I ignored the shot and welcomed the news that Mercer Wallace would be part of the team. A former homicide cop, he was my best investigator at the Special Victims Squad, where he caught all the major serial rape cases and pattern crimes.

“Before you use up your quarter, are you going to fill me in on this one and give me a clue about how to sell it to my boss?”

Paul Battaglia hated it when detectives shopped around his office to pull in their favorite assistant district attorneys to work on complex criminal matters. For the twenty years that he’d been the District Attorney of New York County, he had operated with an on-call system-known as the homicide chart-so that for every twenty-four-hour period, every day of the year, a senior prosecutor was on standby and ready to assist in the investigation of murder cases in any way that the NYPD considered useful. Questioning suspects, drafting search warrants, authorizing arrests, and interviewing witnesses-all of the tasks fell to the assistant D.A. who was “on the chart” and had the first significant contact with the police.

“You’re a natural for this one, Alex. No kidding. The deceased was sexually assaulted. Mercer’s right-we really need your guidance on this one.” Chapman was referring to the fact that I am the bureau chief in charge of the Sex Crimes Prosecution Unit-Battaglia’s pet project that specializes in the sensitive handling of victims of rape and abuse. Often, since many of those crimes escalated to murder, my colleagues and I were designated to handle the ensuing investigations and trials.

I was stretching across to the drawer of the night table to find this month’s homicide chart, to check whether I’d be stepping on the toes of one of the D.A.‘s fair-haired boys, and how much flak I’d be heading for. “Well, until eight o’clock this morning, Eddie Fremont is catching.”