NYPD Red 2(25)
“I am so sorry,” Gideon said, careful not to press his hips too close to her. Nothing says insensitive jerk like a guy with an erection trying to comfort a woman in pain.
“It wasn’t you guys,” he said, wiping a drooping hank of red hair from her face and planting a gentle kiss on her forehead. “The jury just bought into the defense team’s bullshit.”
She sat down, and Gideon took the chair between Meredith and her brother, Dave.
“Bad night,” Dave said, pouring his best friend a beer from one of five pitchers on the table. “Real bad night for the justice system.”
Chapter 25
“You guys are way ahead of me,” Gideon said, picking up his beer. “I’ve got some catching up to do.” He took four big swallows of the cold, crisp brew, set the mug down hard on the table, and let Dave top it off.
He scanned the room. The walls were peppered with TV sets, half of them tuned to Monday Night Football, the other half to Post Mortems, the popular CNN show that focused on the big legal news of the day. And in a bar filled with lawyers, nothing—not even the Hazmat Killer—was bigger than the Rachael O’Keefe case.
O’Keefe was a twenty-nine-year-old single mom living on East 71st Street with her five-year-old daughter, Kimi. By day, she was a phlebotomist, collecting blood, urine, sputum, and other bodily fluids for a private diagnostic lab on the Upper West Side. Most nights, desperate to escape from the tedium of her life, she’d put Kimi to bed at 8:00 and at 9:00 go downstairs to the bar across the street.
Kimi knew that if she woke up and needed anything, she could either speed-dial Rachael’s cell or just pick up the intercom and buzz the doorman, who would run over to the bar and get Mommy.
Rachael knew it wasn’t the kind of parenting Dr. Spock would approve of, but screw him—the men she met on the job stayed only long enough to have her stick a needle in their arm and fill a few test tubes. Nights were the only time she had to get out and meet a decent guy—or at least some badass who could take her up to her bedroom and put a smile on her face.
One Sunday night, something went wrong. According to Rachael, she came home at 2:00 a.m., fell into bed, and slept till 10:00. Kimi was usually awake by 6:30, so Rachael went to her room to see what was wrong.
The little girl was gone. And so was Mookie, the stuffed pink monkey she slept with every night. At 10:04 that Monday morning, Rachael dialed 911, and within twenty-four hours, Kimi O’Keefe was the most sought-after missing person in America.
Her body was found four days later in a landfill in Pennsylvania. She’d been smothered to death. There was no sign of the pink monkey, but the garbage pile she was found in was easily traced to the New York City sanitation truck that picked up at Kimi’s building on Monday morning.
A month later, the DA charged Rachael with murder two.
Gideon remembered the night Meredith was assigned to the case. She came bounding into his apartment, squealing with joy. “I got it! I got it! I’m on the O’Keefe team!”
She wrapped her arms around him, and they fell to the sofa, kissing.
“That’s fantastic,” he said when he came up for air. “You’re going to be a media star.”
“Hardly,” Meredith said. “There are nine of us. I won’t even be in the courtroom. I’ll be locked up on the seventh floor sifting evidence—it’s mostly grunt work, but I do get to prep some of the witnesses. This is the biggest trial of my career, and if we win—”
“When you win,” Gideon said. His hand found its way under her skirt and slowly, tantalizingly, made its way up her leg.
Sex with Meredith was everything Gideon had dreamed of when he was a kid. He and Dave never told her the truth about Enzo Salvi’s murder, but in a weird way, Gideon always thought he had Enzo to thank for his good fortune.
It took two years before Meredith attempted to have sex again. It was a disaster. Meredith assured the guy it wasn’t his fault, and then she made the mistake of telling him the truth. Instead of being empathetic, he put together beach party, booze, and sexy costume and came to a natural conclusion. She had been asking for it. The guy never actually said the words, but Meredith knew what he was thinking. After that, her sexual encounters were infrequent and unfulfilling.
And then came New Year’s Eve 2009. Gideon and Meredith were at a party, dancing, when the ball dropped at midnight. He leaned in, pressed his lips to hers, and she kissed back. Their five-year age difference meant nothing to her at this point.
“I trust you,” she said, kissing him with a ferocity and a passion that had been beaten out of her that night on the beach. Since then, the sex had been glorious. No shame, no guilt, and absolutely no “I love yous.”