She stepped gingerly around the bed. After checking the armoire and peering into dust balls under the sagging mattress, she felt convinced no attacker lurked in the bedroom. A fly buzzed, circling near the unblinking eyes whose gaze was locked on the ceiling. Disgusted, she shooed it away.

Alert for an intruder, she padded down the hallway, examining each closet and scouting every room. Empty.

She hadn't come face to face with a homicide since working with her father. Her impulse was to run out of the apartment, call the flics, and return Hecht's money. But she forced herself to go back.

In the bedroom she surveyed the dead woman more carefully. Deep and bloodless, the swastika stretched from her eyebrows to the wispy gray hairs at her hairline, exposing bone and pulpy tissue. A gold chain with Hebrew letters hung twisted in the bloody ligature mark around her neck.

She swore, shooing the persistent fly, who'd alighted on the woman's wool skirt that crumpled up at her knees. Swollen ankles puffed out over scuffed shoes. Aimee noticed the scratches and bruising on the pasty legs; the hands, in half fists, lay at her side as if she'd died struggling.

"In Lili Stein's hands" was what she'd promised Soli Hecht. That no longer made sense as the woman was dead. She wasn't superstitious but…she bent down, peering at the woman's hand. Bits of wood splinters were embedded in her palms. Aimee looked around her. No marks were scratched in the wood slats nailed over the window. Crutches lay uselessly on the floor. Her fingernails were broken and jagged. Like a cornered animal, Aimee thought, she'd tried to claw her way out.

Aimee carefully put her fingers on the blue-veined wrist. She pulled out the envelope with the photo image and touched it to Lili's cold hand, not yet stiff with rigor mortis.

In that moment she felt the murderer hovering in this dank room. Foreboding washed over her. She became aware of the nasal-voiced radio announcer. In a prerecorded message yesterday to the labor unions at Lille, Cazaux, the French trade minister and expected appointee for prime minister, had promised strict foreign immigration quotas. "French industry, French workers, French products!" Cazaux's familiar voice ranted as crowds roared.