Now I was looking for the identities of both Jane Doe and the rapist we were calling John Doe, even though they bore no relation to each other. I'd like to be able to put names and faces to both of them.

"The working conditions are far from ideal here," Andy said. "We'll get a team in and then transfer her back to the morgue in the morning."

Mike called his lieutenant to get the local precinct commander to send patrol cops to safeguard the site. Waiting for them, we walked outside to put Nan Toth in a taxi for the ride home to her husband and kids.

"You got your car?" Mike asked.

I shook my head.

"Put your mittens on. I'm parked around the corner. Aren't you hungry?"

It was after eleven and the audible rumbling from my stomach reminded me that the dinner hour had long since passed.

"Borborygmi."

"What's that, the Jeopardy! final question?" I asked. "I'll give you twenty bucks without even guessing. Just feed me as fast as you can."

For as long as I could remember, Mike and Mercer had bet against me on Jeopardy! 's final question every evening that we were together. Whether in a bar or at a crime scene, Mike found a way to interrupt the proceedings to step to the television. He had studied military history in college and could detail more battles, biographies of generals, and the colors of the horses they rode in on than anyone I had ever met.

"Double or nothing. Borborygmi."

He had seated himself in the driver's seat and wasn't about to let me in from the cold unless I gave in to him.

I banged on the car window. "I'll buy dinner. I don't have a clue. Open up, okay?"

He unlocked the door and tossed several case folders onto the backseat. The half-eaten bologna sandwich at my feet had some other cop's bootmarks all over it.

"The muscular contractions and expansions of peristalsis that move the contents of your intestines up and down."

"That was tonight's question?"

"Nope. That's what my doctor told me that rumbling noise is I can hear your flat little belly making. When your stomach's full of food, it mutes the noise. But that disgusting sound you're making now? It's deafening. Can you hold out until we get to Primola?"

"Sure. And there I was, ready to concede that the Battle of Borborygmi was the turning point in the Crimean War."

Mike drove east and headed uptown to my favorite Italian restaurant, on Second Avenue at Sixty-fourth Street. The sidewalks were empty as predictions for frigid temperatures the next few nights seemed to have driven people inside earlier than usual.

"Ciao, Signorina Cooper."The owner, Giuliano, called to Adolfo, the headwaiter, "Set up that table in the corner for Mr. Chapman. Subito. I'll have Fenton send your drinks right over."

The restaurant had long been my favorite, not just for the good food, but because we were treated like family. It was always pleasant, at the end of a long day, to be greeted warmly by Giuliano, whose hard work and great kitchen made his restaurant a well-known watering hole for New Yorkers with fussy palates.

"Kitchen still open?"

"For you, Mr. Mike? Even if I had to boil the water myself."

"Skip the usual cocktail, Giuliano. I don't want anything with ice cubes in it. Give us a nice bottle of red wine," Mike said.

No matter how cold the weather, Mike never wore an overcoat. His navy blazer was a trademark, along with his thick head of dark hair and an infectious grin that only the most depraved crime scenes could suppress.

"You know what you'd like to eat or you want to see a menu?" Adolfo asked.

"Anything but ribs," Mike said. "I've had enough of them tonight."

"I'll take the hottest bowl of soup you can cook up. Stracciatelle? And then some risotto with sausage and mushrooms."

"A veal chop for me. Biggest one you've got back there. String beans, potatoes, throw everything in the kitchen on the side, okay? And tell Giuliano to come back and join us."

The owner was as tall as Mercer-six feet six-with an expansive personality, at once charming and tough. He had come to the States from a small town in northern Italy and worked his way up from a position as a waiter in a well-known restaurant to running his own chic eatery.

Adolfo poured the wine for us and went off to place the order. I told Mike about the new case with my old sick stocking nemesis and explained how Mercer and I had convinced Battaglia to let us go ahead with our idea to indict his genetic profile to allow us to connect the newest cases to the older ones.

The soup arrived and I began to eat while Mike chewed on bread sticks. "Tell me how Val is," I said. "I thought she looked fantastic last week."

Mike had fallen in love with an architect he met almost two years ago, while she was recovering from surgery for breast cancer. It was the first serious relationship he had been involved in since we started working together ten years earlier.

"Yeah, she's in great shape. That was my best Christmas present, after the scare we had last fall. She got a clean bill of health in December."

Mike Chapman had just celebrated his thirty-seventh birthday a few months back, half a year before I would. We came from vastly different backgrounds and had grown to be great friends. There were no two people I would rather have covering my back than Mike and Mercer, and I delighted in the happiness that had so radically changed both their lives recently.

Michael Patrick Chapman was the adored son of a legendary cop who, as a second-generation immigrant, had returned to Ireland and married a girl from the family home in Cork. Their three daughters and Mike were raised in Yorkville, and Brian was fiercely proud that Mike chose to be the first in the Chapman line to attend college. While in his third year at Fordham, where he immersed himself in military history when he wasn't waiting tables to supplement his student loans, Mike's father suffered a fatal coronary the day after he retired and surrendered his gun and shield. Mike graduated the next year, but enrolled in the Police Academy immediately, determined to follow in the giant footsteps of the man he most admired.

"Val looked like a natural with Logan in her arms," I said. We had all been together for dinner at Mercer's house in Queens. He and his wife, Vickee, were the parents of a little boy, born last year and named Logan.

At forty-three, Mercer had a new stability in his life, with his remarriage to Vickee and with fatherhood, a role he took so seriously. There were not many first-grade detectives in the NYPD, and Mercer was one of the few African-Americans to hold that distinction. He had once been assigned to homicide with Mike, but preferred-as I did-the opportunity to work with victims, whose recovery from their trauma could be aided by the relationship with a compassionate investigator.

"Six months ago I probably would have snapped at you for going in that direction. Now I'm starting to think it wouldn't be so bad. A kid is all Val wants," Mike said.

I smiled at him. "Think of all the broken hearts there'll be when she takes you off the market. Officially, I mean."

"Yeah, well, I'm trying to buy up every deck of Old Maid in the toy stores around town. You're wearing that logo like it's embedded in your forehead. You don't even look upset about it."

"I actually feel kind of relieved," I said, as Adolfo replaced the empty soup bowl with our entrées. My relationship with television newsman Jake Tyler had ended abruptly last October, after a long period during which I could feel our emotions unraveling and tangling both of us in their debris.

"First-class jerk if you ask me. Shit, I would have married you just for the house on the Vineyard."

"You still can," I said, reaching to refill my wineglass.

"Too much angst, Coop. You and me? You'd probably cut off my balls the first time I rolled over in bed and closed my eyes. It's bad enough you're always telling me what to do on the job. Think what would happen the first time you tried that between the sheets. Talk about murder."