“Well, we rolled it up and we found something underneath.”

“What did you find?”

A crackling on the line covered the pause for a few seconds. “There was a hole cut into the floor.”

“A hole?”

“More like a door,” Maria Caruso said. “A big square door cut into the wood planking. Maybe three-by-three feet. An access door to a crawlspace.”

“Did you open the door?”

“We did.”

Time stalled again. For a moment, Jessica wondered if the connection had failed. “Officer?”

“I went down there. It was bad.”

It was as flat a statement of fact as Jessica had ever heard. A blank, reluctant declaration, as if the young woman wanted to take it all back. “You went down there?”

“Yes ma’am. And my boss, Sergeant Reed, well, he’ll be calling Sergeant Buchanan any second now. I just thought you might want a heads-up on this. I hope I don’t get into any trouble.”

“You won’t,” Jessica said, although she could not guarantee this. “A heads-up on what?”

“You should… well, you’ll see.”

“Okay,” Jessica said. “Thanks for calling.”

“Sure.”

Jessica hung up, called Byrne’s cell phone, got his voice mail, left a message. A minute later she tried again. Same result.

A big square door cut into the wood planking.

Jessica flipped through Caitlin O’Riordan’s case files, rereading some of the witness interviews. There were a number of them. Every so often she’d glance up, waiting for Ike Buchanan to step out of his office, catch her eye.

It was bad.

THE EXTERIOR OF 4514 SHILOH STREET looked essentially the same as it had when they were there the day before, save for the two CSU vans and three sector cars. There were a few more teddy bears at the Florita Ramos memorial next door, a few more flowers. Someone had left a pink panda. It still had the price tag on it. A crowd was assembling across the street.

Byrne still had not called back. For the moment, Jessica was working solo. She hated it.

Having changed from her skirt and blouse into a comfortable pair of Levi’s, Jessica exited her car, clipped her badge on her belt, slipped under the bright yellow tape. She was briefed by Sgt. Thad Reed, the day-work commander of the Crime Scene Unit. All Jessica knew was that they had a female DOA in the crawlspace of the building. According to Reed, nothing down there had been disturbed. Photos and video had been taken.

Jessica looked at the sky. The temperature was a tolerable but humid eighty.

Still no rain.

Officer Maria Caruso was off duty, but it appeared that she couldn’t bring herself to leave. Jessica understood. When you’re young, you get emotionally protective of crime scenes. Every cop had been in that position. If Officer Caruso was ordered off the premises, Jessica had the feeling she would step a few inches past the crime-scene tape and observe, like the ever-growing throng.

Jessica took the young woman lightly by the arm, led her a few doorways south.

“Are you okay?” Jessica asked.

Maria Caruso nodded, a little too forcefully. Jessica wondered whom she was trying to convince.

“I’m good, ma’am.”

Officer Caruso looked better than she had sounded on the phone. On the other hand, she’d had twenty minutes or so to suck it up.

“You found the body?”

Officer Caruso nodded again. She took a few quick breaths.

“Did you disturb anything?”

“No ma’am.”

“Gloves on?”

“Yes.”

Jessica looked at the building, back. She took out her notebook, flipped to a blank page, slipped a rubber band around it. Old habit. She always had a rubber band or two on her somewhere. There was usually one around one of her wrists.

“Was it okay that I called you?” Officer Caruso asked, lowering her voice.

It really wasn’t, but Jessica wasn’t going to get into that now. The kid would learn. “Don’t worry about it.” Jessica slipped her notebook back into her pocket.

“Can I ask you something?” Jessica asked.

“Sure.”

Jessica wanted this to come out right. It might mean something to this young officer somewhere down the road. She took a second, remembering when she had been asked this very question. “Do you have ambitions on this job?”

“Ambitions?”

“What I mean is, do you see yourself on the force in ten years?”

The look on Officer Caruso’s face said that she had indeed given this a lot of thought. On the other hand, it also said that she didn’t want to just blurt out the answer. “Yes,” she finally said. “I mean, I do have ambitions, ma’am. Very much so.”

At that moment, in the diffused sunlight of the alleyway, Maria Caruso looked about sixteen. Take off, kid, Jessica thought. Hang up that belt and run. Go be a lawyer or an architect or a surgeon or a country-western singer. Make it to fifty with your sanity and all your parts intact.

“May I ask what you want to do?” Jessica asked. “What unit you want to work?”

Officer Caruso smiled, blushed. “I want to work homicides, of course,” she said. “Just like everybody else. Just like you.”

Oh, man, Jessica thought. No, no, no. She’d have to get this kid hammered one night at Finnigan’s Wake. Explain the ways of the world. For now, she decided to let it go. She glanced at the doorway. “I’d better get in there.”

“Sure,” Officer Caruso said. She looked at her watch. “I’ve got to get going anyway. I’ve got to pick up my daughter.”

“You have a little girl?”

Maria Caruso beamed. “Carmen. She’s twenty-two months. And counting.”

Jessica smiled. Twenty-two months. Spoken like a young mother trying to hang on to a child’s infancy. Jessica had done the same thing. “Well, thanks again for the good work.”

“You’re welcome.” Officer Caruso stuck out her hand. They shook hands, a little clumsily.

A few seconds later Jessica turned, walked a few feet up the cracked and baking sidewalk. She took out her notebook, glanced at her watch, noted the time, snapped the rubber band. Another old habit.

As she crossed the threshold, she turned, saw Maria Caruso getting into her own car, a ten-year-old Honda Accord. There was rust along the rocker panels, a missing hubcap, a cracked taillight held together with masking tape.

I want to work homicides, of course. Just like everybody else. Just like you.

You might want to think about that a little longer, Maria.

JESSICA LOGGED INTO THE CRIME SCENE, walked into the building. Although she had been there just a day earlier, the interior looked completely different. It was almost presentable. At least to someone thinking about renovating the place. There were still basketball-sized holes in the drywall, still an inch of grease and mold on everything, but a lot of the trash had been removed, and with it seemed to have gone ninety percent of the flies.

Jessica moved down the hallway, then the narrow wooden stairs, into the partial basement, which was now brightly lit with police lights. The floor was not poured concrete, as she might have originally guessed, but rather an old wood planking. It had at one time been painted a deep claret enamel. Before that, as the chipped-away sections told her, something that appeared to be ash gray. The walls were bare concrete block, the ceiling unfinished, just open joists, criss-crossed with one-by-three bridging, dense with cobwebs.

Jessica immediately saw what she was there to see. There was a hole cut into the center of the floor. Next to it lay a plywood square, probably the access door. There was a finger hole drilled near the center. Neither were precisely square.

The rolled-up rug was against the wall.

For the moment, there was only one other person in the basement. An experienced uniformed officer named Stan Keegan. He stood next to the access hole, hands clasped in front of him. He nodded to Jessica. “Afternoon, Detective.”