“You get a better view of the girl if you lean forward and support yourself on a tank. That’s what he did, I’m sure. Only, it’s weird, Lincoln. It’s… deformed. His hand.” She shivered looking at the monstrous palm.

“In the suitcase there’s an aerosol bottle labeled DFO. It’s a fluorescent stain. Spray that on the print, hit the PoliLight and shoot the image with the one-to-one Polaroid.”

She told him when she’d finished this and he said, “Now Dust-bust the floor between the tanks. If we’re lucky he scratched off a hair or chewed a fingernail.”

My habits, Sachs thought. It was one of the things that had finally ruined her modeling career – the bloody nail, the worried eyebrow. She’d tried and tried and tried to stop. Finally gave up, discouraged, bewildered that a tiny habit could change the direction of your life so dramatically.

“Bag the vacuum filter.”

“In paper?”

“Yes, paper. Now, the body, Amelia.”

“What?”

“Well, you’ve got to process the body.”

Her heart sank. Somebody else, please. Have somebody else do it. She said, “Not until the ME’s finished. That’s the rule.”

“No rules today, Amelia. We’re making up our own. The medical examiner’ll get her after us.”

Sachs approached the woman.

“You know the routine?”

“Yes.” She stepped close to the destroyed body.

Then froze. Hands inches from the victim’s skin.

I can’t do it. She shuddered. Told herself to keep going. But she couldn’t; the muscles weren’t responding.

“Sachs? You there?”

She couldn’t answer.

I can’t do this… It was as simple as that. Impossible. I can’t.

“Sachs?”

And then she looked into herself and, somehow, saw her father, in uniform, stooping low on the hot, pitted sidewalk of West Forty-second Street, sliding his arm around a scabby drunk to help him home. Then was seeing her Nick as he laughed and drank beer in a Bronx tavern with a hijacker who’d kill him in a second if he knew the young cop was working undercover. The two men in her life, doing what they had to do.

“Amelia?”

These two images bobbed in her thoughts, and why they calmed her, or where that calm came from, she couldn’t begin to guess. “I’m here,” she said to Lincoln Rhyme and went about her business as she’d been taught. Taking the nail scrapings, combing the hair – pubic and head. Telling Rhyme what she did as she did it.

Ignoring the dull orbs of eyes…

Ignoring the crimson flesh.

Trying to ignore the smell.

“Get her clothing,” Rhyme said. “Cut off everything. Put a sheet of newsprint under them first to pick up any trace that falls off.”

“Should I check the pockets?”

“No, we’ll do that here. Wrap them up in the paper.”

Sachs cut the blouse and skirt off, the panties. She reached out for what she thought was the woman’s bra, dangling from her chest. It felt curious, disintegrating in her fingers. Then, like a slap she realized what she held and she gave a short scream. It wasn’t cloth, it was skin.

“Amelia? Are you all right?”

“Yes!” she gasped. “I’m fine.”

“Describe the restraints.”

“Duct tape for the gag, -two inches wide. Standard-issue cuffs for hands, clothesline for the feet.”

“PoliLight her body. He might’ve touched her with his bare hands. Look for prints.”

She did. “Nothing.”

“Okay. Now cut the clothesline – but not through the knot. Bag it. In plastic.”

Sachs did. Then Rhyme said, “We need the cuffs.”

“Okay. I’ve got a cuff key.”

“No, Amelia. Don’t open them.”

“What?”

“The cuff lock mechanism is one of the best ways to pick up trace from the perp.”

“Well, how’m I supposed to get them off without a key?” She laughed.

“There’s a razor saw in the suitcase.”

“You want me to cut off the cuffs?”

There was a pause. Rhyme said, “No, not the cuffs, Amelia.”

“Well, what do you want me to… Oh, you can’t be serious. Her hands?”

“You have to.” He was irritated at her reluctance.

Okay, that’s it. Sellitto and Polling’ve picked a nutcase for a partner. Maybe their careers’re tanking but I’m not going down with them.

“Forget it.”

“Amelia, it’s just another way to collect evidence.”

Why did he sound so reasonable? She thought desperately for excuses. “They’ll get blood all over them if I cut -”

“Her heart’s not beating. Besides,” he added like a TV chef, “the blood’ll be cooked into a solid.”

The gorge rising again.

“Go on, Amelia. Go to the suitcase. Get the saw. In the lid.” He added a frosty, “Please.”

“Why’d you have me scrape under her nails? I could’ve just brought you back her hands!”

“Amelia, we need the cuffs. We have to open them here and we can’t wait for the ME. It has to be done.”

She walked back to the doorway. Unsnapped the thongs, lifted the wicked-looking saw from the case. She stared at the woman, frozen in her tortured pose in the center of the vile room.

“Amelia? Amelia?”

Outside, the sky was still clogged with stagnant, yellow air and the buildings nearby were covered with soot like charred bones. But Sachs had never been so glad to be out in the city air as now. The CU suitcase in one hand, the razor saw in the other, the headset dangling dead around her neck. Sachs ignored the huge crowd of cops and spectators staring at her and walked straight toward the station wagon.

As she passed Sellitto she handed him the saw without pausing, practically tossed it to him. “If he wants it done that badly tell him he can damn well walk down here and do it himself.”

Saturday, 4:00 p.m., to Saturday, 10:15 p.m.

“I’VE GOT MYSELF INTO A SITUATION HERE, SIR.”

The man across the desk looked like a TV show’s idea of a big-city deputy police commissioner. Which happened to be his rank. White hair, a temperate jowl, gold-rimmed glasses, posture to die for.

“Now what’s the problem, officer?”

Dep Com Randolph C. Eckert looked down his long nose with a gaze that Sachs recognized immediately; his nod to equality was to be as stern with the female officers as with the male ones.

“I’ve got a complaint, sir,” she said stiffly. “You heard about that taxi kidnapping case?”

He nodded. “Ah, has that got the city in double dutch.”

She believed that was a schoolchild’s game of jump rope but wouldn’t presume to correct a deputy commissioner.

“That damn UN conference,” he continued, “and the whole world’s watching. It’s unfair. People don’t talk about crime in Washington. Or Detroit. Well, Detroit they do. Say, Chicago. Never. No, it’s New York that people thump on. Richmond, Virginia, had more murders per capita than we did last year. I looked it up. And I’d rather parachute unarmed into Central Harlem than drive windows-up through South East D.C. any day.”

“Yessir.”

“Understand they found that girl dead. It was on all the news. Those reporters.”

“Downtown. Just now.”

“Now that’s a pity.”

“Yessir.”

“They just killed her? Like that? No ransom demand or anything?”

“I didn’t hear about any ransom.”

“What’s this complaint?”

“I was first officer in a related homicide this morning.”

“You’re Patrol?” Eckert asked.

“I was Patrol. I was supposed to be transferring to Public Affairs today at noon. For a training session.” She lifted her hands, tipped with flesh-colored Band-Aids, and dropped them in her lap. “But they shanghaied me.”