"I'm telling you this murder and the skeleton behind the brick wall are connected," I said, after Teddy Kroon left the station house. "A skeleton is found in the house where Poe once lived. Buried alive, in all probability. You blab it to the press and it winds up in the headlines on a slow news day. Twenty-four hours later, Emily's dead. And her scene is manipulated to look like the elusive Silk Stocking Rapist just escalated out of control. Emily Upshaw's death has nothing to do with our East Side serial rapist."

"What's the link, Coop?" Mike's feet were on the lieutenant's desk and I was slumped back in a chair opposite him when Mercer returned to the room. It was after 6A.M. "She liked Poe? There's not a literate adult in America who grew up without reading him."

"An obsession with premature burial? C'mon," I said.

"You weren't creeped out the first time you read that story? It's impossible to forget those images. The lever in the family vault that throws the iron portals back, the padded coffin with a lid and springs, the rope attached to the big bell, fastened to the hands of the corpse. Living inhumation, isn't that what he called it? Nothing so agonizing on earth. I must have been twelve or thirteen but I didn't sleep for weeks."

"Mike, we're talking about an intelligent adult. Not likely she was spooked for the rest of her life by a short story she read in grade school. Something happened to her, you heard what Teddy said. It's related to some bad experience with a guy she met in rehab who was a madman. About twenty years ago. It's only a madman who would have entombed a young woman alive, too. Straight out of Poe, in the basement of the very house he lived in."

"You're going 'woo-woo' on us, Coop."

"The guy reads in the newspaper that we found the skeleton. The same day's paper has the story of the return of the Silk Stocking Rapist. Emily was some kind of danger to him," I said, my mind racing to think of reasons why, "so he killed her. I think it makes sense."

"So, now what do you want us to do? I know, let's dig up every building foundation in New York City. You think we got buried bones all over town? Or this lunatic only comes out of the blue once every quarter of a century to murder somebody? A bit unusual for a serial killer, isn't it?"

"Find that guy, you solve both cases."

"This bagel is hard as a rock. That's the best you could do for me?" Mike asked, slathering the remaining half with cream cheese.

"I'm with Alex on this one," Mercer said.

"What a stretch. You think DCPI is gonna go with that kind of long shot? Don't ever tell them it's a brainstorm from the mind of Alexandra Cooper," Mike said. "They're likely to flop you back to street patrol in Harlem for taking your cues from blondie."

The NYPD's deputy commissioner of public information would have to advise his boss on this decision. News of a murder on the Upper East Side was a story with legs. Give out an essential clue that might only be known to the killer-the use of actual silk stockings instead of cheap panty hose-and it might blow the chance to score solid points when it came time to interrogate suspects. But if Mike was right and the original serial rapist had escalated to murder, not warning people about this more frenzied attack could prove to be a fatal error.

"The commish is screwed either way. Letting everyone think this new kill is part of the task force operation gives us more wiggle room to work the case quietly," Mercer said. "The murderer will think he's got us duped."

"Mind if I finish this?" Mike asked, reaching over and taking the food Teddy Kroon had left behind. Murder rarely affected Mike's desire for something to chew on. "You know I hate it when Mercer sides with you. But this time, just on some nitwit literary hunch? It almost takes my appetite away."

"It's not her hunch."

"What then?" We both looked at Mercer. His chair was tipped back against the wall, but his long legs were planted firmly on the floor.

"The teeth. It's the skeleton's teeth," he said.

"How so?"

"Well, Andy Dorfman gives us an age on those bones that wouldn't be so different from Emily Upshaw's age today-forty-three years old-if the other woman had lived. And her teeth suggest that in the last few years of her life she spun out of control-like a drug addict or alcoholic who didn't get any medical or dental attention."

"You two are beginning to scare me," Mike said.

Mercer ignored him. "The skeleton lady and Emily Upshaw- we know she sucked the bottle a bit too much way back then- might have moved in the same small world."

"Yeah, well, that's like telling me it's a quarter of the population of this or any other big city. Dope, alcohol, people who are scared of the dentist's drill. Both of you are leaping to conclusions that seem pretty absurd."

I looked at my watch and yawned. "What do you say we carry this discussion forward on Monday, when you get an autopsy report on Emily? Mercer and I have to finish up in the grand jury and file our John Doe indictment on the rapist. And Mike, can I ask a special favor? No leaks this time."

"Nevermore, blondie. Nevermore."

The Nineteenth Precinct was only a few blocks from my apartment. Daylight was just beginning to break on this next-to-last morning of January as I walked home at about 7A.M. Sanitation trucks blocked the cross streets as they loaded huge piles of green plastic trash bags into their bellies, gypsy cabdrivers honked to get my attention as I jaywalked across Third Avenue, and what was left of the snow and ice that skirted my path was now coated in soot. The doormen were huddled in their long uniform coats, with hats and gloves, grudgingly opening the door to let me in. I picked up the Sunday paper from the mat in my hallway, went inside to undress and climb into bed.

I slept until noon. After I had called Battaglia to alert him about the murder of Emily Upshaw and the question about whether it was part of the recurring rapist's pattern, the rest of the day was a lazy mix of reading the Times, catching up with friends and family by e-mail and phone, and rearranging my closets. There were empty spaces and shelves where Jake had kept clothes and toiletries and books, and I tried to fill the gaps-constant reminders of the breakup-with things of my own that I had moved back then to make room for him.

On Monday morning, a light dusting of snow fell as I hailed a cab to go down to the office. I spent the first hour drafting the indictment of the Silk Stocking Rapist for Laura to type, so that it could be signed by the foreman of the afternoon grand jury and filed with the court. Brenda Whitney, in charge of media relations, came in to discuss all the relevant facts so that she could prepare a statement for Battaglia to release to the press. Since there was not yet an arrest, I needed an unsealing order to make the news public. Completing the essential paperwork was as time-consuming as prepping the case.

"Got time for a headache?" Alan Vandomir asked as he knocked on my open door shortly after ten.

"Another one?"

"A little lighter than what you were dealing with all weekend." Vandomir was one of the best detectives in Manhattan's Special Victims Squad and I liked working with him. "I want you to hear this story-we'll make it as quick as we can."

"Bring it on."

He walked to the waiting area across the hall and returned with a teenaged girl dressed in a lavender velour warm-up suit and chewing on some sticks of red licorice. Vandomir motioned her to one of the chairs in front of my desk and sat next to her while he introduced us and got her to start talking.

Seventeen-year-old Darcy Hallin told me she was a high school student on Staten Island and had been dating a classmate for the first half of senior year. She was tall and big-breasted, with frizzy blonde hair. She went into the details of their sexual relationship, which included the assurance that they had protected sex. Most of the time.