Long corridors, elegant stairwells, not-bad old watercolors on the walls—someone had draped fake-pine-needle garlands between them, for that discreet balance of festive and somber. Even the actual morgue, a long room with ceiling moldings and high windows, would be beautiful if it weren’t for the little details: the thick chilly air, the smell, the stark tiles on the floor, the rows of steel drawers lining one wall. A plaque between drawers said, in neat engraved letters, FEET FIRST. NAME TAG ON HEAD.

Cooper pursed his lips thoughtfully at the drawers and ran a finger along the line, one eye half closed. “Our new Jane Doe,” he said. “Ah, yes,” and he stepped forward and pulled a drawer open in one long flourish.

There’s a switch you learn to flick, very early on in Undercover. It gets easier, maybe too easy, with time: one click, somewhere in a corner of your mind, and the whole scene unfolds at a distance on a pretty little screen, in living color, while you watch and plan your strategies and give the characters a nudge now and then, alert and absorbed and safe as a general. The ones who don’t find the switch fast wind up in new squads, or in the ground. I flicked that switch and looked.

The bones were arranged perfectly, on their slab of metal; almost artistically, like the ultimate jigsaw puzzle. Cooper and his crew had cleaned them up somehow, but they were still brownish and greasy-looking, except for the two neat rows of teeth, Colgate white. The thing looked a million times too small and fragile to be Rosie. For a split second, a part of me even hoped.

Somewhere out on the street a bunch of girls were laughing, high helpless shrieks, faint through the thick glass. The room felt too bright; Cooper was just an inch too close, watching me just a hair too intently. He said, “The remains are those of a young adult white female, between five feet six inches and five feet nine inches tall, of medium to strong build. The development of the wisdom teeth and the incomplete fusion of the epiphyses place her age between eighteen and twenty-two.”

He stopped there. He waited till he made me ask, “Can you tell for sure if it’s Rose Daly?”

“No dental X-rays are available, but records show that Rose Daly had one filling, in a rear right lower molar. The decedent also has one filling, in the same tooth.”

He took the jawbone between his thumb and finger, levered it downwards and pointed into the mouth.

I said, “So do other people.”