It was a coyote.

The same impatient driver behind her gave another horn blast and the animal left. Not in a panic run, but a trot, displaying wild elegance, potential speed, and something else. Arrogance. She watched it reach the other curb, where it stopped, gave her a backward glance, complete with brazen eye contact, and then dashed off toward Amsterdam.

For Nikki, an unsettling way to start her morning: first the scare of almost hitting an animal; then the creepy look. She drove on, blotting herself with napkins from the glove box, wishing she had chosen a black skirt this morning and not gone with the khaki. It never got any easier for Nikki to meet a corpse. As she sat behind the steering wheel at 86th and Broadway, parked behind the OCME van, observing the silent movie of a coroner at work, she once again reflected that maybe that was a good thing.

The medical examiner was crouched on the sidewalk in front of the shared storefront of a lingerie shop and the newest gourmet cupcake bakery. A duo of mixed messages, if there ever was one. She couldn't see the victim he was working. Thanks to a citywide garbage strike, a waist-high mound of refuse started in the gutter and encroached on a good bit of the sidewalk, obscuring the body from Heat's view. She could whiff the two days of trash rot even in the morning chill. At least the mound formed a handy barrier to keep the looky-loos back. There were already a dozen early risers up the block and an equal number behind the yellow tape down at the corner near the subway entrance.

She looked at the digital clock flashing time and temperature on the bank up the street. Only 6:18. More and more of her shifts were starting like this. The downturn in the economy had hit everyone, and in her personal observation, whether it was the city cutbacks in policing or merely the sort of economy that fueled crime-or both-Detective Heat was meeting more corpses these days. She didn't need Diane Sawyer to break out the crime stats for her to know that if the body count wasn't up, the rate was at least quickening its pace.