting colleagues present him with information for an impending press conference, confident in their mastery of the facts of the case, to have him come back with questions like, ”Do you know what church the suspect’s mother attends?“ or,
”Which junior high school did the witness go to?“ or some other point that was of potential value to a politician and none to a junior prosecutor.
    Battaglia talked at me for quite a period of time before he began to ask for facts that he didn’t yet know. And then it was time to give him every shred of detail from the moment Isabella first was introduced to me and spent time in our office through our most recent correspondence and her request to escape to a private hideaway.
    The District Attorney waited for my presentation to conclude before he leaned in, eyeballed me, and asked:
    “Can you think of any aspect of this, any hint of scandal, that’s going to come back to hurt this office, Alexandra?”
    The unspoken portion of that sentence, I knew, was…
    “Because if there is, Alex, you’d better start cleaning out your desk drawer and thinking about the advantages of the private practice of law.”
    “No, Paul,” I said, shaking my head repeatedly, “I’ve been thinking about it all of last night and this morning. There’s nothing more that I haven’t told you, really.”
    He sat back upright in his chair and reflected for several seconds before his when began to soften and he took on the aspect of the Paul Battaglia I idolized.
    “Okay, Alex, how do you come out in all this? What are we going to do about you?”
    “I’m practically numb today, Paul. I think it’s actually good for me to be at work because it gets my mind-‘ ”Good for you, maybe, but I don’t know how good it is for the office. Patrick McKinney thinks I ought to put you on leave for a few months and wait till this all clears up.“
    “Oh, Paul, that’s ridiculous. What he really thinks is that I should throw my body on top of Lascar’s coffin and be burned alive. Of course Pat wants me to take a leave he can’t bear having me around in the first place.”
    “Well, I spoke to the District Attorney up there in Massachusetts this morning the one in charge of the murder investigation. He and the police chief would like you to fly up for a few hours tomorrow. They need a lot of background from you, and they have to go through your house so you can tell them what things are yours and what were Isabella’s… and what belonged to the mystery guest.
    “So make your arrangements and, let’s see, tomorrow is Friday I want you to go up and give them whatever they need. And your detective goes with you, understand?
    Who’ve you got?“
    “Mike Chapman, Manhattan North.”
    “Fine. Just keep in touch with me every step of the way.
    I think you know that I don’t like surprises, Alex.“
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Two other points. You are not to go to Lascar’s funeral. No Hollywood, no photo-ops, no way for the press to keep tying this back in to us. She’s dead say your farewells privately. Understood?”
    I nodded in agreement.
    “And the other thing. You are not a cop, Alex. As I’ve told you before, you could have gone to the Police Academy and saved your old man a lot of money. You are an assistant district attorney, an officer of the court, a lawyer. Let the boys and girls in blue play police officers and keep your nose out of it.”
    I nodded again.
    “Oh, I meant to ask you, do you have any idea who was paying her a visit up there?”
    “No, I don’t, Paul. She never mentioned it and I never asked.”
    “Well, when did she get to the Vineyard?”
    Whoops, I could feel it coming. I had a rough idea of the answer, but not an exact time. Two “I don’t knows’