Mona Berk was standing now, shouting directions to Lucy DeVore.

Lucy was speaking Evelyn's words, the teenager beginning to whimper as she disclosed the story of her deflowering by Stanford White. "I didn't want to be there, Harry. Really, I didn't. I didn't want to drink the champagne, but St-but Mr. White, he made me do it."

Mike was in my ear. "How many times have you heard that excuse in your office, Coop? How do you force someone to drink champagne? Hold her in a headlock and pour the stuff down her throat? I don't get it."

Harry Thaw wasn't buying Lucy's version of events, either. He ranted at her, raising a hand as though to strike his young bride.

"He drugged me, Harry. He must have put something in my drink to make me pass out. You know I wouldn't have given myself to an old man like that willingly."

"Drug-facilitated sexual assault," Mike said. "A hundred years ago."

"False reporting, too. She wouldn't have made it past Mercer's first interview."

Lucy DeVore dissolved into tears pretty effectively as she described how she awakened in White's bed, naked and helpless, and how he took advantage of her without her understanding or permission. Thaw reached to embrace her and the pianist broke into the music for his soliloquy about stolen innocence. Nobody would leave the theater humming that one on opening night.

Ross Kehoe came back onstage and put his arm around Lucy, and together they disappeared off stage left.

A few leggy chorus girls, older than Lucy DeVore and just as well built, sauntered onto the stage, dressed in black leotards that highlighted their blond locks and high-heeled shoes laced at the throat. They limbered up and showed off their talents with stretches and splits, while the pianist vamped some ragtime to invoke the spirit of the Gilded Age setting in which these events had occurred.

Mona was talking to the assembled angels scattered in the theater seats. "So this is the big scene on the roof of Madison Square Garden. Climax of the first act-we'll go to intermission with this one. It's a hot summer night in 1906. A very elegant gentleman is sitting alone at a table, closest to the dancers. That's Stanford White."

A handsome man, prematurely grayed-I guessed-by a dash or two of talcum powder, came onto the stage pushing a small table on wheels and carrying a chair that he placed beside it on which to sit.

The piano player kicked up the rhythm and the girls did a stylized dance routine, which Stanford White watched with great enthusiasm, applauding wildly and calling out their names from time to time.

From within the folds of the burgundy curtain on stage right, Harry Thaw slipped onto the stage, pretending to make his way through the imaginary tables of crowded theatergoers. It was hard to take your eyes off the showgirls, whose bodies moved in spectacular synchronicity, but Thaw continued to slink in and around them to the extreme opposite side of the stage.

As the music stopped and one of the girls flopped onto the lap of a delighted Stanford White, a gunshot rang through the nearly empty theater and echoed with the force of a cannon. Harry Thaw had come around from behind and fired a gun into White's back as the dancers screamed and White fell from his chair, taking the chorine with him, all enveloped in a huge cloud of smoke that billowed from behind the thick curtain.

At the sound of the blast, I gripped Mike's arm, surprised by the burst of gunshot. I hadn't remembered that the prominent architect had been murdered by Thaw.

"Relax, kid. That's how it happened in real life."

The smoke began to clear as the music segued into a soft ballad. Thaw and White picked up the table and chair and followed the girls offstage.

From far upstage, against the darkened backdrop, a small spotlight caught a pair of legs-perfectly contoured, long and lean-dangling high above the boards. As the music got louder, a voice from the front row-probably Mona Berk's-yelled out the word "Go!"

The legs kicked, like those of a child pumping a swing on a playground. Within seconds, the vision of the very platinum Lucy DeVore was in full view, her golden hair streaming down as she propelled herself forward and back across the length of the stage, her slinky teddy gleaming in the single spot that followed her movement. The swing descended slowly from the fly, with the motion of a smooth but steady pendulum as the ragtime rhythm picked up the pace.

Lucy turned her head to the audience far below her and started to sing the opening lines of the number. Her legs bent back beneath her and then carried her up out of sight again, sacrificing the words she was singing to the striking visual image she created.

As she drifted down and across to stage left, there was the sound of a loud crack. The seat of the swing broke away, and Lucy's scream pierced the back row of the balcony as she clung in vain to the hanging ropes that had supported her before she slammed onto the floor of the stage.

Mike ran down the narrow flights of stairs from the balcony and vaulted over the railing into the first of the two side boxes that hung above the orchestra. He climbed into the second one, closest to the curtain, and reached for the metal ladder that was exposed to the side of the proscenium arch to climb down it. He was on the stage only seconds after Mona Berk, Ross Kehoe, and everyone else in range had come up to surround the still body of the teenager.

I had flipped open my phone to call 911 for an ambulance and police backup as I took the more traditional route down the staircase and into the front of the orchestra.

However surprised people were to see Mike Chapman, they responded well to his control of the situation. "Get back. Everybody get back," I could hear him shouting to the group that had crowded in around Lucy DeVore. "Give her air."

"Call for help," I heard Mona Berk say.

"There's an ambulance on the way."

Mike saw me from the stage. "Coop, get up here. The rest of you, stand off. She's alive. She's breathing. Coop, don't let anybody touch her. Keep ' em away. She needs air. You-any one of you," Mike said, gesturing to the small band of actors. "Go out to the lobby and wait for the medics. Bring 'em right in here."

I kneeled in beside Mike. "Can you tell what's fractured?"

"The legs, obviously," he said, pointing to where the bone had broken through the skin. "I don't know about the neck or spine. I don't want to touch anything until there's an EMT here to check it. She hasn't opened her eyes yet. Just stay with her while I look around."

Mike called to Mona Berk, "Who's operating the swing up above?"

She, in turn, pointed at Ross Kehoe to give the answer. "The fly crew. We've just got two guys up there today."

"Don't let anybody leave. Make a list of everyone working here today," Mike said, trotting into the wings to find his way up to the fly gallery.

I sat on the stage next to the shattered body of Lucy DeVore. I placed my hand over one of her outstretched arms and found her pulse-a very weak one-and I kept her hand covered in my own, stroking it and telling her she was going to be okay. She had not fallen in the same way that Talya had been thrown to her death- headfirst-so I tried to be optimistic that the injuries would not be fatal.

Mike seemed to have disappeared backstage. I could no longer see his navy blazer and shock of black hair against the dark metal grillwork of the theater walls and scaffolding. The people who had made up the cast and audience were split off into small circles now-Mona huddled with Ross Kehoe and Rinaldo Vicci, on her cell phone, explaining the situation to someone she had called; the actors obviously distressed about the injured teenager.