To the two officers she radioed, "Give him twenty. Then you're green-lighted."

At close to the ten-second mark, the man dropped the rifle and stood up, hands in the air. "No shoot, no shoot!"

"Keep those hands straight up in the air. Walk toward the corner of the building here. If you lower your hands you will be shot."

When he got to the corner Wilkins cuffed and searched him. Sachs remained crouched down. She said to the suspect, "The guy inside. Your buddy. Who is he?"

"I don't gotta tell you-"

"Yeah, you do gotta. Because if we take him out, which we are going to do, you'll go down for felony murder. Now, is that man in there worth forty-five years in Ossining?"

The man sighed.

"Come on," she snapped. "Name, address, family, what he likes for dinner, what's his mother's first name, he have relatives in the system-you can think of all kinds of real helpful stuff about him, I'll bet."

He sighed and started to talk; Sachs scribbled down the details. Her Motorola crackled. The hostage negotiator and the ESU team had just showed up in front of the building. She handed her notes to Wilkins. "Get those to the negotiator."

She read the rifleman his rights, thinking, Had she handled the situation the best way she could? Had she endangered lives unnecessarily? Should she have checked on the wounded officer herself?

Five minutes later, the supervising captain walked around the corner of the building. He smiled. "The H-T released the woman. No injuries. We've got three collared. The wounded officer'll be okay. Just a scratch."

A policewoman with short blond hair poking out from under her regulation hat joined them. "Hey, check it out. We got a bonus." She held up a large Baggie full of white powder and another containing pipes and other drug paraphernalia.

As the captain looked it over, nodding with approval, Sachs asked, "That was in their car?"

"Naw. I found it in a Ford across the street. I was interviewing the owner as a witness and he started sweating and looking all nervous so I searched his car."

"Where was it parked?" Sachs asked.

"In his garage."

"Did you call in a warrant?"

"No. Like I say, he was acting nervous and I could see a corner of the bag from the sidewalk. That's probable cause."

"Nope." Sachs was shaking her head. "It's an illegal search."

"Illegal? We pulled this guy over last week for speeding and saw a kilo of pot in the back. We busted him okay."

"It's different on the street. There's a lesser expectation of privacy in a mobile vehicle on public roads. All you need for an arrest then is probable cause. When a car's on private property, even if you see drugs, you need a warrant."

"That's crazy," the policewoman said defensively. "He's got ten ounces of pure coke here. He's a balls-forward dealer. Narcotics spends months trying to collar somebody like this."

The captain said to Sachs, "You sure about this, Officer?"

"Positive."

"Recommendation?"

Sachs said, "Confiscate the stuff, put the fear of God into the perp and give his tag number and stats to Narcotics." Then she glanced at the policewoman. "And you better take a refresher course in search and seizure."

The woman officer started to argue but Sachs wasn't paying attention.

She was surveying the vacant lot, where the perps' car rested against the Dumpster. She squinted at the vehicle.

"Officer-" the captain began.

She ignored him and said to Wilkins, "You said three perps?"

"That's right."

"How do you know?"

"That was the report from the jewelry store they hit."

She stepped into the rubble-filled lot, pulling out her Glock. "Look at the getaway car," she snapped.

"Jesus," Wilkins said.

All the doors were open. Four men had bailed.

Dropping into a crouch, she scanned the lot and aimed her gun toward the only possible hiding place nearby: a short cul-de-sac behind the Dumpster.

"Weapon!" she cried, almost before she saw the motion.

Everyone around her turned as the large, T-shirted man with a shotgun jogged out of the lot, making a run for the street.

Sachs's Glock was centered on his chest as he broke cover. "Drop the weapon!" she ordered.

He hesitated a moment then grinned and began to swing it toward the officers.

She pushed her Glock forward.

And in a cheerful voice, she said, "Bang, bang . . . You're dead."

