Likely to Die Read Online Free PDF

some object—a belt buckle or a clasp of some kind got imprinted or pressed into it. Crime Scene photoed it.”
     It didn’t seem a bit like that in my view. “It looks like she was writing something, like it was part of a word.”
     Chapman was all over me. “She didn’t have the strength to breathe, Blondie, much less write. She was checkin‘ out, not doing a grocery list.”
     I ignored him and traced the shape in the air for Mercer. “It looks like the letterF, you know, a capitalF —or maybe anR, but with squared corners—and then a tail going off this way, wiggling,” I said, drawing an invisible line from the bottom corner, downward and to the left. “Doesn’t it?”
     “We’ll have your video guys take some shots of it, too, Alex, but I’m sure it’s wishful thinking.”
     “Get me a Polaroid of it, Mercer.”
     He nodded his head but was already whistling the old Temptations tune “Just My Imagination” as he made another notation on his pad.
     Mike held the door open for us and closed it behind Mercer and me, telling the uniformed cop beside it not to let anyone in without authorization, as he mimicked me on our way down the hall. “I can hear the summation already—that’s what you start prepping for as soon as you get a case, isn’t it?—with one of your dramatic lines about the hand from the grave, pointing a finger at the killer. Good try, Cooper. The jury may laugh but the press corps will love it.”
     4
     IT WAS EIGHT-THIRTY WHEN I PARKED THECherokee on the narrow street in front of the entrance to the District Attorney’s Office and dug into my pocketbook to remove the identification tag that would get me through the metal detector inside the main door. I picked up my third cup of coffee from the vendor who wheeled his cart of bagels and pastries to the corner of Centre Street every morning and walked inside past the security guard who was too engrossed in a skin magazine to notice my arrival.
     I liked to get to my desk at least an hour before nine o’clock, when the huge office comes alive with lawyers, cops, witnesses, jurors, and miscreants of every description, in addition to the noise of thousands of telephones ringing constantly throughout the day. In the quiet of the early morning, I can read and respond to motions in my pending matters, screen and analyze the case reports forwarded to me by assistants in the unit, and return some of the calls that inevitably pile up by the end of each working session.
     There was no one else on my corridor yet, the executive wing of the Trial Division, so I flipped on the hallway lights, unlocked my door, and passed by my secretary Laura’s desk to hang my coat in the tiny closet in the corner of the room. It felt as though it was fifty degrees in my office, so I slipped off my shoes, climbed on top of Laura’s computer table with a screwdriver to reach the thermostat that some sadistic city engineer had locked into a metal grid out of human reach, and readjusted the heat to a comfortable level so I could settle in at my desk and get to work. My colleagues and I were entrusted with the safety and well-being of the millions of inhabitants and daily visitors to Manhattan but not with the temperature control of our decaying little cubicles in the Criminal Courts Building.
     I dialed my deputy’s extension to leave a message on her voice mail. “Hi, Sarah. Call me as soon as you get in. Caught a murder with Chapman at Mid-Manhattan and we’re going to have to do a search on all our cases involving health care professionals, hospitals, and mental institutions. I’m probably going to need some help with my schedule, too.”
     Next call was to my paralegals, who shared an office on the adjacent corridor. They were both smart young women who had graduated from college the preceding spring and were apprenticing with me for a year before going on to law school. “There’ll be a meeting in my office at ten. New case with lots to