Harper was getting bustled around the crowds of rich shoppers as he headed for her car. Blue Team was just up and running at LaGuardia and Madison and the cops weren’t yet feeling the cold. But they would soon, after working all through Thanksgiving and spending hour after hour standing on the street in the ice staring at Christmas presents they couldn’t afford.

They transferred to Harper’s Buick and drove back up through the forgotten streets of Harlem. Harper was going over the case in his mind and feeling the adrenalin kick of anticipation.

‘You said you know a thing or two about this killer. Why don’t you take me through it,’ he said.

‘Okay, but I can do without the cynicism. This is my first attempt.’

‘I know you’re a rookie, that’s why I trust you. You don’t know what it feels like to be wrong yet.’

‘Well, that’s a vote of confidence I could do without.’

‘Hey, look,’ said Harper, ‘I’ve not been suspended once since I started your treatment.’

‘Yeah, and don’t think I haven’t noticed that we’re doing a lot of case work and nothing on you.’

‘I’m healed. You work quick. Take it as a compliment.’

‘Yeah, well, don’t compliment me, just listen to me. I think I’ve got seven incontrovertible facts about the killer. You want to hear them?’

‘Sure, go ahead.’

‘He’s white, mid-thirties, married, high school educated, self-controlled, and works in a sales or marketing job with some background in police or military work.’

Harper listened to the brief summary and then nodded. ‘I hope you’re right. I’ll share it with the team.’

‘You don’t want to ask questions?’

‘I figured this guy had a stable background, or at least something that appears stable on the surface. If not, he would’ve been found out years ago.’ He turned to her. ‘How are you feeling about this?’

‘More curious than scared, I think,’ said Levene.

‘Well, just hang back. A corpse can hang on your retina for a long time. Some stay for years.’

‘Yeah, I’ll do that. Thanks for the warning.’

They arrived at the near-deserted street in East Harlem and got out of the car, seeing the first officer slowly tying off a parking lot and talking into his shortwave. It was a quiet crime scene, with no traffic around - just a dirty street of unused warehouses and old abandoned shops. They could hear the pervasive roar of traffic and the echoing shouts of distant arguments, but here it was still and silent. There were a couple of detectives on the scene and a single crime scene officer.

‘What’s the story?’ asked Harper as he approached the detectives.

‘Nothing, yet. Precinct got a call about a body in a municipal dumpster, so we showed up.’

‘Who called?’

‘No name. Just gave us the location. Patrol came by about two hours ago, had a look and called us in. Might be a gangbanger, a shooting or some crack whore sleeping off her debts for the rest of eternity. Who knows?’

Tom took a look around. This was a real quiet one. Someone getting rid of a body quickly. No showmanship, wealth or extravagance like they’d been dealing with on the Upper East Side. This body was hidden. It wasn’t the American Devil’s style at all.

Denise leaned forward. ‘What’s your feeling, Tom?’

Tom shrugged his shoulders and shook his head. ‘It’s nothing like the others. The killer always left the naked body visible. He likes to show, to shock. This is off his track, too. I don’t know. Maybe it’s got nothing to do with him. Just another sad life coming to an end.’

He didn’t want to go over to the dumpster and look at the body. He breathed deeply as he took a step forward towards the crime scene detective in her whites.

‘Detective Harper, Homicide. What have you got?’

She didn’t look up. There was an expression of fierce concentration on her face.

‘Can’t see much. Strangled by the look of it. Raped, probably - at least, her pants and jeans are round her ankles. It’s difficult to tell.’

It wasn’t the answer Harper wanted. The American Devil raped and strangled his victims. Tom just wanted to be sure he could strike this one from his list. ‘Can I take a look?’

‘You want bad dreams? Go ahead.’

Tom walked over to the side of the big steel dumpster and looked in. The woman in white handed him a torch.

The beam of light caught the flat, smooth skin of the girl’s stomach. Tom passed the light over the rest of her body. A poor young life thrown out with the trash. He didn’t want Denise to see it. How can you look at the destruction that human hands can wreak and show it to someone else? That’s why cops got cynical. You had to keep it to yourself. Crime scenes were usually peopled by those who had been desensitized, and together they created a community of objective observers that protected everyone at the scene. Seeing Denise at the edge of the lot made him realize it was a good thing to keep outsiders away. They bring emotions and emotions create cracks in your own defences.

It brutalizes you, no doubt about it. You see things that take you down notch by notch until all you see around you is the human animal - an aggressive and dangerous beast.

Harper went over to Denise and took her to one side. He told her not to look.

‘What did you see? At least tell me.’ Her hand gripped his arm.

‘Caucasian female. Late teens. Bruising on the neck. Half undressed. Not a lot else.’

‘A sad end,’ said Denise. Then her mind started working. ‘Why did you think it might be him?’

Harper walked with her to the edge of the car park. He looked up at the grey fall sky splintered with dark slashes of storm clouds and wished he had faith in something. ‘I just can’t put my finger on it. But I don’t like the similarities.’

‘It’s not his signature, is it?’

‘No. It doesn’t look like it. It’s not his ritual. We’ll wait for the DNA analysis, see what this looks like. But he might change his style. He took out Williamson with arrows. He’s capable of anything.’

‘What’s your gut say?’

‘It’s telling me that I’m hungry.’

‘Mine too.’

Harper moved Denise across the parking lot as a CSU van pulled up. His eyes scanned the graffiti tags all over the dumpster as he passed by. ‘There’s no posing, no poem,’ he said, ‘but I want to look around a little more.’

Harper put Denise in a patrol car and sent her back to her car on Madison, while he watched the team arrive at the scene. Was it his elusive serial killer? He couldn’t tell. If it was, he’d suddenly taken a different approach. That didn’t help. Patterns caught killers.

Harper spent an hour walking around the scene trying to figure out what had happened. They should be able to ID her pretty quickly on the street if she was a hooker.

The car park was covered in a thin layer of sand and dust. He looked all over it, but there weren’t any car tracks at all. It was strange. How do you hump a dead body around one of the most populated cities in the world without getting seen? Then he saw something that could easily have been overlooked. Leading up to the dumpster were two small tracks about ten inches apart. Harper knelt by the tracks. A small trolley of some kind? He called the CSU detective across and asked her to get the tracks mapped and photographed.

As Harper was walking back to his car, he spotted something else so small that it might easily have been missed. Something on the ground in the dirt, caught in the wet along with the trash. Harper crossed and knelt by the kerb. He pulled on a latex glove and then reached down into the gutter and picked the thing up carefully between his thumb and forefinger. He put it to his eye and turned it. He knew what it was. It was a single pale pink petal. Harper felt the hairs on his neck prickle. Cherry blossom.

He scrambled to his feet and called Captain Lafayette. He was about to give him the whole scenario, but Lafayette broke in real fast. ‘Save it and get your ass back here. I’m watching the Madison Avenue feeds and I think we got ourselves a situation developing. We’ve got a high-heeled blonde and some guy in a black suit is following her.’