"He wore a Yankees hat," Hammermill said. He looked at April again; then his eyes glazed over. Maybe he'd had too much to drink. He was a very elegant man, out of his element.

"Anything else?" Mike asked.

"He had a Chase Bank umbrella. I didn't see his face."

"What kind of dog?" April asked.

"I don't know. It was big and hairy."

Uh-huh. "Would you recognize the breed if you saw it again?"

"I don't know. I don't notice dogs much."

But he had noticed the dog. People always noticed dogs. April checked her watch and followed the ME to where the victim was still lying where she had fallen over an hour ago. The CSU team lifted the tarp that had been covering a beautiful young woman wearing a snug black cocktail dress. The dress was hiked up high enough to reveal long legs and smooth thighs. Suddenly open to view, she looked like a mannequin from an expensive department store, posed in a party dress on the ground with her head twisted and her face frozen in a fake expression of emptiness. She was lying on her side. One leg was straight and the other bent. April was shocked. Somehow she'd expected a Birdie to be old.

She caught her breath and coughed, then moved closer to get a better view of the expensive sling-back heels with the open toes that revealed the nail polish on the woman's toenails. Her fingernails were a matching pink, and her hands, curled in death, looked soft and appeared to be without any defense wounds. But first impressions could be deceiving.

Sometimes when the medical examiner removed victims' clothes, puncture wounds were discovered, knife wounds, gunshot wounds. Even hair sometimes hid deep depressions in the skull from blows to the head. Tissue from the killer could be found under the victim's nails. A broken nail from the killer could be caught in the victim's clothes. Many things not visible to a viewer at a scene could be hiding somewhere on the victim's body. It was clear that this kill was cold and calculated, like an expert hunter killing a deer. And the most macabre thing about the scene was that rain had fallen for at least a few minutes after the victim died. Droplets of water still hung from the soaked blond hair. Rivulets had run down her arms and her legs and puddled in spots in the pavement around her. April stepped back and watched the ME go to work.

Thirty-five

Early in the a.m., after a late night and very little sleep, Mike and April traveled back into Manhattan to the edgy Sixth Precinct. The rain had started again before dawn and held through the night. It was a wet morning. Fog from their warm breath steamed up the car windows, and traffic was already beginning to bunch up around the bridges by seven-fifteen. April hadn't slept enough and hadn't had enough tea to get her voice going. She wanted to talk, but they didn't have a chance in the car.

Mike was on his cell phone, taking a call from the branch supervisor of the FBI. The FBI had an instant response to serial killings. Two killings of a like kind pushed the button, and special agents were coming in to help the NYPD, like it or not. For April and Mike it meant there would be more toes to avoid, more people to keep in the loop.

As Mike talked, his voice was low and calm. He was supposed to be on his way out of Homicide, no longer engaged at this level on the front lines of murder investigations, but he did not show any sign of irritation. He was at home under the gun, still good at keeping the sharp edges off his Bronx machismo. Mike was a born negotiator, never at a loss. April could almost be lulled by his confidence, his assurance to the Feeb that everything was under control, even though it wasn't at all.

Before they hit the Midtown Tunnel, she called her boss, Lieutenant Iriarte. Like everybody else in the department who'd had enough sense to get out of the boroughs, where the population was too dense and the apartment prices were too high, he lived up in Westchester. She knew he was on the road by six-thirty.

Iriarte picked up his cell on the third ring.

"It's April," she croaked, letting her voice do its cracky thing because she hadn't been in to work in a week and didn't know how well he was taking her absence.

"Oh, nice of you to call in, Woo. Feeling better?" Iriarte asked sarcastically.

"Yes, sir. How's it going?"

"With us? I'd like to say it's been a madhouse, and we're swamped without you. But the truth is it's been quiet," he admitted. "I hear you caught another one downtown last night."

"Yes, sir."

"I hear it's bad."

"Yes, sir," April repeated, because that pretty much covered it. Two killings in the same place a week apart had about the same odds of occurring as lightning striking the same building twice. It wasn't exactly an advertisement for an area with the highest concentration of students in the city-including CUNY, the New School, the School of Design, NYU, Pace, and York University. One murder in a location considered a quality-of-life safe zone might be considered an unfortunate anomaly. Two murders there could only be deemed careless. Not enough uniforms on the streets, yada, yada, ya. The unlucky commanding officer of the Sixth Precinct, Captain Jenny Spring, was on the carpet big-time. Nobody envied her unfortunate situation.

"What do you have on this karate nut?" Iriarte asked, sounding satisfied that his own detective unit wasn't going to be a mob scene for the duration.

"You seem pretty well informed already, Lieutenant," April croaked out.

"No, all I heard is he's right up your alley. That why you're on it?"

With this remark, he reminded her that the killer was better and smarter than she, and also that Iriarte knew things he wasn't supposed to know.

"No, sir. Doesn't seem to be my alley at all." April hesitated.

"How can I help?" he asked. She could feel him settling back in his Lumina, letting his hostility melt. She could tell he was beginning to like her. Maybe she should stay out of his sight more often.

"I need somebody," she said slowly.

"Don't we all? Who do you need, Woo?"

"Woody, sir."

Lieutenant Iriarte broke out in laughter because he considered Woody Baum the worst detective in his unit, which was one of the reasons April could rely on him. Loyalty always came easily to the underdog. "Oh, sure, take him and never send him back." The lieutenant laughed some more.

"I'd also like Hagedorn to check a few things." Hagedorn was the computer whiz in the Midtown North unit. He was a real yin character, with a pudgy body and a soft moon face, but the fastest detective at pulling a back story out of the Net.

Iriarte snorted, pleased to be useful. "Fine. Whatever you need."

April thanked him, and they both hung up. Mike hung up, too, and they headed into the tunnel for the second time in less than twelve hours.