FOR THE FIRST HALF HOUR, I tried to convince myself that I was content just sitting in the car, staying on the sidelines. The Mercedes, half station wagon, half SUV, was as comfortable as the easy chair in my living room. A copy of The History of Love by Nicole Krauss sat on my lap while I flipped through various stations on satellite radio, then listened to the local news. I had been savoring the Krauss, because it reminded me of how it was when I first fell in love with fiction. I had another good one at home, Winter’s Bone by Daniel Woodrell, that I was equally enthralled with.

Plenty of time for reading now that I was out of the game. But was I out of the game?

Listening with one ear, I picked up on a few obvious inaccuracies in the news coverage, the worst being a report that the killer at the Riverwalk was some sort of terrorist. It was too early to jump to that kind of conclusion. Every news outlet in town was on this story, though, the nationals too, all scrambling for a unique angle. That usually led to mistakes, but the media didn’t seem to care as long as they could attribute a theory to some kind of “expert,” or even another news outlet.

Not that the killer would care about accuracy. It seemed obvious to me that what he wanted more than anything was simply attention.

I wondered if any Metro Police personnel had been assigned to follow the news coverage itself. If it were my case, that would be one of the first things I took care of. Emphasis on the if. Because this wasn’t my case. I didn’t have cases anymore. I didn’t miss them either, at least that’s what I told myself as I watched the action from my car.

There was something about being at the busy homicide scene that kicked in my instincts, though. I’d been formulating theories and running different scenarios in my head from the moment I got there-I couldn’t help myself.

The killer had obviously wanted an audience; he’d been consistently described as looking “Middle Eastern,” which added up to… what? Was it possible that this was a new kind of terrorism-the door-to-door variety? How did a bestselling crime writer fit in? There had to be some tie-in. Was the killer acting out a brutally sadistic scene he had imagined many times before? Was it something the author had written about? What kind of psychopath wanted to throw victims off twelve-story buildings?

Eventually, my curiosity moved me to my feet. I got out of the car and gazed toward the top floor. I couldn’t see Bree or anyone else up there.

Just a quick look around, I told myself. For old times’ sake. No harm in that.

WHO WAS I TRYING TO KID, anyway? The Dragon Slayer was on the prowl again, and it felt natural, like I had never been away. Not even for the months I had been.

Most of the television-news cameras were set up around the MPD street-level command center. As I walked nearby, I recognized the captain of Violent Crimes, Thor Richter. Richter was standing behind a bouquet of microphones that had been stuck in the middle of all the chaos, and he was handling the interviews himself.

That probably meant Bree was still upstairs. Fine by her, I was sure. She didn’t like police politics, or Richter in particular, and neither did I. He was too much by-the-book, a ruthless prick and shameless ass-kisser. Plus, who the hell was named Thor? I was being unkind, I knew, but I just didn’t like the captain.

The lobby of the apartment building was relatively quiet, and I was recognized by a couple of uniforms who didn’t seem to know that I wasn’t on the Job anymore and hadn’t been for a while. As I rode the elevator to twelve, I didn’t really expect to get much farther than the primary perimeter. Somebody would be checking badges there.

Somebody was-an old friend, it turned out, Tony Dowell, who used to work in Southeast. I hadn’t seen Tony, or heard from him, in years.

“Look who it is. Alex Cross.”

“Hey there, Tony. I thought they retired cops as old as you. Bree Stone around anywhere?”

Tony reached for his radio but then changed his mind. “Straight down the hall,” he said, and pointed. Then he handed me a pair of latex gloves. “You’ll need these.”

I FELT A LITTLE SHIVER of anticipation, then kind of an unpleasant chill. Was it that easy to step back into the line of fire, or whatever this was? At the front door to apartment 12F, a small Asian man I recognized as an MPD techie was dusting for prints. That told me it would be relatively calm inside. Chemical elements aren’t introduced until the evidence-collection teams are finished.

I found Bree standing all by herself in the middle of the living room, looking pensive and far away.

A line of dark streaks, probably the victim’s blood, ran across the ivory carpet. A sliding glass door was open to the terrace, and a light breeze rustled the curtains.

Otherwise, the living room looked pretty much undisturbed. There were built-in bookshelves on every wall, and they were filled with hardbacks, mostly fiction, several of them by the victim herself, including foreign editions. Why a crime writer? I wondered. There had to be a reason, at least in the killer’s mind. Was that train of thought correct? Maybe, maybe not, but I was definitely analyzing the scene.

“How’s it going?” I finally spoke.

Bree’s eyebrows went up in a How did you get in here? kind of way, but she skipped the chitchat entirely. I had never seen her on the Job before, and she was a completely different person.

“Looks like he came in through the front door. No sign of forced entry anywhere. Maybe he posed as a serviceman of some kind. Unless she knew him. Her clothes, and her purse, are here.”

“Anything missing?” I asked the natural question.

Bree shook her head. “Nothing real obvious. Doesn’t look like she was robbed, Alex. She was wearing a diamond bracelet and earrings when she went over the railing. So maybe you can take it with you.”

I pointed at the streaks on the carpet. “What do you know about these?”

“The ME says the victim’s knees were bloody before the fall-and get this: she was wearing a dog leash when he tossed her off the balcony.”

“Somebody on the radio said it was a rope. I was thinking noose, but that didn’t totally make sense to me either. A dog leash? That’s interesting. Bizarre, but interesting.”

Bree pointed toward an archway and a formal dining room beyond, with lots of glass cabinets full of dinnerware. “Bloodstains start back there and then end here in the middle of the room. She was crawling, and she was under duress.”

“Like a dog. So he needed to humiliate her, and in public. What could she possibly have done to him? How could she deserve this?”

“Yeah, sure feels like it was personal. Maybe a boyfriend, or somebody who fantasized about her?” She breathed in and out slowly. “You know, this probably would have been your case if you were still on the force. High profile, high crazy factor.”

I didn’t tell her that the same thought had occurred to me about a half dozen times already. The weird cases usually funneled my way. So was Bree the new me? Suddenly I wondered if our meeting at the party had been as “accidental” as it had seemed at the time.

“Anyone else live here?” I asked.

“Her husband died two years ago. There’s a housekeeper, but she was off this afternoon.”

I rocked back on my heels. “Maybe the killer knew that.”

“I’ll bet he did.”

It was interesting, the way Bree and I fell into it. The really strange part was that it didn’t feel strange at all. I kept noticing different little things. A needlepoint pillow that said Mirror, mirror on the wall, I am my mother after all. A Hallmark greeting card propped up on the mantel. I looked at it, saw it was unsigned. Was that anything? Probably not. But maybe. You never know.