“Two,” the EMT said. “Get the fuck out of the doorway! We got an injured woman coming through.”

The second EMT pulled an oxygen mask out of his bag, held it at the ready.

The cops backed off onto the porch.

“Three.”

We lifted her, and her body felt far too light in my arms, as if it had never moved or jumped or danced.

We settled her onto the stretcher and the second EMT clamped the oxygen mask down over her face and yelled, “Coming through,” and they pulled her down the hall and onto the porch.

Phil and I followed and the moment I stepped out onto the icy porch I heard the sounds of at least twenty weapons being cocked and aimed in my direction.

“Put the guns down and drop to your fucking knees!”

I knew better than to argue with nervous cops.

I placed my gun and Dunn’s on the porch and knelt over them and held my hands up.

Phil was too worried about Angie to think that they could be talking to him too.

He took two steps after her stretcher and a cop clubbed his collarbone with a shotgun butt.

“He’s the husband,” I said. “He’s the husband.”

“Shut the fuck up, asshole! Keep your fucking hands in the air. Do it! Do it! Do it!”

I did. I remained kneeling as the cops moved cautiously closer and the bitter air found my bare feet and thin shirt and the paramedics lifted Angie into the back of the ambulance and took her away.

35

By the time the cops sorted everything out, Angie was in her second hour of surgery.

Phil was allowed to leave around four, after he’d called City Hospital, but I had to stick around and walk four detectives and a nervous young ADA through everything.

Timothy Dunn’s body had been found stuffed naked into a trash barrel by the swing sets in the Ryan Playground. The assumption was that Evandro had lured him there by doing something suspicious enough to catch Dunn’s eye, but not so obvious as to be taken as a direct threat or sign of danger.

A white sheet was found hanging from the basketball hoop that would have been directly in Dunn’s field of vision from his unmarked cruiser. A man hanging a sheet to a hoop at 2:00 A.M. on an icy night could conceivably have been odd enough to draw a young cop’s curiosity, but not a call for backup.

The sheet froze to the pole and hung there, a diamond of white against a pewter sky.

Dunn had been approaching the playground steps when Evandro came up behind him and buried the stiletto in his right ear.

The man who shot Angie had come in through the back door. His footprints—size eight—were found all over the back yard, but disappeared on Dorchester Avenue. The alarms Erdham had installed were rendered useless by the blackout, and all the man had to do was pick a second-rate bolt lock on the back door and walk on in.