Mercer grimaced. “You thinking like I am?” he directed the question to me.

I was crestfallen, too. For the past few years, Mercer and I had come to rely on DNA evidence and its stunning genetic fingerprinting techniques to resolve a growing number of rape cases. Even when the victim survived the attack, as most do, and picked out her assailant in photo arrays and lineups, the reliability of DNA testing to confirm her identification had dramatically increased the success rate of prosecutions all over the country.

“I guess I was counting on evidence we’re not going to have,” I said, the dejection apparent in my tone. “I just assumed that we’d get seminal fluid and develop a print ready for comparison when we find our suspect.”

“That’s a luxury I don’t think we’re going to have in this case, Alex.”

“Any chance the guy used a condom, Doc? That’s why you’re not finding any semen?”

“Unlikely, Mike. I mean, it’s entirely possible. But most of the time condoms leave substances in the victim’s body that we would detect at autopsy or in the lab. Whether it’s the lubricant or the spermicides, there’s-”

“Well, I mean, can you tell if she was even penetrated?”

“There’s no trauma, either vaginally or anally. Now, that doesn’t tell us much in and of itself about vaginal penetration.”

Mike didn’t have the experience with sexual assault cases that Mercer and I did, so I went on with the facts to which Kirschner had alluded. “More than two-thirds of adult women who are raped don’t sustain any kind of physical injury or trauma, Mike. Someone who’s sexually active isn’t likely to exhibit internal damage. The vaginal vault is pretty elastic, and if she was unconscious when the rapist penetrated, there’d be even less likelihood of meeting resistance.”

Kirschner was a step ahead of me. “What I find even more unusual, though, is that there was not a shred of any other trace evidence suggesting an attempt at a sexual encounter. If he had actually tried to penetrate, I would have expected to find some ofhis pubic hair in our combing of hers.”

A standard part of evidence collection in rape cases, as well as at autopsies, is a combing of the victim’s pubic hair. Frequently, the rapist’s own hair becomes entangled and left on the victim, and becomes another means of forensically linking a perpetrator to his prey.

“When you’ve got a rape, the crime sceneis the victim’s body. It’s the only crime for which that’s true. I’m convinced there is too little evidence here to believe our attacker committed a sexual assault.”

“So now all we gotta figure is what stopped him,” Mercer said. “Anything from getting scared off by noise in the hallway to losing his erection. Maybe Mike’s right in this case. If his intention was to rape Dogen, but he had to use more force than he had planned to subdue her, he might have been disgusted or simply unable to maintain an erection.”

“Don’t forget,” I added, “with a lot of the psychiatric types living in and under the medical center, you’re starting out with some candidates who are sexually dysfunctional even though their intention may have been to complete an assault. Are we back at square one, guys?”

“I hate to disappoint you, Alexandra, but I don’t think the solution to this crime is going to come frommy work ormy laboratory. Chapman knew as much about how Gemma Dogen died before he got here this morning as he does now. He just didn’t know where each of those knife wounds landed, internally, until we opened her up. I’m sorry I can’t give you any more help right now but your killer didn’t leave the kind of incriminating evidence we had all hoped for.

“If you find him before too much time goes by,” Kirschner said, turning to the two detectives, “his body and his clothing are likely to tell more of the story than Dogen’s. Whether or not she was able to scratch or bite or hit him, I have no idea. But he certainly must have left that room looking like he’d come from an abattoir. He’d have had more blood on him than anyone except a surgeon leaving the operating theater.”

Chet reminded us to forward the crime scene photos to him as soon as we had them, collected his Polaroids, and excused himself, noting that he had half an hour until he began his next procedure at three o’clock.

Mike, Mercer, and I gathered our belongings and walked out of the room. “I’m taking a pass on those sandwiches, Cooper. Want a cup of coffee across the street before we go on?” Mercer asked.

I had absolutely no appetite, either. “Sure, maybe it’ll take the chill off.” We walked back up the ramp and out onto the sidewalk.

“You taking Coop over to see Dogen’s apartment?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll be at Mid-Manhattan doing interviews. Coming by the station house later, kid?”

“What can I do to be useful? I’m still stunned by Chet’s findings. I was just counting on something that the lab could give us to move forward with by the weekend. I’ve got to give a speech at Julia Richman High School tonight.”

Mercer stepped off the curb to cross First Avenue. I turned back and flashed a grin at Chapman. “Why’d you ask? Do you need me, Mikey?”

“In your dreams, Blondie. In your dreams.”

10

BURGUNDY-SUITED DOORMEN FLANKED THE entrance to Gemma Dogen’s apartment building on Beekman Place, a short walk from the medical center complex. Wallace palmed his gold detective shield to the older of the two, on our left, who acknowledged his recognition by swinging back the large glass doors.

Wallace pointed me to the right, through the lobby and past an enormous display of forsythia and pussy willows that seemed to be rushing the season. We got on the elevator and Mercer pressed twelve.

“Damn,” he said as the doors opened onto a dim hallway made more oppressive by a heavy pattern of taupe flocked wallpaper. “I brought a camera in case you wanted any photos. Left it in the trunk. It’s the third door on the left-12C. Here are the keys, large one for the bottom lock. Let yourself in and I’ll be back up in five.”

I fingered the key chain as the doors pinched shut behind me. I hesitated while toying with the miniature replica of London’s Tower Bridge from which the two keys dangled, thinking I might be more comfortable entering Gemma’s home with Mercer than alone.

Grow up, I told myself. There are no ghosts inside and Mercer will be here within minutes.

I slipped the shorter key into the top lock, then turned the long Medeco one into the cylinder below. The knob seemed to stick for a minute before it cracked open, and I was startled at that exact moment by a noise behind me. I stepped on the threshold and looked over my shoulder to see only the swinging door at the service end of the hallway moving back and forth.

There were no voices and no other noise on the corridor and yet I could have sworn I saw someone’s face peeking out from behind the small porthole window there toward me. It was a creepy feeling, as though I were being watched, and I reassured myself that nosy neighbors were likely to be concerned about the strangers who were parading in and out of the dead woman’s home.

The entryway light switch was on the wall next to the front closet, so I flipped it up as I closed the door behind me.

My eyes swept around the large space. It was a postwar building with rooms of a generous size, spoiled by concrete ceilings that resembled a huge, upside-down vat of cottage cheese but saved by a floor-length wall of windows that looked over the expanse of the East River. Today the clouds hung dense and low and I could barely see beyond the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge and the traffic gliding toward La Guardia Airport.

Gemma Dogen’s taste was simple and stark. I moved through the living room, which appeared to have been furnished during a single stop at a low-cost, contemporary Scandinavian store. Every piece had sharp angles and lines; all fabrics were neutral in shade and slightly rough to the feel. I wished her the deep, rich colors and thick, soft materials of my own home, which enveloped and soothed me when I was ready to relax, kick my shoes off, and leave my professional world behind me at the end of a tough day.