Dark lines under those eyes today and hopeless matte skin—smoker’s skin, she remembered from the years she went through two packs of Marlboros a day. The earring holes in her lobes had long ago grown closed.

A look out the window, past the trees, into the street in front of the town house. She caught sight of the traffic and something tugged at her mind. Something unsettling.

What? What is it?

The feeling vanished, pushed away by the ringing of the doorbell.

Percey opened the door and found two burly police officers in the entryway.

“Mrs. Clay?”

“Yes.”

“NYPD.” Showing IDs. “We’re here to keep an eye on you until we get to the bottom of what happened to your husband.”

“Come in,” she said. “Brit Hale’s here too.”

“Mr. Hale?” one of the cops said, nodding. “He’s here? Good. We sent a couple of Westchester County troopers to his place too.”

And it was then that she looked past one of the cops, into the street, and the thought popped into her mind.

Stepping around the policemen onto the front stoop.

“We’d rather you stayed inside, Mrs. Clay . . . ”

Staring at the street. What was it?

Then she understood.

“There’s something you should know,” she said to the officers. “A black van.”

“A . . . ?”

“A black van. There was this black van.”

One of the officers took out a notebook. “You better tell me about it.”

“Wait,” Rhyme said.

Lon Sellitto paused in his narration.

Rhyme now heard another set of footsteps approaching, neither heavy nor light. He knew whose they were. This was not deduction. He’d heard this particular pattern many times.

Amelia Sachs’s beautiful face, surrounded by her long red hair, crested the stairs, and Rhyme saw her hesitate for a moment, then continue into the room. She was in full navy blue patrol uniform, minus only the cap and tie. She carried a Jefferson Market shopping bag.

Jerry Banks flashed her a smile. His crush was adoring and obvious and only moderately inappropriate—not many patrol officers have a history of a Madison Avenue modeling career behind them, as did tall Amelia Sachs. But the gaze, like the attraction, was not reciprocated, and the young man, a pretty boy himself despite the badly shaved face and cowlick, seemed resigned to carrying his torch a bit longer.

“Hi, Jerry,” she said. To Sellitto she gave another nod and a deferential “sir.” (He was a detective lieutenant and a legend in Homicide. Sachs had cop genes in her and had been taught over the dinner table as well as in the academy to respect elders.)

“You look tired,” Sellitto commented.

“Didn’t sleep,” she said. “Looking for sand.” She pulled a dozen Baggies out of the shopping bag. “I’ve been out collecting exemplars.”

“Good,” Rhyme said. “But that’s old news. We’ve been reassigned.”

“Reassigned?”

“Somebody’s come to town. And we have to catch him.”