The captain, a soft-spoken veteran who resembled Laurence Fishburne, was the primary assessor for the exercise and had been taking notes on her performance.

"Okay, Officer," he said, "we'll write up our results and they'll be attached to your review. But let me just say a word unofficially." Consulting his notebook. "Your threat assessment regarding civilians and officers was perfect. Calls for backup were timely and appropriate. Your deployment of personnel negated any chance the perpetrators would escape from the containment situation and yet minimized exposure. You called the illegal drug search right. And getting the personal information from the one suspect for the hostage negotiator was a nice touch. We didn't think about making that part of the exercise. But we will now. Then, at the end, well, frankly, we never thought you'd determine there was another perp in hiding. We had it planned that he'd shoot Officer Wilkins here and then we'd see how you'd handle an officer-down situation and organize a fleeing felon apprehension."

The officialese vanished and he smiled. "But you nailed the bastard."

Bang, bang.

Then he asked, "You've done the written and orals, right?"

"Yessir. Should have the results any day now."

"My group'll complete our assessment evaluation and send that to the board with our recommendations. You can stand down now."

"Yessir."

The cop who'd played the last bad guy – the one with the shotgun – wandered up to her. He was a good-looking Italian, half a generation out of the Brooklyn docks, she judged, and had a boxer's muscles. A dirty stubble of beard covered his cheeks and chin. He wore a big-bore chrome automatic high on his trim hip and his cocky smile brought her close to suggesting he might want to use the gun's reflection as a mirror to shave.

"I gotta tell ya – I've done a dozen assessments and that was the best I ever seen, babe."

She laughed in surprise at the word. There were certainly cavemen left in the department – from Patrol Services to corner offices at Police Plaza – but they tended to be more condescending than openly sexist. Sachs hadn't heard a "babe" or "honey" from a male cop in at least a year. "Let's stick with 'Officer,' you don't mind."

"No, no, no," he said, laughing. "You can chill now. The AE's over."

"How's that?"

"When I said 'babe,' it's not like it's a part of the assessment. You don't have to, you know, deal with it official or anything. I'm just saying it 'cause I was impressed. And 'cause you're… you know." He smiled into her eyes, his charm as shiny as his pistol. "I don't do compliments much. Coming from me, that's something."

'Cause you're you know…

"Hey, you're not pissed or anything, are you?" he asked.

"Not pissed at all. But it's still 'Officer.' That's what you call me and what I'll call you."

At least to your face.

"Hey, I didn't mean any offense or anything. You're a pretty girl. And I'm a guy. You know what that's like… So."

"So," she replied and started away.

He stepped in front of her, frowning. "Hey, hold on. This isn't going too good. Look, let me buy you a coffee. You'll like me when you get to know me."

"Don't bet on it," one of his buddies called, laughing.

The Babe Man good-naturedly gave him the finger then turned back to Sachs.

Which is when her pager beeped and she looked down to see Lincoln Rhyme's number on the screen. The word "URGENT" appeared after it.

"Gotta go," she said.

"So no time for that coffee?" he asked, a fake pout on his handsome face.

"No time."

"Well, how 'bout a phone number?"

She made a pistol with her index finger and thumb and aimed it at him. "Bang, bang," she said. And trotted toward her yellow Camaro.

This is a school?

Wheeling a large black crime-scene suitcase behind her, Amelia Sachs walked through the dim corridor. She smelled mold and old wood. Dusty webs had coagulated near the high ceiling and scales of green paint curled from the walls. How could anybody study music here? It was a setting for one of the Anne Rice novels that Sachs's mother read.

"Spooky," one of the responding officers had muttered, only half jokingly.

That said it all.

A half-dozen cops – four patrol officers and two in soft clothes – stood near a double doorway at the end of the hall. Disheveled Lon Sellitto, head down and hand clutching one of his notepads, was talking to a guard. Like the walls and floors the guard's outfit was dusty and stained.

Through the open doorway she glimpsed another dim space, in the middle of which was a light-colored form. The victim.

To the CS tech walking beside her she said, "We'll need lights. A couple of sets." The young man nodded and headed back to the RRV – the crime scene rapid response vehicle, a station wagon filled with forensic collection equipment. It sat outside, half on the sidewalk, where he'd parked it after the drive here (probably at a more leisurely pace than Sachs in her 1969 Camaro SS, which had averaged 70 mph en route to the school from the assessment exercise).

Sachs studied the young blonde woman, lying on her back ten feet away, belly arched up because her bound hands were underneath her. Even in the dimness of the school lobby Sachs's quick eyes noted the deep ligature marks on her neck and the blood on her lips and chin – probably from biting her tongue, a common occurrence in strangulations.

Automatically she also observed: emerald-colored studs for earrings, shabby running shoes. No apparent robbery, sexual molestation or mutilation. No wedding ring.

"Who was first officer?"

A tall woman with short brunette hair, her name tag reading D. FRANCISCOVICH, said, "We were." A nod toward her blonde partner. N. AUSONIO. Their eyes were troubled and Franciscovich played a brief rhythm on her holster with thumb and fingers. Ausonio kept glancing at the body. Sachs guessed this was their first homicide.

The two patrol officers gave their account of what had happened. Finding the perp, a flash of light, his disappearing, a barricade. Then he was gone.

"You said he claimed to have a hostage?"

"That's what he said," Ausonio offered. "But everybody in the school's accounted for. We're sure he was bluffing."

"Victim?"

"Svetlana Rasnikov," Ausonio said. "Twenty-four. Student."

Sellitto turned away from the security guard. He said to Sachs, "Bedding and Saul're interviewing everybody in the building here this morning."

She nodded toward the scene. "Who's been inside?"

Sellitto said, "The first officers." Nodding toward the women. "Then two medics and two ESU. They backed out as soon as they cleared it. Scene's still pretty clean."

"The guard was inside too," Ausonio said. "But only for a minute. We got him out as soon as we could."

"Good," Sachs said. "Witnesses?"

Ausonio said, "There was a janitor outside the room when we got here."

"He didn't see anything," Franciscovich added.

Sachs said, "I still need to see the soles of his shoes for comparison. Could one of you find him for me?"

"Sure." Ausonio wandered off.

From one of the black suitcases Sachs extracted a zippered clear plastic case. She opened it and pulled out a white Tyvek jumpsuit. Donning it, she pulled the hood over her head. Then gloves. The outfit was standard issue now for all forensics techs at the NYPD; it prevented substances – trace, hair, epithelial skin cells and foreign matter – from sloughing off her body and contaminating the scene. The suit had booties but she still did what Rhyme always insisted on – put rubber bands on her feet to distinguish her prints from the victim's and the perp's.

Mounting the earphones on her head and adjusting the stalk mike, she hooked up her Motorola. She called in a landline patch and a moment later a complex arrangement of communications systems brought the low voice of Lincoln Rhyme into her ear. "Sachs, you there?"