"Hi, Rol. You bet."

Detective Roland Bell unbuttoned his jacket and she caught a glimpse of his belt. He, too, in accordance with regs, was weaponless but she noticed two empty holsters on Bell's midriff. She remembered when they worked together they often compared stories of "driving nails," a southernism for shooting—one of his hobbies and for Sachs a competitive sport.

Two men who'd also been in the prisoner interview room joined them. One was in a suit, a detective she'd met before. Crew-cut Luis Martinez, a quiet man with fast, careful eyes.

The second man wore Saturday business clothes: khaki slacks and a black Izod shirt, under a faded windbreaker. He was introduced to Sachs as Charles Grady though Sachs knew him by sight; the assistant district attorney was a celebrity among New York law enforcers. The lean, middle-aged Harvard Law grad had remained in the D.A.'s office long after most prosecutors had fled to more lucrative pastures. "Pit bull" and "tenacious" were just two of the many clichés the press regularly applied to him. He was likened favorably to Rudolph Giuliani; unlike the former mayor, however, Grady had no political aspirations.

He was content to stay in the prosecutor's office and pursue his passion, which he described simply as "putting bad guys in jail."

And which he happened to be damn good at; his conviction record was one of the best in the history of the city.

Bell was here thanks to Grady's current case. The state was prosecuting a forty-five-year-old insurance agent who lived in a small rural town in upstate New York. Andrew Constable was known less for writing homeowners policies, though, than for his local militia group, the Patriot Assembly. He was charged with conspiracy to commit murder and hate crimes and the case had been moved down here on a change-of-venue motion.

As the trial date approached, Grady had begun to get death threats. Then a few days ago the prosecutor had received a call from the office of Fred Dellray, an FBI agent who often worked with Rhyme and Sellitto. Dellray was currently in parts unknown on a classified anti-terrorist assignment but fellow agents had learned that a serious attempt on Grady's life might be imminent. Thursday night or early Friday morning Grady's office had been burglarized. At that point the decision was made to call Roland Bell.

The soft-spoken North Carolina native's official assignment was working Homicide and other major crimes with Lon Sellitto. But he also headed up an unofficial division of NYPD detectives known as SWAT, which wasn't the same famous acronym that every viewer of Cops knows; this version stood for the "Saving the Witness's Ass Team."

Bell had, as he expressed it, "this sorta knack for keeping people alive other people want dead."

The result was that in addition to his regular investigation caseload with Sellitto and Rhyme, Bell ended up doing double duty running the protection detail.