“Of course. It’s just temporary.”

Jenkins looked through the window that divided him from the detectives, working his jaw. “You don’t want it to become more than that. No matter what they say, it can’t come easy. Not to me, and not to you. You better deserve it twice as much as they do. You get what you want too soon, and you won’t be seen as earning it.”

Ellie knew precisely what he meant. She had made detective quicker than most, after four years on patrol, and the assignment had coincided with the wave of media attention thrown her way that year. She knew other cops speculated she got a leg up either because she was female, because of the press, or both.

“Yes, sir. Thank you. I still don’t understand, though. Who’s the detective?” Not that it made a difference. Ellie didn’t know anyone in homicide.

“Flann McIlroy. You ever heard of him?”

“By name, sure.” The truth was she usually heard Flann McIlroy referred to by a slightly different name. McIl-Mulder, as he was called, was a colorful subject of discussion – usually complaints – among other career detectives who resented the singular adoration he appeared to enjoy. In the case that sealed his status as a media darling, a clinical psychiatrist had been pulled from the elevator of her Central Park West building when it stopped at a floor that was supposedly closed for construction. She had been stabbed eighty-eight times. The M.E. couldn’t determine whether the rape came before, during, or after.

“Well, apparently McIlroy thinks he knows something about you,” Jenkins said. “Face it. You’ve gotten more press lately than most of us experience in a career. What the hell that’s got to do with two bodies in New York is for you to figure out.”

Ellie would have loved to explain that she did not want the attention. To start with, the news stories weren’t about her. They were about her father. No, not even. They were about the man her father had hunted – the man who may have killed him. She was a mere human-interest sideshow, the daughter who followed in her dead daddy’s footsteps, who still believed in him.