Inside, butterflies took to the breeze. From somewhere came the sound of Peter Tosh’s “Glass House”.

“Des.”

Detective Desiree Powell opened her eyes. It was not Lucien. It was Marco Fontova. If her chest had not been on fire, if it did not feel as if someone had deposited a grand piano on her ribs, and then weighted that down with anvils, and then had the entire New York Rangers team work out on it, she might have laughed. She passed out again, but could not find Lucien.

Gone.

SHE DRIFTED BACK. It took a while to find a sound within her. “How long have I been out?” she asked. Her voice sounded like someone else’s, like an old scratchy recording from the Twenties.

Fontova looked at his watch. His face betrayed his fear, his concern for her. It was sweet. “I don’t know.”

“Why did you look at your watch if you don’t know?”

“I don’t know.”

“Am I bleeding out?”

Fontova shook his head. “No.”

There was someone standing behind Fontova, a blond female paramedic, too young and pretty to be in this line of work. As Powell struggled to sit up, the young EMT told her to stay down, but it wasn’t going to happen. Fontova helped Desiree into a sitting position. With a great deal of pain she leaned against the wall. The room began to spin and, for a moment, she felt the nausea creep. She took a moment, waited it out. She then reached behind her. Something was wrong. “Where’re my cuffs?”

Fontova looked away, then back. He was never good at telling her bad news. “I think they were taken,” he said. “Your badge too.”

“Motherfucker.”

Fontova raised an eyebrow. “I think that might be two dollars.”

“Mother is not a swear word.”

“I think it’s the intent, though.”

The sickness came over her in a foul rush. Powell choked back the bile. She glanced to her left, saw the Kevlar vest they had taken off her. It was ripped and dented. “Jesus.”

“You okay?” Fontova asked.

Powell just glared at him.

“Okay. Well. There’s something you should see.”

“Where?”

Fontova pointed at the steps. Powell looked up. “That might take a while. Like maybe a week.”

“Hang on,” Fontova said. He stood up, took the stairs two at a time, probably in an attempt to show off to the pretty blond paramedic. When he returned a few minutes later, he held his cellphone in front of him. Powell glanced at the screen. There, in living color – mostly red – was a dead male body, slumped in a closet. It looked like his face had been carved by a meat slicer.

“Jesus Christ.”

“The bedroom looks like a slaughterhouse.”

Powell looked more closely at the small screen. The DOA could have been anyone. “Is it Michael Roman?”

Fontova shook his head, held up an evidence bag. In it was an oversized leather wallet, connected to a chain. “His name was Nikolai Udenko.”

“Did you run him?”

Fontova nodded. “Small timer. Did a stretch at Rikers for assault. No wants or warrants.”

“Then why is he dead in this pretty house?”

Fontova had no answer.

“Ma’am?”

Powell glanced over at the paramedic. She hated being called ma’am, but this kid looked twenty-four, and Powell figured it was the right term. “Yeah?”

“I should really take a look at those ribs.”

TEN MINUTES LATER, while an EMT team wrapped her damaged – probably broken – ribs, Powell tried to put it all together.

Since she’d gotten the assignment, she was certain she had the starting point of this case. She believed it was the point where all homicide investigations began, that being with the murder itself. Elementary this, no?

No. Not always.

“We got a call from the 105,” Fontova said, sitting at the dining-room table, looking the other way while Desiree Powell – wearing just her bra on top – got swaddled in Ace bandages. “It seems that a uniformed officer talked to a man up there at one of the pay-and-play motels along Hampstead. They’d gotten a call of two men fighting in the parking lot.”

“What about it?” All three words hurt. Powell winced. The paramedic helped her slip her blouse back on.

“The officer said the guy did not have any ID on him, but identified himself as a Queens prosecutor.”

“A prosecutor?”

Fontova nodded. “The guy said his name was Michael Roman.”

“Okay.”

“They checked him out, let him slide. But the officer said they pulled around the back of the motel and watched the guy drive away. He was driving a 1999 Ford Contour.”

“He run the plate?”

Fontova looked at his notes. “Yeah. It comes back to a company called Brooklyn Stars.”

“What the hell is that, a Roller Derby Team?”

“Small car dealership in Greenpoint. Probably a chop shop. I checked it out. Guess who owns the place?”

Powell would have thrown up her hands if it wouldn’t have sent her into paroxysms of agony. “I am in a world of hurt. Don’t make me guess.”

“Nikolai Udenko.”

“Our friendly neighborhood DOA?”

“The same.”

Powell glanced out the window. Her chest was aflame. But that didn’t stop the wheels from turning.

“So let me get this straight. We’ve got a torture homicide up in the 114, the victim a shady lawyer tied to ADA Michael Roman – a man who I might add was spotted this afternoon on Hampstead Avenue, driving a car that belonged to a man we just found sliced and diced in the aforementioned Mr Roman’s lovely suburban house.”

“Yep.”

“A house inside which I talked to his rabbit-eyed wife before taking three –”

“Four.”

“Four slugs to the vest.” Powell shifted her weight in the chair. For some reason, learning about the fourth shot made her ribs even worse. “And now the wife and daughters are gone.”

“In the wind.”

Powell thought it might take a calculator to add all this up. “Some fuckery this.”

“That’s exactly what I was gonna say, but I gave that word in all its forms up for Lent.”

Fontova held up a second evidence bag, this one containing what looked to Powell like a .25 semi-auto.

“That was my ticket to heaven?” Powell asked.

“Yep.”

“That bitty thing? I’m almost embarrassed.” The truth was, a .25 could drop you just like a .38, depending on the load. Powell thanked the Lord it was only a twenty-five. At the range at which she had been shot, the vest might not have saved her if it had been anything bigger.

“I called in the serial number,” Fontova said. “And it turns out this here belly gun is registered to none other than one Abigail Reed Roman, RN, thirty-one, of Eden Falls, New York.”

Powell just looked at her partner. “Now, you’re just a handbook of police procedure aren’t you?”

“Tell the world, chica.”

“Well I may not know much, but I’m sure of one thing,” Powell said, struggling to her feet.

“What’s that?”

“I know she didn’t pull the trigger.”

AS THE SHOOTING TEAM headed up to Eden Falls, Powell got on her cellphone to Lieutenant John Testa, the commanding officer of the Queens Homicide Squad. Testa was a supple sixty, with a full head of silver hair and burnished little gray eyes that could make you confess to something you never did. He had an unrequited thing for Desiree, and therefore she could usually wrap him around her finger. After assuring her supervisor that she was fine (she was not), and pleading with him to not pull her in (she hated begging), she told him the facts as they knew them. Except in detail about how her chest felt like she had been kicked for a forty-nine-yard field gold and it hurt to even hold the cellphone. Testa caved, let her stay on the street.

As promised, five minutes later, he issued an arrest warrant for Michael Roman.

FORTY-FIVE

Michael drove two miles under the speed limit, coming to a full stop at stop signs and red lights. He was usually a careful driver, especially with the girls in the car, but today there were more reasons to be cautious. He did not know if there were wants and warrants on him yet. He had to be where he was going, but he had to get there.