"So what's this got to do-"

"Guess who he lived with a year ago, his main squeeze? Charlotte Voight, the girl who's been missing since April."

Planning anything this particular Monday morning was a futile race against time. Every agency and business from which I needed records and information would be shutting down, some for just the period surrounding Christmas, and others for more than a week until after the New Year's holiday. Lab scientists, cops, prosecutors, and witnesses would be taking days off for traditional celebrations and trips to be with family out of town. I took a cab to the office at 7 a.m. and reviewed the file for the short hearing I had to conduct at nine-thirty.

Then I blasted out a list of e-mails on the in-house network. I had to find one of my senior attorneys to handle the new pattern in the Nineteenth Precinct, and to put a rush on the subpoena for the victim's stolen cell phone records. I drafted a list of things for Laura to work on while I was in court, and wrote memos about case developments that she needed to type and get to the district attorney.

We had our own NYPD branch, a squad detail of about fifty officers, based one flight above me, so I called the voice mail of Detective Joe Roman and told him to do a complaint report with the statements Shirley Denzig had made to the Witness Aid workers. I also asked him to run a pistol permit check on Denzig's father, in Maryland, and to determine whether his gun had in fact been stolen.

Laura had just reached her desk at nine, and before she could sit down she was buzzing me on the intercom. "It's Howard Kramer."

"I'll take it. But if Chapman calls, put him right through. I thought he'd be here by now."

I picked up the phone to greet Kramer, a litigator and managing partner at one of the premier law firms in the city, Sullivan and Cromwell. Although I knew Howard through his work, we had become better acquainted after his marriage to Nan Rothschild, the Barnard professor who was also my ballet class companion.

"How've you been?"

"Fine. Everybody's well. I know how busy you are, but I thought you might want to see Nan sometime this week. She's flying in from London this afternoon, on her way back from a conference at Oxford. I read in the Times that you're involved in the Professor Dakota mess. Nan was working with Lola on a project that the college was sponsoring, and she may have some insights for you."

I knew that Rothschild was one of the most prominent urban anthropologists in the country. A professor at Barnard College, she has led and participated in some of the most extraordinary excavations in America, including several in the heart of New York City that had unearthed Colonial burial grounds and artifacts of early settlements.

"I was talking to Nan at class a few weeks ago and she described the dig she was supervising in Central Park. Seneca Village. Is that what Dakota was involved in?" The village was a community of several hundred people who were moved from their mid-Manhattan homes in the 1850s to make way for the creation of the Great Lawn in the park. Nan had captivated me with stories of the most current high-tech means of exploring the city's past.

"I don't think Lola had anything to do with that one. Nan was brought in as a consultant by King's College on something brand-new. The head of their anthropology department, a guy named Winston Shreve, asked her to head up a small project for them. Shreve had this idea to take a significant urban structure with an interesting architectural history, let Nan lead the excavation, and then combine the students' physical dig with courses about the political and cultural history. Lola was one of four teachers heading up the operation. It's attracted a lot of attention in academia- very substantive, but at the same time very lively for the students. You'd be amazed at some of the things they've found." "Where are they working?" "The Octagon Tower. Do you know it?" "Never heard of it."

"You'll have to let Nan take you over to see it-it's quite extraordinary. It was New York's first lunatic asylum. Of course, that's what they called it then, back in the early nineteenth century. It's on Roosevelt Island, the northern end, just south of the lighthouse."

"Not part of that great-looking ruin you see from the Drive?" The one I had pointed out to Chapman on Saturday night.

"No, not the hospital. You can't see the Octagon from this side of the river. Tell you what. Come over to the house for drinks tomorrow night, and Nan will tell you everything she knows about Lola. Then, when you have a chance, I want her to promise she'll take you out to the Octagon so you can watch what's going on." We agreed to meet at seven on Tuesday just as Chapman walked in the door, taped a sprig of green plastic mistletoe on the bookshelf overhanging Laura's chair, and kissed her on the back of the neck. "I'll be bringing a detective with me, if that's okay. See you then."

"Where are we going?" Chapman asked.

"Right now, we're going to Part Seventy-four for my hearing. Can you believe that the dig Lola was working on was an old lunatic asylum? I'm afraid if the two of us make a site visit, they're likely to keep us. My friend's wife is going to tell us what Lola was up to if we stop by their house tomorrow. This hearing will be short. As soon as I'm finished we can scoot out of here, up to the college."

Pat McKinney was standing in the doorway, mug in hand, as I gathered my papers and white legal pad. "Guess I don't need to worry about the direction of your investigation anymore, Alex. They're giving you the big guns to work the case. Detective I've-got-a-ninety-three-percent-clearance-rate-on-my-homicides himself." These two despised each other. McKinney took any shot he could at Mike, and Chapman felt a constant need to cover my back against McKinney's double dealings.

"Don't dally too long, Pat. You'll be missing your Mensa meeting," Mike said just as snidely. Over McKinney's shoulder, we could see Ellen Gunsher and Pedro de Jesus on their way down the hall to his office for their daily ritual of coffee behind closed doors.

"I want to be sure you sit down with us before I head upstate for Christmas, Alex. Pedro has some ideas about the trial you're starting in January. The blood-spatter evidence. I think it would be useful to hear him on it."

"Pedro hasn't tried a case since I was in the academy. He's giving advice to Coop? You two ought to start your own Web site. Www.I-used-to-be-a-contender dot com. Sit in your corner office telling war stories to Little Miss Gun Shy about what it was like in the days when you didn't have to turn over Rosario material, and scientific evidence meant proving someone was blood type A or O.

She probably even buys into your baloney. Thinks you were a trial dog once upon a time. Gunsher wouldn't know the difference between the inside of a courtroom and the Spring Street Bar. "We got work to do, buddy. And you, Ms. Moneypenny," Mike said, winking at Laura, "I expect you to tell me whether you've been good or bad this year. Don't let McKinney under my mistletoe. His breath's funny. See you later."

We brushed past Pat and trotted down the staircase across the seventh-floor corridor to take the elevators up to the sixteenth-floor courtrooms. "How come you were late? I thought you were going to be in my office by eight o'clock."

"Forgot I had to make a stop at the hospital. See a friend."

"Sorry. Who's sick?"

"Nobody you know. Just promised to be there for some blood tests. I'll tell you later."

It was unlike Mike not to respond directly to my questions, so I left it alone for the moment. "Anything more on the student who killed himself?"

"He was one of the kids that the dean had lined up to talk to us this afternoon. So far, that's all I know about him. People are dying to get out of your way, Coop."