“Looks like from someone in the backseat. See where the fingers would have laced together?”

“Looks like she put up a hell of a fight,” said the detective. One of the victim’s shoes was off and her ankles and shins were mottled by scrapes and bruises where she had kicked the underside of the dash.

“And look,” said Lauren, “heel marks on the inside of the windshield over there.” The missing shoe rested broken on the dash above the glove compartment.

“I think that ring belongs to whoever strangled her. It probably came off in the struggle.”

Nikki thought of the woman’s desperate last moments and her brave fight. Whether she had been an innocent victim, a criminal getting a payback, or something in between, she was a person. And had she ever battled to live. Nikki made herself look at the woman’s face, if for no other reason than to honor that struggle.

And when Nikki looked at her, she saw something. Something death plus time couldn’t obscure. Images played hazily in the detective’s mind. Grocery clerks, and bank loan officers, and photos of women from society pages, an old schoolteacher, a bartender in Boston. Nothing came to her. “Could you…” Nikki pointed at the woman’s hair and waved her forefinger. Lauren used her ruler to gently draw all the hair off the face. “I think I’ve seen her before,” said the detective.

Heat shifted her weight on her heels, leaned back from the woman about a foot, and tilted her own head to match the angle of hers. And pondered. And then she knew. The grainy photo, at a three-quarters angle with the expensive furniture in the background and the framed lithograph of a pineapple on the wall. She would have to look it up to be sure, but damn it, she knew. She looked at Lauren. “I think I’ve seen this woman on the surveillance tape from the Guilford. The morning Matthew Starr was killed.”

Her cell phone rang and she jumped.

“Heat,” she said.

“Guess where I’m standing.”

“Rook, I’m not up for this right now.”

“I’ll give you a clue. Roach got a call about a burglary last night. Guess where.”

A cloud of dread gathered around her. “Starr’s apartment.”

“I’m standing in the living room. Guess what else. Every single painting in the room is gone.”

Thirty minutes later, Detective Heat stepped off the Guilford’s elevator on six and strode the hall to where Raley stood with a uniform outside the open door to the Starr apartment. The door frame bore a crime scene posting and the requisite yellow tape. Stacked on the luxurious hallway carpet by the door were plastic snap-lid tubs labeled “Forensics.”

Raley nodded hello and held up the police line tape for her. She ducked under and entered the apartment. “Holy shit,” said Nikki, turning a circle in the middle of the living room. She craned her neck upward to the take in the full height of the cathedral ceiling, believing what she was seeing, yet stunned at the sight. The walls were stripped bare, and all that was left were the nails and mountings.

That living room had been Matthew Starr’s self-proclaimed Versailles. And even if it hadn’t been an actual palace, as a single room it most certainly qualified as a museum chamber with its two stories of wall space graced by some valuable, if not cohesively collected, works of art. “Amazing what happens to the size of a room when you strip everything off the walls.”

Rook stepped over beside her. “I know. It looks bigger.”

“Really?” she said. “I was going to say smaller.”

He flicked his eyebrows. “Guess size is a matter of personal experience.”

She shot Rook a furtive cool-it look and turned her back on him. When she did, Nikki was certain she caught a fast glance darting between Raley and Ochoa. Well, she thought she was certain, anyway.

She made a forceful show of getting down to business. “Ochoa. We’re absolutely sure Kimberly Starr and her son weren’t here when this went down?” The detective needed to know if a kidnapping was rolled into this.

“Daytime doorman said she left yesterday morning with the kid.” He flipped back through his spiral pad. “Here it is. Doorman got a call to help her out with a rolling suitcase. That was about ten A.M. Her son was with her.”

“Did she say where they were going?”

“He hailed her a cab to Grand Central. From there, he didn’t know.”

“Raley, I know we have her cell phone number. Dig it out and see if she picks up. And go easy when you break the news, she’s had a hell of a week.”

“On it,” said Raley, who then head-nodded to the pair of detectives on the balcony. “Just to be clear, are we working this, or is Burglary?”

“Heaven forbid, but we may actually have to cooperate. Sure it’s a twenty-one, but we can’t rule it out as part of our homicide investigation. Not yet, anyway.” Especially with the discovery of the Jane Doe from the surveillance tape and the ring at her death scene likely belonging to Pochenko, even a rookie’s cop sense would tie it all together. What remained was to uncover how. “I expect you to play nice with them. Just don’t give away our secret handshake, OK?”

The pair from Burglary, Detectives Gunther and Francis, were cooperative but didn’t have much information to share. There were clear signs of forced entry; they used power tools, obviously battery-operated, to compromise the front door of the apartment. “Beyond, that,” said Detective Gunther, “it’s all pretty much neatsy tidy. Maybe the lab rats will pick up something.”

“Something’s not lining up for me,” Nikki said. “Moving this haul would take time and manpower. Blackout or not, somebody had to see or hear something.”

“Agreed,” said Gunther. “I had a thought we should split off now and knock on a few doors, find out if anyone heard anything go bump in the night.”

Heat nodded. “Good thought.”

“Is there anything else missing?” asked Rook. Nikki liked his question. Not only was it smart, but she felt relieved he had dropped the seventh-grade innuendos.

“Still checking,” said Francis. “Obviously we’ll know more when the resident, Mrs. Starr, gives it a once-over, but so far, it appears to be just the art.”

Then Ochoa did what they all kept doing, looking at the blank walls. “Man, how much did they say this collection was worth?”

Nikki answered, “Fifty to sixty mil, give or take.”

“Looks definitely more like take,” said Rook.

While Forensics examined the apartment and the Burglary detectives peeled off to canvass residents, Nikki went downstairs to talk with the only eyewitness, the night-shift doorman.

Henry was waiting quietly with a patrol officer on one of the sofas in the lobby. She sat beside him and asked him if he was all right, and he said yes, like he would have said it no matter how bad he felt. The poor old guy had answered these same questions for the first responders, and then again for the Burglary cops, but he was patient and cooperative with Detective Heat, glad to tell someone his story.

The blackout came during his shift, at about nine-fifteen. Henry was supposed to get off at midnight, but his relief called in about eleven and said he couldn’t make it on account of the power outage. Nikki asked the man’s name, made a note, and Henry continued. It was mostly quiet at the door because with the elevator out and all the heat, people who were in were staying in, and many of those who were out were stuck someplace. The stairwell and halls were equipped with low-level emergency lighting, but the building didn’t have a backup generator.

At about three-thirty in the morning, a big van pulled up out front and he thought it was ConEd, because it was big like one of theirs. Four men in coveralls got out all together and jumped him. He didn’t see any guns, but they had big five-cell flashlights and one of the men gave him a punch in the solar plexus with his when Henry challenged them. They got him off the street and into the lobby then used plastic zip cords to bind his hands behind his back and hold his feet together. Nikki could still see some flecks of pale gray adhesive on his deep brown skin where they had duct taped his mouth. Then they took his cell phone and carried him into the tiny mail room and closed the door. He couldn’t give very good descriptions because it was dark and they all wore baseball hats. Nikki asked if he heard any names or could pick out anything unusual in their voices, like if they were high, or low, or perhaps had accents. He said no, because he never heard their voices, not one of them ever spoke. Not even a word. Professionals, she thought.