The shotgunner stopped and laughed. He shook his head in admiration. "Damn good. I thought I was home free." The stubby gun over his shoulder, he strolled to the cluster of fellow cops beside the tenement. The other "suspect," the man who'd been in the car, turned his back so that the cuffs could be removed. Wilkins released him.

The "hostage," played by a very unpregnant Latina officer Sachs had known for years, joined them too. She clapped Sachs on the back. "Nice work, Amelia, saving my ass."

Sachs kept a solemn face, though she was pleased. She felt like a student who'd just aced an important exam.

Which was, in effect, exactly what had happened.

Amelia Sachs was pursuing a new goal. Her father, Herman, had been a portable, a beat cop in the Patrol Services Division, all his life. Sachs now had the same rank and might've been content to remain there for another few years before moving up in the department but after the September 11 attacks she'd decided she wanted to do more for her city. So she'd submitted the paperwork to be promoted to detective sergeant.

No group of law enforcers has fought crime like NYPD detectives. Their tradition went back to tough, brilliant Inspector Thomas Byrnes, named to head up the fledgling Detective Bureau in the 1880s. Byrnes's arsenal included threats, head-knocking and subtle deductions-he once broke a major theft ring by tracing a tiny fiber found at a crime scene. Under Byrnes's flamboyant guidance the detectives in the bureau became known as the Immortals and they dramatically reduced the level of crime in a city as freewheeling back then as the Wild West.

Officer Herman Sachs was a collector of police department memorabilia, and not long before he died he gave his daughter one of his favorite artifacts: a battered notebook actually used by Byrnes to jot notes about investigations.

When Sachs was young-and her mother wasn't around-her father would read aloud the more legible passages and the two of them would make up stories around them.

October 12, 1883. The other leg has been found! Slaggardy's coal bin, Five Pts, Expect Cotton Williams's confession forthwith.

Given its prestigious status (and lucrative pay for law enforcement), it was ironic that women found more opportunities in the Detective Bureau than in any other division of the NYPD. If Thomas Byrnes was the male detective icon, Mary Shanley was the female-and one of Sachs's personal heroines. Busting crime throughout the 1930s, Shanley was a boisterous, uncompromising cop, who once said, "You have the gun to use, and you may as well use it." Which she did with some frequency. After years of combating crime in Midtown she retired as a detective first-grade.

Sachs, however, wanted to be more than a detective, which is just a job specialty; she wanted rank too. In the NYPD, as in most police forces, one becomes a detective on the basis of merit and experience. To become a sergeant, though, the applicant goes through an arduous triathlon of exams: written, oral and-what Sachs had just endured-an assessment exercise, a simulation to test practical skills at personnel management, community sensitivities and judgment under fire.

The captain, a soft-spoken veteran who resembled Laurence Fishburne, was the primary assessor for the exercise and had been taking notes on her performance.

"Okay, Officer," he said, "we'll write up our results and they'll be attached to your review. But let me just say a word unofficially." Consulting his notebook.

"Your threat assessment regarding civilians and officers was perfect. Calls for backup were timely and appropriate. Your deployment of personnel negated any chance the perpetrators would escape from the containment situation and yet minimized exposure. You called the illegal drug search right. And getting the personal information from the one suspect for the hostage negotiator was a nice touch. We didn't think about making that part of the exercise. But we will now. Then, at the end, well, frankly, we never thought you'd determine there was another perp in hiding. We had it planned that he'd shoot Officer Wilkins here and then we'd see how you'd handle an officer-down situation and organize a fleeing felon apprehension."

The officialese vanished and he smiled. "But you nailed the bastard."

Bang, bang.

Then he asked, "You've done the written and orals, right?"

"Yessir. Should have the results any day now."

"My group'll complete our assessment evaluation and send that to the board with our recommendations. You can stand down now."

"Yessir."

The cop who'd played the last bad guy-the one with the shotgun-wandered up to her. He was a good-looking Italian, half a generation out of the Brooklyn docks, she judged, and had a boxer's muscles. A dirty stubble of beard covered his cheeks and chin. He wore a big-bore chrome automatic high on his trim hip and his cocky smile brought her close to suggesting he might want to use the gun's reflection as a mirror to shave.

