Sparrow had beaten her addiction. She was clean again.

And young again – starting over.

Where were you going with your new face?

After reviewing the notes, Edward Slope signed them, thus completing his own hostage negotiation, and Mallory opened the door to set him free. He backed up quickly, making way for a man in the short white coat of a hospital intern. The young doctor crashed into the room with a jangling, rolling cart full of metal and glass equipment and a running nurse at his heels.

Dr Slope stayed to watch the intern and nurse as they outfitted their patient with tubes and wires. ‘What’s the point of this if she – ’

‘She’s got brain activity.’ The intern tracked Sparrow’s rolling blue eyes with the beam of his penlight. ‘I never should’ve listened to the damn cops. They told me this woman was revived twenty minutes after death. That can’t be true.’ He turned on a startled Riker. ‘And you had no right to keep me out of here. Suppose she’d gone sour before I got her on life support?’

‘That’s enough.’ Edward Slope looked down at the smaller doctor, then held up a wallet with his formidable credentials. Satisfied that the younger man’s testicles had been neatly severed, he continued. ‘Your patient was never in any danger while I was here.’ He reached down to pick up the clipboard that dangled from a chain on the bed rail, then pointed to the bottom of the page. ‘I see a clear order not to resuscitate.’ He glanced at the intern’s name tag. ‘I assume this is your signature?’

‘Yes, sir, but that was before I saw the EKG results.’

‘Screwed up, didn’t you.’ This was not a question, but Slope’s opinion of inexcusable error.

The intern had the look and the whine of a petulant boy. ‘I told the cop my patient needed life support.’

‘Nobody told me anything,’ said Riker. ‘I didn’t know.’

„She knew!’ The young doctor whirled around to point an accusing finger, but Mallory was gone, and the door was slowly closing.

Riker settled into a chair beside the bed. He was fifty-five years old, but feeling older, shaken and suddenly cold. Yet he managed to convince himself that no cop would leave herself so exposed to a charge of manslaughter by depraved indifference to human life -and that Mallory had not just tried to kill Sparrow.

CHAPTER 2

The high-pitched laughter of crime-scene tourists drifted in from the street, unhampered by a bedsheet draped over the broken window. The basement floor was no longer covered by water, but the air was hot and dank. Mallory removed her blazer and folded it over one arm as she moved about the room, taking in each detail.

Beads of moisture trickled down the cheap metal cabinets of the kitchenette to make wet tracks through black fingerprint dust. A fold-out sofa made do for a bed, and wrought-iron lawn furniture passed for a dining room set. The wooden crucifix was the only wall decoration. Crime Scene Unit’s airtight metal canisters and plastic bags were stacked by the door, awaiting the van’s return.

Though the work of collecting evidence was done, Riker kept his hands in his pockets to pacify Heller, a great bear of a man with slow brown eyes and rolled-up shirtsleeves. The forensic expert ran a blow-dryer over a small paper box and muttered, ‘Freaking clowns.’ This was his least colorful name for the firemen who had broken the window and hosed down his crime scene. ‘My crew didn’t find a camera to go with this film box. Maybe your perp took a snapshot for a souvenir.’

A soggy cockroach was also drying out, perched on the edge of the sink and basking in the warmth of Heller’s floodlights, a bug’s idea of the Riviera. New York City roaches were not afraid of bright light. Nor did they fear fire, flood or cops with guns, and it would take more than all of that to kill them.

‘Well, this is all wrong.’ Riker stood beside the table, examining a plastic bag filled with dead insects. ‘Hey, Mallory. Ever see so many flies turn out for a body that wasn’t dead yet? There must be a thousand bugs here.’

‘At least.’ Heller switched off the blow-dryer, then turned his head with the slow swivel of a cannon. ‘And the perp brought the flies with him. He carried them in that jar.’

‘What?’ Riker leaned down for a closer look at the evidence bag that held a large glass jar coated with black dust. ‘You didn’t find any prints.’

‘That’s how I know it belonged to the perp. He wore gloves.’ Heller sorted through a stack of elimination cards marked with the fingerprints of firemen and police. ‘All I got here is the victim’s prints and that idiot Zappata’s.’ He nodded toward the plastic bags. ‘The jar’s got a crack in it. Either the perp dropped it, or the fire hose knocked it off the table. I skimmed those flies off the water, but I know they were all dead before they hit the floor. I can even tell you how they died.’

Riker raised one eyebrow to say, Oh, yeah? ‘Did they drown? Or did you find smoke in their little lungs?’

Heller’s glare of quiet disdain was an unmistakable message: Don’t fool with the master. ‘The inside of the jar smells like insecticide. So do the flies.’ He pulled four specimen bottles from his pockets and lined them up on the table. Four dead flies floated in clear liquid. ‘They’re in different stages of decomposition. I’d say he’s been collecting them for a week. And I got twenty bucks that says an entomologist will back me up.’

‘Naw.’ Riker waved him off, for he knew this was a sucker bet. In or out of court, the man from Forensics was rarely challenged.

‘So he’s been planning this for a while.’ Mallory turned to the makeshift curtain. Was the freak just passing by when he looked down, saw Sparrow for the first time – and decided to murder her? Was that the day he started collecting his flies and hoarding them? Or maybe the whore had bumped into him on the street, a New York kind of accident, a chance collision with violent insanity.

Heller crouched beside his toolbox and began the work of putting away unused razor blades and cotton swabs, brushes and bottles of dust. ‘Lieutenant Coffey called. He’s on his way over.’

Mallory wore her I-told-you-so smile. Riker ignored her and hovered over Heller, prompting him. ‘So? Was Coffey pissed off?’

‘You bet. The lieutenant heard a scary rumor that you guys accepted this case for Special Crimes. How do you plan to sell him on this one? Given it any thought?’

‘Yeah.’ Riker glanced at his partner. ‘She’s gonna handle it.’

Heller nodded. ‘Excellent choice.’

Mallory studied the scorch marks at the base of the brick wall, then turned to the evidence bag of ashes and paper fragments. ‘Did the perp use anything fancy to start his fire?’

‘Just a match,’ said Heller. ‘I’ll test for accelerants, but I don’t think I’ll find any.’

A rocking chair and a small magazine rack blocked the bathroom door. The scorched wall was the only logical place for them. ‘And you’re positive none of the firemen moved any furniture?’

He nodded absently as he placed each aerosol can in its proper compartment in the toolbox. ‘One of Loman’s detectives got statements from everybody on the fire truck.’

She pointed to a couch cushion leaning against another wall. A large square of material had been cut away. ‘What’s that about?’

‘I cut out a scorch mark and bagged it. That was the perp’s first try at arson. It should’ve gone up like a torch. The couch must’ve come from out of state. New York law doesn’t require fire-retardant upholstery. Lucky for you it didn’t burn. Inside of four minutes, the whole place would’ve gone up in flames.’

‘And destroyed all the evidence,’ said Riker. ‘You’re sure that’s not what he wanted?’

‘Yeah, I’m damn sure. This guy was looking for a fast controlled burn. Lots of smoke, but no major damage. He was real careful to clear the area around his bonfire.’