“You’re right. It’s like…I don’t know, rotten garbage or something.”

Jacob, disgusted, took a step back in the leaves and stumbled over something. He put out his hand and leaned against it to steady himself, only to find the leafy surface he’d been hidden against now yielded with a soft sigh, and the stench suddenly billowed over them, a hundred times worse than before. He jerked away and staggered back even as he heard Ryan say, “Look, there’s a hand…”

2

LIEUTENANT COMMANDER DETECTIVE Squad Vincent D’Agosta stood in the floodlights outside the garage in Kew Gardens, Queens, watching the Crime Scene Unit work. He was annoyed at being called out so late on the night before his day off. The body was reported at 11:38—just twenty-two more minutes and the call would’ve gone to Lieutenant Parkhurst.

He sighed. It was going to be messy, this one: a young woman, decapitated. He played around in his mind with possible tabloid headlines, something along the lines of HEADLESS BODY IN TOPLESS BAR, the most famous headline in New York Post history.

Johnny Caruso, the head of the CSU, emerged from the glare, slipping his iPad into his bag.

“What you got?” D’Agosta asked.

“These damn leaves. I mean, try searching for hair, fiber, fingerprints, whatever in that mess. Like a needle in a haystack.”

“You think the perp knew that?”

“Nah. Unless he actually worked on an evidence collection team once. Just a coincidence.”

“No head?”

“None. The beheading didn’t take place here, either—no blood.”

“Cause of death?”

“Single shot to the heart. High-caliber, high-velocity round, went right through, back to front. Maybe some frags in the wound, but no round. And that didn’t happen here, either. Given the cold and so forth, best estimate is the body was dumped three days ago, maybe four.”

“Sexual assault?”

“No obvious signs of it so far, but we’ll have to wait for the M.E.’s examination of, you know, the various—”

“Right,” D’Agosta said quickly. “No ID, nothing?”

“None. No documents, empty pockets. Caucasian female, maybe five six—hard to say—early twenties, toned body, obviously fit. Wearing Dolce and Gabbana jeans. And see those crazy sneakers she’s wearing? Just looked ’em up on the web. Louboutin. Almost a thousand bucks.”

D’Agosta whistled. “Thousand-dollar sneakers? Holy shit.”

“Yeah. Rich white girl. Headless. You know what that means—right, Lieutenant?”

D’Agosta nodded. The media would be there any moment—and here they were, as if he’d conjured them out of his head: a Fox 5 van pulled up, then another, and then an Uber with none other than good old Bryce Harriman, the Post reporter, stepping out like he was Mr. Pulitzer himself.

“Christ.” D’Agosta murmured into his radio for the spokesperson, but Chang was already on it, at the police barricades, talking his usual smooth stuff.

Caruso ignored the rising chorus beyond the barricades. “We’re working on an ID, looking through the missing person databases, fingerprints, the whole nine yards.”

“I doubt you’ll get a match on her.”

“You never know, girl like that: cocaine, meth. She might even be a really high-end hooker—anything’s possible.”

D’Agosta nodded again. His feeling of disgruntlement began to ease. This was going to be a high-profile case. That could cut both ways, of course, but he never shied away from a challenge and he felt pretty sure this one would be a winner. If anything so awful could be called a winner. Decapitation: that meant it was some sick, twisted perp, easily caught. And if she was some rich family’s daughter, it would mean priority for the lab work, allowing him to cut ahead of all the piece-of-shit cases waiting in line for the notoriously slow NYPD forensic labs.

The Evidence Gathering Team, all gowned up like surgeons, continued to work, crouching here and there, humped up and shuffling about like oversize white monkeys, sifting through the leaves one by one, examining the concrete floor of the garage, going over the door handle and windows, lifting prints from the broken glass on the floor—all by the book. They looked good, and Caruso was the best. They, too, sensed this was going to be a big case. With all the recent lab scandals they were taking extra care. And the two kids who’d found the body had been questioned right on the scene before being released to their parents. No shortcuts on this one.

