"About fifteen years ago, a student named Jeanne Cleary was raped and strangled to death in her dormitory at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. The bastard who killed her was also enrolled at the school. He was a drug addict with a history of deviant behavior who had broken into her room to burglarize it while she was sleeping. Her parents fought a long, tough battle to get federal legislation to make it mandatory for every campus official to report the statistics of criminal occurrences at their schools."

"At least it gives the applicants an idea of what the problems are at each college."

"That's the point. It's got to be in all the admissions literature, so families making decisions about where they're sending their kids can assess the risks. What kind of security measures the school has, how it handles crime reporting, what kind of disciplinary measures the administration enforces-all that sort of thing."

"Does it work? Do any good?"

"It's a great idea, but I haven't seen one school anywhere near this jurisdiction that reports it accurately. Not Columbia, not NYU, not Fordham, not FIT. Do you know there are more than twenty college campuses in Manhattan alone, from those large universities down to small commercial colleges that just have a single building? I can give you ten criminal complaints a year taken from students who report to the local precinct or to my office for every one you'll see in the numbers supplied to the government-and to the parents-by the schools. They all want to fudge it."

The door to Dakota's office was open and Sherman was beginning to document everything in sight with his camera and flash.

"Get a shot of that bulletin board on the wall by the window, Hal. And watch your mouth-I got Cooper with me."

"Hey, Alex, how goes it? Understand Kestenbaum's got a hush-hush preliminary finding of a homicide on this broad. So much for the accidental death theory they were floating last night, I guess. Tough break on that verdict last week in the case from the bus station. Sorry the stuff we came up with wasn't too helpful. Helen took the loss pretty hard."

One of my assistants had just had a not guilty verdict the previous Thursday. Her victim had been beaten in the face so badly that she was unable to identify her attacker. The fact that thousands of people a day passed through the Port Authority terminal made it impossible to get a clean set of fingerprints from the corridor in which the attack occurred, and the circumstantial case had been too weak for a jury to believe in.

"Cooper trains her troops not to look at an acquittal as a loss, Hal. Just figure Helen came in second place… right behind the defense attorney. Most other jobs, that gets you the silver medal. No harm in that."

"What do you want me to do after I dust these surfaces?"

"I want copies of as much of the paper as you can give me. Originals if it's not worth trying to lift prints off this stuff."

Sherman removed the gum from the wastebasket with a pair of tweezers, slipping it into a small manila envelope and labeling it with the date and number of the Crime Scene run. "I'll drop the copies off at your office. Gotta get to midtown. Just had a double homicide called in. Guy in a Santa suit did a stickup at a doughnut shop, using a ten-year-old customer as a shield. The owner had a licensed pistol. Plugged Santa and one of his aging elves before they could make it back into their getaway sleigh."

"Best of all possible dispositions, eh, blondie? Case abated by death. Perps blasted into the great hereafter-God's own Alcatraz-by a law-abiding citizen just trying to make a living. Give the doughnut man a kiss for me. You gonna make it to the party later, Hal?"

"Depends on whether the good guys or the bad guys are winning. Have one on me."

It was the night of the Homicide Squad's annual Christmas party, and although our moods were not festive, Chapman and I wanted to be there for a while to wish our colleagues some holiday cheer. Darkness had enveloped the city early, and the temperature had dropped substantially during our hours at Foote's office. I pulled on my long gloves and raised the collar of my coat as Chapman held open the front door of the building and we trudged uphill toward Broadway to get the car. Tiny white lights decorated the trees on College Walk and candles rested on windowsills in some of the dorm rooms.

As the motor idled, I watched the groups of college kids, seemingly oblivious to the bitter cold, making their way from classrooms to living halls to dining facilities. There were bunches talking on the great steps of Low Memorial Library, which was festively adorned with a giant wreath, and I imagined they were making plans to meet at parties or nearby bars and apartments. It wasn't much of a stretch to recall the feeling of invincibility in that period of my life, the sense of security the academic community offered-the endless possibilities of youth, fueled by intelligence and energy.

Yet one year ago, the Columbia campus had been rocked by the death of a talented and popular athlete, found in her dorm room with her throat slashed, killed by another student she had been dating, who threw himself in front of a subway car hours later. That followed the similar killing of a brilliant law student the preceding year, also by a former boyfriend who had stabbed her repeatedly.

I began to think of all the cases I had handled with students from schools throughout the city and to make a mental list of what the relationship was between victim and offender, so I could pull the files and examine the facts. For the students at King's, the illusion of the sanctity of the university setting was about to be shattered.

"Want to stop by my place and relax for a bit before we head to the soiree?" The party was held at the Park Avenue Armory, on Sixty-sixth Street, just a few blocks from my home.

"Sure. Is Jake gonna be there tonight?"

"No. He doesn't get back to New York until Sunday." The schedule Jake Tyler had as a political correspondent and stand-in anchor for Brian Williams on NBC Nightly News made his life even less predictable than my own. It was a pleasure, for a change, to be involved with a lover who had no complaints about my unavailability when I was called out on a major case.

I parked the car and we went upstairs. As soon as I put the key in the door, I could smell the delicious scent of the Douglas fir that I had bought two nights ago on my way home to serve as a Christmas tree. I had been raised as a Jew and was observant in the Reform tradition, but my mother's religious upbringing was entirely different. Her ancestors were Finnish, and she had converted to Judaism when she married my father. Our family tradition combined elements from both of their backgrounds, and although I had lighted the candles on a Hanukkah menorah earlier in the month, I always looked forward to decorating a tree and rediscovering the boxes of antique ornaments that my mother had collected throughout her life.

"I'm going to freshen up. Make yourself useful. Pour us a drink."

"Mind if I use the phone? I was gonna meet some of the guys down the street at Lumi's for a drink before the party."

"Of course. Anybody I know? Invite them over here. And while you're calling, check with your office to see whether there's a final on the autopsy results. Then you can start putting some of those bulbs on the top branches of the tree that I can't reach. Don't peek at the pile of presents. I haven't finished wrapping yours yet."

I went inside to wash my face, add a colorful scarf to my black suit, slip into a pair of higher heels, and spritz some Caleche on my neck. I played back the messages on my answering machine. The usual freeway greeting from Nina Baum in L.A., a callback from one of my sisters-in-law in response to my question about what the kids wanted for Christmas, and the persistent voice of Post reporter Mickey Diamond begging me to give him any kind of scoop about the Dakota investigation. I held my finger down on the delete button.