Harper was trying to pull me farther back from the bookshelf, so I tried to find something to cling to that would keep me in place, keep me apart from wherever he wanted to take me. I kept bringing up Chapman’s voice inside my head.

Now I remembered what was familiar about this scene. I was almost giddy with thoughts of how Chapman would react to finding my body. I continued to twist against my captor, thinking how Grace Kelly had been attacked by the killer inDial M for Murder. I’d be strangled from behind, just like Kelly almost was, and Mike would be telling the uniformed guys how much he loved her in that movie-even as they bagged my corpse.

The letter opener. I was fighting against Harper’s right hand, which was trying to pull one of my arms out from under the cord so he could finish off the job. My eyes scoured the top of Gemma’s desk for a letter opener or sharp pair of scissors but nothing was in sight. C’mon, kid, my voices were telling me. Grace Kelly did it. You can do it, too.

Let him take one hand out, I thought to myself, grabbing onto my throat even more tightly with the other, to protect it. As he let go of my right one to use both of his to pull on the cord, I thrust my palm up against his face and scratched at the socket of his eye with my fingers. Again a howl and a spit at the side of my head.

But I knew what I wanted now and I knew I would only need a few inches to get at it.

I was gasping for air as he jerked on me harder this time. He could see the sweat that was dripping from my scalp, stinging my eyes, and hear my irregular intake of breath. My left side was facing him and I had leaned my entire upper body away from his as I pawed at the bookshelves for support. I had few things to be thankful for at that very moment, but the rigor of my exercise over the years was giving me an edge against his greater girth and strength.

A sudden bend toward Harper, which surprised him, left me with several inches of play in the cord. With my left hand still guarding my neck, I pitched away from him and grabbed Gemma’s prize surgical award from its ebony stand on the third row of shelves. I whirled back with the gold-handled scalpel in my palm and ripped it across the wrist of the mad doctor. His blood spurted everywhere from whichever artery I had cut.

The cord fell from his hand as I began to slash at him savagely. I let up only to pull the gag out of my mouth. I wanted to find a place to cripple him seriously enough for me to have time to get out of the room but I wasn’t sure I could find the right spot through his clothing. As he hunched over the desk, trying to wrap his own sleeve around his most serious wound, I stabbed at his upper thigh, digging the scalpel in it repeatedly. When he fell to the ground wailing, I ran to the door and unlocked it-as I had tried to do so many minutes ago-sprinting out this time and slamming it behind me.

The twelfth-floor corridor echoed with my screams as I pounded on the few doors between Dogen’s apartment and the elevator. I could hear the peephole cover slide open behind the door of the nearly deaf neighbor and I realized what a sight I presented. Two lengths of black vinyl cord were wrapped around my neck while I held up the telephone machine that was hanging from one end of it to prevent the sheer weight of it from choking me to death. My yellow sweater was drenched in Harper’s blood and stretched out of shape so that it appeared to be coming off one of my shoulders completely.

No sane New Yorker was going to let me into his or her home in that condition. All I really wanted to do anyway was get a police officer to respond. I began banging on the neighbor’s door. “Let me in,” I shouted. “I just killed a man. I’m crazy! I escaped from Stuyvesant last night and I came here to kill him. Let me in, NOW!”

Exactly as I thought the little feet inside shuffled over to the telephone and whoever they were attached to dialed 911. Then she immediately called the doorman to complain about the madwoman who was ranting in the hallway outside her apartment. I kept the scalpel firmly in my hand and my eye on Gemma’s door, for the forty-seven seconds it took the superintendent to bring the service elevator up to the floor.

I unwrapped the phone from around my neck while the two of us waited on the silent corridor for the police. The response time was less than seven minutes. I guess it was fortunate that Harper had tried to kill me on a quiet Sunday afternoon and not during a weekday rush hour. Three cars answered the call. Two cops stayed with me while the other four broke down the door to find Harper, who was unconscious on the floor of the apartment.

“We gotta take you to be checked out and examined, Miss Cooper. What hospital you wanna go to?” one of the rookies asked me when I explained to him who I was.

“After this investigation, I’m not sure there’s a medical center in this city where I’d be welcome. I’ve got a really great internist, though. If you guys could just take me home and do your interviews there, it’d be much less painful all around. You can look up a number for Dr. Schrem with Information and his service will beep him. I think maybe he’d make a house call in this situation.”

The superintendent’s assistant had seen the cops arrive at the building and had followed upstairs with an old blanket. Police Officer Dick Nicastro wrapped it around my shoulders and took me down to the patrol car for the short ride home.

I sat in the backseat with my head resting against the window listening to the staccato noise from the radio as a call came over of a rape in progress on a rooftop in the 7th Precinct.

“It’s gettin‘ to be that season, Miss Cooper.”

I closed my eyes and wiped the raindrops off my hair, shaking my head at the sight of my bloody hand. “Unfortunately, officer, it’s always that season.”

BATTAGLIA’S MONDAY MORNING REACTION to my unexpected skirmish was nothing compared to the whipping I took from Mercer and Mike on Sunday evening. When they arrived at seven, my doctor was just finishing up his examination, documenting his findings in detail because I told him they would be evidence at the trial. He made the guys promise not to aggravate my fragile condition with any excitement or emotional turmoil and he insisted on remaining with us while I relived for them my encounter with Coleman Harper.

“No cross-examination, gentlemen,” he dictated as he left us. “She needs an early night-and a quiet one.”

Mike had called in Hal Sherman from the Crime Scene Unit to take photographs of my injuries. I didn’t need a mirror to remind myself what shape I was in when I saw the expression on his face. “I’ve photographed cadavers that look better than you do, Alex. If you were the winner, what does the other guy look like?”

Chapman lifted my hair from the side of my neck to show Hal the ligature marks. “Don’t worry. She took a nice chunk out of his ass. He’ll be singing soprano with the Attica boys’ choir.”

The flash from the camera made my eyes sting as he shot close-ups of the bruises on my forehead, then focused on my wrists and forearms.

Nobody wanted me to stay alone in case I needed anything during the night. So I accepted the invitation from David Mitchell to sleep on the fold-out sofabed in his living room, where he and Renee could look out for me, with Zac at my feet. Mike and Mercer left at nine, taking my clothing along with them to be vouchered and sent to the police lab for serology and analysis.

I was determined to show up at the office bright and early before the story of the attack took on mythical proportions. It was obvious that Gemma Dogen’s murder case would have to be reassigned to another assistant district attorney-along with the assault on me. I was an ordinary witness in this matter now and not a prosecutor. Rod Squires let me have a choice of lawyers to handle the two attacks as long as it wasn’t Sarah or anyone in the Sex Crimes Unit. I asked that it be given to Tom Kendris, who was a friend and whose work I respected.