"So why is that any different for acquaintance rape?" the local NBC reporter asked.

"Because effective NYPD strategies-like anticrime units, community policing, an aggressive sex offender monitoring unit, and a smart SVS-they can keep the stranger rapists off the street with greater success. Acquaintance rapes are cases in which the victim is with the offender because she thinks she knows him, she trusts him. He's a family member or coworker or friend. She walks right past the cop on the beat to go to his home or her apartment or a hotel room. Law enforcement can't prevent this kind of case from happening, and that's why you see the numbers going up from time to time."

Mickey Diamond brought us back to the moment. "How come nobody prevented that foreign student from getting stabbed last week? How about yesterday's murder?"

Battaglia took control again. "That's precisely why we're taking this very aggressive approach, this John Doe indictment. No serial rapist is entitled to put his hands around the throat of this city and strangle it with fear."

He stood up to signal the end of the questioning period and started toward his desk.

"So you're saying these attacks are the work of one man, Paul?" Diamond asked.

Battaglia pretended not to hear him. He wanted nothing on the record that could be quoted back to him if he guessed wrong. "Rose, you want to get me the mayor on the phone? And help clear these crews out of here as fast as you can."

Diamond was relentless. "Heard you came face-to-face with that skull in the basement over at NYU the other night, Alex. Want to comment on what you thought about the experience? Tell us where that investigation is going?"

Battaglia's head whipped around and he glared at me to ensure that if I had thought for a second that I might respond to the question, I'd think better of it.

"That's entirely a matter for the police and the medical examiner. They've got to figure out who the woman is and how she died before there's any reason for my office to be involved. Alexandra has nothing to say about it. We're closing up shop here so you'd better scram before you miss your deadlines."

"So I guess that means the commissioner hasn't told you about the call that came into the tip hotline this afternoon?"

Battaglia hated to be out of the loop on anything. He looked to me for help. I shrugged my shoulders and shook my head, knowing he would blame me for not having the latest information. "I've been tied up most of the day," he mumbled to Diamond. "I'm sure the PC called but I haven't gotten back to him yet. Which tip are you talking about?"

"Some shrink from the Village saw my piece over the weekend," Diamond said proudly. "Says he thinks he knows who the girl in the brick coffin is. Claims that one of his patients whose initials were A.T. went missing almost twenty-five years ago."

"Would you please tell us, Dr. Ichiko, why you changed your mind this evening and decided against revealing the identity of your former patient?" The New York One reporter had sandbagged the psychiatrist outside his Sixth Avenue office as he closed up, and the interview was running at the top of the seven o'clock news.

The doctor raised his coat collar and walked briskly away from the cameras, trying to shield his face more than to protect himself from the biting-cold air.

"Is it true you've been offered a substantial amount of money to tell her story tomorrow night on a network reality show?"

The doctor waved his hand in front of the camera and tried to dodge the reporter by stepping off the curb between two parked cars.

"The police believe they have a homicide on their hands and yet you refuse to talk to them, Doctor. Am I right?" The reporter gave up and turned back to the camera. "That was Dr. Wo-Jin Ichiko, who may hold the clues to the mysterious discovery of a woman's skeleton that we told you about last week. It seems that the good doctor is willing to spill the beans… but only for a price."

Brenda Whitney had left her office-Battaglia's public relations bureau-unlocked so that Mike, Mercer, and I could watch the breaking story on the evening news. I had beeped Mike at five-thirty, when Battaglia ejected the press corps, and he gave us the strange development about the doctor.

"Ichiko's just trying to cash in on his fifteen minutes of fame. He's got a bullshit practice treating derelicts, drunks, and druggies and he finally smells a score," Mike said, talking over the reporter.

"Who'd he call first?" Mercer asked.

"The good doctor started at the Post after he read their story. They leaped at the chance to get an exclusive with him. The police department only found out because the editors checked with headquarters to make sure the guy wasn't a quack. Meanwhile, Ichiko liked the press reaction so much he began to call the networks to drum up a little bidding competition for his story."

"I thought the media can't pay sources for news. I thought they had some kind of ethical guidelines," I said.

"You use 'ethics' in the same sentence as 'the media'? I figured you had more brains than that, Coop. The news producer got Dr. Ichiko a twofer. Flipped him over to that reality show- Crime Factor-the one where ex-cons tell about their worst offenses and how they beat the system. They're willing to pay him twenty-five thousand dollars for what he knows about the girl's disappearance, and then the evening news show uses outtakes from that. We get leftovers."

"Déjà vu?" I asked Mike.

"All over again."

We had handled a high-profile homicide several years back in which a young woman had been strangled. Friends of the defendant had made a videotape of him while he was partying during the trial. He was high on cocaine at the time and playing with a doll, laughing into the camera as he broke its neck. Rather than talk to police about what the perp had been saying off-camera about the murder, or even telling us about the existence of the tape, the enterprising teen filmmaker sold it to a tabloid television show for use after the trial was over.

"Does Scotty know?" I asked, referring to the Cold Case Squad detective who was assigned to the matter.

"He heard about it on the radio and dashed over to the doc's office. Couldn't get past the receptionist."

"Tell Scotty to be here first thing in the morning," I said. "We'll open a grand jury investigation and give him a subpoena. The doctor doesn't want to talk to the police, then let him tell the jurors his story. He clams up, we hit him with contempt."

Mike made some calls from Brenda's desk while Mercer and I watched the rest of the news. One of Emily Upshaw's sisters had flown in to accompany her body back home to Michigan for burial. She was due at the morgue shortly and had agreed to talk to us at eight o'clock tonight, after her meeting with the medical examiner.

At twenty-five after seven, Mike clicked the buttons to change the channel on the small TV set Brenda kept on top of an old green filing cabinet.

Trebek was announcing the topic of the final answer: "Benjamin Franklin's Firsts."

"Twenty bucks," I said.

"I'm only good on Founding Fathers who were warriors, not statesmen."

"Cough it up, Mike. Mercer?"

He removed a bill from his wallet and put it on the desktop. "You're taking food right out of my baby's mouth, Alex. Lightning rods, bifocals, lending libraries. I just know the easy things he invented that you learn in grade school."

The big board slid back. Trebek read it to us. "Franklin's printing press published this novel, first ever in America, in 1744."

Mike crumpled a wad of paper and threw it at the screen. "A setup if I've ever seen one. Literature in the guise of history, to borrow one of your regular gripes. Nobody was writing novels then. They all should have been plotting the revolution or fighting against the French and Indians."