Two hours on, still no positive identification has been made. Despite numerous excellent prints having been acquired from the Hi-Top, CSU has so far made no matches to databases in the U.S. or Europe. FaceRec continues to yield zip. Even the woman’s personal effects come up goose eggs. No ID, no phone. She has a wallet but it’s as scrubbed as her identity on the web and in the administrative world—no credit cards, no family snapshots, not even cash, just street scrip, traceable to nowhere and nothing.

I have gleaned only two insights in my initial three hours as our female’s guardian. The first comes in the ambulance.

PARAMEDIC #1

Hey, Detective . . . want something for your report?

The medic turns the unconscious woman’s left wrist into the light.

Suicide scars.

PARAMEDIC #2

Pro-style. Not across the veins but parallel.

The second medic calls my attention to the scar tissue. It has faded to differing hues.

PARAMEDIC #2

Multiple attempts. On both wrists. And take a squint at this.

Along the length of both forearms: burn scars.

ME

From which you conclude what?

PARAMEDIC #2

Self-mutilation?

(shrugs)

This babe’s had a rough life.

The woman remains unconscious throughout the ambulance trip and for twenty-four minutes by my watch after entry to the ER. I have handcuffed her per protocol. When the medics settle her on a gurney, I secure her by one wrist to the rail. Down the hall we troop toward an examination room. Suddenly our woman snaps alert. It takes her several seconds to realize where she is. Then, with a cry like an animal, she claws herself upright, yanks the IV tube from her arm, and catapults off the trolley.

The cuff on her left wrist jerks her back. The gurney totters. I tackle her from one side; a six-foot orderly undercuts her from the other. Two nurses right the rolling rig and expertly flip her back onto it. Apparently they have done this before.

I don’t know what juice they inject our woman with, but her eyeballs roll back into their sockets like pinballs. She drops dead-weight onto the trolley. A second IV, this time delivering a stronger punch, is affixed.

Another hour passes in paperwork (for me and the patrol officer from the Six-Six) and medical evaluations for the woman. A team from DivSix arrives—Kiriakin and two Second Graders, both of whom have hit on me in the past and now hate my guts. They dismiss the patrol officer and turn to shoo me.

SECOND GRADER #1

The girl’s ours now, Dewey. Take a hike.

ME

I’m here till Manning relieves me.

Kiriakin gets on the horn to Gleason, who’s on-site at the Rebbe’s now and can’t or won’t respond. Gleason’s tech sergeant, though, reminds me on his own that the SWAT raid on the Russian Mafia is slated for 2230 tomorrow, with prep commencing four hours from now at Emergency Service Unit, Brooklyn South.

KIRIAKIN