“Let’s get comfortable, Alex. We have some time to kill.”

The three of us went up to the corner together to buy coffee. “I’ll sit at this end of the street,” Mike said. “Better chance she’d be coming from Lex than Third, either by bus or subway. You and Mercer should be right in front of the building, so you can run interference before she gets inside.”

It was a beautiful fall afternoon, crisp and clear, and we leaned against the hood of Mercer’s car, talking about the events of the last month, catching up on Vickee and their young son, Logan.

“Now you see why stakeouts are so tedious,” Mercer said, stretching his arms and straightening his back. “Give it another hour and then go on home. I’ll call you when we see Tina.”

“I can’t take the chance she’ll batten down the hatches again. Battaglia’s ripped.”

We took turns walking up and down the street just to stay alert. I checked with Laura for my messages and made calls on several of my cases. The air chilled a bit as the sun slipped behind the tall apartments that lined Central Park West, and I bought another round of coffee before settling in to the front seat of Mercer’s car.

“What have you got?” Mercer said, flipping open his cell phone. He listened and then answered. “I see him coming.”

It was after six o’clock when Tina Barr’s neighbor, Billy Schultz, approached the building from Lexington Avenue. He jogged up the front steps, unlocked the door, and went in. Within the hour, an older couple got out of a taxicab and made their way inside, too. A minute later, a light went on in the third-floor window facing the street.

I heard the sirens before I saw the flashing strobes of the patrol cars that raced into the narrow one-way block from each direction, coming to a stop nose to nose with each other in front of Barr’s building.

The passenger in each RMP dashed out of his car and bolted up the steps. Someone-it looked like Schultz’s head framed in the narrow space-opened the door, and they disappeared inside.

Mercer was running across the street as I opened my car door, shouting at me. “Stay put!”

Mike raced downhill from the corner, then took the steps two at a time and pushed through the door that had been propped open by one of the cops. I could see the glimmer of the gold detective shield he had palmed.

A crowd began to collect around the front of the building-people on their way home, going out for dinner, heading for a run in the park, or walking dogs.

I tried to get past the driver of the patrol car who had stationed himself at the building’s entrance, but he didn’t know me and refused to let me in. I showed him my ID, but he wasn’t interested in admitting me without orders from a higher-ranking officer.

“You trolling for bodies, Alex?” I turned at the sound of Ray Peterson’s voice.

The lieutenant in charge of the homicide squad had pulled in behind one of the RMPs. He had been at too many crime scenes in his career to feel the need to rush, taking his time for a last drag on his cigarette before nodding at the uniformed cop.

“What do you know, Loo?” I was already feeling guilty about not having pushed Tina to talk to me, and now I was panicked at the thought that her attacker had returned. “Is it Tina Barr?”

“That your vic from last night?” Peterson said, patting my back. “We got a corpse, but she doesn’t fit that ’scrip. Mike’s in there now.”

“Yes, we were waiting together for Barr to get home.”

“What’s he doing leaving you outside with the riffraff? C’mon in. I’m sure you’ve seen worse.”

The officer stepped aside as Peterson guided me up the steps. The commotion was downstairs, and the door to Barr’s apartment was open. Peterson led me in, through the little room where I had talked with the distraught woman. Tables and bookcases were overturned, as though the apartment had been ransacked.

Peterson continued down the narrow hallway. I glanced into the bedroom as we passed it, noting the disarray, including empty dresser drawers dumped on the floor.

“Chapman?” Peterson called out as he approached the kitchen.

“Come ahead. I’m out back, in the garden,” Mike said. He must have seen me when he looked up to answer the lieutenant. “For Chrissakes, Loo, what’d you bring Coop in for? It looks like a slaughterhouse.”

Mercer tried to intercept us before I saw the body, but he was too late. The dead woman was lying facedown, spread-eagled on the wide wooden planks of the kitchen floor, her head split open like a ripe melon. Blood spatter streaked the refrigerator and dotted the ceiling, and what hadn’t spurted upward was pooled around her head.

I closed my eyes as Mercer pressed me against his chest. “The lady’s too tall to be Barr.”

“Who is she?” I asked.

“Don’t know yet. Mike’s talking to Billy Schultz.”

No matter how many crime scenes, autopsies, or morgue visits came up in the course of my work, the individual horror of each circumstance never lost its impact. Peterson liked to tell his men it was time to hang up the job the moment that happened.

I looked again, taking deep breaths to calm myself. There would be a wait for the medical examiner on call, and for CSU to process the apartment and photograph the body. All necessary, but it seemed so cruel to leave her in that position, as a deadly exhibit for the trail of investigators who would be summoned to ferret out clues.

“When do you figure she died, Mercer?”

“It’s not what you’re thinking, Alex. It didn’t happen on your watch. There’s rigor, and she’s been cooling down. Maybe late morning.”

It didn’t help to know the body had been there while we had been sitting outside, across the street, for close to five hours.

“Do you remember seeing anyone leave the building?”

“Not a soul,” Mercer said. “You okay, Alex? Let’s go. C’mon, now-you can’t help the lady.”

I wondered who the woman was and what connected her to Tina Barr. She looked seven or eight years older than I-in her mid-forties, perhaps-and almost as tall as my five foot ten. She was dressed in a well-tailored black wool suit, an expensive one, if I was not mistaken. While one shoe was still in place, the other appeared to have come off as the blow to the back of the head knocked her to the floor.

“I’m coming,” I said softly, putting my hands in my pants pocket so that Mike and Mercer, always trying to protect me from the atrocities of our chosen jobs, couldn’t see them shaking.

Mike and the lieutenant were huddled in the small backyard behind Barr’s apartment, talking with Billy Schultz. He was explaining to Peterson what he must have told Mike minutes ago.

“No, it’s not usual for me, if that’s where you’re going. I’m not a peeper,” Schultz said, sort of bobbing in place while he responded to questions. “I poured myself a drink when I got home, came to sit here for a while-won’t be many more nights so mild I can do that.”

There was a wooden staircase leading down from his first-floor apartment, and two folding beach chairs with a table between them. There was an empty tumbler and an iPod resting beside it.

“Ms. Barr’s rear door was open?” Peterson asked.

“Not wide open. It was ajar, which was strange, considering there were no lights on in the kitchen. After what happened here the other night, I didn’t want to take any chances.”

I was standing behind Mike as he asked the questions. “Tell the lieutenant exactly what you did.”

Schultz took a handkerchief out and blew his nose. “Sorry. I’ve never seen anything like this before. I-uh-I called out Tina’s name. Two, maybe three times. When she didn’t answer, I pushed the door in a bit more and said her name again. There was no answer, so I turned on the light-and, well, that’s when I saw the body.”

“Then?”

“I took a few steps in. I was-um-you guys do this every day, but I was pretty overwhelmed.”