The Kills Read Online Free PDF Page A

own skin.
    "What
do you hear from your folks? They okay?"
    "They're
fine. They're out West, visiting my brother and his kids," I said to
Mercer.
    My
father, Benjamin, had retired from his cardiology practice years ago. The
simple plastic tubing that he and his partner had developed three decades
earlier had been used in all open-heart surgery in virtually every operating
room in the country. It was the Cooper-Hoffman valve that had cushioned my
lifestyle, providing a superb education-my degree in English literature from
Wellesley and the subsequent Juris Doctor from the University of Virginia-as
well as the means to maintain my apartment on Manhattan's Upper East Side and
my beloved farmhouse on Martha's Vineyard.
    But it
was my father's devotion to public service in his medical career that led me to
try something comparable in the law by applying to the Office of the District
Attorney following my graduation more than twelve years earlier. I had
anticipated spending five or six years there before moving on to private
practice. As I rotated through the routine assignments of the young
prosecutorial staff, I'd been fascinated and engaged by the work of the Sex
Crimes Prosecution Unit. The endless challenges-legal, investigative,
scientific, and emotional-kept me riveted, and committed to making a
professional home for myself in this new specialty within the law, created just
a generation earlier.
    We pulled
off the drive and circled the block before Mercer spotted a parking place on
Second Avenue.
    Mike was
standing on the sidewalk with Giuliano, the owner of the restaurant. Both
seemed to be enjoying the warm September evening.
    " Ciao, Signorina Cooper. Com'e stai? How
was your holiday?" He held the door open and ushered us to the corner
table at the window, where Adolfo seated us and started to describe the
specials.
    "Fine,
thanks. And Italy?"
    " Bellissima, like always. Fenton," he
called to the bartender. "Dewar's on the rocks for Ms. Cooper. Doppio. And your best vodka for the
gentlemen. On me."
    "You
oughta stay away more often, Coop. Giuliano's so happy to see you he's giving
away his booze. That's a first."
    I ordered
the veal special, a paillard pounded thin and lightly breaded, with arugula and
chopped tomatoes on top. Mercer asked for sausage and pepper with a side dish
of fettuccine, and Mike settled on the lobster fra diavolo.
    "How's
Valerie?" I asked.
    "Pretty
good. She never seems to pick her head up from the drafting table long enough
to tell me." Mike had been dating a woman for the past year, an architect
who was involved in planning the redesign of the Museum of Modern Art. They'd
met when Valerie was in the early stages of recovering from a mastectomy, in
treatment at Sloan-Kettering Hospital, where Mike had gone to donate blood.
    "How
did the trip to California go?" Valerie had taken him home to Palo Alto to
meet her family over the Labor Day weekend.
    "I'm
not sure Professor Jacobsen's first choice for his daughter's beau is a New
York City detective, but the old lady handled it pretty well."
    Michael
Patrick Chapman was the son of a legendary street cop, a second-generation
immigrant who had met his wife on a visit to the family home in County Cork.
Brian was on the job for twenty-six years, dying of a massive coronary barely
two days after turning in his gun and shield. That had been during Mike's
junior year at Fordham, and although he'd completed school the following year,
he'd applied for admission to the police academy before he handed back his cap
and gown. He had idolized his father, longed to follow in his footsteps, and
distinguished himself in his rookie year with a major arrest following the
drug-related massacre of a Colombian family in Washington Heights.
    I raised
my glass and clinked it against the others'. For the better part of the last
decade, these two men had become my closest friends. They'd taught me the
creative investigative skills they themselves had mastered, they covered