The small tattoo-bloodred ink within a black outline-sat almost at the crease in the skin where her inner thigh joined her body.

I bent over to study the image.

“Do you recognize the design?” Pomeroy asked.

“No, Doctor. It’s the placement of the tattoo that’s significant to me.”

Mike cocked his head and stepped in closer. “Talk, Coop.”

“When victims are trafficked into this country, they’re often tattooed by someone who works for the snakehead. Stakes her out as his property. The girls being sold for prostitution-the better ones, the younger ones-are often marked right here, close to the opening of the vaginal vault. It’s a symbol of their pimp’s control.”

“So we know what kind of work she was destined for,” Mike said. “Now we’ve just got to identify the bastard who set her up.”

“Jane Doe Number One,” I said. “Personal property of… the rose.”

EIGHT

It was almost nine P.M. when Mercer walked into Dr. Pomeroy’s office, where Mike and I were waiting for two of the shipmates who’d been treated and released from the hospital to be brought into the viewing room to try to identify the deceased.

“Got anything for a headache, Alex?” he asked.

“My tote’s on the floor in the corner. Open the cosmetics bag.”

“Don’t take the ones that make Coop hallucinate that she’s going to solve this mother anytime soon,” Mike said. “You know any bad guys use the nickname ‘The Rose’?”

I handed Mercer my bottle of water and he downed the tablets, shaking his head.

“I hate to ask what took you so long,” Mike said, “but what took you so long? I thought you were coming through the tunnel when you called.”

“Detour to East End Avenue,” Mercer said, turning to me. “Salma’s goin’ all crazy on us. Or on Leighton.”

“What now?” I asked.

“Another nine-one-one call. Screaming for help.”

I leaned back in Pomeroy’s desk chair and rested my head. “About what? That Leighton was threatening her, while he was sitting in the courthouse with Lem?”

“Worse than that. She said that the congressman was actually in the apartment, trying to take the baby away from her.”

“You’re sure that’s what she said? There goes her credibility.”

“Wait a minute. Exactly what time?” Mike asked. “Tell Mercer about tonight.”

“I’m too embarrassed. You tell him.”

Mike and Mercer tried to construct a time line, based on my estimate of when I left the office. “Entirely possible,” Mike said.

“The nine-one-one operator who got the call speaks Spanish. That’s what Salma said.”

“They responded, right?”

“And so did I.”

“Well?”

“No sign of Leighton. The doorman said nobody except Salma’s sister showed up for her today. Left with the baby around six o’clock.”

“You talk to her yourself?”

“Salma wouldn’t let the uniformed guys in at first. She thought they were just harassing her again. “

“How’s her English?” Mike asked.

“Good. Perfectly good. The doorman confirmed that when she gets excited or upset, she’s pretty shrill in both languages, but Spanish first.”

“So she understood why you were there?”

“You bet she did. Denies making the calls, denies having heard anything from Leighton since he left the apartment early this morning. Says one of his aides called her several times to tell her what happened to him and that she should avoid the reporters. Lem phoned too.”

I grimaced. “Thank goodness he hasn’t had time to meet with her yet.”

“First thing tomorrow morning,” Mercer said. “I’ll tell you, Salma makes no effort to keep her temper in check. She started chewing out the cops for disturbing her. Told them they better not come back ’cause she’d been up all night and wanted to get some sleep. She doesn’t care how many nine-one-one calls they claim to get, she’s not the one making them.”

“You checked to see if there’s anyone else in the apartment? A nanny, another relative with a screw loose who could be calling nine-one-one while Salma doesn’t even know?”

“All clear, Mike.”

“And the basement? No one tinkering with the phone lines there?”

“I went down myself to double-check the techs who came over. Nothing touched.”

“The baby was well enough to send to her sister?” I asked. “When you checked the place out, did anything look amiss?”

“Now, you know how I am about kids, Alex. I got the sister’s info and called over to her. She confirmed that Salma told her she needed to get herself some sleep and the baby is fine. Has two of her own, so she seems to know what she’s doing.”

“And the apartment?”

“Leighton set her up nice. Neat and clean, everything in place. Great river view, by the way. It overlooks Gracie Mansion-maybe Leighton has her keeping an eye on the mayor,” Mercer said with a smile. “You can practically see out to the Montauk lighthouse.”

“Did she let you poke around?” I asked.

“Salma got into such a spitting match with the cops, I just helped myself into her bedroom and the nursery. No signs of a struggle, nothing out of place anywhere.”

“Tell me about her,” Mike said. “What makes a guy with such promise throw it all out the window? Salma must be really hot-some kind of fox. What does she look like?”

“Could we stay on point here? Why was she fighting with the cops?”

“I told you, Alex. She was yelling at the rookie in Spanish, telling him-like he told me-that if they came back and bothered her again, she’d get Leighton to have them fired. That kind of thing. Seems pretty clear she’s used to throwing his name around.”

“Might have had some value until a few hours ago. Ethan Leighton’s name will get her squat now,” Mike said.

“Officer Guerrero tried to make that clear,” Mercer said, chuck-ling about the encounter. “I didn’t get the exact translation, but she blasted him after that. He told her she could call nine-one-one as often as she wanted, but nobody was going to show up again. Told her they’d had enough craziness for one day.”

“The fox who cried wolf,” Mike said. “Not to worry. I’m assuming the congressman’s wife will have him securely tied to the mattress tonight. By his balls. And in their spare bedroom, I’m sure.”

“I’d really like to talk to Salma before Lem sits her down,” I said. “We’ll never get the true story once he starts spinning her.”

“And I’m gonna pass out if I don’t put some dinner in my stomach soon.”

“I’m right behind you,” Mercer said.

Pomeroy’s assistant reappeared in the doorway. “Dr. P is ready for you, Mike. The men are here.”

I followed Mike and Mercer down the corridor to the family reception room. I wasn’t usually involved in this painful stage of the process, but I had been to the morgue often enough to observe the anxious loved ones of homicide victims waiting among strangers to confirm the news that no one wanted to get.

“I’ll stay outside the viewing room. Let’s not overwhelm them,” I said.

“Neither one of these guys is missing a relative or close friend, Coop. They’re just shipmates. They volunteered to try to give us names, if they recognize these first three victims.”

Mercer and I listened as Mike introduced himself, explained the process to the Ukrainian interpreter the cops had found during the day, and then separated the two men so that neither could hear what the other one told us.

He led the first guy-Pavlo-who appeared to be in his twenties, into the cubicle adjacent to the reception area with the interpreter. When Mike had positioned him in front of the glass partition, he pulled back the short blue curtains that covered the space. In the old days, when I first came on the job, the viewers were in the same room as the deceased. Now there was the small extra comfort of being on the far side of a piece of glass-unable to smell death, not tempted to touch the corpse one last time.