We had seen lots of cases recently in which men sent to jail by DNA evidence continued their criminal ways when released, but came to crime scenes armed with condoms when they raped or prepared to destroy evidence as they departed.

“Or he watches too much TV,” Hal said. “Everybody’s an expert on TV, you know? Every lazy slob thinks he could do my job. Find this guy soon and get a warrant for his laundry bag. He’s gonna have blood all over his shirtsleeves, if I’m right about how he was holding her. And blood on his shoes. It had to drip on his shoes.”

“I should be that lucky I find him soon,” Mike said. “Or her.”

“Her?” I asked.

“Why, you think it couldn’t be a broad? You don’t figure Claire Leighton had a grudge to settle? Maybe while Salma was waiting for her date, Claire knocked on the door and the girls had a catfight.”

My stomach churned a bit. I’d never thought about Leighton’s wife as a possible suspect, but there was good reason to consider her.

I was scanning the clean white walls and stainless steel appliances, looking for any signs of blood, but there were none. “Too clean for a catfight.”

“Just like a dame to straighten up the mess.”

“Hey, Hal!” His partner was shouting for him from the other end of the apartment. “Bring your equipment and get your ass down here quick.”

Mike stepped aside so Hal could go first, stopping to pick up his camera from the living room sofa.

“Whatcha got, Jack? You find a skeleton in the closet?” Hal made his way quickly down the hall to the master bedroom.

Jack Egan was standing on a stepladder. At his feet were half a dozen cardboard shoe boxes-all designer labels-with their lids removed, and another two dozen stacked on shelves in the closet.

“Better than that,” Jack said, opening the cover of the box he was holding. “I found a gold mine.”

Like the one in Jack Egan’s hands, the boxes on the floor were filled with money. Mike crouched beside them and scooped out a fistful of bills.

“Hundred-dollar bills-Ben Franklins all,” he said, playing the edges of them as he counted the wads. “Each one of these little wrappers holds ten thousand dollars. I know Coop would just as soon have the shoes, but we’re probably looking at a million or more in cash.”

“What the hell was this broad doing with all that money?” Hal asked. “Where’d it come from, do you think?”

“You’ll be the first to know, Hal. Meanwhile, you better tell your other team to check the bottom of the well for loose change.”

NINETEEN

“You don’t want to be where the money is, Coop,” Mike said. We had taken the elevator down to the rear entrance, making our way out past the lineup of shopping carts left behind the building, no doubt, by lazy deliverymen who’d been relieved of their bags.

“Why not?”

“By the time it’s sorted and accounted for, some muckety-muck will demand that Internal Affairs empties the pockets of all of us who were up there. Big money scares me.”

“Why don’t we go back down to my office? We can spend the evening putting this whole thing together. It’s so much more quiet than the squad.”

“She’s right, Mike,” Mercer said.

“You take her with you. I’ll stop by the morgue and then meet you there.”

The damp cold and darkness didn’t seem to bother the press corps. They were still staked out on East End Avenue, hoping for a sighting of someone related to the scandal of the disgraced congressman or news of the missing woman.

I got in Mercer’s car and as he made a U-turn to get on the Seventy-ninth Street entrance to the drive, I called Nan to tell her everything that had happened. I also asked if she could round up at least one of the other women in our group so that we could reboot our investigation over takeout and triple doses of caffeine.

My next call was to Donovan Baynes. I hesitated before dialing, wondering whether he was passing information to his old friend Ethan Leighton, but his position in charge of the task force left me no choice but to tell him. He was as intrigued by the news of Salma Zunega’s abduction and murder, and the rose tattoo, as we were. Baynes agreed to participate in our evening meeting.

Traffic slowed us as we inched downtown on the FDR Drive. I put the phone in my pocket, my head on the headrest, and closed my eyes.

“Things okay with you, Alex?” Mercer asked.

“Everything’s been good till this series of disasters.”

“Your folks?”

“Happy to spend some downtime with me,” I said, shaking off my exhaustion to talk about something more personal than the investigation. Mercer knew that my parents, who retired to a small island in the Caribbean, had spent the week leading up to Christmas with me in the city, before going out West to visit with my brothers and their kids in Colorado.

“And Luc?”

I had flown to Paris the day after Christmas. Luc Rouget, the divorced restaurateur I’d been dating, lived in a small village in the south of France. But we had planned a romantic interlude in the glamorous city of lights.

“We had a wonderful time together. He’ll be here next month,” I said. He was making progress in his business plans to open here in Manhattan, where decades ago his father had created one of the world’s classic French restaurants, Lutèce. “You and Vickee will have to have dinner with us.”

“Happy to do that. You know how I feel about this.”

Mercer had become so grounded and pleased with his newfound family life that he had taken to urging me to ease up on my professional duties and put my relationship with Luc in full gear.

“It scares me a bit, Mercer. I’ve told you that.”

We were slowed to a standstill in the underpass next to the United Nations. “It wouldn’t mean anything if it didn’t do that.”

“It’s different,” I said, looking at him. “I know these decisions aren’t easy for anyone, but Luc doesn’t live here. Even if he gets the restaurant going, he’s in this country six months a year at best. I’d have to give up all of this-”

“Give up what? Chasing these animals around town? Righting all the wrongs of the world? You’ve proven you can do some of that. Time to turn a page, maybe.”

“I’m afraid I like it too much.” I knew it seemed strange to my friends outside the criminal justice system when we described our jobs in such upbeat terms. But the satisfaction in doing justice-convicting the guilty, exonerating the innocent, and trying to restore some measure of relief to those victimized-was a constant source of pride. “I can’t see myself sitting on a stool behind the cash register in Mougins, asking people if they enjoyed the special of the day.”

Mercer laughed. “The man’s too smart to have you doing that, Alex.”

“That’s why his first wife split.”

“Is that what makes you leery, my friend, or is it the intimacy? The fear that if you give in to happiness something will come along to destroy your center again?”

I had been engaged to marry a medical student I’d fallen in love with while I was at law school in Virginia. Together Adam Nyman and I had bought our dream house on Martha’s Vineyard, and I’d allowed myself to plot out all the fantasies of a long life together. On the drive from Charlottesville to Chilmark for the wedding weekend, Adam died when his car plunged from a bridge on the interstate to the riverbed below.

I bit my lip. “Maybe that, Mercer.”

“Why is it you fall in love with guys who are impossible to fit into your life? First Jed, then Jake, now Luc. You’ve got to work at it some yourself, Alex. This guy is mad for you, isn’t he?”

“Who set you up for this chat?” I said, reaching to turn on the car radio. “Nina? Joan?”

My two closest friends had teamed up, from Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., to hector me about my love life and raise the volume of the ticker on my biological clock.