"I gotta tell ya-I've done a dozen assessments and that was the best I ever seen, babe."

She laughed in surprise at the word. There were certainly cavemen left in the department-from Patrol Services to corner offices at Police Plaza-but they tended to be more condescending than openly sexist. Sachs hadn't heard a "babe" or "honey" from a male cop in at least a year. "Let's stick with 'Officer,' you don't mind."

"No, no, no," he said, laughing. "You can chill now. The AE's over."

"How's that?"

"When I said 'babe,' it's not like it's a part of the assessment. You don't have to, you know, deal with it official or anything. I'm just saying it 'cause I was impressed. And 'cause you're . . . you know." He smiled into her eyes, his charm as shiny as his pistol. "I don't do compliments much. Coming from me, that's something."

'Cause you're you know . . .

"Hey, you're not pissed or anything, are you?" he asked.

"Not pissed at all. But it's still 'Officer.' That's what you call me and what I'll call you."

At least to your face.

"Hey, I didn't mean any offense or anything. You're a pretty girl. And I'm a guy. You know what that's like . . . So."

"So," she replied and started away.

He stepped in front of her, frowning. "Hey, hold on. This isn't going too good. Look, let me buy you a coffee. You'll like me when you get to know me."

"Don't bet on it," one of his buddies called, laughing.

The Babe Man good-naturedly gave him the finger then turned back to Sachs.

Which is when her pager beeped and she looked down to see Lincoln Rhyme's number on the screen. The word "URGENT" appeared after it.

"Gotta go," she said.

"So no time for that coffee?" he asked, a fake pout on his handsome face.

"No time."

"Well, how 'bout a phone number?"

She made a pistol with her index finger and thumb and aimed it at him. "Bang, bang," she said. And trotted toward her yellow Camaro.

Chapter Three.

This is a school?

Wheeling a large black crime-scene suitcase behind her, Amelia Sachs walked through the dim corridor. She smelled mold and old wood. Dusty webs had coagulated near the high ceiling and scales of green paint curled from the walls. How could anybody study music here? It was a setting for one of the Anne Rice novels that Sachs's mother read.

"Spooky," one of the responding officers had muttered, only half jokingly.

That said it all.

A half-dozen cops-four patrol officers and two in soft clothes-stood near a double doorway at the end of the hall. Disheveled Lon Sellitto, head down and hand clutching one of his notepads, was talking to a guard. Like the walls and floors the guard's outfit was dusty and stained.

Through the open doorway she glimpsed another dim space, in the middle of which was a light-colored form. The victim.

To the CS tech walking beside her she said, "We'll need lights. A couple of sets." The young man nodded and headed back to the RRV-the crime scene rapid response vehicle, a station wagon filled with forensic collection equipment. It sat outside, half on the sidewalk, where he'd parked it after the drive here (probably at a more leisurely pace than Sachs in her 1969 Camaro SS, which had averaged 70 mph en route to the school from the assessment exercise).

Sachs studied the young blonde woman, lying on her back ten feet away, belly arched up because her bound hands were underneath her. Even in the dimness of the school lobby Sachs's quick eyes noted the deep ligature marks on her neck and the blood on her lips and chin-probably from biting her tongue, a common occurrence in strangulations.

Automatically she also observed: emerald-colored studs for earrings, shabby running shoes. No apparent robbery, sexual molestation or mutilation. No wedding ring.

"Who was first officer?"

A tall woman with short brunette hair, her name tag reading D. FRANCISCOVICH, said, "We were." A nod toward her blonde partner. N. AUSONIO. Their eyes were troubled and Franciscovich played a brief rhythm on her holster with thumb and fingers. Ausonio kept glancing at the body. Sachs guessed this was their first homicide.

The two patrol officers gave their account of what had happened. Finding the perp, a flash of light, his disappearing, a barricade. Then he was gone.