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chair at the opposite end of the table and sat down.
    “Dump job. The body was found in the Lake, but they don’t think she was killed there. I was only in the Park for half an hour, but the guys haven’t come up with much yet or they would have left me a message.”
    “Is she anybody?” Battaglia asked, thinking—no doubt—of which part of his constituency he would have to work. Priest, preacher, rabbi, councilman, community group—someone to whom he would need to express interest and give assurances that his best people would be on the case. “Do we have a name on her?”
    Of course she’s somebody. Somebody’s daughter,
I wanted to say.
She is somebody’s broken and battered child or sister or aunt or girlfriend. There’s most likely a relative who is going about the ordinary business of his or her daily life but will soon get the news that a loved one has been murdered.
    “No name. Chapman thinks she’s probably homeless.”
    “Raped?”
    “We won’t know till after the autopsy. Her skull was bashed in. No clothes on, but that could be for a variety of reasons. She was in the water for a couple of days at least.”
    “Do you want to keep it?” McKinney was directly above me in the chain of command. On many occasions he had tried to strip me of cases I wanted to handle. If the homicide victim had been sexually assaulted or killed at the hand of an intimate partner, it fell to my unit and Battaglia usually backed me.
    “I’d like to, Pat. Obviously, I don’t know what we’ve got, but chances are once we confirm an ID, a lot of the people we’ll need to talk to—the girl’s friends—are the population we’re good at dealing with.” My colleagues in sex crimes work specialized in vulnerable young women.
    “I spoke with Lieutenant Peterson a few minutes ago,” McKinney said. “He’s not thinking this will be a quick fix. Needle-in-a-haystack kind of thing. Catch a lucky break is all they can hope for. You in for the long haul?”
    “I’d like to be.”
    “Then it’s yours.”
    “Thanks.”
    Battaglia asked me a dozen more questions to which I had no answers before he dismissed me with a wave of his half-chewed cigar.
    The rest of the day flew by with phone calls and staff meetings. Most of the lawyers seemed eager to get out in time for weekend travel, and I was one of them.
    I was going to my home on Martha’s Vineyard, catching the last flight out of LaGuardia at nine P.M. with Vickee Eaton, who was Mercer’s wife and a second-grade detective assigned to the Office of the Deputy Commissioner of Public Information at One Police Plaza.
    At five, I dialed Vickee’s cell. “Do we have a plan?”
    “Our office has been totally swamped with calls about the homicide in Central Park.”
    “Does that mean we’re grounded?”
    “Not a chance. Scully and the mayor did a stand-up at City Hall an hour ago. Bare bones. Not many facts to go on. And they put out a hastily done sketch of the girl. If anyone recognizes her from this one, I’ll be amazed. No more to be said by my guys till there’s a new development.”
    “Does that mean you expected me to make the plan? ’Cause I totally dropped that ball. We can take a cab to LaGuardia.”
    “Girl, I just want to be sitting on your deck in Chilmark with an ice-cold glass of your best white wine when that full moon is straight overhead,” Vickee said. “Mercer’s picking me up behind One PP at six sharp. Meet me here. He says a quick dinner at Primola with Mike and they’ll have us both up to speed on the day’s happenings in the Park and get us to the airport in time for the flight. You cool with that?”
    “Beyond cool. See you shortly.”
    I locked up at a quarter to six, leaving behind all my case folders for a change. I couldn’t remember taking off for a weekend in months without having to grind through a closing argument or prep witnesses without a break to relax.
    The lawyers who hadn’t cut out earlier in the day were coming