“Keep it up,” said D’Agosta, giving Caruso a pat on the shoulder as he stepped back.

The cold was starting to creep in, and D’Agosta decided to take a brisk turn along the chain-link fence that surrounded the old car yard, just to make sure they hadn’t missed any possible points of ingress. As he moved out of the illuminated area, there was still plenty of ambient light to see, but he flicked on his flashlight anyway and moved along, probing this way and that. Coming around a building toward the back of the yard, picking his way past a stack of cubed cars, he saw a crouching figure just inside the fence—inside. It was no cop or anyone on his team: the figure was dressed in a ridiculously puffy down jacket, with a hood way too large for his head that stuck out like a horizontal piece of stovepipe.

“Hey! You!” D’Agosta hustled toward the figure, one hand on the butt of his service piece, the other hand holding the flashlight. “Police officer! Stand up, hands in sight!”

The figure rose, hands raised, face completely obscured in the shadow of the fur-fringed hood, turning toward him. He could see nothing but two gleaming eyes in the blackness of the hood.

Creeped out, D’Agosta pulled his piece. “What the hell are you doing here? Didn’t you see the police tape? Identify yourself!”

“My dear Vincent, you may put away your weapon.”

D’Agosta recognized the voice immediately. He lowered the gun and holstered it. “Jesus, Pendergast, what the hell are you doing? You know you’re supposed to present your credentials before poking around.”

“If I must be here, why miss out on a dramatic entrance? And how fortunate it was you who happened upon me.”

“Yeah, right: lucky you. I might have busted a cap in your ass.”

“How dreadful: a cap in my ass. You continue to amaze me with your colorful expressions.”

They stood looking at each other for a moment, and then D’Agosta pulled off a glove and stuck out his hand. Pendergast slipped off his own black leather gloves and they shook, D’Agosta gripping his arm. The man’s hand was as cool as a piece of marble, but he pulled back his hood and exposed his pale face, white-blond hair slicked back, silver eyes unnaturally bright in the dim light.

“You say you have to be here?” D’Agosta asked. “You on assignment?”

“For my sins, yes. I’m afraid my stock in the Bureau has declined rather sharply for the moment. I am—what is that colorful term of yours?—temporarily in shit’s creek.”

“Up shit creek? Or do you mean you’re in deep shit?”

“That’s it. Deep shit. Without the paddle.”

D’Agosta shook his head. “Why are the feds involved in this?”

“A superior of mine, Executive Associate Director Longstreet, hypothesizes the body may have been brought here from New Jersey. Crossing state lines. He thinks organized crime could be involved.”

“Organized crime? We haven’t even collected the evidence. New Jersey? What’s this bullshit?”

“Yes, Vincent, I’m afraid it’s all fantasy. And for one purpose: I am being taught a lesson. But now I feel rather like Br’er Rabbit being thrown into the briar patch, because I have found you here, in charge. Just like when we first met, back at the Natural History Museum.”

D’Agosta grunted. While he was glad to see Pendergast, he was not at all glad the FBI was involved. And despite the uncharacteristically light banter—which felt forced—Pendergast didn’t look good…not at all. He was thin, almost skeletal, and his face was hollow, dark circles under his eyes.

“I realize this is not a welcome development,” Pendergast said. “I shall do my utmost to keep out of your way.”

“No problem, you know how it is with the NYPD and the FBI. Let me bring you over to the crime scene and introduce you around. You want to examine it yourself?”

“When the EGT is finished, I’d be delighted.”

Delighted. He didn’t sound delighted. He’d be even less so when he saw the three-day-old body without a head.

“Ingress and egress?” Pendergast asked as they walked back.

“Seems pretty evident. The guy had a key to the back gate, drove in, dumped the body, left.”

They arrived back at the area before the open garage and entered the glare of the light. The EGT was almost finished, packing up their stuff.