"What kind of bail can he make?" Moffett asked Ingels.

"Your honor, most respectfully," I said, "I don't think you should approach the matter that way and accommodate the pocketbook of the very person we're charging with these crimes. We're talking about two counts of first-degree rape. I'd like to suggest bail in the amount of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars."

"What?" Ingels said, pounding the table in front of him with a closed fist. "You know how much a medical resident earns?"

"Calm down, both of you. Here's what I'm gonna do. She's gonna holler at me anyway, Mr. Ingels. I'm going to release Dr. Sengor on his own recognizance-no bail. You, Alexandra. Stop with the grimace and the smoke coming out your ears. I'll put the case over for a very short date. Next Friday, in my part. You'll have lab results by then. I'll hear you from scratch on this issue. If the case looks stronger then, I'll give you the opportunity to make your application all over again."

Screwed twice. Not only would Sengor walk out the courthouse door before I made it up to my office, but Moffett had kept the matter in his own court part.

"I'd like him to surrender his passport to you, judge. How about that?"

Ingels whispered to his client, who told him something in response. "Of course, Dr. Sengor doesn't have it with him. The detectives rousted him out of his home in the middle of the night, with no warning."

"So get it to me at the beginning of the week. You're not planning any vacations, are you, son?"

Selim Sengor smiled at the judge and shook his head. "Thank you, sir. No, sir. I-I didn't-it's not what-"

Ingels put his hand on his client's arm and told him not to speak.

I gathered up my papers and medical research and walked the length of the courtroom with Mercer beside me.

"You didn't want me to collar him when I was in the apartment, did you?"

"I can't fault you for that," I said. "I never dreamed the pills would be there in plain view. I figured you'd execute the warrant, we'd test the findings, and the arrest would go down later during the week. You couldn't do anything but lock him up once you saw what you did in there. I'm fine with it."

"And now you've got to argue this case before that Neanderthal?"

"Not if I can help it." The district attorney, Paul Battaglia, occasionally pulled strings to move high-profile cases after too many embarrassing episodes of trials in front of the handful of judges who couldn't manage the more notorious crimes.

Mercer's cell phone was vibrating in his jacket pocket and he removed it to speak while we continued through the rotunda within the 100 Centre Street lobby.

"No, we're done with that," I heard him say to his caller. "On our way to her office. You want to ask her?"

He handed me the phone, telling me that it was Mike.

"What's up?"

"Nothing good," Mike said. "I'm on my way to Lincoln Center. The Metropolitan Opera House."

"Natalya? Has anyone heard from Natalya yet?"

"Nope."

"No one's even seen her?" I asked.

"They found some stuff. She'd been dancing a scene from Giselle-that's the one with the Wilis, right?"

"Yes." Mike knew I had studied ballet all my life.

"Like a headpiece, and some tulle from the costume that mast have caught on a nail and ripped off."

"A garland of white flowers, with a veil?" There was a standard costume for Giselle's graveyard scene.

"That sounds right. Would dancers like her go out on the street after a performance, Coop, in a full-length tutu and toe slippers?"

"Very unlikely. Even if she had a coat over her costume, she'd put shoes on so she wouldn't rip the satin pointe slippers on cement sidewalks or asphalt. Why, Mike? Where did they find the clothing?"

"In a hallway, going up to the third floor, a few flights above the stage and the dressing rooms. Along with a glove-a man's white kid glove. A dressy one, if you know what I mean. I had a pair like it once that I had to wear when I was an usher at a wedding at St. Patrick's. And blood, there's a few droplets that look like blood on the wall."

"That could mean any number of-" I said.

"Did I mention a contact? One contact lens. The agent confirmed she wears them."

I thought of what kind of blow to the socket could cause the lens to be forced off the surface and expelled from the eye. "You're ruling out everything but some kind of struggle, aren't you?"

"They're checking all the corridors, top to bottom-every room and cubbyhole. That place is just massive. I can't sit on my ass anymore and wait for the twenty-four hours to pass."

I could picture Talya-a magnificent creature whose fragile appearance masked the incredible strength and stamina possessed by the great ballerinas. I had seen her at Lincoln Center just months earlier, commanding the enormous stage as though it was her natural home.

"It's unthinkable," I said.

"What is, Coop?" Mike's personal tragedy had made him more cynical than ever. "That Talya Galinova might have been unfortunate enough to put herself in the running for this year's homicide stats?"

More than a decade in this business had made me mindful that no one was guaranteed immunity from that often random list. But to disappear inside the most famous theater in the world, with more than four thousand people under the same roof at the very moment she vanished?

"It's not possible she was murdered at the Met."

Mercer parked in the driveway that arced away from Broadway and ran the entire length in front of the plaza at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, from 65 th down to 6znd Street. The travertine complex of theater and music facilities was built in the 1960s at a cost equivalent to more than a billion dollars today.

Bright April sunshine bounced off the waters in the enormous fountain in the center of the buildings as streams gushed in the air at timed intervals, delighting the tourists who gathered around it with their guidebooks. We ignored the structures to the north and south- the Philharmonic's Avery Fisher Hall and the City Ballet and Opera's home, the New York State Theater. The block-long giant that dominated the plaza set back on its western end was the Metropolitan Opera House, and I tried to keep pace with Mercer's great strides as we both hurried to hook up with Mike Chapman.

"I hope you didn't read him wrong."

"He wants you here, Alex. That's why he called."

"I'm familiar with this world. That's really why he called. I'm not sure Mike's ready to let me back into his life."

People with cameras were everywhere, snapping photos of one another against the backdrop of the imposing buildings on this great urban acropolis. Large silk banners with the Royal Ballet's logo billowed from the flagpoles, heralding the visiting company in the calm afternoon breeze.

The three of us had worked as a team on more murder cases than most prosecutors would ever handle in their entire careers. Mercer had transferred from the Homicide Squad to Special Victims. Like me, he got satisfaction in helping women find justice in a system that had denied them access for so long, with archaic laws and even more stubborn human attitudes. The legislative reforms and stunning advances in scientific techniques brought us successes not dreamed possible even twenty years ago.

Mike preferred the elite world of homicide cops-no living victims to hand-hold, few eyewitnesses to have fall apart in court- coaxing from lifeless bodies the secrets of how they met their deaths and then ferreting out the killers. All too often our professional worlds intersected and we shouldered the cases together, trying to restore moral order to a world in which lives ended so violently and abruptly.