There were a number of variations on the legend, it seemed. One version included a prince and a gray wolf; another was about a firebird. One thing they agreed upon, though, was that Koschei was an evil man who terrorized the countryside, primarily young women, and could not be killed by conventional means. This was because his soul was separate from his body. As long as his soul was safe, he could not die. Except for one way, according to one of the variations. If he was stabbed in the head with a needle, it would be curtains for the big ugly guy. But only if the needle was broken.

Nice kid’s story, Abby thought. Right up there with Charlotte’s Web.

The good news was that her daughters couldn’t yet read.

BACK IN THE CAR, heading home, Abby realized she couldn’t get the melody the girls had been humming at the grocery store out of her head. She knew it – recalled the piece of music the way you sometimes remember a face, like a person who was present during something important in your life: wedding, funeral, graduation. It was so melancholy, Abby doubted it was a wedding. The song was too gloomy.

She realized the only way to get a song out of her head was to replace it with something else. She flipped on the radio, dialed to a Nineties oldie station. Good enough.

Twenty minutes later they pulled into the drive. The sun was out, and the girls were giggling over something secret, as they often did. As Abby unloaded the groceries she’d found that the mysterious tune had left her, but for some reason the sense of unease had not.

♥ Uploaded by Coral ♥

PART TWO

SIX

The borough of Queens is the largest of the five boroughs of New York City, and the city’s second most populous. It sits on the westernmost section of Long Island, and is home to both LaGuardia and JFK airports, as well as the US Open for tennis. At one time or another the borough had been the residence of a number of celebrities, both famous and infamous, including Tony Bennett, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, and John Gotti. It was by far the most culturally diverse borough, boasting more than one hundred nationalities.

The office of the district attorney, a modern ten-story building located in Kew Gardens, looked as if it had been built by five different architects and builders, composed of a series of additions added in different eras, a pastiche of style, materials, and methods. One of the busiest DA’s offices in the country, it was home to more than three hundred attorneys, and five hundred support personnel.

The Major Crimes, Investigations, Trials, Special Prosecutions and Legal Affairs divisions of the office were responsible not only for the prosecution of arrest cases brought to the office by the New York City Police Department and other law enforcement agencies, but also for proactively seeking out wrongdoers and aggressively undertaking investigations of suspected criminal conduct.

The DA’s office, too, boasted its own stars. Frank O’Connor, a former Queens District Attorney, figured prominently in the 1956 Alfred Hitchcock film The Wrong Man.

To some, mostly those who were not inside the elite divisions of the office, the building was called the Palace. Those who did work in Major Crimes never did anything to discourage the practice. And while a palace can really only boast one king – in this case it was the District Attorney, Dennis R. McCaffrey – it can have a number of princes.

When Michael Roman, inarguably the most favored prince at the bar, arrived at the Palace on the day before the Ghegan trial was scheduled to begin, there were only a handful of people. If Saturdays turned the New York legal system into a ghost town, Sundays rendered it virtually barren. Only the newest and most ambitious young attorneys, along with royalty like Michael Roman, ventured into the office. The second floor was all but deserted.

As much as Michael enjoyed the buzz and noise of the office when it was in full swing, he had to admit he liked having the place to himself. He did his best thinking on the weekends. There was a time when the DA’s Homicide division was located in a dumpy little building in Jamaica that looked like a check-cashing store and, for a number of prosecutors, Michael included, it was almost a pleasure to try cases out there, off the beaten path, away from the boss’s scrutinizing eye.

After five years of working in these trenches, vaulting his way up from the Intake Bureau to the Felony Trial Bureau, Michael cemented his reputation with the trial and conviction of the Patrescu brothers, a pair of vicious drug dealers who had cold bloodedly murdered six people in the basement of a fast food restaurant in the Forest Hills section of Queens. Michael and Tommy Christiano had worked nights and weekends on that case, backed by a capital investigation team with hundreds of detectives from the DA’s office and the NYPD.

Marku Patrescu was currently serving six life sentences in the Clinton Correctional Facility, better known as Dannemora. His brother Dante, who had pulled the trigger, had been executed that March. After Dante’s sentence was carried out, Michael began to hear interesting stories from DAs all over the city. It seemed that apprehended suspects, in a wide range of crimes – rapes, assaults, robberies – cited the Patrescu execution as a major reason not to carry a weapon, or use a weapon in their possession during the commission of a felony. It was this sort of evidence of cause and effect for which prosecutors live.

The same team that worked tirelessly to convict the Patrescu brothers helped put Patrick Sean Ghegan behind bars. Ghegan’s trial began in just over twenty-four hours. Michael had everything in place – the ballistic evidence tying Ghegan’s weapon to the crime, a line-up that positively identified Ghegan as the man who had been observed threatening Colin Harris in his florist shop, along with surveillance camera footage that showed Ghegan entering the store moments before the murder.

The only thing Michael did not have, not in the sense he needed, was Falynn Harris, the daughter of the slain man. Falynn, whose mother had died in a car accident when she was only six, had not spoken a single word since the day she saw her father die in a hail of bullets.

Today would be Michael’s last opportunity to get Falynn to talk.

Michael knew why he was so driven on this case. It was hardly a secret around the office. Falynn’s story was not that different from his own. He had ridden shotgun on every detail leading up to the prosecution, had walked the evidence through the firearms unit, had personally interviewed everyone involved. Michael Roman was known throughout the Palace as the kind of prosecutor who liked to tie down evidentiary details even before charges were returned.

Michael had already met with Falynn six times, once bringing her to his house in Eden Falls, hoping that spending some time with Charlotte and Emily and Abby might open her up. No such luck. Each time she sat, curled into a ball, completely closed off from the world, embraced by the cold arms of grief.

Unless there was a continuance, today would probably be Michael’s last chance to prepare her for testimony. She had been subpoenaed by the defense, the judge had already ruled on the matter, and whether Michael liked it or not, she was going to take the stand.

SHE LOOKED YOUNGER than fourteen, even younger than she had the last time Michael had seen her. She was slight and gamine, with light brown eyes and curly chestnut hair. She wore faded jeans and a burgundy sweatshirt, battered Frye boots, at least three sizes too big for her. Michael wondered if the boots had belonged to her father, if she had wadded-up paper towels in the toes.

Then there was that face. The face of a sad angel.