"Yeah, but I'm the one who hit him."

"Some court-appointed asshole looking for his Clarence Darrow moment sees my name as the arresting officer and spots his opportunity. Makes me the dupe, stringing my personal life into the middle of the mess. 'Detective Chapman went over the edge this time, Your Honor. He's lost control of himself, taken it out on my client.' Asks for all kinds of privileges for the murderer with the cracked cranium. Maybe even gets him bail for medical treatment. I'm not in the game, kid. I'm outta here."

"Don't be ridiculous. I had to hurt Phelps to save my own life."

"That'll be the footnote after the trial, Coop. Right now, nobody'll believe it was anything except excessive force by a homicide cop who's got no focus at the moment. You're not the one who stands next to this scumbag at the arraignment-one of us dumb dicks does that. I'm not giving the tabloids the chance to bring Val…" Mike's voice trailed off. "To make this frigging case personal."

I tried to maneuver myself to stand in Mike's way but he sidestepped me and kept walking. "They'll blame Mercer for it. You don't want that, do you?"

"The gentle giant? Nah. They won't play the race card. Nobody thinks he'd hurt a fly. It's me they'd be gunning for."

"Nobody's going to let you be held responsible for Phelps's injuries."

"Alex Cooper used her glutes and pecs instead of her brains to bring a guy down? I'm not being the patsy for you tonight."

"Why, Mike? I disappointed you?"

He turned back from the doorway of the snuff mill. "Yeah, Coop. You did. Too bad you didn't finish the job tonight. One less shitbird for the State of New York to house and feed for another forty years. One less miserable excuse for a human being to suck the life out of every appeal and excuse in the book. You should have hit him harder when you had the chance."

No need saying I didn't believe Mike meant those things. I knew he did.

Mercer had his notepad ready. "Let's get back to it, Alex."

The front door was open and Mike was silhouetted in its frame. Behind him was a phalanx of department cars with bubble flashers on their hoods surrounding the quiet house, casting red streaks of light against the backdrop of the dark forest.

"Tomorrow? Want to have dinner with me, Mike?"

He stopped to answer. "I barely have the strength to get myself through the night. I can't help you this time, Coop. I just can't do it."

I heard Lieutenant Peterson's voice in the front yard, ordering one of the men to escort Mike's car out the gate on the far side of the gardens to avoid the reporters and cameramen waiting at the nearest exit.

I started through the doorway to go after Mike. There was something else I wanted to tell him. I had a need to make some kind of physical contact with him as badly as I wanted him to embrace me.

"We've got work to do, Alex," Mercer said, clamping a strong hand on my shoulder to hold me in place.

I looked up at him, ready to plead my case, but he gave no ground. I turned away from the flashing lights, let him close the door behind us, and walked back to sit in the armchair, surrounded by Poe's dark birds.

Mercer pulled up a stool opposite me and stroked my head until I lifted my eyes to look at him. "Let the man go, Alex. Just let him go."

My first encounter with Edgar Allan Poe's Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque made an indelible impression on my adolescent imagination. A dead man's heart beating beneath the floorboards, the huge pendulum descending on a prisoner in the pit, the Red Death invading the festive masquerade, and the repeated torment of premature burial and entombment behind cellar walls-each of these narratives was responsible for youthful nightmares, and all of them have lured me back over the years to delight in their dramatic power and poetic elegance.

That Poe was capable of such a body of work-stories, poems, journalistic pieces, and literary criticism-is even more remarkable when one considers his short life and the tragic circumstances of it. Several cities claim the great master of crime fiction as their own- Richmond, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Boston. To my surprise, though, were the many places in New York where Poe lived and in which some of his greatest works were written, and the inspiration he drew from the landscape he so loved to walk.

My greatest pleasure in plotting this book was the opportunity it provided to reread all of Poe's writings. My source was the ten volume collection published by Stone and Kimball in 1894, including the memoir by George E. Woodberry. Poe's life is well-described by Kenneth Silverman in Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance; and by Arthur H. Quinn in Edgar Allan Poe-A Critical Biography.

The Bronx County Historical Society maintains Poe Cottage in remarkable condition, for tourists and scholars alike. Kathleen McAuley is not only its knowledgeable curator, but an enchanting guide. The splendid setting that is the New York Botanical Garden is one of the city's true jewels, as I saw in the hands of Dr. Kim Tripp, and a far less threatening site than it appears in my novel. I am grateful to both institutions for opening their doors to me.

Thanks once again to everyone at Scribner and Pocket Books- Susan Moldow, Roz Lippel, Louise Burke, Mitchell Ivers, Pat Eisemann, Erin Cox, Sarah Knight, Angella Baker-and to John Fulbrook, for my own elegant raven.

To Susanne Kirk, who has guided my hand and spirit from the first pages of Final Jeopardy through the last edit of Entombed, may you always be sitting on my shoulder as I write, through your long and happy retirement.

To Hilary Hale and David Young at Time Warner UK, my gratitude for taking Alex Cooper around the world in such grand style. And to Esther Newberg, the best in the business, I'm glad to have had you at my side since the outset.

My family and friends are my inspiration and source of sustenance. Librarians and booksellers are the generous souls who put my books in readers' hands. And my beloved Justin Feldman- whose childhood playground, in the Bronx, was actually Poe Park-remains my steadfast partner in law and literature, which gives me happiness beyond imagining.

Linda Fairstein, America 's foremost legal expert on crimes of sexual assault and domestic violence, led the Sex Crimes Prosecution Unit of the District Attorney's Office in Manhattan for twenty-five years, leaving in 2002 to write, lecture, and continue her advocacy for victims of violent crime. A Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers and a member of the International Society of Barristers, she is a graduate of Vassar College and the University of Virginia School of Law. Her first novel, Final Jeopardy, which introduced the character Alexandra Cooper, was published in 1996 to critical and commercial acclaim and was made into an ABC Movie of the Week starring Dana Delaney. Likely to Die, Cold Hit, The Deadhouse, The Bone Vault, and her most recent novel, The Kills, also achieved international bestseller status. Her nonfiction book, Sexual Violence, was a New York Times notable book in 1994. She lives with her husband in Manhattan and on Martha's Vineyard.