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softly. “You’re right. She’s gone. She was found this morning.”
    William Childs started to sob loudly. He was a powerful-looking workingman, but that didn’t matter. He held his bewildered little girl to his chest and tried to control the crying, but he couldn’t.
    “Oh, God, no. Oh, Nina, Nina baby. How could somebody kill her? How could anybody do that? Oh, Nina, Nina, Nina.”
    A young, pretty woman came up behind him. She had to be Nina’s sister, Marie. She took the baby from her sister’s husband, and the little girl began to scream, as if she knew what had happened. I had seen so many families, so many good people, who had lost loved ones on these merciless streets. I knew it would never completely stop, but I felt it ought to get better. It never did.
    The sister motioned for us to come inside, and I noticed a hall table on which there were two pocketbooks, as if Nina were still about. The apartment was comfortable looking and neat, with light bamboo and white-cushioned furniture. The whir of a window air conditioner was constant. A Llardo porcelain figure of a nurse stood on an end table.
    I was still sorting through details of the homicide scene, trying to connect the murder to the other Jane Does. We learned that Nina had attended a health-care charity dinner on Saturday night. William had been working overtime. The family called the police late Saturday night. Two detectives had shown up, but no one had been able to find Nina until now.
    Then I was holding the baby while Nina’s sister took the chill off a bottle of formula. It was such a sad and poignant moment, knowing this poor little girl would never see her mother again, never know how truly special her mother had been. It reminded me of my own kids and their mother, and of Christine, who was afraid I would die during some murder investigation like this one.
    The older little girl came up to me while I was holding her baby sister. She was two or three at the most. “I got a new hairstyle,” she said proudly and did a half-turn to show me.
    “You did? It’s beautiful. Who did those braids for you?”
    “My mommy,” said the girl.
    It was an hour later when Sampson and I finally left the house. We drove away in silence and despair, the same way we’d come. After a couple of blocks, Sampson pulled over in front of a ramshackle neighborhood bodega covered with beer and soda posters.
    He gave a deep sigh, put his hands to his face, and then cried. I’d never ever seen John like this before, not in all the years we’d been friends, not even when we were just boys. I reached out and laid a hand on his shoulder, and he didn’t move away. Then he told me something he hadn’t shared before.
    “I loved her, Alex, but I let her get away. I never told her how I felt. We have to get this son of a bitch.”

Chapter 11
    I SENSED I WAS AT THE START of another homicide mess. I didn’t want it, but I couldn’t stop the horror. I had to try to do something about the Jane Does. I couldn’t just stand by and do nothing.
    Although I was assigned to the Seventh District as a senior detective, my job as liaison with the FBI gave me some extra status and also the freedom to occasionally work without too much supervision or interference. My mind was running free, and I’d already made some associations between Nina’s murder and at least some of the unsolved killings. First, there had been no identification on the victims at each crime scene. Second, the bodies had frequently been dumped in buildings where they might not be found quickly. Third, not a single witness had seen anyone who might be a suspect. The most we ever got was that there had been traffic, or people out on the street, where one of the bodies had been found. That told me that the killer knew how to blend in, and that he possibly was a black man.
    Around six that night, I finally headed home. This was supposed to be my day off. I had things to do there, and I was trying to balance the