Staging:A perpetrator’s efforts to rearrange, add, or remove evidence from a crime scene to make it appear that the crime he or she has committed did not occur or was committed by someone else.

Trace evidence:Bits of tiny, sometimes microscopic, substances such as dust, dirt, cellular material, and fibers.

Unsub:Unknown subject; that is, an unidentified suspect.

Vacuum-metal deposition (VMD):The most effective means for visualizing latent friction-ridge prints on smooth surfaces. Gold or zinc evaporated in a vacuum chamber coats the object to be examined with a thin layer of metal, thereby making a print visible.

I’m indebted to Peter A. Micheels, author of The Detectives, and E. W. Count, author of Cop Talk, whose books were not only wonderfully helpful in researching this one but great reads as well. Thanks to Pam Dorman, whose deft editorial touch is evident everywhere in this story. And of course thanks to my agent, Deborah Schneider… what would I do without ya? I’m grateful too to Nina Salter at Calmann-Lévy for her perceptive comments on an earlier draft of the book and to Karolyn Hutchinson at REP in Alexandria, Virginia, for invaluable help with wheelchairs and other equipment available for quadriplegics. And to Teddy Rosenbaum – a detective in her own right – for her fine copy-editing job. Students of law enforcement may wonder about the structure of the NYPD and FBI as presented here; tweaking the organizational charts was my doing exclusively. Oh, yes – anyone interested in reading a copy of Crime in Old New York may have a little trouble finding one. The official story is that the book is a fictional creation, though I’ve also heard the rumor that the one copy in existence was recently stolen from the New York Public Library – by a person or persons unknown.

– J.W.D.

JEFFERY DEAVER is the author of nine suspense novels. He’s twice been nominated for Edgar Awards and is the recipient of the Ellery Queen Readers’ Award for best short story of 1995. His most recent thriller from Viking/Signet, A Maiden’s Grave, was an HBO feature presentation. The Bone Collector is soon to be a film from Universal Pictures.