“Number 3, take one step forward.”

The man stepped forward at the same time that the door beside Sandy opened and Coletti walked in with Smithson. “Hey Sandy, I wanted to—” He stopped in midsentence when he saw that they were still in the middle of lineups. “I’m sorry,” Coletti said, turning to leave, “I thought you were done.”

“We are,” Sandy said as she glanced at James White. “None of these guys is a match, right?”

White’s face was ashen. His body was shaking. His eyes were wide with fear. Raising his cuffed hands, he looked straight ahead, as though he’d seen a ghost. Then he clutched at his chest.

“Get the doctor in here!” Sandy said as White fell to the floor and started to convulse.

“I think he’s having a heart attack!”

The detective running the lineup ran out to get help. Coletti grabbed White’s shoulders. Sandy grabbed his feet. Smithson knelt over him and applied CPR. The harder she worked, the whiter his face became. The more she tried to save him, the more afraid he looked.

James White had seen the angel of death, and his heart skipped a beat, then two, before slowing to a snail’s pace. As he moved his lips in an attempt to speak, his windpipe began to close. He shut his eyes against the pain and hoped his body would listen.

As the light in his eyes grew dim, the detective rushed back with the doctor and two patrolmen. After a few frightening moments, the doctor managed to stabilize the stricken man, who was immediately transported to nearby Jefferson Hospital.

When he was gone, Smithson turned to Sandy and Coletti, who both looked through the glass at the last man to step forward.

It was Ivan Petrov.

Charlie Mann pulled up in the loading bay at the medical examiner’s office and parked next to the police wagon that had transported Gabe’s body from the scene.

Mann watched as the autopsy technicians opened the steel double doors so the officers could carry the body inside. Then he walked in behind them.

One of the technicians looked Mann up and down, glancing disapprovingly at his hoodie, jeans, and boots.

“Detective Charles Mann, homicide,” he said, pulling a chain that held his badge from inside his hoodie. “I’m here to examine the personal effects.”

“Oh, sorry,” the technician said as he pulled out a book and donned heavy latex gloves. “I didn’t mean to stare.”

“It’s all right. I get that all the time. Even from people in the department.”

The technician opened the book in which they documented personal effects and wrote a number in the second column. A few seconds later, the investigator from the medical examiner’s office came down on the elevator.

“Sorry it took me a few minutes,” he said to the technician before turning to Mann. “How are you?”

“Overworked,” Mann said, only half joking.