The line had meant several things to Herman Sachs. Certainly it could refer to his job, their job—he too had been a cop, a portable, walking his beat in the Deuce, Times Square, at a time when the murder rate in the city was at an all-time high. Fast of foot, fast of thought, fast of eye could keep you alive.

Life in general too. Moving… The briefer you were a target for any harm, the better, whether from lovers, bosses, rivals. He’d recited those words a lot, up until he died (some things, your own failing body, for instance, you can’t outrun).

But all cases require backgrounding and paperwork and that was particularly true in this one, where facts were hard to come by and the crime scene inaccessible. So Sachs was in desk job prison at the moment, plowing through documents and canvassing—discreetly—via phone. She turned from the board and sat once more as she absently dug a thumbnail into the quick of a finger. Pain spread. She ignored it. A faint swirl of red appeared on a piece of intelligence she was reading and she ignored this too.

Some of the tension was due to the Overseer, which was how Sachs had come to think of Nance Laurel. She wasn’t used to anyone looking over her shoulder, even her superiors—and as a detective third, Amelia Sachs had a lot of those. Laurel had fully moved in now—with two impressive laptops up and running—and had had even more thick files delivered.

Was she going to have a folding cot brought in next?

The unsmiling, focused Laurel, on the other hand, wasn’t the least edgy. She hunched over documents, clattered away loudly and irritatingly at the keyboards and jotted notes in extremely small, precise lettering. Page after page was examined, notated and organized. Passages on the computer screen were read carefully and then rejected or given a new incarnation via the laser printer and joined their comrades in the files of People v. Metzger, et al.

Sachs rose, walked to the whiteboards again and then returned to the dreaded chair, trying to learn what she could about Moreno’s trip to New York on April 30 through May 2. She’d been canvassing hotels and car services. She was getting through to human beings about two-thirds of the time, leaving messages the rest.

She glanced across the room toward Rhyme; he was on the phone, trying to get the Bahamian police to cooperate. His expression explained that he wasn’t having any more luck than she was.