I tore at my stomach, trying to rip the bloody dress in half. Had Hellida been responsible for my clothes, her ironclad stitching would have dragged me to my grave. But I have always preferred to mend my dresses myself, and there are few women in New York as lazy with a needle. The seams ripped, the buttons popped, and I flew to the surface like a champagne cork, in a slip as thin as paper.

The current carried me two piers south, and it took effort before I was able to wrap my arms around a shard of soft timber, spending a few grateful minutes enjoying the rank city air. Once the black spots in my vision retreated, I squinted toward Copeland’s body. A man stood over it, tattered overalls dangling from his bare shoulder. He prodded the corpse with his foot.

I inched down the piling, as low as I could get. A few ounces of foul water shot up my nose. I coughed, and the man on the docks looked my way. He squinted, and I prepared to swim for my life. Before I did, though, a stout man bounded out of the yacht, a crate over his shoulder. They walked away, and I saw that the box was marked with a symbol that sent a jagged wave of heartburn surging up from my stomach: the brand of the bloody fist.

Then they were gone, and the river felt as cold as the blood racing through my heart. I hauled my sopping body onto the nearest pier. The sun dried what remained of my clothes within minutes, and I began to sweat again. I didn’t mind—it meant I was still breathing.

An old, familiar feeling came back to me, a feeling I had arranged my life to avoid. It was more than fear. It was the sensation of being trapped by deadly coincidence, caught in a battle that I had not started, and that I did not want to fight. That is not what tiny mysteries are about.

I was breathing almost evenly when the captain’s pier exploded. I couldn’t will my legs to stand up. I just rolled to my side and watched it burn. As the flames danced above the grimy Hudson, it occurred to me that there was no ship on the river—nothing that could have possibly cast the shadow that chilled my skin and invited me to die.

Three

Iron shutters covered the windows of the Fourth Precinct, but the door was gone. Two malnourished cops in tattered uniforms lounged on its steps, hands resting where their pistols used to be. One holster was empty; the other held only the pistol’s butt. I’d met them before, on afternoons when Lieutenant Thorne drank too much to walk. I had never been impressed.

“The tiny detective,” said Lavangetto, a slow-witted patrolman whose head was as hard and pointed as an artillery shell.