I was on the phone for more than an hour, starting with a call to Maureen, who seemed chipper and unconcerned by the day’s events, perhaps because Charles was still by her bedside. By the time I called my mother, Joan Stafford, David Mitchell, and Nina’s answering machine to explain why I was going out of town for a couple of days, it was after eight-thirty. I dialed P. J. Bernstein’s and asked them to send up an order of chicken soup before they closed.

My papers were spread out all over the dining-room table. Off to one corner I placed the Polaroid photo that I had asked Mercer to take of the marking made by Gemma’s blood on the floor of her office. Had it been intentionally drawn by the dying woman? I wondered, and was it a letter or part of a word? I pulled out a yellow pad and wrote beside it the initials of each of the people we had interviewed so far. I tried to compare the capital letters of their names to the incomplete squiggle that had seemed so clear to me that morning last week. Nothing seemed to match and I abandoned the exercise in favor of reviewing and organizing my interview notes.

After I packed and got into bed shortly before midnight, I called Drew’s hotel in San Francisco and left a message on his automated mail system. I told him about my unexpected departure for London the next day and asked him to call whenever he got in so I could hear the warm sound of his voice and make plans to see him when I returned home.

I set my alarm for seven and turned off the lights. I worried about Maureen and whether my idea had exposed her to any real danger. Then I tried to make sleep come by thinking of everything except murder. But the puzzle of Gemma Dogen and the way she died kept intruding as I lay awake late into the night.

LIKELY TO DIE. ANOTHER ONE.“

“What do you mean?” I looked at the clock and saw that it was just a couple of minutes after 6A.M.

“Sorry to wake you,” Chapman added, “but I figured you’d want to know as soon as I heard it. This one’s uptown, right outside of Columbia-Presbyterian. Really screws up our investigation.”

I was halfway out of the bed already waiting for an explanation. “Because?”

“It’s eerie. Could be our guy. Maybe Dogen’s death has nothing to do with Mid-Manhattan. Maybe some clown is after women in white uniforms, or striking out at each of the hospitals.”

“Stop babbling and tell me what it is.”

“The lieutenant just called, after he heard it from nightwatch. Up in the 3-4, another medical center surrounded by a war zone. Female resident finishes back-to-back shifts, walks out the door a little after midnight to go to her car. When she reaches it, she sees a tire is flat. Good Samaritan-and I’m using the term loosely-offers to help her change the tire. Bastard probably flattened it himself. Tells her he’s just got to go into his sister’s building across the street and get some tools. Says she can wait in the vestibule for him, to keep warm.

“They cross the street-three eyewitnesses to that part. Say he’s polite, holds her elbow, tells her to watch out for traffic. Inside the lobby-it’s a tenement, five-story walk-up-he pulls a knife, apparently. Now, we got no witnesses, nada, nobody. We got a trusting young doctor wearing her white lab coat lying on the floor behind the staircase with eight stab wounds in her chest and abdomen, underwear removed, and skirt pulled up to expose the lower half of her body. But no evidence of a completed sexual assault-no semen, no pubic hair, no proof of a rape.

“Soyou tell me, is it an attempt that got interrupted or is it just staged so the scumbag could steal her ten bucks and her beeper and let us think we’re looking for a rapist? Is it a coincidence or a second strike?”

I had no answers for Mike. I was trying to envision the crime scene and thinking about the loss of another useful life.

“Dead?”

“Better off if she were. Very, very likely to die. Hooked up to life support with perfectly flat brain waves.”

“You said there were witnesses?”

“Just the people who saw the guy hanging around the hospital entrance, then talking to the doctor near her car. Male Hispanic, six-two or -three, wiry. Looked dirty, unkempt, possibly homeless, like a thousand other men within a stone’s throw of the medical center. Wearing a flannel shirt and green surgical pants. He wasn’t a professional rival of hers, I’ll tell you that much.”

“Well, what do you think?” I knew it was a stupid question as soon as I asked it.

“I think I don’t have a friggin‘ clue what to think. I don’t know whether this is just a bad fluke of timing or the work of some lunatic that we rousted out of the tunnels at Mid-Manhattan and sent up to Columbia-Presbyterian with a license to start over again in an even more fertile location.

“I’m back to having no idea whether Gemma Dogen wasn’t raped because something interrupted the attempt, and because she struggled, like this kid last night. Or whether you’re right and Dogen’s killing was just staged to look like a sexual assault.”

“How many women do you think are likely to die before we figure it out?”

“Hey, Blondie, we’re all likely to die. It’s just the time and place of this one that’s so wretched. Six other guys from the squad are gonna jump all over this one. It’ll take us twice as long to sort the whole thing out and figure whether they’re related to each other. I’ll call you at the office as soon as I get some more details.”

I went into the kitchen and turned on the coffee before I showered, wondering why Drew hadn’t called during the night. The clothes I had planned to travel in were laid out the night before, so I dressed in the navy cashmere sweater and matching slacks hoping that my blue-and-red quilted jacket would be warm enough for Britain ’s early spring.

The doorman helped me with my luggage to a cab, and I convinced myself that the extra hour at the office in the early morning would actually benefit me to organize my desk before the staff began to arrive.

I couldn’t believe the phone was ringing at seven fifteen when I unlocked the door.

“Alex? It’s Stan.”

Westfall. One of the guys in the unit who was fine in the courtroom but difficult to deal with almost all the rest of the time.

“I got a problem. Just tried you at home and when I got the machine, I figured I’d give you a shout at your office.” He sounded frantic.

“What could possibly be wrong at this hour of the morning?” I’d already had one dose of dreadful news and doubted that anything Stan had to complain about would be in the same league.

“My witness is gone, Alex. You know I’m on trial in front of Sudolsky, right? Well, I finished the direct case yesterday but she hasn’t been crossed yet. She’s the woman I brought back here from Pittsburgh to testify and-”

“Who’s she been staying with?”

“Well, that’s it. You were really busy, you know, with your murder investigation and I didn’t want to bother you. So I just went to Pat McKinney and got his permission to put her up in a hotel. I mean, a cheap one. Big Apple, over on West Forty-sixth.”

“Great. You put a hooker in a hotel in midtown. With a bodyguard?”

“No. Alex, she swore to me she’s not a hooker anymore. I really believed it.”

It didn’t do any good to roll my eyes. Stan wouldn’t have gotten the point had he been standing right in front of me. He was more likely to be struck by lightning than ever meet anex -hooker.

“And what happened? She got booted for bringing tricks into the room during the night while the taxpayers picked up the bill?”

“Well, the manager caught her with a guy coming into the lobby around 2A.M. Knew she was with us, so he stopped them and kicked out the john but let her go up to the room. See, um, the manager’s the one who called me. Sometime after that she just left.”